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Is Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins Brilliant ... Or What? By Jim Hightower
A gaggle of self-righteous multimillionaires is now in charge of America's poverty agencies and policies, and they've been flaunting their deeply held ignorance about poor families — almost none of whom they actually know.
Consider the national embarrassment of Brooke Rollins, a patrician ideologue, who is President Donald Trump's plutocratic Secretary of Agriculture. Besides promoting a corporatized food and farm system, Rollins is advocating a program of back-to-the-future peonage for poor people. "We have way too many people that are taking government program that are able to work," she snorts.
Bad grammar aside, she falsely asserts that "34 million able-bodied adults" are freeloading on public health care. They're taking Medicaid benefits that they ought to have to "earn" by hard labor, she recently decreed. Her Dickensian solution: Put the moochers to work in the fields!
Noting that Trump's militarized assault on immigrants has terrorized agricultural workers, thus creating a farm labor crisis, Rollins wants to hitch America's poor families to the plow. Voila — labor shortage solved, and the poor are forced to earn their medical care. What a brilliant leader!
Except for her rank ignorance. First, 64% of Medicaid recipients are already working, and nearly all of the rest are retirees, unable to work or struggling to find jobs. Second, she's obviously unaware that agriculture is skilled work — you can't just bus city and suburban people out to the country and say, "grow stuff."
Consider the national embarrassment of Brooke Rollins, a patrician ideologue, who is President Donald Trump's plutocratic Secretary of Agriculture. Besides promoting a corporatized food and farm system, Rollins is advocating a program of back-to-the-future peonage for poor people. "We have way too many people that are taking government program that are able to work," she snorts.
Bad grammar aside, she falsely asserts that "34 million able-bodied adults" are freeloading on public health care. They're taking Medicaid benefits that they ought to have to "earn" by hard labor, she recently decreed. Her Dickensian solution: Put the moochers to work in the fields!
Noting that Trump's militarized assault on immigrants has terrorized agricultural workers, thus creating a farm labor crisis, Rollins wants to hitch America's poor families to the plow. Voila — labor shortage solved, and the poor are forced to earn their medical care. What a brilliant leader!
Except for her rank ignorance. First, 64% of Medicaid recipients are already working, and nearly all of the rest are retirees, unable to work or struggling to find jobs. Second, she's obviously unaware that agriculture is skilled work — you can't just bus city and suburban people out to the country and say, "grow stuff."
https://www.creators.com/read/jim-hightower
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