Ugly, Anti-Christian Republican Hatred Of Poor People-- From Wisconsin To Arizona

Ending the chapter of my life called "College," brought two major changes: I moved abroad and, soon after-- following an incredible months-long binge in Afghanistan-- I stopped using drugs… forever. I lived overseas close to 7 years, much of it in Amsterdam, where I had a wonderful life working in a government-funded meditation center, the Kosmos. When I moved back to America in the late '70s I had to start all over again. Along with my friend, Chris, I started an independent record label from scratch. We had no money, none at all but we built a company that CBS bought and that led me to Warner Bros and, eventually, to paying millions of dollars in income taxes. I didn't celebrate writing those mammoth checks but I never begrudged paying them-- not once-- because I always knew that without this great country I was paying taxes to, I would never have earned the income that resulted in those big tax bills.

But at one time, those taxes might have gone to Holland and not America. At a time long before I was paying any taxes, I was struggling trying to keep my company afloat. Every week at least one or two days I would have to chose between eating and putting gas in my car. Someone turned me on to the idea of food stamps, which helped get me over the hump in a big way. It was a fantastic investment for the government. Without those few thousand dollars in food stamps for a couple of years I would probably have had to move back to Holland's easier life. The jobs generated by my company and the taxes paid by it and by me, would have been Dutch jobs and Dutch taxes. I'm so glad it worked out the way it did.

Today Republicans are-- as always-- negative and condemnatory about fellow-Americans who need a hand. In his gubernatorial reelection platform, Koch-backed right-winger Rick Scott, promises to discourage and severely limit, arbitrarily, assistance to people in need. In his crabbed little world people who need a hand are "the other," not "us," not potential resources but a burden. He's telling Wisconsin voters that he will "require a drug test for those requesting unemployment and able-bodied, working age adults requesting Food Stamps from the state." If Wisconsin voters are smart, they'll unemployed Scott Walker.

But Republican contempt for the less fortunate isn't just a Wisconsin story. It's a pillar of the conservative world view and the disease is everyone. Do you remember the Mormon neo-nazi sympathizer state Senator in Arizona Russell Pearce? Long the ugly face of the Arizona Know Nothing movement, he was elected by right wing extremists president of the state Senate in January of 2011 and then recalled by the voters-- the first Arizona state legislator in history to ever be recalled 10 months later. He lost the recall election, 54-46%, and several of his top campaign staffers were charged with felonies for vote fraud during the election. A horrible, corrupt and ignorant man, he ran again in 2012 and was rebuffed by the voters with an even greater margin, 56-44%. At that point, the ultra-racist Arizona Republican Party hired him as First Vice Chairman.

Pearce was forced to resign on Sunday, not because of the racism and xenophobia, his trademark issues but because of his hatred of poor people and, especially, poor women. Republican Party candidates didn't want to be associated with him after he made some typically right-wing remarks on a Hate Talk Radio show on KKNT-AM. Like Scott Walker, he doesn't want to lend a helping hand-- he wants to sever outstretched hands asking for assistance. "You put me in charge of Medicaid," he boasted, "the first thing I'd do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations… Then we'll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job."

Mark Brnovich, the Republican running for Attorney General was only one of many GOP candidates worried that Pearce's extremism would harm is own chances at the polls in November. "The notion that government would force sterilization upon anyone is counter to everything I believe about individual liberty and contrary to the founding principles of a free nation. Comments that demean the plight of the poor, including women in the dual role of mother and economic provider, are not conservative; they're cruel. And I reject them."

The Republican Party's top hope for winning a Democratic-held seat, Martha McSally, who has been making progressive against Blue Dog Ron Barber, also feared Pearce's comments could hurt her in the extreme southeastern part of the state, especially in Tucson and the Pima County suburbs where Barber beat her in 2012 52-48% and providing his margin of victory in one of the country's tightest races. She took to her Twitter account as fast as she could:

Maybe McSally should have thought more carefully about which party she joined and what they really do stand for at their core. Pearce, after all, has long been at the heart of the Arizona GOP and his comments are consistent with his career-- and with what the party espouses across the entire country.