This past week's FOX primetime debate showcased 10 well-fed stuffed suits bloviating about their talents. A defensive Donald Trump insisted that America's angry because of political correctness. Using this to justify his history of churlish commentary about women, he and the rest of the onstage boys club ratcheted up their attack on a woman's right to govern her own body.
And while several of the candidates' parents are immigrants - Ted Cruz himself was born in another country - they fanned the flames of Trumps recent xenophobic rants. They feigned that it's about undocumented workers, but it's not. If they really wanted to stop shortcut migration, they'd go after the employers not the employees.
Hell, I ain't no brain surgeon (I used to believe it was improper to use ain't in public discourse, but after Ted Cruz used it in the debate, I figure it's ok to employ poor grammar now) but even the brain surgeon on stage - Ben Carson - couldn't come out against torture, even though empirical science shows it doesn't work. So, it would appear that between woman bashing, foreigner hating, and counterintuitive waterboarding, the real winner of the first presidential debate was the selfish, ugly, angry American. Come out, come out where ever you are. Dust off your drooling chin; it's cool to be cruel in America.
Only one guy on stage veered away from the knuckle dragging pack long enough to voice some sort of compassion for the people in the country he'd like to lead. Ohio Governor John Kasich spoke a word or two about elevating the standards for those not doing so well. Of course he didn't mention that back home, under his administration, food stamp recipients must be employed to eat. Yep, in Ohio, if you're under 50 and single there's a work requirement for the federal food program called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Of course even Kasich's not completely heartless. In 16 of Ohio's 88 counties, they've waved the employment requirement, because the unemployment rate is so dang high.
I work with some of the poorest, least employable people in America. They aren't tough to employ because they're rotten people. They're unemployable because they don't have regular access to transportation, communication, or shelter. And, they aren't even counted in that unemployment rate. They've fallen off the radar, and try as they may, they can't get back on it without help. And in Kasich's Ohio, they can't get food either.
I suppose if all those lies about poor people moving to the communities with the best benefits were true, all the destitute hungry people in Ohio would have relocated to the food stamp friendly 16 counties by now. But they haven't.
Last week I drove a 73-year-old man to an appeal hearing. It's my job to advocate for the folks who stay at our shelter. And when a hearing is scheduled for an elderly gentleman that's 25 miles away from where he lives, it only makes sense that he's going to need a ride. He could have had a phone hearing, but he's got a number of disabilities, and he gets confused.
This old fella's never had a car. He's gone to all 48 states on his bicycle. He loves maps. He collects them, although that hasn't always worked so well because he's been homeless so much and he loses his stuff. His favorite maps are the old ones that gas stations used to give away.
A kid born with special needs in the 1940's didn't have too many options. His dad had survived the Bataan Death March but died in a factory explosion back home when this old fella was still a young teen. His mom loved him very much, but she had other children who needed her too. He began to drift.
I filed the request for medical assistance and food stamps back in February. He'd gotten the food stamp card, but he told me that often it doesn't work. We walked into the hearing and sat across from an administrative judge and a woman representing the county.
The county said that the old fella didn't qualify for Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) - what used to be welfare before President Clinton's welfare reform - because he didn't have young children, he wasn't pregnant, and as an elderly person he wasn't blind. Only blind old people can get cash assistance in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Oh, and because of his social security benefit, he made too much money anyway. In Pennsylvania you can't get welfare if you make $250 - or more - a month.
The woman from the county asked him when he started receiving social security. He couldn't remember but it was about 40 years ago, since his seizures got so bad that he kept waking up in a hospital.
Which brought us to our other question. In April he'd been approved for medical assistance to pay what Medicare didn't pay. But he had a lot of bills from before then. The woman from the county said she could pay back to December and to send her the bills. She didn't know why he hadn't gotten a letter telling him that.
As for his food stamp card not working: the woman from the county said that sometimes cashiers don't tell a person that they've tried to spend too much money. They just tell them that the card won't work. He said it's embarrassing to leave all his food on the conveyer belt. She said to ask the cashier to tell him how much he needs to remove from the total so that he can afford some of the food. You could see the dread in his face, having to beg a clerk for help after he or she clearly hadn't offered any.
The woman from the county told him that he could just "check his balance on line" before he went shopping and add his purchases up as he went through the store. Well-meaning as that advice was, it was pretty out of touch.
Mean clerks and elderly going hungry. Poverty and Medicare co-pays. Information on-line and inadequate housing. It's an ugly dysfunctional reality, perpetuated by ugly angry Americans, and now they have a bevy of blowhards begging to be their commander-in-chief.