The 47% and Irony
Let’s personalize Mitt Romney’s denigration of the 47%.
Cindy Nerger went to her local Kroger’s to pick up groceries for her family. She paid using her food stamps, but the cashier and then the store manager said that she still owed $10. Ms. Nerger replied that this was not possible, because she knew that food stamps covered everything she had bought. To this, the store manager replied, “Okay, just give it to her.” Nerger said, “see, I told you it was covered by food stamps,” to which the manager replied, “excuse me for working for a living and not relying on food stamps!'”
Granted, it was likely one of the few times the manager of a Kroger’s in the middle of Georgia was able to lord it over anyone else, but still.
When the manager insulted her in that way, Nerger turned and saw the other people in line, felt humiliated, and left the store in tears.
Moocher.
Nerger said she started receiving food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, when she became eligible for Medicare and Social Security Supplemental Income because of kidney failure in 2008. While she waits for a kidney transplant, she cannot work because of daily 12-hour dialysis treatments. Her husband runs a carpentry business. “If he doesn’t get a call [for a job] we don’t have any extra money for the month,” she said.
Food stamps have been a hot issue in the presidential campaign, with Republicans labeling President Barack Obama the “Food Stamp President” and charging that Obama has deliberately increased dependency on government. The Great Recession and its aftermath have pushed SNAP enrollment to 46.6 million, up from 34 million at the same time in 2009.
Heartbreaking, right? Well, here’s the other thing:
However much the campaign issues might resonate in her personal life, Nerger said she doesn’t have cable and hasn’t been following politics or the presidential election. Still, she doesn’t think much of either Obama or his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.
“They’re all gonna kill us,” she said. “Most of the people that we have to choose from — Obama with his spending and his health care reform, and then Mitt Romney, he just wants to let poor people die, so either way we’re doomed. So I don’t see any point in voting.”
Scroll back up to the part where she’s a Medicare recipient. She is a beneficiary of a federally run single-payer health insurance program and denigrates Obamacare and “spending”.
WTF, people.
Here’s another good one. Guy is in favor of McDonald’s posting nutrition information until he’s told it’s because of ACA: (2/3 of the way down) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/24/a-big-mac-has-550-calories-mcdonalds-customers-say-so-what/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
“People get the government they deserve.” — de Tocqueville
I thought the 47% was supposed to be in Obama’s pocket.
She’s in Georgia; she’ll vote (R) because only black and brown people are leeches on the government. She “deserves” help.
I think it’s pretty unfair to assume she is racist because she’s from Georgia.
I love this, because this is what you will never get. I believe I read you did not grow up around here, so I also get why you get all mad at all the “simple people” who don’t go along with what you seem to think is always the clear and obvious choice. Nor do you understand why this woman is not singing anyone’s praise about having to buy her groceries on the government dime. (WTF? Well, she isn’t WTF happy about not paying cash.)
I really don’t have time to explain it to you right now, but suffice it to say in the places I like to hang out around WNY, mostly blue collar working bars, many folks not working, you can hear them spend the whole day bad mouthing the democrats and Obama. I actually saw one guy throw to the floor and stomp an imaginary Hilary Clinton in the last election cycle, then they all got into a conversation about how much they loved Palin’s spunk! I don’t think it is their best choice, but I understand why they have no interest in being embarrassed about coming up short with government coupons.
What does my not growing up around here have to do with anything? I didn’t grow up in Georgia, either.
Right.
Sorry. I didn’t realize you were a lunatic.
Yeah back to your name calling crap again, easier than real thoughtful responses, but you tweet, you twitter you twizzle all day long about how people in Buffalo should vote, eat crap, think about some building you think is important and otherwise do what you think is right, but here it is the real deal. A place that doesn’t take food stamps that doesn’t care what you wear to shop the kiosks and you don’t give a crap. That is because you didn’t grow up here and you don’t understand the history of this place. You just want brightly lit convenience when you need it. If you ever understand Super Flea you will finally understand what it means to be a Western New Yorker, in the meantime ramble on to your ever decreasing readers in your outside voice.
If Cindy Nerger went to the SF there would be no issues. Disgraceful!
1. I “twizzle” about “some building [I] think is important”, and you’re not a lunatic? 2. “A place that doesn’t take food stamps that doesn’t care what you wear to shop the kiosks and you don’t give a crap” <- what does that even mean? How am I supposed to give you a “real thoughtful” response when you write nonsenically? What do I have to do with Superflea? I’ve been there loads of times, never written a thing about it. WTF are you talking about?
Alan, you don’t understand. You didn’t grow up in Buffalo…we’re voting in November for President of Buffalo, don’t you realize this?
You damn well better start writing about it, if you want to be relevant at all! I will say it one more time; if Cindy Nerger went to the SF she would not have had the problems described above.
A place that doesn’t take food stamps that doesn’t care what you wear to shop the kiosks and you don’t give a crap
right, couldn’t have asked for a more striking example f what you wrote about above, forWNYers
You stopped making sense ages ago. Give it up.
you stopped being able to listen to anything but your own tapping on them phone keys.
figured you couldn’t put it together.
He’s right, Alan! YOU WILL WRITE WHAT I ORDER YOU TO WRITE!! KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!!
Well , I’m certain you didn’t hear that in Blue collar Lackawanna. Mention Romney in a bar and they bust a gut.
West Seneca, basically the same difference, and it was Palin. Not the unconscious beaten imaginary wreck on the floor that was Clinton. What do they do when you mention Obama?
.
West Seneca and Lackawanna are not basically the same.
Depends where you hang out.
Palin? WTF does Palin have to do with it. And Yeah, O is well liked. Have you ever been in a bar in LA? Let me tell you the LA mantra. “Put a republican in and you starve”. They still haven’t got over that Ronnie sold them and their steel industry down the river to the japs.
I know Lackawanna and I know all those old guys who would fight left and right for a union raise still never wanted their kids to go into the mills. They wanted the mills there as a back up. But they never wanted that for their kids. They wanted better.
Alan dancing gracefully around the news that median household incomes fell by 1.1% again in August, and are now down 8.2% under the Obama Regime.
You’re right. This is a very serious problem – once that’s been unaddressed since its peak of an inflation-adjusted $54,942 reached in the 1999 – the penultimate year of the Clinton administration. Under the Republican administrations starting with Reagan, median household income has remained the same and stagnated because of the doctrinal Republican assault on the middle class in favor of the superwealthy leveraged buyout types like Romney and Milken.
Have a nice day!
Wow she is an idiot! I felt sorry for her but she hates the president whose policies would actually help her and help care for her condition (the renal failure, not the condition of sheer stupidity).
Sheer stupidity cannot be cured as of yet.