More from the mind of Rep. Joe Walsh

Rep. Joe Walsh, still one of the
worst people in Congress
More jackassery from the unsealable pie-hole of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-NoLongerADeadbeat):

During a town hall meeting in Elmhurst yesterday, a constituent asked Walsh about corporate welfare provisions in the farm bill currently before Congress. Walsh denounced corporate welfare, but used the opportunity to highlight his belief that government assistance is 'destructive' for those in need.

WALSH: Corporate welfare is every bit as destructive as welfare for poor people. And we do both of them.

This notion'that feeding poor people is more damaging than telling them to just go to hell already'seems to be even more common with the new tea party-endorsed crowd than it ever was with past Republican incarnations. I suppose it fits: If taxed enough already was the tea party motto, implicit in that is the premise that every bit of the country not personally represented by the space between their own ears can, well, go to hell. We always had Republican grumbling about supposed welfare queens, poor Americans living glamourous lives on the pitiful amounts of money government might provide them, but the premise now is that even dirt-poor Americans who live like dirt-poor Americans don't deserve assistance. Forget being a welfare "queen": Even if you're legitimately poor and desperately hungry, you don't deserve help. You don't even deserve to eat. Starving to death builds character.

How all that might work is, I admit, something I've never quite been able to wrap my head around. The belief goes that a family that can't feed their kids will somehow be able to find better jobs and more money if their kids get more hungry; apparently because once the kids get sufficiently weak you'll find it much easier to leave them home alone without worrying they'll get into trouble. It just happens to be a theory that completely insulates the believer from having to pay a damn cent to anyone, and enabling them to claim moral superiority while doing so, which is exactly like every other rationale for ignoring the poor that has come up in every other century before this one. This time around, it just comes with a generous portion of old-timey hats.

Joe Walsh is playing a not uncommon game here as well, tying "corporate welfare" to programs to help poor people in a way such as to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we could cut tax breaks to gigantic industries if we cut assistance to poor people at the same time. You know, because they're equivalent things (except for the part where the tea partiers vote to cut that corporate welfare, which happens approximately never, compared to the constant votes to cut food stamps, unemployment assistance, medical programs and the like. I guess poor people need to hire better lobbyists).

Well, at least we know why deadbeat Joe was holding out on his child support payments. He was just trying to empower his kids by letting them experience life without food, clothing or pesky electricity. Gotta hand it to Joe Walsh, he does indeed walk that walk.