Cross-posted at MN Progressive Project with some edits for a national audience
Updated here
The Minnesota House GOP was smart enough to pull down the video, but dumb enough to put a camera in front of someone challenged in both brain and heart. They were too slow for HongPong on YouTube, who saved and uploaded it, with a hat tip to Bluestem Prairie where I found the video posted.
About 1:50 in, Franson read "this little funny clip we got from a friend":
It says, 'Isn't it ironic that the food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to please not feed the animals, because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
This comparison of people receiving some form of government assistance (
that's almost everybody, but of course they mean the poor, not themselves) to animals is a minor meme on the right. Franson and her anonymous "funny" clip writer join the infamous ranks of
Nebraska AG and GOP US Senate candidate Jon Bruning who compared poor people to raccoons eating cockroaches, and
South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer who compared them to stray animals that breed too much when fed by children.
I have a feeling there are some instances we're merely unaware of. Hey conservatives, your contempt of your fellow human beings is showing. Didn't you have your hands full calling women whores because they speak out for friends who need contraceptives to avoid losing their ovaries? When did the War on Poverty become the War on Poor People?
Franson followed that by listing several forms of abuse, including verbal --- and no, the irony did not strike her. What was she saying about abuse? Sex abuse is bad, go see what you can do about it. Visit a web site. That's it. Nothing specific she's addressing. No thought of, "Oh right, I'm in the majority in the legislature. I could present a bill to do something useful."
So much for any residual notions the lousy session last year (these are the same people who shut down the state government when the Democratic governor wouldn't give them everything they wanted) and the responsibility of governing would make the GOP more serious this session.
By the way, just to keep facts straight, which Rep. Franson couldn't be bothered to do, the Dept. of Agriculture isn't "pleased" to hand out the greatest amount of food stamps ever. That's a sign of how many people the GOP Great Recession threw into desperate circumstances. The National Park Service is part of Interior, not Agriculture, though that doesn't matter except to indicate someone who works in government doesn't bother with details about it.