Fox’s Martha MacCallum thinks that ensuring adequate nutrition for schoolchildren is a gateway drug that will hook them on socialism forever. So better they should go hungry!
MacCallum was joined by Larry Kudlow for a round of fear mongering about the horrors of Democrats spending money on projects that help all Americans, American businesses and the environment.
Although it’s not in the video below, the interview began with the “notoriously wrong” Kudlow predicting, “reconciliation, as we know it, is dead.”
But soon, Kudlow and MacCallum got to their real concerns: spending that helps everyday Americans.
KUDLOW: So, Manchin's made it very clear. Excess federal spending means higher inflation. We cannot transform the society into one that doesn't go to work or respects the dignity of work. Eligibility means testing and work requirements. And Martha, you've got in this -- I mean, I've read everything so carefully read the House Budget Committee markup, and so forth.
You've got people earning 300, 400, $500,000 a year, getting assistance for these universal basic income ideas. You know, childcare, child tax credit - - actually my favorite one, if you're earning $800,000 a year, and you buy an electric car, made in America, in a union shop, you get a $12,500 tax credit, if you're making $800,000 a year. That's nonsense. That's serious nonsense.
Yes, why should we give rich people an incentive to buy American products that also help the climate? Not that MacCallum cared about that.
MACCALLUM: So, why are they throwing all this money towards rich people, when they say that that's the last thing that they want to do, is my question.
Like Fox’s top host and deadly disinformer, Tucker Carlson, MacCallum obviously was more interested in looking like she was asking the question and thus delegitimizing the plan, rather than getting answers. Otherwise, she’d have asked someone in a position to know.
The next thing that unnerved MacCallum was paid family leave for everybody. As if she wouldn’t have squawked if only poor people were eligible.
MACCALLUM: This is from the Wall Street Journal. And this is another example of what is in this bill, OK, when you actually look at what they want to give away, it is absolutely extraordinary. So, a new parent earning $200,000 a year could be eligible for more than $1,000 a week for 12 weeks, every year.
So, $12,000 every year from the government. The company has paid first and the government supposed to kick it back to them: "No matter if that person is married to another six-figure earner who also claims to leave." So, a couple that earns $400,000 a year could essentially get $24,000 covered in family leave.
KUDLOW: Which any normal person knows is nuts, absolutely nuts. All right. It just, it's not even in the ballpark.
But what really horrified MacCallum was the thought of free lunches for schoolchildren. As Crooks and Liars noted, she argued that ensuring adequate nutrition for all students will corrupt them into becoming moochers forever!
MACCALLUM: One of the things that kills me is that now that, you know, there's a free lunch program in New Jersey, and it's for everyone, even if you don't need help, just send your child's lunch to school. So, those kids are all going to grow up thinking, well, school -- lunch is free, right? And then God help the person who comes along and tries to take that away, Larry. You're talking about free lunch. I mean, that that will never -- once that happens, right? Once it's baked in there, it's never going to end.
KUDLOW: That is important, what you said, you're going to pay for it with higher taxes and higher inflation. And I think most again, common sense Americans, no, this is not right. They don't want big government socialism. They don't want a welfare state, we're all dependent on.
As the segment closed, Kudlow said, “Save America. Kill the bill.”
These sentiments are not just mean-spirited and selfish, they conceal a deep-seated contempt for Americans. Because it’s not just that MacCallum and Kudlow hate the idea of helping Americans buy electric cars from American businesses or ensuring school kids are adequately nourished. They obviously believe that Americans are so foolish as to like policies these two think are dangerous. And they would rather Americans go without lunch if that’s what it takes to foist their preferences on the rest of us.
You can watch it below, from the September 30, 2021 The Story with Martha MacCallum, via Media Matters.
More seriously, means-testing provides mean-spirited individuals with a weapon with which to demean the recipients who really need those benefits. Some power-drunk managers get a lot of pleasure from being able to decide who gets access and who does not.
In any case, I doubt that Ms. MacCallum knows much about anything that may have to do with helping the more vulnerable members of a society.
It’s the same issue about higher education. An extremely wealthy family sending their kids to an elite college is not worried about going to the local community college.
The actual means testing tends to weed itself out in actual practice. Trying to penalize everyday people with it is less effective and only serves to reinforce an angry and false Right Wing narrative about who “deserves” assistance.
It’s the same approach we heard when Medicare was proposed – that good Christian people would somehow already have millions saved to cover wild hospital expenses thanks to companies and employers refusing to do anything for their employees in retirement or when disaster struck.
The usual angry Right Wing approach, as we are hearing from the Fox News personalities as they desperately attempt to grab some viewers back from OANN or Newsmax, is to say that there is no societal responsibility for anyone to help their neighbor, and that if someone needs any assistance, they are someone to be despised and not aided.
In reality, providing school lunches is not “socialism”. It’s called decency. But angry Right Wingers wouldn’t concern themselves with such concepts.
As for Fox News and AM Radio’s constant viciously bigoted attacks on the Obama family, that’s simply par for the course for them. Just as we could predict that the Pence White House would attempt to erase the entire presidency of Barack Obama. It would be easy to blame that attack on simple bigotry, but the hatred of angry Right Wingers like Fox News anchors goes far beyond that. They’re all busy attacking Joe Biden now for any basis they can find. (It’s similar to the Godfather scene where movie mogul Jack Woltz keeps throwing bigoted epithets at Tom Hagen, changing up when he hears that Hagen isn’t Italian.) The hatred of angry Right Wingers is based on the fact that they intend to win, and they want everyone else to lose and go away. When we refuse to go along with that plan, the hatred apparently finds new manifestations.
Dear John: Like you, I also STILL remember that TOTAL CHEAP SHOT INSULT from that cow Martha MacCallum on the morning of January 20, 2009, i.e. the inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th POTUS. You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to figure out that racist cow MacCallum was in an “udderly foul moooooooooooood” that morning. There is ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NO DOUBT IN MY MIND that deep down, she was clenching her teeth tightly and SEETHING WITH UNCONTROLLABLE RAGE and mumbling the following privately:
“I STILL CAN’T F***ING BELIEVE THAT G**DAMNED UPPITY DARKIE AND HIS FAMILY OF MONKEYS ARE GOING TO BE LIVING IN THE F***ING WHITE HOUSE THE NEXT FOUR YEARS!!”
I will never forget the vicious, vacuous cow commenting on Michelle’s glorious inauguration gown “These people don’t usually look good in green”.
