Fox News retracts fake news story about food stamp fraud.

Courtesy of The Hill:

Fox News has retracted a Tuesday story that claimed "an all-time high" for food stamp fraud. 

“We reported that back in 2016 $70 [billion] were wasted on food stamp fraud,” Fox News contributor Abby Huntsman said on Friday's "Fox and Friends." 

“That was actually incorrect. The latest information from 2009 to 2011 shows the fraud at 1.3 percent, which is approximately $853 million for each of those three years. Nationally food stamp trafficking is on the decline. So sorry about that mistake.”

Okay well I guess it is somewhat of a good sign that Fox is finally starting to take responsibility for some of the bullshit that they put out.

However if you notice they picked one of the most attractive and pleasant people in their news stable to give the apology.

"Let's go ahead and admit we were wrong, but let's distract them with something pretty while we do it."

Personally I would rather see Bill O'Reilly making the apology so that I can despise him and the network for lying in the first place and then mock them for having to apologize.

Sarah Palin uses her Down syndrome child to cover for a heartless attack on poor folks in Maine.

Courtesy of Hypocritical Hattie's Facebook page:  

Get Off Your Butt To Make a Buck 

Good things come from the beautiful state of Maine. (I met the nicest lady visiting Trig's school yesterday for our "Lunch With a Loved One" reading event, all the way up here from Maine to visit grandkids, representing her state so graciously!) Good stuff from the Pine Tree State, including some tough love to restore work ethic.

Well isn't that sweet? Mom came to visit at Trig's school.

Well it would be if she then did not use at an opportunity to link to a Nancy French written post over at Brancy's blog, which cheers Maine Governor Paul LaPage's decision to require food stamp recipients without children to get a job or lose benefits.

In the post French applauds the fact that LaPage managed to kick 80 percent of the people off of the program, claiming that they must not have needed the help in the first place.

However what they seemed to have missed was the fact that charitable organizations in Maine have been working overtime in order to fill the gap.

Courtesy of the Portland Press Herald:  

The growth of Good Shepherd and other charitable organizations shows how far government efforts are falling short, and the transformation of emergency interventions into permanent institutions is proof that Maine’s weak response to hunger is making the problem worse. 

How big is the problem? 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are approximately 206,000 Mainers who experience food insecurity, the term for those who don’t have enough money to reliably get their hands on an adequate supply of safe, nutritious food. 

That number includes 24 percent of Maine’s children and 23 percent of its seniors. Maine ranks 12th in the nation for this measure of hunger, and first – or worst – in New England. 

But while the problem grows, the state’s response has been to pull back, using government policy to reduce the number of people who receive aid through entirely federally funded programs, leaving money in Washington that could be helping people here and putting more pressure on individuals who support charities and whose consciences won’t permit them to turn their backs.

“We’re no longer for emergencies. We’re a regular supplier of people’s food,” said Kristen Miale, Good Shepherd’s president, in a recent interview with the Maine Sunday Telegram. “Food banking isn’t the solution to hunger.”

I guess the folks behind the Good Shepherd understand the concept of being a good Christian.

What a shame that not all of those hiding behind that label recognize the responsibility.

President Obama calls out Fox News for their portrayal of poor Americans as lazy undeserving leeches."

“Over the last forty years, sadly, I think there's been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top or mad at folks at the bottom. And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, you know are undeserving, got traction. And look it's still being propagated. I mean I have to say that if you watch FOX News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu. They will find folks who make ME mad. I don’t even know where they find them. They're all like, ‘I don’t want to work, I just want a free Obamaphone or whatever.' And that becomes an entire narrative that gets worked up, right? And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical who is raising a couple of kids and doing everything right, but still can’t pay the bills.”

The President, of course, is right to call out Fox News over their unfair portrayal of poor people as lazy, and as people who use food stamps and public assistance as "leeches."

Possibly the most famous case of this was the case of "food stamp surfer" who, with Fox News cameras in tow, went to the local store to purchase lobster for dinner with his food stamps.

This was literally shown on a loop at Fox News, and was referred to by Congressman seeking to cut social programs that serve the neediest people in the country.

All of this is reminiscent of the famous Welfare Queen meme that Ronald Reagan used back in 1976 to smear recipients of food stamps and other social welfare programs. (By the way there was an actual person who inspired Reagan's anti-welfare stories, but she was a criminal who did far worse than take advantage of the system, and who ultimately was jailed for her crimes.)

Since then, and actually even before, vilifying the poor as lazy and unworthy of help has been a constant theme among the conservatives and on their media outlets.

There are of course always those that take advantage, but the majority of Americans receiving public assistance are hard working people who simply cannot make ends meet. At least not yet.

But I guess reporting that would not exactly fit the conservative mythology of the haves being taken advantage of by the slothful and duplicitous have nots.

Republicans repay their constituents for electing them by trying to starve them to death.

Courtesy of The Root:

The Republican Party is engaged in class warfare against poor and middle-class white Americans. It is a little-discussed fact but an ironic one worth noting, since those are the very same people who elect them. 

This week, House Republicans passed a nutrition bill that eliminates $39 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps. Nearly 47 million Americans currently rely on SNAP -- roughly 15 percent of the population -- and 17.6 million U.S. households are considered food insecure, which means they aren't sure where their next meal will come from. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (pdf), nearly 17 million of these people are children, 5 million are seniors and 300,000 are elderly veterans. 

And despite prevailing racial stereotypes, which first became mainstream during President Ronald Reagan's tenure and his propagation of the myth of a "welfare queen" from the South Side of Chicago, the overwhelming majority of food stamp recipients are white. And curiously, many of them are Republicans. USDA data show that in 2011, 37 percent of food stamp users (pdf) were from white, non-Hispanic households. 

And of the 254 counties where the number of food stamp recipients doubled between 2007 and 2011, Republican candidate Mitt Romney won 213 in last year's presidential election. Bloomberg's John McCormick and Greg Giroux compiled research revealing that Kentucky's Owsley County -- which backed Romney with 81 percent of its vote -- had the largest proportion of food stamp recipients of all the communities where Romney won. 

What is most curious is that this isn't surprising. The poorest states in the union tend to be the most reliably red, with Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas among the top 10.

You know I have heard about cognitive dissonance before, but THIS takes the cake.

The GOP has NEVER been about supporting its constituents, and ALWAYS been about pleasing their biggest political donors, who are certainly NOT the people that will be affected by this bill.

If these same red states reelect their Representatives after this then they are simply to ignorant to survive anyhow.

I guess Darwin was right.