Reporters Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff deserve praise for their piece in Sunday’s Times showing how some of the good folks of Chisago County, Minnesota, are taking handouts from the government while simultaneously railing against wasteful governmental spending. Campaign Desk has long urged the media to get out and talk to ordinary people. The Times did just that, and offered a picture of Americans conflicted by their growing economic needs and today’s dominant ideology, which dictates the best government is the one that that governs least.
We meet eight Minnesotans. There’s 57-year-old Ki Gulbranson, a struggling small business owner who has never made more than about $46,000 a year. His business has morphed from gift shop to jewelry store and now to one that sells screen-printed clothing. To make ends meet, he uses the earned-income tax credit, which offsets some of his payroll taxes. He says the money from the credit pays for sports activities and car insurance for his kids. He is conflicted, however: “You have to help and have compassion as a people because otherwise you have no society but financially you can’t destroy yourself. And this is what we’re doing.” But he added: “I don’t demand that the government does this for me. I don’t feel like I need the government.”
Seventy-four-year-old Bob Kopka and his wife attend weekly meat raffles in the basement of an American Legion Hall and depend on Medicare. Without it, Kopka would not have had his three heart procedures, nor would his wife have had cataract surgery. He would be dead, and she would be blind, Kopka says. Barbara Sullivan, 71, cried when a reporter asked about financial matters. A monthly Social Security check of $1,222 is her only source of income, and it’s tough to pay the rent and have money left over for food.
Brian Qualley, 49, has a sister who is disabled, and the government pays for her care in an assisted living facility. Qualley owns a tattoo parlor, and his comments reminded me of those I heard last fall from the owner of a church goods store in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the owner resented people with disabilities, because he said they drove their scooters into his store and then stood up to buy his wares. Qualley said his customers with disability checks come in for $300 or $400 tattoos and “they’re wearing nice new Nike shoes that I can’t afford.” He seemed unconcerned about retirement income and health care when he got old, because he said he never wanted to leave the tattoo business. The reporter asked what if his hands started to shake. He replied that it was his shoulders and neck that bothered him the most.
Barbara Nelson, 61, said she had little patience for people who said they did not need government help and thought most people can afford to pay more taxes. “Anyone who can come into a coffee shop and buy coffee is capable of paying more,” she said. Gordy Peterson, 62, disabled from a construction accident, thinks the government should operate by paying cash because he paid for his house in cash. Peterson has benefitted from the government in the form of Social Security disability checks, a workers’ compensation settlement that let him buy a farm, and Medicare to cover his health expenses. Recently he hit the government jackpot when the county using federal dollars bought a portion of Peterson’s farm to build a new interstate exchange. He use the money to built a gas station at the edge of the farm which has prospered catching traffic from the new interchange. And so it went in Chisago County.
Go figure, really? People pay taxes, so one shouldn't be surprised that they want some of that money back. That doesn't mean that in the long view, they are not allowed to question the size and scope of politics/government.
By instructive comparison, I expect that some or most or perhaps all wealthy advocates of higher taxation take deductions on their own returns in spite of their public-spiritedness.
We hear a lot more about faceless people of modest means being 'irrational' on the subject of taxes and welfare programs generally - another example of the mainstream media's upper-class orientation. Somehow, with a wealthy newspaper heir called Sulzberger signing their checks, I think I can predict that neither Applebaum or Gebeloff will propose such a story idea to their editors at The Times.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 14 Feb 2012 at 12:40 PM
Just a quick note to say--fantastic interview on Doug Henwood's show!
By the way, do you have a liink to the National Journal article casting doubt on savings from ACOs that you mentioned?P
#2 Posted by Frank, CJR on Sat 3 Mar 2012 at 06:38 PM