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I caught this segment on Friday and thought it was awful enough just for the pure race-baiting involved, but after reading this post over at Media Matters, I discovered that it was even worse than it appeared at first blush. Not only were Neil Cavuto and his guest Crystal Wright doing their best to falsely demonize the Obama administration as wanting to promote a welfare state of lazy moocher "illegal immigrants," the program was started under their hero, George W. Bush.

Fox Accuses Obama Of Creating Dependency With Bush-Era Program:

Fox News accused President Obama of promoting dependency and illegal immigration with a food stamp program that started under the Bush administration.

On the April 26 edition of Your World, Cavuto attacked a partnership that educates Spanish-speaking populations about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility. Wright claimed that "the Obama administration wants to encourage government dependency and, it looks like, illegal immigration" with the program. Cavuto agreed with Wright and added "it looks like we are doing a beeline to help folks who should not be here in the first place."

But the partnership was created under President George W. Bush in 2004. Salon reported that it "doesn't actually provide food stamps to immigrants," only information on benefits that are already available to those who had been in the country legally for five years: [...]

Fox News continues to falsely claim that Obama is creating a "culture of dependency" for anti-poverty programs put in place before his presidency and exacerbated by the recession. In reality many SNAP recipients work and only stay on the program a short time.

Cavuto continually qualified his statements during this interview with him saying he really didn't want to see anyone out there starving... but... hey... we can't have someone asking for his taxes to be going up to feed all of those lazy brown people just dying to live off of the public dole because they don't want to work for a living... or not.

And it was so nice to hear his guest, Crystal Wright say that she doesn't want the "neediest of the poor" to have to go without being helped. Just what the hell does that mean? Nothing like Fox deciding to have someone on who will define what the rest of us consider poverty down a notch, as if the standard definition isn't quite low enough.

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"Let these families take their White House tour next week and I'll cover the added expenses," he explained. "Word is it will cost around $74,000. If I can get the White House doors open, I'll pick up the tab... You know this is an offer you can't refuse. Give me a call."

"I think we just realized that The Five isn't your primary source of income," co-host Greg Gutfeld quipped.

Later in the hour, Fox News host Sean Hannity joined in Bolling's offer, tweeting, "[G]reat idea! Count me in, I will pay for a week also!"

But in all the fuss over whether or not lawmakers can give out White House tours as gifts, MSNBC host Martin Bashir pointed out that everyone was missing a very serious point that "it’s the public who are being injured by the sequester."

For the money that Bolling and Hannity have agreed to spend so that lawmakers can give constituents access to a short walk through the White House, the Fox News hosts could also provide one year of nutritional and preschool programs to 15 of the 75 children that could be cut from the Head Start program because of sequestration.

Or according to the Nation, they could fund over 90,000 meals to hungry families through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps program, which is also expected to face cuts.

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From this Wednesday's Politics Nation, the Rev. Al Sharpton did a good job of pointing out the fact that our political class in Washington doesn't seem to be too terribly concerned with poverty, or the plight of the working poor in the United States. He went after the Senate for the $4.5 billion in cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) in the farm bill, and for voting against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's amendment which would have removed the cuts, which went down by a vote of 33 to 66 earlier this week.

Sharpton also did a great job talking about the record income disparity and the fact that we're slashing our social safety nets while the wealthiest among us get one tax cuts, one after another.

There is one point he missed, though. The real welfare recipients in the United States are not the poor. It's companies like Walmart who refuse to pay their employees a living wage and will happily allow the American taxpayer to make up the difference by having their workers receive benefits such as SNAP and Medicaid.

As my fellow contributor here at C&L Jill Klausen pointed out in her Winning Words Project, it's time someone asked these United States Senators, who just voted to reduce funding for the SNAP program, the right question:

ATTN SENATORS: Walmart Is The Largest Food Stamp Recipient In The Country:

While our nation still reels from the economic crisis brought on by irresponsible Republican fiscal policies that saw millions of jobs being lost, the middle class being decimated, and a nearly unprecedented rise in poverty rates (only the Great Depression rivals it), our elected Representatives in the United States Senate have voted to reduce funding for the only source of sustenance for millions of impoverished Americans: Food Stamps.

Lots and lots of good stuff there so please go read the rest, but here was Jill's question for our Senators:

When will Republicans in Congress take up legislation that imposes severe fines on mulit-billion dollar corporations who line their pockets at the expense of taxpayers by refusing to pay their employees a 2012 wage and use government programs to supplement their payrolls?

The answer is probably never unless we get the money out of politics, which tragically our Supreme Court took us backwards on with their Citizens United ruling. But our politicians do respond to public pressure occasionally if there's enough of it. It would be nice to see some momentum build to push them to force companies to pay a living wage and to get executive pay back in line with the wages of the average worker. More segments like the one from Sharpton above would be helpful as well, instead of your typical segment at Fox where they're demonizing the poor and labor unions.

Transcript of the video above below the fold:

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The panel on Up With Chris Hayes this Saturday of Sam Seder, Bob Herbert, Josh Barro and Victoria Defrancesco Soto had a discussion on the growing wealth inequality and lack up social mobility which are being made worse by things like Republicans wanting to cut a billion dollars in food assistance for the poor in their proposed Farm Bill.

Bob Herbert made a really great point late into the first clip when they were discussing the fact that SNAP, which used to be called food stamps, is subsidizing corporations that don't want to pay a living wage and that we ought to be raising the minimum wage among other things to remedy that. I think that's a point that is not mentioned nearly often enough when we see the likes of Paul Ryan demagoguing the needed expansion of the program. A good deal of those people using the program to keep from starving are not unemployed, but are the working poor.

More great discussion on the Romney's trying to rewrite the fact that they inherited great wealth instead of admitting they were born with huge advantages that most Americans are never going to be lucky enough to have below the fold.

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Another day, another morning where MSNBC's resident bigot-in-chief Pat Buchanan showed that he just can't help himself when it comes to going after the poor with some not so thinly veiled racism as we saw from him again on this Tuesday's edition of Morning Joe.

After Wes Moore reminded the viewers that the food stamp program falls under the Department of Agriculture and that there is a report that was just released showing that one in seven Americans are now on food stamps, Moore asked Sec. of Agriculture Tom Vilsack what is being done by his department to address poverty in the light of that recent news.

VILSACK: Well, obviously, it’s putting people to work. Which is why we’re going to have some interesting things in the course of the forum this morning. Later this morning, we’re going have a press conference with myself and Secretary Mavis and Secretary Chu to announce something that’s never happened in this country which we think is exciting in terms of job growth.

But, I should point out, when you talk about the SNAP program or the food stamp program, you have to recognize that it’s also an economic stimulus. Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity. If people are able to buy a little bit more in the grocery store, then someone's got to stock it, shelve it, package it, process it, ship it; all of those are jobs. It's the most direct stimulus you can get into the economy during tough times.

Vilsack also explained that the reasons some of the numbers have gone up with the number of people using the program is his department has been doing a better job of working with the states in getting the word out about the program so more people who are eligible for it actually sign up for it and help stimulate their local economies.

Enter Pat Buchanan who of course tries to paint the program as a being one of the causes for our “exploding budget deficit.” Never mind those wars Bush started or the tax cuts for the rich. We can't be wasting any money on those poor slackers who just want to live off the government teet since that's the real cause of our problems in Buchanan-Upside-Down-World.

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