What’s next – concentration camps for the unemployed and poor?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I read two articles this weekend that could be harbingers of the Tea-Publican tyranny to come. At a time when we are in a New Gilded Age of wealth concentrated in the hands of a very few über-rich plutocrats, the greatest income disparity since just before the Crash of 1929, inequality.org, the Tea-Publicans want to demonize the unemployed and poor for the nation's economic ills.

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum (never heard of him until now) wrote a column that suggested Registering Poor To Vote 'Like Handing Out Burglary Tools To Criminals' | TPMMuckraker:

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

"It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

"Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor," Vadum writes. "It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers."

There is so much wrong with this, where to begin? This column was published in something called the "American Thinker"? What were they thinking? This guy is one of the wild-eyed conspiracy theorists who hawk their wares at World Nut Daily. This wingnut has zero credibility.

What is "anti-social and un-American" is the totalitarianism of Tea-Publican tyranny that would deny American citizens their birthright to constitutional rights and liberties under the U.S. Constitution based upon economic status. Vladum tried to "clarify" his outrageous views:

Vadum writes that of course he thinks poor people have the right to vote, he just doesn't want anybody to help them since their votes "could lead to the destruction of the republic."

Vadum clarifies that it is "destructive to register welfare recipients to vote so that they can vote themselves more government benefits."

Really? How about the über-rich plutocrats like the billionaire bastard Koch brothers who are corrupting our political system so that they can help themselves to corporate welfare? And they get tools like this guy to do their dirty work for them.

Then there was this unbelievable report from McClatchy News in the Arizona Daily Star. Is America losing patience with the unemployed? (Conservatives call them lazy, states cut benefits, and economy still plods):

As the nation celebrates U.S. workers this Labor Day weekend, many jobless Americans say they sense a growing indifference to their plight, and even a certain level of demonization.

For years, people who lost their jobs were the sad, sympathetic faces of the nation's economic meltdown. But more than two years after the Great Recession officially ended, America's empathy for the unemployed is showing signs of wear.

* * *

America's jobless also face increased hostility from conservative lawmakers, as more states cut the amount and duration of unemployment benefits, while making them harder to get.

In South Carolina, where state-funded jobless benefits were cut from 26 to 20 weeks, Republican state Sen. Kevin Bryant blogged in April that "part of the unemployment problem is that our human nature is to take advantage of the ability to get paid to not work. … I'm very sympathetic to those out of work desperately seeking it, but I'm disappointed that we have a significant segment of our society leeching (off) the system."

Similar comments from a variety of conservatives reflect a sneaking suspicion that 99 weeks of extended benefits have taken the urgency out of job searches.

"Two years is a long time. At some point you've got to provide more incentives to get people to do things," said Frederick Tannery, an economics professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania.

* * *

Last year, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, even proposed drug tests for people who apply for welfare and jobless benefits.

The notable change in tone begs the question: Has America lost patience with the unemployed? And have extended jobless benefits caused some to view the long-term unemployed as the "welfare queens" of the new millennium

Oh, dear God. The massive Bush tax cuts were a windfall to multinational corporations and the über-rich "investor class," now rebranded the "job creators" by GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz. The investor class produced no jobs in America over the past decade. The number of employed Americans has dropped from 132.5 million to 131.2 million over the past decade. (At the same time, the population has increased by 27 million). Corporate welfare and tax windfalls to the über-rich are the drivers of our economic ills, not the measely unemployment insurance benefits that workers paid into while they were employed and working — it isn't "welfare."

"Extended unemployment insurance has been the saving grace for millions of people who lost jobs in the recession through no fault of their own. The benefit programs – which are run by the states but financed by federal and state taxes on wages – kept 3.3 million people out of poverty in 2009."

McClatchy accurately makes the point:

In fact the economy isn't creating jobs fast enough to re-employ the 8 million-plus who lost jobs in the Great Recession of 2007-09.

"People blame the chronically unemployed when, in fact, they're the victim of a much larger economic calamity that's beyond their control," said Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.

Blaming the victims is what Tea-Publicans do while serving their masters, the banksters of Wall Street and the über-rich plutocrats of the corporatocracy.

How far will this demonization of the unemployed and poor go? What's next – concentration camps for the unemployed and poor? Since American workers are no longer needed to keep multinational corporations profitable and the über-rich plutocrats fabulously wealthy, are they going to "decrease the surplus population" as Ebeneezer Scrooge advised? I would not put it past the totalitarians of the Tea-Publican tyranny.