Oklahoma Republicans compare poor people to animals in Facebook post

Who ever controls the Oklahoma Republican Party (OK GOP) Facebook page posted an incredibly insensitive “lesson in irony” comparing poor people who need food stamps in order to put food on their tables to animals in our national parks:

The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is proud to be distributing this year the greatest amount of free Meals and Food Stamps ever, to 46 million people.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us “Please Do Not Feed the Animals.” Their stated reason for the policy is because “The animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”

Thus ends today’s lesson in irony ‪#‎OKGOP‬

The OK GOP’s Facebook post is downright offensive, because it dehumanizes Oklahomans who are on food stamps because they have trouble providing food for their families by comparing them to wild animals. Poor people are not animals. They are people with families that they have to take care of, they are people who are either unable to find a job or work at a job that pays low wages, and they are people who are struggling to put food on their tables.

Oklahoma State Rep. Emily Virgin (D-Norman), noted on Twitter that many teachers and correctional officers in Oklahoma legally qualify for food stamps because they’re not paid enough to be fully able to provide food for themselves and their families:

Many OK teachers, correctional officers, college students, and single mothers qualify for food stamps. OK GOP's statement is disgusting.

— Emily Virgin (@RepEmilyVirgin) July 14, 2015

If Oklahoma Republicans were serious about actually getting people off food stamps, they’d call for raising Oklahoma’s minimum wage in order to lift thousands of Oklahomans out of poverty, instead of dehumanizing Oklahomans who are in poverty. Sadly, that’s far too much to ask from them.

Dumb Ron Johnson falsely stigmatizes single mothers

Wisconsin’s Dumb Senator Ron Johnson recently launched an attack on single mothers who are struggling to provide for their children, saying that he thinks that single mothers intentionally have children out of wedlock in order to get more benefits from government-run public assistance programs:

Johnson’s personal attack and stigmatization of women is based on a completely false belief that conservatives have that single mothers would be better off having more children out of wedlock than marrying someone. As Wisconsin progressive blogger Jud Loundsbury noted in this diary on the progressive website DailyKos, Johnson’s claims are absolutely absurd:

As anyone who works and has kids would expect, Johnson and (Republican Congressman Glenn) Grothman’s modern redux of the “welfare queen” has been rated “Mostly False” by Politifact and was given “Two Pinocchios” by the Washington Post’s fact checker. Why?  Because it is a ridiculous notion to suggest that when you’re a single parent, working below the poverty line, that you would intentionally have another child to get more government assistance and “increase your take-home pay.”  Obviously, food stamps, health care and other government assistance don’t come close covering all the expenses that come with having a child and what Johnson and Grothman fail to grasp in their misleading calculations of “income,” is that children actually eat and children actually get sick– the “increased income” they’re talking about comes in the form of increased benefits that all (in most cases literally) get eaten-up by the children.

In other words, single mothers who receive food stamps and other forms of government assistance would not financially benefit from having another child out of wedlock, since any extra benefits that single mothers would receive by having another child would be used by the children in the form of eating food, getting medical treatment, and so on. What Republicans like Ron Johnson don’t take into consideration is that children eat food, (in most cases) live in homes with some type of heating system, and become ill.

Wisconsin and the rest of America has had to deal with Ron Johnson’s stigmatizing and shaming of the American people, as well as his absurd logic, for far too long. I hope Wisconsinites vote him out of office next year.