Dixiecan Governors Use Code To Avoid Charges Of Racism As They Reject Money For The Unemployed

Soon to be ex-Governor Rick Perry (KKK-TX)

Franklin Roosevelt had some problems with the KKK and their elected representatives when he started introducing aspects of the New Deal to pull America out of the Republican Depression. These Democratic politicians were worried that the programs would not just help white people-- something they backed-- but would also help African-Americans, what they called, when they were in a polite frame of mind, negroes. Well, guess what-- the political descendants of these racist politicians are mostly Republicans now and they haven't changed one bit.

Today's NY Times has a piece by Michael Luo that never mentions Roosevelt or racism but, in effect, is an update of the same story. Working families in the South are boiling mad that the KKK governors of South Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee (the one so-called "Democrat in the plot), Texas, Alabama, and Georgia (plus Alaska and Idaho) are threatening to reject millions of dollars in federal stimulus money for increased unemployment insurance.

The stimulus bill recently passed by Congress includes incentives to states to expand benefits to many more jobless people, including part-time workers and those who have cycled in and out of the work force, who are not covered in many states.

Rick Perry (R-TX), who recent polls show badly trailing his Republican primary challenger in his re-election bid, is one of the governors who says he's going to reject the money. He wrote to President Obama last week saying that he opposes "using these funds to expand existing government programs, burdening the state with ongoing expenditures long after the funding has dried up." Perry and the other KKK governors would never say-- publicly-- that they don't want to help African-Americans. Instead the use more updated right-wing dogma to mask their virulent racism.

The governors contend that once the federal money ran out, they would have to continue providing the new benefits, which they say would force them to raise taxes on businesses. The federal money will end in two or three years in some states, or much later in others, depending on the size of the state allocation.

Proponents say that nothing would prevent states from changing the laws back at that time... [M]any laid-off workers across the South have been fretting over precisely what they might lose out on, even as they express astonishment that they might not receive the help that jobless people in other states will get.

They need to think about that the next time they go to the polls and are asked to vote for rightist, reptilian politicians like Jim DeMint and Mark Sanford in South Carolina, David Diapers Vitter and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, Bob Corker and Phil Bredesen in Tennessee, Haley Barbour and Roger Wicker in Mississippi. Elections, as they say, have consequences. And if you missed this video yesterday, please watch it today: