Alt-compassion
On Thursday morning, the White House’s budget director Mick Mulvaney rationalized Trump's budget cuts with the The Bizzaro Version of Compassion. He said: “When you start looking at places that we reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was, can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no,” Mulvaney told MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
Eric Levitz has come thoughts about things we are already asking them to pay for:
(1) The U.S. already spends more more on its military than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, France, India, and Germany — combined. By contrast, America spends far less than its peers (per capita) on many of the initiatives that the Trump’s budget cuts.Reporters pressed him for futher clairificatiomn:
(2) Trump’s proposal cuts many programs that are more intuitively valuable to coal miners in West Virginia — and single mothers in Detroit — than a 10 percent increase in defense spending. The president’s budget cuts funding for early-childhood education, public housing, transit, food assistance, and job training — all programs that disproportionately benefit single mothers in cities with low median incomes. And it also abolishes the Appalachian Regional Commission and Rural Business-Cooperative Service, while shrinking the Labor Department — all moves that disadvantage coal miners.
(3) If the White House feels bad about taking money from coal miners and single mothers, then why is one of its top priorities to pass an enormous, regressive tax cut?
“Just to follow-up on that, you were talking about the steel worker in Ohio, coal worker in Pennsylvania, but they may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program or who may have kids in Head Start,” Acosta said. “Yesterday, or the day before, you described this as a hard-power budget. Is it also a hard-hearted budget?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mulvaney replied. “I think it’s probably one of the most compassionate things we can do.”
“To cut programs that help the elderly and kids?” Acosta asked, incredulously.
Now here is the crux of his reasoning, this is how he rationalizes it:
“You’re only focusing on half of the equation, right? You’re focusing on the recipients of the money. We’re trying to focus on both the recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place,” Mulvaney explained. “And I think it’s fairly compassionate to go to them and say, ‘Look, we’re not gonna ask you for your hard-earned money, anymore, single mother of two in Detroit … unless we can guarantee to you that that money is actually being used in a proper function.’”
That is Bizzazro logic. W can ask them to pay 149$ for a towelette seat (for defense--soldiers have to crap) but we can'task them to by an old lady lunch or for a hungry child so he can learn and grow up to be a brilliantine like Trump?
If we look at murder from his perspective we have to take both ides of the equation we need to know if the murderer is getting a good clean kill. We can't just look at the victim's side of it, we should stick up for the murderer, make sure the she get's her monies worth worth.
Tax payers are not analogous to murderers but the principle is the same, both sides of every equation are not equal. The fact is the taxpayer only get's her money's wroth from defense if it's used, but you have to have a war to use it. Not to worry I'm sure Trump will get us into war, But there is one other point to be considered. Taxpayers benefit from services, social programs are not just helpful for some abstract category of lazy people called "the poor" they help tax payers too. We benefit from PBS, from culture more than from defense.It's more important to go on with culture and civilization. We benefit from society we owe we should pay back. Defense id all overcharge anyway, no money's worth there.
This is a crime agaisnt humanity it is the essence of evil. The rich and powerful misusing a concept like compassion to justify their murder of the poor. It's double murder because they not only murder the poor but the English language as well.
"we’re not gonna ask you for your hard-earned money, anymore, single mother of two in Detroit … unless we can guarantee to you that that money is actually being used in a proper function"
ReplyDeleteSo we spend an awful lot of money on the military, but in spite of Trump having claimed to have a secret 30 day play to defeat them, I don't see the return on that investment. Yet the new budget asks for more money.
I don't see the payoff in investing money to build up our nuclear arsenal further, either.
And I sure as heck don't see the benefit in all the money being spent on golfing weekends in FL and on Melania living in Trump Tower.
yea and besides he makes all of these huge cuts and yet spends it all on defense but no net gaimn frm cuts, the Reagan trick,dense dollars are magic,
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