In addition to giving high-ranking jobs to freakshows like Mark Levin, Ronald Reagan injected a little poison into our political discourse:
Cadillac Queens.
Over a period of about five years, Reagan told the story of the "Chicago welfare queen" who had 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and collected benefits for "four nonexisting deceased husbands," bilking the government out of "over $150,000." The real welfare recipient to whom Reagan referred was actually convicted for using two different aliases to collect $8,000. Reagan continued to use his version of the story even after the press pointed out the actual facts of the case to him.
This morning on Fats Limbaugh's show, I heard a milder variant from a woman caller:
I was standing in line yesterday at the grocery store. I was looking at the people's carts filled with soda and junk and they whip out an EBT card. My husband works hard every day to buy our milk and eggs and chicken. Why am I buying somebody else's soda?
Atrios found a purer example in the comment section of his local paper:
Oh and we the taxpayers who are paying for Obamacare shouldn't have lesser health insurance than you deadbeats who get it for free. Welfare should be for short-term assistance so people can get on their feet...not a way of life and not a system where people who have BMWs and Mercedes are whipping out Access cards while chatting on their iPhones.
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