Glenn Beck is coming to Wilmington. "This town hasn't taken any money from the government," he said, promoting the event. "They don't want any money from the government. And they are pulling together."
To be clear, the story of a community coming together during economic hardship is compelling, and it can illustrate the need for charity. But Beck's tale is nothing more than an effort to further attack programs that help those in need.
In fact, Glenn Beck's policy prescriptions would have disastrous consequences for the residents of Wilmington.
In 2008, DHL announced that it would eliminate 7,000 jobs in Wilmington. Mayor David Raizk has said the DHL closure was a "catastrophic event for the entire region."
In the past two years, Wilmington's use of food stamps, welfare, unemployment insurance, and the National School Lunch Program has increased significantly. According to state officials, food stamp enrollment in Clinton County is up 91 percent, while the number of people receiving cash benefits has increased 116 percent. Medicaid rolls have increased 37.5 percent during that time.
Mark Rembert is co-director of ENERGIZE Clinton County, an organization trying to tap into public and private resources to redevelop the region. He applauded the work of local service organizations, but said that "government money has played an essential role in meeting many basic needs in our community," adding that "it is difficult to envision what state our community would be in were it not for the unemployment insurance paid to laid off employees, food assistance programs, job and family service programs, and financial assistance to our local school system."
But to Beck, these types of "government handouts" make people "slaves."
Just months before the announced job losses, Beck discussed the enrollment process and public awareness campaigns for food stamps and Medicaid. He asked, "Is there no shame in this country anymore?" Food stamps, Beck said in April 2008, are "just the tip of the now taxpayer-funded iceberg lettuce."
In September, Beck proposed a solution to the problem of have-nots: "teach a man to make pie" (because pie is better than fish), and let charity fill in the gaps. Complaining about the number of Americans on government assistance, Beck said, "The vast majority of us -- get off your ass and bake some pie."
But after suffering thousands of lost jobs, Wilmington doesn't need a lesson in how to bake. It needs jobs and investment. And for that it has turned, in part, to the federal government.
Wilmington has received more than $10 million in stimulus funds, according to city officials. And that's a drop in the bucket considering that the city has requested more than $63 million in funding under the stimulus bill, which officials estimated would have directly created 1,211 jobs. Raizk explained to PolitiFact.com: "I've beat on more doors than I can count. Not because we are looking for a handout -- but we are looking for a hand up."
A Wilmington City Schools official says that stimulus funds were used to offset additional teacher layoffs and to purchase classroom resources.
In fact, when it comes to stimulus funding, the problem is not that "government money" has enslaved Wilmington. If anything, the people of Wilmington need more of it.
ENERGIZE Clinton County's Rembert explains: "While we have received some funds -- for which we are very grateful -- they are negligible given the size and gravity of our local economic crisis."
Which brings us back to Beck. At the height of the debate about the stimulus -- a stimulus that many economists said needed to be significantly larger to fix the economy -- Beck called the bill "slavery."
Beck has repeatedly denied what countless economists have said: that the stimulus has created millions of jobs that would not exist otherwise, including more than 500 in Wilmington. (Economists say the stimulus indirectly creates even more jobs than that, as employed workers spend stimulus-funded paychecks on goods and services.)
Beck would have you believe that the people who are working those jobs, weatherizing homes throughout Clinton and Clark counties and redeveloping downtown Wilmington, are slaves to the stimulus.
Wilmington doesn't need Beck -- it needs a strong social safety net and significant public investment in jobs.
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On top of that, the mass figure you just drew on refers to the belief that "A job saved is a job created" which is a completely wrong mindset and two entirely different things. Saving a job with government money is simply is denying the inevitable. Schools cut teachers because they need to tighten their belts, state governments lay off employees because they need to tighten their belts. yes its sad, but coming to the rescue with billions of dollars and then considering yourself the savior of public jobs does not by any means deserve a round of applause.
Oh jeez, yet another conservative who thinks he invented the work ethic.
Semper fi
1. "The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."
2. "From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time."
3. "All men are Created equal..."
With number three, the key is that we are all Created equal, but that doesn't mean that there is a guarantee of an equal outcome.
Furthermore, when we constructed a society that REQUIRES people to pay money in order to access basic needs (which people used to be free to satisfy without having to purchase them) then that society has an obligation to ensure enough money flows through the system to satisfy human demand for it, so the citizens can purchase the services necessary to keep them alive. Again, it's the responsibility of the system IF it wants to continue to thrive.
The government is complicit in the problem in that it's allowed itself to become corrupted by the corporate interests, so most of what it does caters to the needs of the wealthy. It does that by taxing WAGES and redistributing that money to the poor, instead of taxing WEALTH and redistributing that highly concentrated cash to those in need. This arrangement pits the sort-of-haves against the have-nots, cleverly dividing the lower classes while leaving the wealthy class untouched by the controversy. Because the wealthy buy the political clout to make the laws, they make sure the laws are in their favor.
If you want to sell it in China, make it in China. If you want to sell it in America, make it HERE.
It is such an incredible place... There was a musician there playing music while people were praying. It was so unbelievably cool, ...I wrote on the chalkboard my prayer that the nation would see Wilmington. I don't mean that they would see the trouble, they would see the strife. This is a town that's 12,000 people. They lost 7500 jobs. Not that they would see that. They've seen it. You watch 60 Minutes and see that, that's all they show you. What they need to see is the people. They need to see the joy. They need to see the teamwork. They need to see the people coming together. And as I wrote that on the chalkboard and I walked back into the back and I gave the woman who started this great place a hug and she said, "You know, I started this a few years back." And she said, "I just, you know, I just stood where I was told to stand." And she said, "It came to me I should start a prayer center here in town." She said, when I had that thought, I had the impression that it would be the start of something for the nation. That it would -- that the eyes of the nation would see this and it would inspire them and we would get through our tough times."
Semper fi