And Jesus Said Unto Paul of Ryan ...

A woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came up behind Jesus and touched his clothes in hope of a cure. Jesus turned to her and said: “Fear not. Because of your faith, you are now healed.”

Then spoke Pious Paul of Ryan: “But teacher, is that wise? When you cure her, she learns dependency. Then the poor won’t take care of themselves, knowing that you’ll always bail them out! You must teach them personal responsibility!”

They were interrupted by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and shouted, “Jesus, have pity on us.”

“NO!” shouted Pious Paul. “Jesus! You don’t have time. We have a cocktail party fund-raiser in the temple. And don’t worry about them — they’ve already got health care access.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul, puzzled.

“Why, they can pray for a cure,” Pious Paul explained. “I call that universal health care access.”

Jesus turned to the 10 lepers. “Rise and go,” he told them. “Your faith has made you well.” Then he turned back to Pious Paul, saying, “Let me tell you the story of the good Samaritan.

“A man was attacked by robbers who stripped him of clothes, beat him and left him half dead. A minister passed down this same road, and when he saw the injured man, he crossed to the other side and hurried on. So did a rich man who claimed to serve God. But then a despised Samaritan came by and took pity on the injured man. He bandaged his wounds and put the man on his own donkey and paid an innkeeper to nurse him to health. So which of these three should we follow?”

“Those who had mercy on him,” Pious Paul said promptly.

Jesus nodded. “So go ——”

“I mean the first two,” Pious Paul interjected. “For the Samaritan’s work is unsustainable and sends the wrong message. It teaches travelers to take dangerous roads, knowing that others will rescue them from self-destructive behaviors. This Samaritan also seems to think it right to redistribute money from those who are successful and give it to losers. That’s socialism! Meanwhile, if the rich man keeps his money, he can invest it and create jobs. So it’s an act of mercy for the rich man to hurry on and ignore the robbery victim.”

“How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus mused to himself. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven.”

“Let me teach you about love, Jesus — tough love!” Pious Paul explained. “You need a sustainable pro-business model. And you need to give people freedom, Jesus, the freedom to suffer misery and poverty.”

“The Lord God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” Jesus replied, emphasizing the last two words. Then he turned to a paralyzed beggar at his feet. “Stand up!” Jesus told the man. “Pick up your mat and go home.” As the man danced about joyfully, Pious Paul rolled his eyes dismissively.

“Look, Jesus, you have rare talent, and it should be rewarded,” Pious Paul said. “I have a partner, The Donald, who would like to work with you: He’d set up a lovely hospital, and the rich would come and pay for you to heal them. You’d get a percentage, and it’d be a real money-spinner. Overhead would be minimal because every morning you could multiply some loaves and fishes. You could strike it rich!”

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God,” Jesus said. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received comfort.”

“Oh, come on, Jesus,” Pious Paul protested. “Don’t go socialist on me again. Please don’t encourage class warfare. The best way to help the needy is to give public money to the rich. That then inspires the poor to work harder, galvanizes the sick to become healthy, forces the lepers to solve their own problems rather than kick back and depend on others. That’s why any realistic health plan has to focus on providing less coverage for the poor, and big tax benefits for the rich. When millions of people lose health care, that’s when a country is great again!”

“From everyone who has been given much,” Jesus told him, “much will be required.”

“Well, sure, this hospital would have a foundation to do some charity work. Maybe commissioning portraits of The Donald to hang in the entrance. But let’s drop this bleeding heart nonsense about health care as a human right, and see it as a financial opportunity to reward investors. In this partnership, 62 percent of the benefits would go to the top 0.6 percent — perfect for a health care plan.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul on his left and said: “Be gone! For I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; and I was sick, and you did not help me.”

“But, Lord,” protested Pious Paul of Ryan, “when did I see you hungry or thirsty or sick and refuse to help you? I drop your name everywhere. And I’m pro-life!”

“Truly, I say to you,” Jesus responded, “as you did not help the homeless, the sick — as you did not help the least of these, you did not help me.”

Wise words

Did you hear about Paul Ryan's plan for poverty? Check this nonsense out: http://bit.ly/1uJG0T3

Yes?

Rich woman complains about poor trick-or-treaters

A rich woman who hates it when poor kids treat-or-treat in her neighborhood gets shut down by the advice columnist known as "Dear Prudence."

