Today's Alexandria Echo Press includes a letter illustrating the massive local support Representative Mary Franson claims to have received following the tempest over her Youtube remarks in which she repeated a current conservative inbox nasty about food support recipients.
The attempt at humor in the video led into Franson's discussion of a bill creating new time limits for people enrolled in Minnesota's version of welfare for families, MFIP.
In Dismayed by Franson fallout, Franson fan Hugh Myers writes:
Having read the comments allegedly made by Representative Mary Franson and the reaction to them, I am dismayed by the reaction itself.
I feel that the representative was referring to those who have been on the long-term rolls of our welfare system for a variety of reasons – valid and not so valid – and not those who have become members of the system because of the economic downturn in our country.
There are those who have been in the system for an extended period, not because they are unemployable but because it simply easier to be on the rolls than it is to put some effort into finding a job.
These are those that drive their newer pickups and smoke their $5 packs of cigarettes and are out drinking their beer, and that is all bought at public expense.
I applaud Representative Franson for stating her views because she is in a position to possibly make changes rather than simply sitting back and letting the past abuses become part of the future of the welfare system.
There is always someone out there who is looking to provide a misinterpreted version of something said by a public official, so that it will appear as something else.
Yeah, that's the ticket. Perhaps it's a testament to Clinton-era welfare reforms that those stereotyping the poor have had to trade in the Cadillacs parked in their imaginations for "newer pickups."
Given Franson's deep thinking about drug tests for welfare recipients and vast knowledge of USDA programs--she sits on the Minnesota House Ag Committee, after all--perhaps that's what she was thinking about: all those smoking, beer-swilling welfare folks who clot the streets of Alex with their newer pick-ups.
How "newer" are they, Bluestem readers might ask?
Online guidelines for MFIP noted that applicants may own a licensed vehicle with a loan value of up to $15,000. You might find a used Ford Ranger that's less than ten years old in that price range in Central Minnesota, but it's not exactly living large. Nor are the pickups available for under $15,000 at a local dealer exactly low-mileage.
But the logic is good enough for one of Franson's supporters to come to her rescue on the opinion pages of the Alexandria Echo Press, and for the editors to print the letter.
Myers believes he agrees with whatever it was Franson said. Bluestem does not believe she said anything in the video about beer-swilling smokers in newer pickups. She did talk about the poorest of the poor, vehicles not included.
The bill she supports--which was heard in committee yesterday--cuts everyone off at three years, regardless of circumstances.
Images: Franson Crackers by Tild (above); Screenshot from DHS online application form for MFIP.
The swapping out of imaginary Cadillacs (made and driven by black union members, which of course makes the vehicles all the more evil in conservative minds) for imaginary pickup trucks tells you about the shift that's going on within the conservative one-percenters' movement.
Demonizing black and brown people has lost much of its electoral value for the Cons because this demonizing has been rightly condemned as racist, so now they must demonize the people that they depend on for votes: the white working class folks, both rural and urban.
As Professor Richard Wolff explains, that's why the chief targets of Charles Murray's new book Coming Apart aren't so much the ones of his previous books (namely dark-skinned people), but those white people who he thinks should know better than to let society crumble: http://rdwolff.com/content/working-class-coming-apart
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Mar 17, 2012 at 10:24 AM