Americans overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders' economic policies -- so how'd we end up here?

[raging moderate]

2. His supporters think most Black people live on welfare.

Last edited Sat Jan 14, 2017, 12:07 PM - Edit history (1)

Again and again, I read/hear right-wingers repeating this lie. They also believe that many Latinos live on welfare. They think that both groups of people hate to work and that liberal whites swallow all their sob stories and sign them all up for welfare. That awful rancher Cliven Bundy told a reporter that he had passed a housing development in Las Vegas and thought to himself how all these Black people lounging around would have been much better off if they had been kept in slavery because that had made them bustling and cheerful and healthy, whereas the terrible liberals had reduced them to aimless freeloading drunkards and druggies. It didn't seem to occur to him that most of the adults he saw might have been night-shift workers who were just not on-duty at that moment.

These right-wingers listen to fake news such as Breitbart, so they believe that most of the federal budget is devoted to welfare for the undeserving and that most of US debt and deficit are due to the buildup of borrowing to make these welfare payments. Again and again, they send to Congress the most viciously right-wing representatives they can find, who report back to them that they can't get the liberal government to stop giving away tax money to the undeserving poor (code for Black/Brown people), and that's why their taxes are still so high. IF the President is a Democrat, their representative also implies that the President has free access to the Treasury, conveniently overlooking the fact that it is Congress that has the power to allocate the funds. It never occurs to these right-wingers that their representatives have had the majority in the House of Representatives, and usually in the Senate as well, for decades now.

If asked, these right-wingers give low marks to Congress, but that is a fantasy Congress they are describing, not the real Congress that keeps voting to give away bundles to our right-wing billionaires and their right-wing billionaire buddies overseas.