Accidental Blogger

Poverty and suffering, like wealth and success, are frequently associated with personal attributes. The former evokes hard work, determination, intelligence and the competitive spirit, while the poor are suspected of stupidity, malingering and a tendency to exploit the generosity of others. The poor are also often blamed for their own misery in religious terms like karma or an injudicious pact with the devil.  Those making such judgments conveniently ignore issues such as accident of birth, exploitation, unpredictable market forces, social, economic and political disparities, natural and man made disasters and in some cases, physical and psychological disabilities.  

Public servants like to describe themselves as champions of the middle class while many actually are in office to do the bidding of the rich and the powerful. But at least the middle and working class citizens get lip service and faux respect from their political representatives. The poor are at best neglected and in some cases, shamelessly mocked and maligned. It is troublesome when politicians who are vested with the responsibility of improving the lot of their constituents, harbor contemptuous attitudes toward the most vulnerable and powerless among them. The lieutenant governor of South Carolina, Andre Bauer recently said the following at a town hall meeting about those receiving public assistance in his state.

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” he said. “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

When his hateful characterization of the poor generated some criticism, Bauer said that  he did not regret his comments but “maybe the stray animals wasn’t the best metaphor.”

For the true state of government assistance programs in South Carolina, please see the full story here.