Michigan!
Michigan has always been an interesting state. Now it appears that it is also a state of mind for neoconservative and very radical Republicans who have now decided that the poor and the needy should find jobs whether there are any to be found or not. And, they have developed a motivator to get that job done.
This weekend while the rest of the world was contemplating what had happened in Newtown, Connecticut, the lame duck Michigan legislature populated by outgoing republicans passed some interesting new legislation. They decided that they should meddle in the affairs of the businesses that they are so found of touting as job creators by passing a law that states that grocery checkout employees can refuse to process food stamp recipients purchases if they are opposed to them on “moral” grounds with no ability by the employer to have any say so in their decisions--even if it costs the employer some gross sales. As we just said, republicans are famous for not wanting any interference in the affairs of business by government so this is a rather strange conjunction of “morals” and government interference in businesses livelihoods.
Since Michigan has one of the nations higher unemployment rates and use of food stamps, there could be significant effects from this legislation if employees decide to exercise their options in this law.
In addition to this legislation, the Michigan legislature also passed a pair of weekend bills that remove the not for profit tax exemption from soup kitchens and from food pantries. In an interview given over the weekend, one Michigan republican legislator stated that the poor were a bunch of “fat slobs” who would be easily able to find jobs with the coming influx of employment to the state as a result of another republican lame duck measure: the passage of right to work legislation which destroys a labor unions right to charge dues to every employee who works in a union shop.
The legislator interviewed stated that the poor and the needy could sell their food stamps and buy food like the rest of supposed America does. He also stated that the poor and the needy could “suck ice cubes” as a method of sustenance until this influx of jobs provides the needed income to purchase food the regular way instead of with government assistance. In point of fact, the poor and the needy have never been known to become “fat slobs” of off the meager assistance that they get from food stamps and soup kitchens and food pantries. This writer spends a part of many of his days among those who visit a soup kitchen and food pantry combination and there are not that many portly people hanging around them. There are some but, in comparison to the great mass of people there, they are few and far between. It is also quite possible to appear to become fat from not getting enough of the right nutrients such as protein as the body begins to feed off of itself due to the lack of enough meals eaten at the proper times of the day.
The food pantry that we volunteer at has seen a rising influx as this year has gone along of those in need of the food baskets that they can receive once a month to supplement what ever else that they find to eat with their inadequate incomes that go mainly for rent and for food. When one looks inside of those food baskets, one would not be impressed by how long they would feed even a family of one or two, much less three or four or more.
The children that we see come through the doors of our food pantry either to eat a noon meal five days a week or to help carry out what food is received in the baskets do not appear in any way shape or form to be anywhere near overweight. It has been said that one out of six children in this nation does not get enough to eat in any given twenty four hour period of time. This is particularly true when they hit their growth spurt in their teen years when a child can eat you out of house and home and not think anything about it. Some of the adults that we see at the food pantry look suspiciously like former children who never got to take full advantage of the growth spurt that was afforded them due to the lack of an adequate and filling diet that they didn’t get then. So many just seem to have the look of inadequate size and certainly weight in comparison to the average American. One gentleman that we see at the food pantry comes from a family of twenty two children. He is very short and just messes with his meals because his stomach has, from an early age, never been big enough to eat a full meal at one sitting because he never had one to begin with.
It would appear that Michigan has become a lab experiment for what the neocon republican party would like to visit on those less fortunate in this world who just happen to inhabit this nation of ours. They are trying to visit on their fellow Michigan citizens every questionable belief and fantasy that has ever been spread around by the media who control their world. The poor are really poor because they are lazy and shiftless and could work if they wanted to without any problem at all. If subjected to a life of hard deprivation, the poor will either wake up and go to work or move somewhere else and become someone else’s problem, or, just up and die! There is no possibility that there might be intelligence problems or health problems or mental problems or a simply inability to cope with a complex world, or a combination of all of them that prevents the poor from doing any better than they do. And, there is absolutely no probability that depriving the less fortunate of needed food will not exacerbate all of the problems that, in the minds of the neocons, do not exist above. In the neocons world, starvation is a great motivator!
It is the moral component of all of this that bothers us the most! Many of these neocons are white, born again Christians who simply do not follow the teachings of their faith. The Jesus that they follow is not the Jesus of the book of Matthew who states in a fifteen verse mini sermon to his followers that “as yea treat the least of these, yea treat me!” Their Jesus must be some sort of hard task master who has no compassion at all and they must follow this tenant: The Lord helps those who help themselves! The only problem with that tenant is that it does not appear anywhere in the Christian Bible at all. And, their moral code passes judgment all too easily when the real Bible states quite equivocally: Judge not, lest yea be judged! And, perhaps the most interesting thing of all is the Biblical parable where the owner goes to the town square and hires workers at nine in the morning for a days work. He goes back again and again throughout the day and even hires more workers two hours before the workday ends. To the shock of all, he pays the last workers hired the same amount that he pays those who came to work a full day, The owners answer is that it is his money and he can do with it as he sees fit! Not in Michigan, however!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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