A woman who called herself "Halloween for the 99 Percent" wrote in this week complaining about having to give candy to children from "less fortunate areas" who infiltrate her wealthy neighborhood every Oct. 31.

Dear Prudence,
I live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but on one of the more "modest" streets—mostly doctors and lawyers and family business owners. (A few blocks away are billionaires, families with famous last names, media moguls, etc.) I have noticed that on Halloween, what seems like 75 percent of the trick-or-treaters are clearly not from this neighborhood. Kids arrive in overflowing cars from less fortunate areas. I feel this is inappropriate. Halloween isn't a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children. Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person, because what's the big deal about making less fortunate kids happy on a holiday? But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services. Should Halloween be a neighborhood activity, or is it legitimately a free-for-all in which people hunt down the best candy grounds for their kids?
—Halloween for the 99 Percent

Here is Prudence's perfect, blistering response:

Dear 99,
In the urban neighborhood where I used to live, families who were not from the immediate area would come in fairly large groups to trick-or-treat on our streets, which were safe, well-lit, and full of people overstocked with candy. It was delightful to see the little mermaids, spider-men, ghosts, and the occasional axe murderer excitedly run up and down our front steps, having the time of their lives. So we'd spend an extra $20 to make sure we had enough candy for kids who weren't as fortunate as ours. There you are, 99, on the impoverished side of Greenwich or Beverly Hills, with the other struggling lawyers, doctors, and business owners. Your whine makes me kind of wish that people from the actual poor side of town come this year not with scary costumes but with real pitchforks. Stop being callous and miserly and go to Costco, you cheapskate, and get enough candy to fill the bags of the kids who come one day a year to marvel at how the 1 percent live.

Indiana Plans To Cut Tens Of Thousands Off Food Stamps

Indiana will cut tens of thousands of its poorest people off of the food stamps roles beginning next spring, the state announced. Gov. Mike Pence (R) has decided to join seven other states in reinstating work requirements for food stamps despite being eligible for a federal waiver from those rules for the coming fiscal year.

Federal rules require able-bodied, childless people who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for more than three months a year to demonstrate that they are working or attending a job training program for at least 20 hours a week. But those rules can be waived during times of high economic strain when the work requirements cannot reasonably be fulfilled. Nearly every state requested and received such a waiver during the Great Recession. But a growing number of states have begun reinstating the work rules even though the Department of Agriculture has said their unemployment rates are still high enough to justify waiving the rules.

The state estimates that 65,000 people will be affected by Pence’s change, according to the Indianapolis Star. Previous similar moves in Kansas, New Mexico, Maine, and other states have left tens of thousands of people without access to food stamps. The network of food charities that picks up the slack when hungry people are underserved by government programs is already overstretched around the country, according to the people who run those charities.

There is ample evidence that tying anti-poverty aid to work requirements renders the programs ineffective exactly when they are most needed. When the economy tightens and work becomes scarce, more people find themselves in need of safety net programs. Work requirements deprive those programs of the flexibility they need to function, and in recessions they fail to keep up with spikes in demand, leaving needy families in the lurch. The welfare reforms of the 1990s were praised by both political parties for years, but they have eroded the country’s system for helping impoverished families to the point where a record 74 percent of poor families with children did not receive federal aid from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 2010.

Most of the states that have retreated prematurely from food stamps waivers — Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, and Maine — have Republican governors. (Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D) and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) have also declined statewide waivers despite being eligible.)

Pence’s rationale for the move is that it will help push people who would otherwise collect benefits without trying to work. The administration official in charge of the relevant state agency explained Indiana’s decision in a letter to the Department of Agriculture as “an opportunity to help improve the skills of our fellow Hoosiers and advance their prospects for meaningful employment, while at the same time establishing a pool of better-prepared candidates for the Indiana workforce.” Gov. Sam Brownback (R) used a similar argument to justify ending waivers in Kansas last year when the state was still eligible.

But making it harder to fill the fridge doesn’t make it easier to find a job. There are currently two job-seekers for every job opening nationwide. Those are steep odds for people making good-faith efforts to find work, but the two-to-one ratio is also a dramatic improvement from recent years when the ratio was up around five-to-one.

The same conservative mentality toward the unemployed recently lead North Carolina to slash its unemployment insurance system so deeply that it now no longer qualifies as a valid jobless aid system under federal rules. Gov. Pat McRory (R) has claimed that the move helped the state’s economy. But the reality is that the state’s unemployment statistics improved because tens of thousands of people who had been looking for work prior to the cuts simply gave up and stopped being counted. Before the cuts, the employment rate for people between 25 and 54 years old had been rising steadily in North Carolina. It has begun a “pronounced” decline since, analysts at the Economic Policy Institute have found. (In addition to liberal think tanks, conservative economic pundit Jim Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute has criticized McRory’s moveand the Republican rhetoric about it.)

Indiana’s similar maneuver with food assistance funds is likely to produce a similar failure to achieve the Pence administration’s stated goals. The most recent statistics on the job market in the midwest shows that there are nearly two million unemployed people hunting for just over a million jobs across the region, to say nothing of the tens of thousands who have given up their formal job searching and are no longer counted as unemployed.

Still, Pence’s policy compares favorably with what his neighbor Gov. John Kasich (R) is doing in Ohio. Kasich retained the SNAP work waivers for 16 of the state’s 88 counties but reinstated work rules in the counties that house the majority of the state’s minority population. Food stamps recipients in the counties that continue to enjoy waivers are 94 percent white, according to a coalition of groups that filed a civil rights complaint against Kasich in August.

In one Ohio county that lost its waiver, the Star reports, more than 2,500 people lost food stamp benefits. A third of them had physical or mental health issues that make it hard for them to work, an Ohio food charity official told the newspaper.

MUST SEE: Paul Ryan Holds ‘Poverty Hearing,’ Gets Obliterated by Black Mother of Three

Well, it happened. Paul Ryan actually allowed a poor person to testify at one of his sham “poverty hearings,” and we’re pretty sure that he’s not ever going to do that again.

On Wednesday, Tiana Gaines-Turner, a childcare provider who supports three children on just $10.80 an hour, was allowed to speak before the House Budget Committee about her experiences. Surprisingly, given his incredibly racist comments in the past, the person he allowed to speak was of darker hue.

When asked how the Affordable Care Act impacted her family, she explained that the ACA has allowed her to receive adequate medical assistance. Her children were covered, of course, but now her family has adequate medical insurance through Obamacare.

She explained that, while she and her husband are both working, they still struggle to adequately provide for their children. “We’re always trying to climb up,” she said. “There’s a constant climb [...] It’s not something that we choose to do.” She explained that her husband wants to go back to school, as does she. They want full-time jobs, but are unable to find them. “Just because you can obtain a job, and you have two people in your household like me that are working. That doesn’t mean that everything is solved. That doesn’t mean that you don’t still need assistance.”

Watch some highlights from the hearing, below. You won’t regret it, but Paul Ryan does.:

Afghanistan Veteran on Food Stamps Writes Letter to ‘Caring’ Conservatives

Some people measure a society’s condition by the lifestyles of the rich and famous — and those people are usually the rich and famous. For the rest of humanity, a society’s success is measured by the living conditions of the poorest. And who exactly the “poorest” are.

This letter, posted on September 19th by a combat veteran named Jason, speaks volumes of what American poverty looks like on the side streets of our society, and of the people who sleep on them.

“My name is Jason. I turned 35 less than a week ago. My first job was maintenance work at a public pool when I was 17. I worked 40-hours a week while I was in college. I’ve never gone longer than six months without employment in my life and I just spent the last three years in the military, one of which consisted of a combat tour of Afghanistan. 

Oh, and I’m now on food stamps. Since June, as a matter of fact. 

Why am I on food stamps? 

The same reason everyone on food stamps is on food stamps: because I would very much enjoy not starving. 

I mean, if that’s okay with you: 

…Mr. or Mrs. Republican congressman.

…Mr. or Mrs. Conservative commentator.

…Mr. or Mrs. “welfare queen” letter-to-the-editor author.

…Mr. or Mrs. “fiscal conservative, reason-based” libertarian.

I do apologize for burdening you on the checkout line with real-life images of American-style poverty. I know you probably believe the only true starving people in the world have flies buzzing around their eyes while they wallow away, near-lifeless in gutter. 

Hate to burst the bubble, but those people don’t live in this country. 

I do. And millions like me. Millions of people in poverty who fall into three categories. 

Let’s call them the “lucky” category, since conservatives seem to think people on welfare have hit some sort of jackpot: 

Those living paycheck to paycheck? They’re a little lucky.

