Bob Lord

Posted by Bob Lord

A few days ago, the NY Times had yet another piece attempting to stoke resentment towards safety net beneficiaries, Behind the Big Increase in Food Stamps. The gist of the piece is that every American family would save $212 bucks or so a year if we just went back to pre-2007 rules for food stamp eligibility. 

What's going on here? After years of quiet on this front following the financial meltdown, conservatives are back to demonizing poor people and blaming the safety net for our economic ills.

And it's not idle chatter. Demonizing the poor will emerge as the dominant theme for conservatives over the next election cycle.

Posted by Bob Lord

I don't read conservative think tank studies regularly, so maybe the ones I've read are just a bad sample. Based on my admittedly unscientific sampling, however, it's scandalous that we are allowing tax deductions for folks like the Koch brothers to contribute to the Cato Institute and other conservative think tanks, which then hire dishonest shills to compile pure propaganda pieces promoting the right-wing agenda. 

The BlueMeanie and I both posted a few days ago on a Cato Institute study authored by Michael Tanner, The Work Versus Welfare Trade-off: 2013. BlueMeanie reported on a takedown by Josh Barro at Business Insider. I did my own analysis and reached similar conclusions. My analysis went a bit deeper than Barro's, probably because he had a word limit, but neither of us captured the breathtaking dishonesty of Cato's propaganda. 

I've been able to spend a bit more time with the study. It's breathtaking in its mendacity. Tanner fully intended to deceive the public. No question. In my prior post on the subject, No, It's Not The Welfare, Stupid, I pointed out how Tanner based his analysis on a "prototype" family of a single mother with two children, but implicitly assumed she did not receive child support. Thus, his analysis really applied only to single mothers with two children whose father is dead or a deadbeat. 

It's actually far worse than that. The welfare family Tanner claims to be representative of households in general actually represents a tiny of sliver of the population — the sliver most in need of assistance. 

Posted by Bob Lord I'm glad it's not my decision how to handle the Syrian situation. I'd make a bad decider on this one.  I have friends in the Syrian-American community here and have discussed the situation with them. They have family in Syria. They've lost loved ones to Assad. Make no mistake about it, … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord

[UPDATE: I went up with this post because I felt there were some oddities surrounding the Pastor hit piece that called for explanation. The whole thing just didn't feel right. After posting, I realized that what was most odd about this was that the initial response to the mailer came first from Mario Diaz's independent expenditure group, not the Pastor campaign itself. IE groups generally do not take the lead in responding to attacks. They defer to the campaign. Remember, they can't coordinate with the campaign, so they need to wait for the campaign to speak publicly to make sure anything they say is on message. 

The comments to my post, particular those from "you must be using some bad weed", raise further questions. I don't know who, besides Mario Diaz himself, would be motivated to look up his campaign contributions to me from 5 years ago in order to discredit me. And they're illogical. Logically, his contributions to me would enhance my credibility, because I'd be less likely to question someone who contributed as generously as Mario did to my campaign. It's hard to reconcile the personal tone of those comments with the source being someone off the street who just didn't like my post.]

Shocking timing – the first hit piece against any District 4 city council candidate landed Saturday - just three days before Tuesday’s election against Laura Pastor.  The anonymous mail piece — paid for by a “private citizen,” — suggested Pastor and socialite Paris Hilton have gotten ahead because of their fathers, and the messaging was made to look like it came from David Lujan or his supporters.  The piece was a call-back to an attack seen before – a hit back in 2007 when she ran for city council against Michael Nowakowski that accused her of being “Daddy’s Little Girl.”  

On Saturday, Pastor and her opponents Lujan, Carroll and Johnson immediately denounced the piece on social media.  Her opponents said neither they nor anyone from their campaign were behind it. The mailing appears to have gone out to a handful of Democratic activists to clearly get the base fired up on social media over the weekend. Mission accomplished. 

But reporters and activists should dig deeper and ask questions. There are at least a few strands of GOP DNA on the Pastor attack piece, and a lot of questions on who would execute such a ham-handed sexist attack, and who really benefits.

Posted by Bob Lord

[Note — While I was drafting, the AZBlueMeanie posted on the same topic. But we make somewhat different points. And, as you'll see, this one is a bit personal for me. I couldn't not publish it.]

If you believe the reports coming from the right these days, especially the Libertarian right, welfare queens once again reign supreme. 

In fact, our welfare system is causing able-bodied Americans not to work.

So says Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in a report entitled The Work Versus Welfare Trade-Off: 2013 and reported by the Daily Caller in Study: Welfare pays more than work in most states.

I know Tanner. You see, for a few years back in the 90's he was married to my sister. He was one creepy dude. Speculating on how our welfare system inhibits work while he earns a living writing papers for a think tank funded by ultra-rich plutocrats and their private foundations is entirely consistent with the worldview I remember him having. Back then, he used to rail about the evils of social security. Apparently, he's evolved little in two decades.

And his report shows that he's willing to stoop to pretty much any level of intellectual dishonesty to make his case.