Since freeloading was pretty much institutionalized in the historical past, on the backs of slaves and others oppressed, it's ironic that the ideological peers of Jefferson Davis talk about freeloading as much as they do. Like the Tea Partiers in Congress, for instance. And Congress, of all people, commenting on the alleged freeloading of others! You would think they would try to deflect any embarrassing comparisons to themselves by not talking about freeloading at all, but this 113th Congress is shameless. This is, after all, a handsomely paid Congress (roughly $175,000 annually and an abundance of perks) that rarely works a full business week, has more adjournments than probably any Congress in history, and likely takes more and longer vacations than run-of-the-mill freeloaders, such as the CEOs of rich corporations that inexplicably receive monetary largesse from Uncle Sam.
Nonetheless, the Tea Party folk in Congress can't get enough of talking negatively about "food stamp" and general welfare recipients, most of whom are either children or working adults, and many of the latter without conventional jobs are doing community or volunteer work. They even had a Georgian congressman (Kingston) saying or implying that poor kids need to start picking up brooms in school and sweeping the classroom or cafeteria floors (he didn't say "all" kids). The Tea Party Congress could just leave low-income or poor descendants of slaves alone by just considering "welfare" a kind of inheritance trade-off for work never paid for in past centuries, but then that wouldn't fit in with their true colors.
This Tea Party, that's pretty much running the gerrymandered U.S. House of Representatives, even wants to snatch away some or all of the already earned money of Social Security recipients through gimmicky laws or privatization, and a lot of them want to outright dismantle the popular program. They could care less that Social Security is not welfare, but basically a pension fund that is paid into by the general populace, and thus by the recipients themselves. Regarding another insurance program that is paid for by the recipients and could-be recipients, the Tea Party also doesn't want any extension of unemployment compensation to laid-off workers, of course, and they really don't like the concept of unemployment compensation in general, let alone helping people whose benefits are about to run out this month.
All the Tea Party cares about is feeding into this bizarre notion that a government of a great nation should do nothing other than provide for the national defense and some policing, and to pave or re-pave some interstate highways, we guess. Their unorthodox ideas, to put it kindly, would make for a poor nation that would hardly be a nation if they were to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. And if their rank-in-file and the rest of the nation would magically start emulating their 113th Congress ways, who would do the work to keep a great nation running? Pretty much nobody.
[Originally posted on Commoner on 12/20/13 under the title "Speaking of Freeloading: the 113th Congress;" revised on 12/25/13.]
Nonetheless, the Tea Party folk in Congress can't get enough of talking negatively about "food stamp" and general welfare recipients, most of whom are either children or working adults, and many of the latter without conventional jobs are doing community or volunteer work. They even had a Georgian congressman (Kingston) saying or implying that poor kids need to start picking up brooms in school and sweeping the classroom or cafeteria floors (he didn't say "all" kids). The Tea Party Congress could just leave low-income or poor descendants of slaves alone by just considering "welfare" a kind of inheritance trade-off for work never paid for in past centuries, but then that wouldn't fit in with their true colors.
This Tea Party, that's pretty much running the gerrymandered U.S. House of Representatives, even wants to snatch away some or all of the already earned money of Social Security recipients through gimmicky laws or privatization, and a lot of them want to outright dismantle the popular program. They could care less that Social Security is not welfare, but basically a pension fund that is paid into by the general populace, and thus by the recipients themselves. Regarding another insurance program that is paid for by the recipients and could-be recipients, the Tea Party also doesn't want any extension of unemployment compensation to laid-off workers, of course, and they really don't like the concept of unemployment compensation in general, let alone helping people whose benefits are about to run out this month.
All the Tea Party cares about is feeding into this bizarre notion that a government of a great nation should do nothing other than provide for the national defense and some policing, and to pave or re-pave some interstate highways, we guess. Their unorthodox ideas, to put it kindly, would make for a poor nation that would hardly be a nation if they were to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. And if their rank-in-file and the rest of the nation would magically start emulating their 113th Congress ways, who would do the work to keep a great nation running? Pretty much nobody.
[Originally posted on Commoner on 12/20/13 under the title "Speaking of Freeloading: the 113th Congress;" revised on 12/25/13.]
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