Michele Bachmann Links Poverty, Family ‘Decay’ (50th Anniversary of LBJ's Great Society programs)

[big_dog]

Source: Politico.com- 9 hours ago

As America commemorates the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson declaring a “War on Poverty,” Rep. Michele Bachmann is calling the effort a failure and blaming its policies for increasing children born out of wedlock.
In a blog post marking 50 years since Johnson’s speech, Bachmann wrote Wednesday the war did not achieve its goals.

“What followed was five decades of government expansion and spending on new programs that have largely been ineffective,” she wrote. “Today, the poverty rate is only slightly below where it was in 1964, and it came with a $20 trillion price tag. What’s more, a record 47 million Americans are now receiving food stamps, which is about 13 million more than when the President Obama took office

The Minnesota Republican also pointed to government policies as ruining American families, contributing further to poverty.
“One of the saddest results of these last fifty years has been the decay of the American family, as the percentage of children born out of wedlock has risen from 6 percent to 41 percent,” Bachmann wrote. “When government has policies that induce people to either not get married or to bear a child out of wedlock, poverty persists.” Bachmann said the strength of families should be the key to any efforts to combat poverty.




Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/michele-bachmann-war-on-poverty-101952.html#ixzz2pwB6BH99

[onehandle]

1. Did the bats in her head tell her that? nt

[Javaman]

2. hitching her wagon to the rubio trainwreck. nt

[big_dog]

23. Cruz/Bachmann 2016!

we can only hope for the oncoming trainwreck

[Javaman]

24. oncoming? It's on going. LOL

cheers!

[CurtEastPoint]

3. When does this insipid piece of doodoo leave Congress?

[warrant46]

13. Apparently the people who keep re-electing her

Enjoy her unique brand of bat shit crazy acts of random stupidity

[CurtEastPoint]

14. Bachmann announced that she would not seek re-election to her seat in 2014... so... soon!

[warrant46]

16. Wow--- Where will she go next ?

To inflict her clinically insane ranting

[CurtEastPoint]

17. Maybe she can work on getting a straight husband.

[warrant46]

19. Yikes !

[kickysnana]

4. OK. I am wishing this sorry excuse for a human comes back as a disabled, minority, in a chemically

addicted, poverty stricken family in a Red State, a middle child would be good, but, she has to remember who she used to be and then have to live this life again until she gets it right.

[big_dog]

5. she can sure put away a corn dog

[CurtEastPoint]

18. and Jewish.... and gay...

[Swede Atlanta]

6. What evidence does she have to support her batty claims?

First of all we know that poverty has been reduced. It is not as much as I would like to see at this point. It was over 19% in 1967, came down to 12.6% in 1998 and has risen again to 16%. But I'll take that 3% reduction over nothing.

Further does she believe if we had not introduced the SNAP program, unemployment insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, HeadStart, heating assistance etc. and basically forced men and women to marry and stay married poverty would have been dramatically reduced or that their lives would have been better?

I don't disagree that these programs enable a woman who becomes pregnant and who chooses not to marry (or whose inseminator splits) to survive and give her child or children a chance. Do I believe that necessarily leads to more women getting pregnant and either choosing not to marry or encouraging men to split? No, of course not.

The challenges with poverty are extremely complex. They are driven by lack of education and opportunity, crime, cultural and generational influences, etc. But they are just as much impacted by the fact that we have through NAFTA and now the TPP have consciously exported good paying jobs overseas so corporations and the 1% can make even more money. They are driven by the fact we have failed to invest in our inner cities. They are driven by the fact that we have failed at educating our children. They are driven by the fact we have allowed drugs and crime to infest many of our poorest neighborhoods.

So if Ms. Bachmann thinks giving the poor a helping hand has failed and only encouraged a bunch of screwing around without marriage she is sadly mistaken.

I wish her mother had had access to birth control (SARCASM). But seriously would anyone here disagree that in the aggregate we would have been better off if the sperm and the egg that created her hadn't met?

[geardaddy]

7. It's all the fault of Reaganomics, Shelley.

Take your head out of your ass.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. Being a single mother has nothing to do with one's ability to

make money. I was in the top 10% as a single mother.

[Orsino]

9. Bragging does not become you, Congresswoman. n/t

[truthisfreedom]

10. Truthisfreedom links poverty and winger ideas

[DeSwiss]

11. K&R

- Of course. And poverty strengthens the soul too.

[center] [/center]

[frylock]

12. i love when people who never wanted for anything in their fucking lives..

offer their unwanted opinions on the impoverished. fuck this nut jerb.

[Igel]

15. Then there are the stats.

Which nobody really likes to look at.

One politician can say that we have record high poverty levels. An non-factual assertion, but one that's handy to use as a weapon. Or whatever.

Others can say that it only came down because of a specific program. Which were put in place after a fall of 3-4%, a fall that continued unabated after the program was put into place. (Pollution levels show the same phenomenon.)

Then others can point to specific causes for high poverty rates. All of which came about in the late '60s, and none of which reversed the gains in the poverty rate--even if they were expensive and often hard-won.


(From http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/09/us-poverty-rate-1959-to-2009.html, but the data are the usual data. Official rates started to be calculated in 1959, so there's no data points for 1958 or before.)

IIRC, the figures *don't* include unearned income.

[radicalliberal]

20. I guess she wouldn't mind if political conservatism were linked to Jim Crow.

Well, in fact, it always has been linked to Jim Crow. For example, witness the SCOTUS Republican majority's evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. Of course, Bachmann probably believes that Jim Crow was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy (which it clearly wasn't).

[UTUSN]

21. If LBJ were only around to deal with this pipsqueak!1 n/t

[Myrina]

22. Blissfully unaware of the regulations on SNAP/TANF that prohibit 'additional individuals'

(ie - fathers) from being part of the household in order for a woman to maintain eligibility ....

I'm sure most people are also unaware that at any point in your life, should you win the lottery or get an inheritance etc, the state who issued you benefits of any kind can send you a bill to recoup those benefits. So as soon as you DO get yourself out of poverty, the state takes whatever you've got & puts you right back into poverty.

[Ken Burch]

25. The most important cause of family issues was the requirement(insisted on by 'pugs and DINOS)

limiting eligibility for assistance programs to single-parent families. Huge numbers of poor families broke up due to that because, in many areas, the choice was

A)Keep dad part of the family;

or

B)Feed the kids.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan then demonized millions of poor women(most of whom were white, but he liked to pretend they were all black, for some reason)for doing the only thing they COULD do to keep their kids from going hungry.

Jimmy Carter, of all people, saw the wrong in this and tried to change it in his welfare reform proposal...a proposal that actually WAS reform, unlike the Gingrich/Clinton "reform" which was simply class punishment for class punishment's sake.


Now, Michele Bachmann slanders the memory of the women Moynihan demonized yet again.

And she claims to be a Christian.

If we could subsidize tobacco, we could damn well have subsidized intact families.

[madrchsod]

26. Politico!...proud dispensers of bullshit......

why in the hell would anyone care what she has to say anymore. she never had an original thought in her head that resembles anything that is near reality.the only thing she`s ever accomplished is making herself the butt of a joke.

oh yes, her family receives or did receive farm subsidies for years.