Those living unemployment check to unemployment check? They’re a little luckier 

Those living 2nd of the month to 2nd of the month? *ding* We’ve hit the jackpot! 

The 2nd of the month being the time when funds gets electronically deposited onto the EBT card, [at least in NY] for those who’ve never been fortunate enough to hit that $175/month Powerball. 

I fall into the latter two categories. But I’ve known people recently - soldiers in the Army – who were in the first and third. They were off fighting in Afghanistan while their wives were at home, buying food at the on-post commissary with food stamps. 

And nobody bats an eye there, because it’s not uncommon in the military. 

It’s not uncommon – nor is it shameful. It might be shameful how little service-members are paid, but that’s a separate issue. 

The fact remains anyone at a certain income level can find it difficult from time to time to pay for everything. And when you’re poor you learn to make sacrifices. Food shouldn’t be one of them. 

The whole concept is un-American. People living here, in the greatest country on Earth, with the most abundant resources, should be forced to go hungry because of the intellectual notion of fiscal conservatism and the ideological notion of self-reliance.

Are you fucking kidding me? 

I didn’t risk my life in Afghanistan so I could come back and watch people go hungry in America. I certainly didn’t risk it so *I* could come back and go hungry. 

Anyone who genuinely supports cutting food stamps is not an intellectual or an ideologue –they’re a bully. 

And nobody likes a bully. Except other bullies. 

It’s time for regular Americans to stand up to these bullies. Not cower in the corner, ashamed of needing help. Because if there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s that you never know when you’ll be the one in need.”

There are some who despise the American poor because in their minds, you’re not “poor” unless you look like this:

But the people who look like that live in the poorest nations on Earth. We can’t start applying those standards to our own society, because that’s the quickest way to become just like them. Standards slip from the bottom like a foundation sliding downhill. In America, we’re rarely OUT of food…we’re just out of food that won’t kill you.

Say what you will about the idea of “American exceptionalism,” but we have to draw the line somewhere. We have to draw the line at a place that we will not accept…a place we can look at and say “We’re better than THAT.”

Intellectuals like Rand Paul don’t see us as a society…they see us as a Petri dish for their thought experiments. And because they’re smart, a certain number of idiots will stand behind them.

But when we start believing that these guys

are fighting to come home to the living standards of these guys

then we truly have lost everything that it means to be American.

We owe soldiers like Jason a better nation than that.

That's just sad!

Indiana Republican: ‘No One Has the Guts’ to Let the Poor ‘Wither and Die’

A Republican in Indiana has once again proven just how much disdain the GOP has for the poor by saying one of the most disgusting things about them that I’ve ever heard.

During an online discussion about poverty, Republican John Johnston said of the poor, “no one has the guts to just let them wither and die.”

But to grasp just how much Johnston hates the poor, you really need to see his comments in their full context.

“For almost three generations people, in some cases, have been given handouts,” Johnston said. “They have been ‘enabled’ so much that their paradigm in life is simply being given the stuff of life, however meager.”

“What you see is a setting for a life of misery is life to them never-the-less,” he continued. “No one has the guts to just let them wither and die. No one who wants votes is willing to call a spade a spade. As long as the Dems can get their votes the enabling will continue. The Republicans need their votes and dare not cut the fiscal tether. It is really a political Catch-22.”

But Johnston didn’t stop there, “The voters are the ones in charge. However when only 10-11 percent show up to vote, not much will change. People simply are not hurting enough, or simply happy enough that they will do nothing. Consequently the dole continues.”

It’s the typical “people are poor because they’ve been enabled” right-wing propaganda. This fool seems unaware that millions of Americans work full-time jobs yet still rely on help from the government because they make so little due to his party continuing to oppose any hike in the minimum wage.

Are there people who abuse the system? Absolutely. But the way many Republicans perpetuate this myth that the majority of Americans living in poverty are living that way because they’re lazy is, quite frankly, pathetic.

Oh, someone might also want to inform him that there are more liberals than conservatives. Typically the higher the voter turnout, the better that is for Democrats – not Republicans.

That’s why Republicans are trying so hard to pass new voter ID laws that make it harder for people to vote. They know the lower the turnout, the better it is for the GOP.

But once again John Johnston proved just how much Republicans loathe Americans who are living in poverty.

