Just a few days after a state legislative hearing at which Deval’s new Auditor (and former Secretary of Labor) Suzanne Bump testified that the state throws $2.2 billion annually into a “black box” of corporate welfare with no known benefit, Deval and these same legislators are deciding to cut another 20% out of the WIC program.
Hurley said the effects of the proposed cut in state funding for WIC, such as how many families might lose support, remain unclear. State spending would fall from $12.4 million this fiscal year to $9.8 million….
Advocates for low-income women, however, said they fear that the consequences of cutting WIC again – it sustained a 9 percent cut in the past three years – will prove devastating.
Just as Deval unveils the promotion campaign for his new book, detailing how he was a poor starving kid in the ghetto destined for the usual trash heap and miraculously lucked out of it to become a multi-millionaire, he is deciding that the other kids who are now facing that trash heap can go hungry while his corporate playmates loot the treasury.
People across the state should be mobilizing demonstrations at the sites of each and every recipient of corporate subsides (if we can find out the names — many are kept secret, you know), which Deval knows perfectly well have nothing to do with “job creation” and “economic development.” He just gave Liberty Mutual $22.5 million — twice the WIC budget — FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. He even had his staff falsify the LM application by 125 “jobs promised” so he could throw the insurance giant an extra $4.5 million.
The corporate welfare “tax expenditure” budget is $2.2 billion, twice the entire budget shortfall.
Administration officials said they need to make such undesirable cuts as they try to close a projected $1.2 billion budget gap.
If we eliminated only half of the subsidy gravy train, we’d solve all the FY12 budget problems; if we cut it all, we’d restore the past cuts. End of problem.
This is a manufactured crisis, created by cynical pols who count on public ignorance to get away with it. And it works. Just shout “job creation” and all citizens fall silent; everyone believes The Big Lie, and no one knows that it’s all bogus, because we truly suffer an epidemic of ignorance and 24-hour memory.
We need mock trials of our elected officials for child abuse, elder abuse, engendering of homelessness and manslaughter. They are wittingly destroying people’s lives while they continue to stuff the pockets of CEOs and shareholders, who are delighted to “pay it forward” with generous campaign donations.
What on earth will it take for people to wake up? The private workers, the public workers, the sick, the poor, the old, the women, the children, the air and water, the plants and animals. When YOUR turn comes to be sacrificed for the sake of “economic development” and “global competition,” there will be no one left to speak for you.
I couldn’t link to “falsify” in paragraph 4.
I agree with your sentiments, Shirley. Thanks for the post- I thought nobody here was going to mention this bit of nastiness.
as the intricacies of the tax burden, apparently. Entitlements are a scourge that must be eradicated in the GOP /Tea Party mindset.
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p>Just to remind yourself that there is a place where humans are decent and civic-minded on the planet, where women and children are valued, where crime is low, where the standard of living is high, and college is free, and health care is free…the list goes on, there’s always this:
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If you want, that is. đŸ™‚