Evidently, having a terrible football franchise and a baseball team that just had the ultimate sports "choke" actually gets a city something - like a $15 million stimulus grant. Detroit just announced that its residents could fill out applications to receive stimulus money--the result is that 35,000+ people have lined up the last few days to get their shot at the Obamalottery. You can get the full story here.
As if the fact that the feds are literally just giving away millions of dollars to residents of a dying city where Obama and Co. already own the means of production (see, e.g., General Motors) isn't sickening enough, try listening to the people who are hoping to cash in on this "stimulus" plan. Here are two interviews, conducted by a local news reporter, of folks standing in line to fill out the appropriate paperwork: the first is of a lady who thinks that the President can just make money on command, while the second is of a few ladies who voted for Obama because he has a secret stash of money that he is now generously giving away for free.
First, this shows you something about the type of people who voted for our current president. It's reminiscent of the woman who was convinced that Obama was going to pay her mortgage and buy gasoline for her car.
Second, this illustrates how people getting money from the government rarely stop to think where the money came from. Well, allow us to let you in on a little secret, ladies standing in line--THE MONEY COMES FROM US, TAXPAYING CITIZENS WHO ARE ACTUALLY WORKING TO EARN A LIVING. Apparently they forgot to teach you that in school--we guess they were too busy proselytizing and propagandizing you with their cool hip hop tunes.
3 comments:
Yeah, her reasoning isn't exactly fantastic, but it shows you about as much about "the type of people who voted for our current president" as this does about the type of people who voted against him (very little).
I disagree. They can both be somewhat illustrative.
The voters of WVa were probably a little less race-motivated than the Daily Show would suggest. The news reports Daily cited showing the large percentage of white voters who voted for Clinton are a little misleading - the entire state is only 3% black, so of course the white vote is what mattered in that state. And the fact that Obama actually got 42% of the vote in the general election suggests that the people of WVa were a little more nuanced than portrayed. Compare that with national statistics, where 96% of all black voters cast their ballot for Obama. Perhaps the black caucus was actually more racially motivated in their voting than West Virginia?
There is one other difference between the two clips -- we're not handing out free money to the folks in West Virginia like we are in Detroit, although a large percentage of the WVA's are arguably just as poor.
a. My overall point was that both clips (and in the case of the Daily Show clip, I was thinking particularly of the woman who's tired of Husseins) are examples of people who don't have good reasons for voting the way they do, but, without evidence that the individual interviewed really is representative, aren't worth extrapolating from to the motivations of the majority who voted the same way. I assumed you'd agree that the Daily Show clip is intentionally misleading (to be funny, whether you agree that it is or not) in suggesting that the motivations of one woman who seems to be racially biased can be ascribed to the larger group of voters who preferred Clinton to Obama, and hoped you'd think that maybe it's not a good idea to assume that the woman interviewed in Detroit is representative of Obama-voters in general. I'm here to argue for being generous to one's political opponents, in general, which I'm aware that is an odd hobby, but I'm waiting for my computer to execute a couple tasks before I can leave work, so I have time.
Since I have time, a couple specific points from your response:
b. Would you agree that it is worse to vote against someone because one is prejudiced against their race than it is to vote for someone because of racial solidarity? (That isn't to say that the latter is entirely good.) While the effect of voting for-the-black and against-the-white might be the same (the vote goes in the same column in either case), I think motivation matters.
c. Perhaps the black caucus was actually more racially motivated in their voting than West Virginia? Possibly. Or it could be most blacks are Democrats, and so its not surprising that they'd vote for the Democrat. Given that 88% of blacks voted for Kerry and Obama only improved on that by 8% (Obama improved on Kerry's total percentage by 5%), I'd say that the second explanation is more likely. But I didn't mean to imply that I think the primary (or general) results in West Virginia are primarily explained by racial motivations. Again, I think the Daily Show clip is intentionally misleading.
d. There is one other difference between the two clips -- we're not handing out free money to the folks in West Virginia like we are in Detroit, although a large percentage of the WVA's are arguably just as poor.
Well, you don't have to persuade me that rural poverty is a problem, and under-reported -- my family is from West Virginia and I grew up in a mill town in South Carolina that doesn't have a mill anymore, so I'm pretty sensitive to it -- but I'm pretty sure that HUD (the agency distributing the checks, which were part of a particular plan called the "Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program") works in West Virginia as well as Detroit. One can certainly make principled arguments against any and all forms of government-sponsored redistribution, but I don't see any evidence that this particular program is biased against the rural (Detroit is receiving $15 million out of a total $1.5 billion in the program).
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