Watch Rand Paul: Poverty Wages are ‘Tough Love People Have to Accept’

New video has surfaced of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul not only defending the concept of poverty wages for hard-working Americans, but going as far as to claim that they are “the tough live that people have to accept” in order to get our economy out of the Bush Recession that his very own Republican Party’s extremist policies created.

Made during a Tea Party in Kentucky, his comments provide a glimpse into Sen. Paul’s extremely greedy and dangerous “free market” ideology, where large big-box retailers are free to enslave the working class with poverty wages, and if the workers don’t like being forced to rely on government assistance, well that’s just corporate America’s “tough love that people have to accept”.

Do you think that it’s ever dawned on this Tea Party “darling” that the “people” he so callously refers to are hard working Americans who are looking for their own tiny slice of the American dream, becoming a part of our once-great middle class?

Forget about raising the minimum wage. In Rand Paul’s mind, the real solution to putting more money in the pockets of everyday Americans is to give them “lower wages”.

Rand, you can keep your “tough love”. Please watch the video BELOW:

Jeb Bush (R-Idiot) Tells Poor People to Stop Mooching

Jeb Bush demonstrated a serious lack of knowledge and understanding about poverty at a fundraiser with some of New York’s wealthiest conservatives.

Jeb Bush demonstrated a serious lack of knowledge and understanding about poverty at a fundraiser with some of New York’s wealthiest conservatives.

Speaking to a crowd of people in black-tie attire, he praised Paul Ryan’s ideas about how to get out of poverty, saying, according to Politico:

“When it comes to the American family, Paul Ryan has it right. A loving family taking care of their children in a traditional marriage will create the chance to break out of poverty far better, far better than any of the government programs that we can create.”

So basically, get married, stay married, and take care of your children, and that’s how you bring your family out of poverty. Then you won’t have to mooch off of the rest of us married-with-children, hardworking Americans. Bush, and Ryan, imply that traditional family values will eliminate poverty here, despite our current dearth of good jobs and quality education in poor areas.

Conservatives like Bush are so out of touch that it’s like they can’t even comprehend that there are real causes of poverty that don’t have anything to do with “traditional family values.” They can’t grasp the fact that generational poverty is an extremely complex problem that’s very difficult to solve. Government programs won’t get the impoverished out of poverty, but they can help while those people try to find their own way out. At the very least, government programs can help ensure that they’re not on the streets.

The American Dream is more of a pipe dream for people mired in generational poverty. It is extremely difficult to escape. A strong support structure is very helpful, yes, but it’s not the only key. In fact, it’s not even the biggest key. Just when it comes to education, Bush supports stronger teacher evaluations and tying funding to whether schools meet certain standards. This is what No Child Left Behind tried to do, and it was a miserable failure.

Tying funding to the overall grade a school receives doesn’t work because the poorer schools have more problems meeting those standards. They often can’t afford new textbooks, building maintenance and upgrades, even new desks, to say nothing of whether they can afford the state-of-the-art computer classrooms that wealthier schools can afford. These schools don’t have the ability to provide a quality education, and then they’re punished further because they don’t meet standards. Sometimes they’re even closed, which pushes poor kids into other schools, overcrowding those schools and bringing those grades down. There’s a bit of a chain reaction.

NCLB was a failure because of that, and because it made teachers teach to tests. They couldn’t get very creative with their teaching. They couldn’t go outside the box the tests created to give their students a richer, fuller education. If Jeb Bush truly understood anything at all about poverty, he’d focus much harder on trying to raise the quality of education in the poorer school districts.

He’d also understand that education is only part of the solution, and he’d be courting sociologists for information on other causes of poverty, and what to do about it. Instead, he’d rather push the typical, rich, white, conservative “traditional family values” tripe that much of the rest of the religious right is pushing.

BRYAN FISCHER: THE POOR SHOULD BE 'KISSING THE GROUND' ON WHICH THE RICH WALK

American Family Association spokeshater Bryan Fischer, responding to a recent Wall Street Journal article reporting that the top 1% of Americans account for nearly 30% of all federal tax revenue, had this to say on his radio program:

So rather than the poor, the low-income, and the middle class being resentful of [the rich], they should be kissing the ground on which they walk. Who’s paying for the EBT cards? Who’s paying for food stamps? Who’s paying for the women and infant children program? Who’s paying for subsidized housing? Who’s paying for Medicaid? It is the top 1% So they ought to be given ticker tape parades once a week in all of our major cities to thank them for funding welfare for everybody.

