The Ignorant Cracker Defense

Via Josh Marshall, we find the Lt. Governor of South Carolina, who is running for the Governor's office, dog-whistling to his fellow trailer trash:

"GREENVILLE - Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals."

Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.

"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," Bauer said."

Not only was his grandmother uneducated, it's clear she insured he stayed that way, too. This is his understanding of "welfare":

"He said government hasn't made requirements to make those receiving aid be more responsible.

"They can continue to have more and more kids, and the reward is there's more and more money in it for them."

Instead, he said, the government should place incentives in its welfare programs, such as providing child care so parents can work or receive education so they can break the welfare cycle.

Government continues to reward bad behavior by giving money to people who "don't have to do a thing," he said."

You see, this man lives in the Reaganesque world of welfare queens and lazy chicken-eating Negroes, so he missed 1996, when Clinton's welfare reform created the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program, which places limits on lifetime receipts of benefits, and requires parents to work or go to school in exchange for what benefits they receive. And since that program is highly individualistic by state, he must be unaware of his own state's requirements, which requires work and/or school, and which limit the receipt of aid to 60 months in an entire lifetime. Extensions of aid beyond the stated limit are only granted to heads of households who are disabled or caring for a disabled person, who are under 18 and still in high school,who are not themselves recipients of TANF or are caring for abandoned children, or who have no reasonable access to transportation or child care. Failing to comply with extension criteria means immediate termination of the case. Yet this lying sack goes boldly on with his lies, taking swipes as children who,through no fault of their own, must seek school lunch aid to ensure some nutritional adequacy in their diets:

"Later in his speech, Bauer said, "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."

If there are poor test scores. it could have something to do with his state's atrocious poverty rate, which, even before the great recession, was growing steadily. As early as August 2005, S. Carolina had an overall poverty rate of 15.7%, and a rate of 22.1% for its children, making it 12th highest among the 50 states. Of course, it would help if all these stray animals had jobs, but Bauer's state is currently showing a 20% unemployment rate for African-Americans, in a state that is 28.5% black. I guess they could bring back the sharecropper model and put all those school-lunch-eating little bastards to work. That's the kind of solution I have a feeling Mr. Bauer would find eminently satisfying. After all, he has plenty of cash. And he has no dearth of brazenness:

"Bauer said he shouldn't have used the "stray animals" reference. However, he said he knows his comments are politically incorrect, and he does not feel that he needs to apologize."

Fine work, Republicans. More of him and the Crackerbaggers will be ready to start up the lynch mobs again.