South Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is being ridiculed for a recent speech where he appears to compare poor people to stray cats and connect having “ample food supply” to increasing welfare demand.
Here is the key quote:
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
Perhaps his grandma should have also told him not to quote her on this one.
Almost sixty percent of kids in South Carolina participate in free or reduced cost lunches. Bauer insists that those free lunches appear to be driving down test scores:
“I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina,” adding, “You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I’ll show you the worst test scores, folks. It’s there, period.” … “You go to a school where there’s an active participation of parents, and guess what? They have the highest test scores. So what do you do? You say, ‘Look folks, if you receive goods or services from the government and you don’t attend a parent-teacher conference, bam, you lose your benefits.’”
I just hope that he does not read this blog and see the availability of haggis in a can for lunchroom cafeterias, here.
By the way, have you noticed that the number of truly moronic statements goes up dramatically with the free availability of microphones. I can show you a bar graph where politicians near free mics have the worst ideas in any state.
Wow this is actually interesting.
I hear a fool is going around here acting fool. Is Bdaman still clowning with numerous screen names? The fool that he is makes it difficult concentrate on the topic at hand. I wonder how many ID’s can be traced to his computer?
Yo, Duh, see if you can get Bdaman to give you his IP address here.
“The talking heads on Fox want to divide and they are succeeding.”
I know you’re much more intelligent than that. FOX NEWS is just honest about their partisanship. They’re all bad, and they all feed division. When you get away from all of them you can start to see what really they’re doing. One side tells you to look left. The other side tells you to look right. In the meantime, they both keep you from seeing he problem that is coming straight at you.
Jhngalt5:
can the state compel an individual to give up a child? Isn’t that an infringement of their rights?
Since most of us pay taxes and I don’t personally mind some of my taxes going to help a poor mother aren’t you denying me my rights as well?
Who is to say what level of assistance is required to keep a child? The government? So you are willing to allow the government to intervene in a very private matter on the one hand but you are unwilling for the government to intervene to make abortion illegal? So the government can take a child from his mother but it cannot prevent her from having an abortion. Seems to me if the government can take away a mothers child it can also force her not to have an abortion.
What do you believe in? Government control or not? I may be missing something here but it seems to me you are contradicting yourself. Unless of course you are not an Objectivist.
I know it provides much more. I was answering the question about the meals. The talking heads on Fox want to divide and they are succeeding.
I’m not referring to people leaving their jobs or spouses so their kids can get free meals. I’m referring to people who are already on government assisstance who have more children to keep the benefits coming. I’m also referring to high school girls, like the ones in Chicago, who purposely get pregnant inorder to receive government benefits. We need to tell people like this that they need to give up the child for adoption if they can’t provide for it, either personally or thorugh family or private charity. Is this heartless? A little, but we can’t afford, financially or as a civilized society, to have it any other way.
Swarthmore mom,
Don’t sell the program short. They do much more than provide breakfast and lunch.
“Head Start is a national program that promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families.”
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ohs/
You said “Conservatives criticize government programs carte blanche without even knowing what the services they provide are.”
I think you’re painting with a broad brush. It’s easy to cover a lot of territory, but I don’t think it’s accurate. How easily we forget what unites us, and focus on what it is that divides us. The talking heads want to divide us. It’s our responsibility to stop them.
“if you subsidize a behavior, you get more of it—that’s an indisputable fact.”
Even if that’s true, the amount of people in the entire state of Georgia who will be motivated to become unemployed or leave their spouses because of a reduced price school lunch program is probably less than 1 per 10,000 years.
Byron Head Start provides breakfast and lunch to preschoolers. Conservatives criticize government programs carte blanche without even knowing what the services they provide are.
The analogy would be accurate if he were talking about welfare for able-bodied individuals in general. Aside from reproductive issues, if you subsidize a behavior, you get more of it—that’s an indisputable fact. If you feed stray cats, they stick around and bay at your window at night. Santa Monica, CA is a great example of how feeding the homeless encourages them to stick around and cause problems.
The watermelon man is the walk a mile in someones shoes.
Believe it or not, I’m am writing this from a homeless shelter where I currently reside using a laptop and a wireless Internet connection. Just imagine what I think of S.C. Lt. Governor Bauer’s grandmother’s advice.
SURPRISE!!:
Kristin Tassin:
first that was in no way directed at African Americans, there are more poor white people. And intelligence is a good predictor of success in life, it is not everything but it goes a long way. A person with an IQ of 90 is not going to be a doctor or a lawyer (well maybe a lawyer).
“I do not believe that any one is intrinsically lacking in ability or intelligence.”
then you would be flat out wrong, people have varying degrees of intelligence and ability. How they use what they have is another matter.
“And, regardless of your feelings on the causes of poverty, I don’t think depriving school children of what is probably the only balanced meal they have all day is a good solution.”
I never said children should be deprived of school lunches.
“The fact that poverty is associated with lower-paying jobs and lower education achievements are due to things like: poor nutrition, poor environmental conditions, lack of access to qualified teaching and medical personnel, lack of access to higher education, lack of access to the Internet, etc.”
there are so many government programs that are designed to help the poor, whether it be WIC or welfare or housing subsidies or medicaid that there is no reason for someone going without food or housing or medical care. And education is available through student loans and Pell grants and through scholarships.
So I think you are pretty much wrong on all counts including the one that says all people want to provide for their families. That is not correct either, there are people that do not care about their families and abandon them.
And a final question, why do you think this was about blacks and not about poor whites as well? Hmmm?
bdaman,
There was no need to go after Puma personally. Please stop.
I’m sure John Puma was referring to the Lt. Governor replacing the current Governor in case of impeachment or resignation, as a bad thing.
Don’t let the title mislead:
Puma, wrong guy. Hope you never serve on a jury.
This is the first and only good reason I’ve seen for the failure to impeach/convict the Appalachian/Argentine lover-boy.
A couple of friends of mine, a physician and his wife (both caucasian) have over the years adopted 8 african-america children. All of them were infants at the time of their adoption. Every one of their children are achieving at the same rate as their white peers.
This would indicate that it’s not the color of one’s skin, or who your birth parents are that has a direct influence, but lends more support to the nurturing they receive.
As Kristin pointed out, environment can influence the ability to achieve. Poor nutritian and poor environmental conditions play a significant role.
By the time poor children get to school age, I think the cards are stacked against them. The brain, due to a number of causes between birth and school age, didn’t get the proper kick start, and the desired result may be much more difficult for teachers to achieve.
Kristin, Thanks for teaching! It is a profession that only those who enter into it really get to see the rewards of their efforts.
I hope you know I was being sarcastic about what is in the lunches. I agree that for many it is the only nutritious meal they may get that day.