Billions in Bonuses Given to Wall Street in 2013 Exceeds ALL Minimum Wage Workers’ Pay Combined

The only way to boost the American economy is to put more money into the hands of the rich, right? Wall Street firms did not disappoint the greedy hands of high-end suppliers such as Ferrari and Swiss watches when they passed out $26.7 billion dollars in bonuses for 2013, which is up a hefty 15% from last year.

Luxury product sales will no doubt increase from those bonuses. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. That much money could have fed countless starving families across the country. It could’ve provided homeless people shelter for these remaining chilly weeks.

But no, the only logical way to boost the economy is to give big bonuses to people who already have busting bank accounts so they will invest their millions back in, right? Wrong. If this money had been placed in the hands of minimum wage workers, that cash would have spread throughout the economy because these people are using almost every dollar they earn to pay for their basic needs.

Author Sarah Anderson states, “According to my new report, every extra dollar going into the pockets of low-wage workers adds about $1.21 to the national economy. Every extra dollar a high-income American makes, by contrast, only adds about 39 cents to the gross domestic product (GDP)”. 

 

Anderson brings up a great point because not only are the rich getting richer, but also they are doing so at the expense of the entire country’s economic growth. Had these bonuses been placed in the pockets of low-wage workers, the growth of the economy would’ve remarkably increased by about $32.3 billion.

“There was just this kind of cult of more, more, more; grow, grow grow, and I think now the culture on Wall Street is fundamentally unhealthy.”

Paul Ryan’s ‘unfortunate’ poverty report

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been pretty aggressive in recent months about leaking word of his recent policy focus on poverty. The far-right congressman has periodically let major news outlets know he now hopes to “help” those who would suffer most under his own budget plan: low-income families.

 

And so, as Ned Resnikoff reported, it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Ryan yesterday issued a 204-page report, called “The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later,” condemning a variety of federal efforts to reduce poverty in the United States. It’s apparently intended to serve as a precursor to the congressman’s next budget blueprint, which, predictably, will seek more cuts to Medicaid, Head Start, and food stamps.

 

Ryan will justify his efforts, working from the assumption that many federal programs, aimed at helping those struggling, unintentionally make matters “worse.”

 

The editorial board of the New York Times did a nice job summarizing the degree to which Ryan’s ideas are “small and tired.”

It’s easy to find flaws or waste in any government program, but the proper response is to fix those flaws, not throw entire programs away as Mr. Ryan and his party have repeatedly proposed. It might be possible, for example, to consolidate some of the 20 different low-income housing programs identified in the report, but Congressional Democrats have no reason to negotiate with a party that fundamentally doesn’t believe government should play a significant role in reducing poverty. (Similarly, Republicans complain endlessly about flaws in health care reform, but their sole solution is to repeal the entire program, not improve it.)

 

The report notes that some programs, including the earned-income tax credit, have been effective, but it fails to draw the proper lessons from those examples. The most successful programs, including the tax credit, Medicaid and food stamps, have been those that are carefully designed, properly managed and well-financed. For all their glossy reports, Republicans have shown no interest in making these or any other social programs work better.

It’s a fair critique, but digging in a little closer, even more glaring issues arise.

An Economist With 2 Minutes And A Marker Explains The Greedy, Selfish Things Some Rich People Do

Only thing I would add is the only reason the rich don't want to reinstate slavery is because it's cheaper to pay workers $2 an hour than to feed, house and clothe slave laborers.

If You Do This, Should You Still Be Allowed to Call Your Organization ‘Goodwill’?

As you’ll see in the following NBC report, Goodwill pays many disabled employees well below minimum wage while CEOs and executives make millions and the non-profit, who gets tax exempt status, grosses $5 billion dollars each year–and it’s all perfectly legal.

What’s the answer from Goodwill’s president to the allegations of unfairness and ridiculous levels of wage disparity?  Well, that the people at the top are innovative job creators, of course!  He also accuses anyone who demands fairer pay of being “elitists.”

What do you think?  Should these disabled workers just be happy they can get a job at all, or is this blatant exploitation?  Let us know in the comments below.

Watch the video, courtesy of NBC’s Rock Center: