quote:

That region and race and education levels and income levels have far more to do with how one votes than whether or not they're receiving government assistance?

Doesnt income level = whether or not you receive government assistance a good amount of the time?

Wait a second, race is more important than personal economic incentives in deciding how to vote? Suddenly gay marriage sounds substantive.

No, we're talking about categories, not issues, as I'm sure you know. Black is a category. Gay marriage is an issue.

Steve is making the case that people on welfare trend Democratic, seemingly unaware that there are more whites on welfare, especially rural whites, than there are blacks on welfare.

Do you disagree that this is true? I don't suppose that you do, since you know how to find this information, if you weren't aware of it already.

Uh, sure.

"Yep.
Cause and effect?
Lowest literacy levels
lowest school attendance
Most welfare
Highest crime rate
=
Democrat votes."

"Oddly enough, as you know, those with the highest degrees, usually in academia tend left D as to criminals and illiterate inner city poor. Above average educated and relatively successful in between tend R.
Obama runs well with liberal elites and poor blacks.
Why?
Who knows."

"Idiot.
Just because your boy deals the race card from the bottom of the deck you gotta? I guess you do.
Illiterates trend Dem as do criminals, those close to illegal aliens and welfare recipients.
The least educated trend Dem; tough shit if you don't like it."


So I'll ask you again. Where are you getting this idea that welfare recipients and criminals and illiterates trend Democratic?

That's some great math. That's pretty funny.

So the answer is what I thought -- you don't have any sources on that, or a real argument, but it makes sense in your head, and in your shoddy math.

I'll run the real numbers for you when I have some more time.

Well, for one thing it's clear that you've never actually seen a poll or a study that isolates the voting behavior of welfare recipients. Nor have you ever run the numbers before, mostly because you were unaware how many whites were on welfare. This is all just your guess based on your ignorance about who is on welfare.

So let's try this:

As of 2006, which is the latest census, there are 221.3 million white people in America.

There are 37.1 million black people.

According to the census, 35.5% of blacks receive form of means-tested assistance, compared with 10.6% of whites.

That means there are 13.2 million blacks receiving means-tested welfare.

And 23.5 million whites.

Then you'd have to go into how old these people are, how many are registered, how many people on welfare actually vote, and who they vote for. You'd also have to include Hispanics.

Or you could just posit that most people who are on welfare are black and therefore vote Democrat.

Take your pick.

I'm not sure what any of that means, or where I claimed that most poor people are Republicans, or that the lowest educated people vote Republican. But yes, "Obama's gang" is a pretty diverse group.

As for you being a racist, I'm sure you don't carry any individual ill-will towards blacks. You're simply guilty of a gross mischaracterization of blacks, and you don't know much about welfare, or who is on it. So you probably shouldn't post one post after another equating blacks with illteracy, welfare, and criminality. That's a bit racist. And you probably shouldn't pretend to have some sort of data on the voting patterns of welfare recipients, or illiterates, or criminals, because you don't. And when pressed, you couldn't come up with any.

And what you really shouldn't do is fail to come up with any sort of data backing up your point, and then accuse me of "making it all up". Especially after we just finished 25 posts about how you made something up.

But that's okay. We'll move on.

Once again, Heck is wrong...:

Robert Scheer: Clinton Ended Welfare, Not Poverty

Posted on Aug 29, 2006
By Robert Scheer

Judging from his recent New York Times column, you’d think Bill Clinton doesn’t know the difference between getting mothers and their children off the welfare rolls and getting them out of poverty.



To hear Bill Clinton tell it, his presidency won the war on poverty three decades after President Lyndon B. Johnson launched it, having changed only the name. Unfortunately, however, for the mothers and their children pushed off the rolls but still struggling mightily to make ends meet even when the women are employed, the war on welfare was not the same battle at all.

Clinton masterfully blurred the two in a recent New York Times opinion column, as did most others on the 10th anniversary of the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, writing as if getting mothers and their children off the welfare rolls is the same as getting them out of poverty. In the absence of any evidence that poverty is tamed, he celebrates a “bipartisan” victory, which was good for his image but not necessarily for those it claimed to help.

The ex-president gloats over the large decrease in the number of welfare recipients as if he is unaware of the five-year limit and other new restrictions which made it inevitable. Nor does he seem bothered that nobody seems to have thought it important to assess how the families on Aid to Families with Dependent Children fared after they left welfare. The truth is we know very little about the fate of those moved off welfare, 70% of whom are children, because there is no systematic monitoring program, thanks to “welfare reform” severing the federal government’s responsibility to help the nation’s poor.

The best estimates from the Census Bureau and other data, however, indicate that at least a million welfare recipients have neither jobs nor benefits and have sunk deeper into poverty. For those who found jobs, a great many became mired in minimum-wage jobs—sometimes more than one—that barely cover the child-care and other costs they incurred by working outside the home.

Yet, in rather the same way that President Bush likes to follow sentences about Sept. 11 with the words “Saddam Hussein” to imply a connection unsupported by facts, Clinton follows his boasts about welfare “reform” by announcing that “child poverty dropped to 16.2 percent in 2000, the lowest rate since 1979” as if that proves a causal relationship.

But if crushing welfare is such a boon to poor children, the effects should be snowballing the further we get from the bad old days, right? Well, no: The same census data Clinton cites for 2000 also records a 12% increase in childhood poverty over the four subsequent years.

Of course, Republican funding cuts to various poverty-related programs have no doubt played a role in this sad stat, as has a bitter resistance to raising the federal minimum wage, which, in real dollars, is now at its lowest point in a half-century. But it is ridiculous to imply, without evidence, that welfare reform is responsible for declines in poverty but is unrelated to increases in poverty.

What we do know unequivocally is that real wages have been declining for workers, both lower- and middle-class, despite increases in productivity. As the New York Times reported on Monday, “wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s.” These numbers are even more depressing when we realize that the top 1% of wage earners, beneficiaries of Bush’s feed-the-rich tax breaks, now earn an outsized 11.2% of the nation’s total wages.

Now, Clinton knows full well that the playing field is neither level nor fair, so it is unconscionable to have singled out the minuscule welfare program for a big propaganda campaign to improve government efficiency. The overly examined welfare program costs $10 billion a year while the $300 billion already spent on the Iraq war is rarely raised in discussions of taxpayer burden and fiscal responsibility.

The sad reality is that “ending welfare as we know it” was championed by Clinton because it made him appear to be a “new Democrat” and not because it would improve the lives of poor kids. Otherwise, he would not dare boast in his column that “as a governor, I oversaw a workfare experiment in Arkansas in 1980,” because that program was a failure.

In Arkansas today, fully half the children are described in Census Bureau data as “low income,” while 1 out of 10 live in a situation that researchers call “extreme child poverty,” meaning that a family of four survives on less than $9,675 per year.

Yes, Clinton all but ended welfare. Unfortunately, child poverty is again on the rise in Arkansas and throughout the nation.

Cal, Heck can't be wrong. He used census stats on the annual decrease in the percentage of blacks living in poverty under Clinton.

That's not a right/wrong thing. It's a fact thing. When you discuss Clinton in the future, you have to do so with this factual knowledge pierced into your calcified brain.

The deficit became a surplus, poverty was reduced, the market boomed, more cops in big cities equaled a huge decrease in violent crime, peace reigned, birds sang...

It was a great eight years. When compared to the last eight? Forget about it.

You don't have to like it... but now you know.

I never thought I'd see the day when Cal was posting an editorial from Robert Scheer.

"But, Heck, we've wasted the time because you believe I'm probably right and don't like it."

Huh? Trust me. I don't believe this "information" you've passed on is founded in anything real. I know where you got this "information" and it's your own head.

