This is about the entire package of right wing misinformation. This is about how the bad information starts, and about how it flourishes.
I was poking around Youtube, and I ran into a video from the Thom Hartmann show. Thom Hartmann does a very good job of pointing out some major flaws in the right wing's arguments. This time, Thom was talking about the tiny fraction of our taxes that go to fund things like food stamps.
In the comments, a right wing troll made this comment:
Only every 1 out of every 5 dollars makes it to poor welfare recipients, the rest gets trapped up in bureaucracy.
This is one of my favorite libertarian/conservative arguments. This sort of comment makes them look like they are caring. This gives them the false impression that they are doing something on behalf of someone else.
There are probably many ways that a cogent person can rationalize greed. This is one of them. They rationalize their opposition to food stamps by pretending that they are doing it on behalf of the people who would no longer be getting them, if cons had their way. This seems to fit with the whole "strict father" model.
"I'm taking your shoes from you. It's in your best interest to walk to school in the snow in bare feet."
When pressed on the facts, she gave me a citation from Mises.org. Actually, she wasn't pressed on the facts. I think I just laughed at her.
http://mises.org/...
This is why she cited this paper-
Robert L. Woodson (1989, p. 63) calculated that, on average, 70 cents
of each dollar budgeted for government assistance goes not to the
poor, but to the members of the welfare bureaucracy and others serv-
ing the poor.
When I searched
Robert L. Woodson (1989, p. 63) as a phrase, I found more than 600 results that all included the exact same line. Nearly all of them are right wing websites.
I was interested in determining how this guy came up with this conclusion. There are no new copies of the book available on Amazon. There are no digital copies of the book available. In fact, if you'd like to buy a new one, your costs appear to start at about 159 bucks.
Get that? This book contains a highly quotable claim about the efficiency of government funding for the poor and needy, yet it is not available to actually read.
I am going out on a limb (No, I'm not) and I'm gonna suggest that 99% of the people who cited this paper never even read the original quote in the paper.
I just searched again. I was still unable to find any information that source.
Who is Bob Woodson?
I don't know a whole lot about Bob Woodson. I only know what I've read online. I know that he runs an organization called the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.
Given that Bob Woodson is very much in favor of private charities making a difference, I decided to check out the charity navigator page. They seem to get a high rating. They spend 95% of their budget on programs.
That seems nice, right?
Woodson's group had about 4 million in funds in 2010. They got 2.5 million of that from government grants.
Woodson's pay in that year took up more than 6% of the entire operating budget. He took home more than a quarter of a million dollars in pay from that organization.
Huh. Imagine that. A wingnut welfare recipient who gets more 60% of his funds from the government takes home a quarter million dollar paycheck.
Woodson's pay in 2010- $271,843 Entire program expenses? 4 million dollars. Government grants? 2.5 million. This is what right wing community activism pays.
This is disgustingly immoral.
How do these programs really do?
http://mediamatters.org/...
A June 30 GAO study reported total federal and state expenditures as well as federal and state administrative costs for several means-tested government programs for FY 2004. Dividing "administrative expenditures" by "total expenditures," Media Matters for America determined that administrative costs for Medicaid -- by far the country's largest means-tested welfare program -- were 4.9 percent of total costs. For the food stamp program, administrative costs were higher: 17.1 percent. Administrative costs were 4.5 percent for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and 2.1 percent for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). The report notes that "[t]he specific types of expenditures that are considered administrative differ considerably across the programs."
A. Make Think Tank
B. Make up facts
C. "Publish"
D. Quote Mine
Get rich.
HT to Catte Nappe for this-
Our story starts with a 1990 speech by Robert L. Woodson Sr., founder of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, before the Heritage Foundation during a lecture series observing Black History Month. Woodson posed a question: Is the black community a casualty of the war on poverty?”
(Woodson’s source for the shift in spending appears to be from Volume One of a 1986 government report titled “Up from Dependency,” ... The report was making a point about official poverty statistics, noting that noncash benefits were not counted in official poverty statistics. “In 1960, three-quarters of all welfare came in the form of cash; by 1985 only 24 percent did,” the report said, arguing that “non-cash benefits diminish personal choice and self-responsibility among welfare recipients.” Woodson appears to have taken this statistic and assumed that all those noncash benefits went to middlemen.)
Then, in 2003, Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute took note of Woodson’s remarks on his book, “The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society.”
In a footnote to the “70 cents” sentence, Tanner emphasized: “It is important to note that the 70 percent figure is not solely government administrative overhead. That figure also includes government payments to the nonpoor on behalf of the poor. For example, Medicaid payments go to doctors. Housing subsidies are frequently paid directly to landlords.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...