In her gold necklace, and $3000 red dress, the neatly coiffed New Mexico Secretary of Human Services, Sidonie Squier knows a thing or two about hunger and poverty. Obviously, from her getup, we know Squier knows the feeling when the growling stomach bumps up against the spine, the hands tremble uncontrollably and thinking is a dull haze. Obviously, Squier knows the dread of staring into your own child’s eyes and seeking an apology, some remorse, some explanation because there is nothing to eat in the house. The scene is repeated each and every day in New Mexico, but Sidonie, with her money, with her prestige, with her Republican values and her fat position, she knows the real truth:
"There has never been and is not now any significant evidence of hunger in New Mexico,” she said in a recent e-mail she sent to other administrative types. Squier sits on the New Mexico board that supervises the food stamp program (SNAP) here.
Our dear Republican governor, Susana, who appointed Squier and who shares her Republican values, chastized her minion, not by disagreeing so much with the sentiment in Squier’s quote, but she thought Sidonie might work on the wording a bit.
In fact, Squier and the gov. are on the same page when it comes to people who need to eat and who have no money, because this is after all New Mexico, the second poorest state in the land. This wonderful idea is ripped from the David Koch page that simply says, “Anyone who doesn’t have enough money to eat deserves to die.” This is the Ted Cruz page. This is the John Boehner page. They are torn from the same book, the tome written in the 1950s and 60s by Ayn Rand. It is the philosophy of governance that says only the rich count, only the powerful count, a philosophy that is either in its last days because people are fed up, or a belief system that will end our economy, end our republic, end our useless eating.
Squier apologized, not for what she said, but for how crudely and directly she exposed the underlying ideas that back all Republican weird, so let’s not be shocked or even surprised at what comes out of the Secretary of Health’s mouth. These are the commanding notions that run through each and every Republican’s head as they all make up their hate lists.
The poor are at the top of the list, along with women, along with blacks, along with Hispanics, along with liberals and progressives, along with moderates, along with the old, along with the young, along with you and me. Indeed everyone is on this hate list except for David Koch and other bigots and super-rich hogs.
Don’t believe this half-hearted little apology that comes sneaking like a wiggly death worm from the mouth of the privileged Secretary of Human Disservices. Remember, the apology is not for the hideous, inaccurate, and cruel comment, but for her wording. She should’a said it better.
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