You don't even seem to get what you're doing, which is making the leap from "blacks trend Democratic" to "people on welfare are black" to "people on welfare trend Democratic."

Not to mention criminals and the illiterate. And I could do a search and find even more examples where you make this connection. And then you pretend you don't even understand why that's racist.

Come on, man. I really don't think you're basing this on something you read in a Columbia University study because you don't read that stuff. Nor were you even aware of the makeup of people on welfare. And that's fine. Most people aren't. But I think we can cut that crap. As if there's a study on "illiterates, criminals, and people on welfare" somewhere. I mean, come on...

Your position, despite your continued claims (unfounded) that you read this in a journal somewhere, isn't based in reality. It's based in your own prejudice. As in "pre-judging". You've pre-judged something to be true without knowing whether or not it's true.

Now you're saying "How do you know it's not true?" and "I bet you know it's true and can't admit it!"

Oh, boy.

The point you're also not getting is that I'm not sure there is any data on how people on welfare vote nationally. It'd be almost impossible to quantify with any accuracy.

But with whites on welfare (mostly rural whites) vastly outnumbering blacks on welfare, one would tend to think it's probably a slightly Republican voting block, but a small one overall. At the very least it's an open question. And the reason there aren't any studies, at least that I know of, that focus on the voting patterns of people on welfare is that being on government assistance probably isn't much of a determining factor, or a meaningful one; that is to say there's nothing about being on welfare that is going to tell us anything. Their location, race, age, religion, etc., tell us a lot more about how someone is going to vote than whether they use food stamps.

"Criminals" can't even vote in most states, so that's not a meaningful voting block, so I don't know where you're getting that one either. Plus, you didn't know what the Florida controversy was all about, and dropped that ridiculous claim as soon as you were confronted.

"Illiterates" is just bizarre. I'm quite positive you won't find a study on illiterate voting behavior. There aren't many illiterates voting - you know, since you have to be able to read the ballot.

I think we can all see your claims about "welfare" and "criminals" and "illiterates" for what they really are.

I thought that the actual numbers of those on welfare broken down by race were common knowledge.. as it is used as a major counter point from those afflicted with a small case of "the guilt" (and no Heck, I don't think that's why you're bringing it up).

What concerns me (and should concern anyone else that breathes through their nose) is the vast difference in percentages. Where, as a percentage, blacks on welfare is about 3 times as much as whites on it.

And honestly, I believe thats what Steve was (probably) referring to.

Where the existence of welfare seems to be an epidemic in one particular group of people, and in another seems to be a more reasonable amount (in relative terms - I dont actually believe any amount is "reasonable").

If you sample a group of 1000 people to find how many have brown hair and compare it to a sample of 25 people to find how many have brown hair - shouldn't we anticipate a higher number overall in that group of 1000? I mean, I thought this was basic stuff.

With welfare recipients being 66 percent white, and most of those being rural whites, I think it would be at the very least reasonable to guess that the Republican would win the Welfare Vote.

I'm guessing that an alarmingly low percentage of welfare recipients actually vote, because voter turnout descends along with income. And hope, I guess.

All in all, the voting habits of those on welfare couldn't possibly get any less important, could it?

quote:

With welfare recipients being 66 percent white, and most of those being rural whites, I think it would be at the very least reasonable to guess that the Republican would win the Welfare Vote.

Actually Heck said it was 60.
But remember that nearly all of the other 40% are Democrat.
So unless the White 60% votes a way higher margin than 52 to 48% Republican the group as a whole would tend Democrat.
Also it shouldn't be any secret (and I doubt even Heck will deny this) thet the poorest 10% tend Democrat.
As you yourself point out, that's the party that cares about them, right?

All in all, the voting habits of those on welfare couldn't possibly get any less important, could it?

Not much.
But they do serve as pawns for guilty liberals.
WSS

Heck and Shep act like pouting little girls. Stomping their feet because they know theve been out smarted by superior intelligence.