The Wrong Kind of Suffering

"If you're low income you get lots...you can qualify for...in many states you can qualify for medicaid you can qualify for food stamps you can qualify for housing assistance, and that's not if you're in poverty, that's if you're above the poverty line and so you have all of these (sic) children growing up in an environment where government is paying you. And then we wonder why do these kids feel they're entitled to so much. (...) and that is not a healthy thing for children, its not a healthy thing for society, so that's how I square it, I square it that, you know, suffering, if you're a Christian, you know, suffering is part of life. And its not a bad thing. It is an essential thing, in life. And that...we suffer, there are all different ways to suffer, one way to suffer is through lack of food and shelter and there's another way to suffer which is lack of dignity and hope and (...) its not just tangible, its also intangible."



Senator/Mistress Rick Santorum (sadly) of Pennsylvania, at an Iowa town hall meeting, explaining why if you work but your income is insufficient to pay for housing, food, and or medical care having the government help you is a form of suffering worse than starving, being homeless or being chronically ill/dead from lack of health care. Because you know, now your children feel entitled. Obviously many full time jobs don't entitle you to earning anything like a living wage, so you should stop suckling at the government teat and maybe pay for trade school or an associate's degree with suffering (real, tangible suffering) Do it quick though. Suffering is an important part of life, but your kids can't eat it.

Idiot Son of an Asshole

Dear Concerned American,

They snickered when I said I came to the U.S. Senate to change Congress. But their laughter stopped when I sponsored the National Right to Work Act to free U.S. workers from forced unionization and break Big Labor's multi-billion dollar political machine forever. 

Rand Paul... (less rich than most of the jerks quoted so far, but still a real jerk) in an email soliciting support for his Federal Right to Work Act. No, this wouldn't be like the "right to work" they claimed to have in the Soviet Union, where everyone was supposed to be guaranteed a job. This is the right to work (for less, with less benefits if any and no collective bargaining rights). Of course, if you want it you already have this right, just take any of the 93% of jobs in the private sector in the U.S. where, like all non-union employees in America, you will be an "at will" employee who can be fired at any time for any (or no) reason and can't bargain collectively for benefits, a safer work environment, or anything else. This is really more a law to ensure that the bosses have the "right" to (desperate) "work"(ers) with no rights.

You might remember that Rand Paul stated that he wouldn't have supported the Civil Rights Act, because (like all libertarians) he feels that the right of bosses to make decisions about the use of their property based on their deeply held, individual racist beliefs is much more important than, say African Americans having the right to feed their families. He claims he would have marched with Dr. King, though (maybe for the exercise) so here is a non-rich-jerk quote in the interest of furthering his education...

 

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped."   

 

Martin Luther King, Jr.