Paul Ryan's Deep Contempt for His District
http://www.progressive.org/paul-ryan-is-janesvilles-marie-antoinette
Ryan’s comments are especially demeaning to the overwhelmingly white First District he represents in southeastern Wisconsin. Much of the district is composed of factory towns whose economic hearts have been ripped out by deindustrialization and globalization, fed by the “free trade” agreements which Ryan has championed. These once-bustling industrial centers include Racine, Kenosha, and Ryan’s hometown of Janesville. The city of Beloit, just outside Janesville and formerly in Ryan’s district, has also been languishing.
Janesville became famous, briefly, after Ryan’s false claim in 2012 that President Obama promised to keep open a General Motors plant which closed just before Christmas in 2008. That city, more than any other, has borne the brunt of Ryan's contempt for workers and the poor in his own district. Ryan’s Janesville, a community of about 62,000, has barely stayed afloat after losing an estimated 11,000 jobs directly and indirectly wiped out by the GM closing (meanwhile GM has kept channeling hundreds of millions into a plant it built in Silao Mexico to duplicate Janesville’s production lines).
After the GM plant closed, Janesville experienced a surge in human misery of all kinds--women seeking shelter from abuse, as well as suicide, food shortages, unmet health needs, and homelessness. Everyone Cooperating to Help Others Inc., a local faith-based organization, experienced nearly a 15-fold increase in demand for food from 2003 to 2009. Another indicator of the city’s plight is the percentage of children who qualify for those free and reduced-cost lunches that Ryan disparaged. The percentage of children eligible for these lunches soared from 34% in 2007 to 52.8% by the fall 2012.
Paul Ryan is Janesville's own Marie Antoinette. The Congressman has repeatedly and consistently opposed extending unemployment benefits (again during the recent budget negotiations with Sen. Patty Murray) and funding for food stamps and foreclosure assistance (although desperately needed in his birthplace, where the county saw foreclosures nearly quadruple 2000-2009).
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