Under a new budget proposal from State Sen. Bruce Casswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.
Casswell, a Republican representing Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and St. Joseph counties, made the proposal this week, reports Michigan Public Radio.
His explanation?
“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”Under his plan, foster children would receive gift cards that could only be used at places like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other second hand clothing stores.
Spoken like someone who never realized just how grim the foster care system in this country can be. But, hey, on paper, foster kids don't vote. But people who think we should be cutting as many dollars from foster kids as possible do vote. It's just politics, GOP style: leave the country arguing about how much icing should be put on the cake while the guys at the top steal the cake itself.
Skippy has the right of it:
now, to be honest, i shop at thrift stores as i believe in recycling and reusing but i am an adult. i have a choice. i am not at that tender age where slights can scar one so easily.
i am also, not a foster child, where an underlying, unspoken message of "you are different"..."you are not one of us"..."you are not wanted" often permeate a psyche.
this state senator wants to codify those messages with this law. this is unconscionable. this is cruel and, unfortunately in these days of social darwinism run amok, is not all that unusual.
He's right about the social Darwinism. Time to rid America of the looters and moochers, starting with those who need us the most, the GOP says. They talk about what Jesus would want us to do on Easter Sunday, and how we have to do X and Y to live a good life in His image, and then say that the laws of this country made by men must codify these "Christian beliefs" into law, and then they pull crap like this and say "It's not the government's job to get involved in caring for the poor." Indeed, if you care, you should donate your money to charities, not expect the government to do it.
It's more than social Darwinism, it's Christian objectivism bordering on the Divine Right of Kings. It results directly in the nonsense that the people that have money and power also have self-evident morality and that the most anti-Christian thing you could do is to have a government program that helps those who lack money and power...because they are the least moral among us. After all, if they were good people, they wouldn't be poor, would they?
ABL is even less kind to the GOP on this one, by the way.
On this day of rebirth and resurrection, keep that in mind. Happy Easter!
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