“A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on.” This quote attributed to Mark Twain has more validity today than ever before. A spoken mistruth or half-truth will be broadcast across YouTube and the world with minutes. Just ask Rick Santorum.
Earlier this month Republican Presidential hopeful, Rick Santorum was asked while campaigning in Iowa, “…how do we get off this crazy train? We’ve got so much foreign influence in this country now…where do we go from here?”
Santorum’s response to this question of foreign influence?
“It just keeps expanding – I was in Indianola a few months ago and I was talking to someone who works in the department of public welfare here, and she told me that the state of Iowa is going to get fined if they don’t sign up more people under the Medicaid program,” Santorum said. “They’re just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That’s what the bottom line is.”
He added: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money…and provide for themselves and their families. The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling again.”
As River Song (from Doctor Who) would say, “Say it again…one more time.”
“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”
One has to ask where in the world that response came from. Santorum was asked a question about foreign influence, presumably in American lives, politics, finances, etc. He could have talked about our debt crisis with China or our reliance on foreign oil or our trade imbalance within NAFTA. But no, Santorum went straight for the GOP stereotypical bogyman – Blacks in America. And then denied he said it.
Permit me to drop a few facts in Mr. Santorum’s lap. I know it won’t matter to him, but the truth does matter even when it is unpleasant for someone like him to hear. The below information comes from the 2010 census.
- Blacks make up only 9% of the people in Iowa who are on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP (food stamps)). Whites make up 84% of those who receive SNAP in Iowa.
- Nationally, the 2010 census reported that Blacks (non-Hispanic) made up 22.5% of all the SNAP recipients. Whites (non-Hispanic) made up 32.2% of the SNAP population and Hispanics make up 15.5%. (22.7% recorded more than one race or declared no race /ethnic group.)
- Children under 17 made up 47% of the SNAP population.
- In 2010, the average recipient received $133.79 per month.
It was the failing economy that drove more people to seek public assistance in 2009 & 2010 (available census data) and it will be a rebounding economy that will ultimately lower the rolls. Mr. Santorum could have turned the question into a forum to discuss foreign lobbying or trade imbalances or the like. But why should he do that, when he had a much easier target to damage with little chance of being called on it. After all, what good is a bogeyman if you don’t use him?
