Louisiana State Senator Worries That There Will Soon Be Too Many Black People, Film At 11
I don’t even know if I have the stomach to do full commentary on this shit. So here are the highlights.
Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.
“We’re on a train headed to the future and there’s a bridge out, ” LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. “And nobody wants to talk about it.”
LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.
Right. He’s totally worried about there being enough tax dollars. That’s all. Really.
“What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare, ” he said.
He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.
Oh I am so glad that we’re being very feminist about this!
LaBruzzo described the tube-tying incentive as a brainstorming exercise that has yet to take form as a bill for the Legislature to consider. He said it already has drawn critics who argue the idea is racist, sexist, unethical and immoral. He said more white people are on welfare than black people, so his proposal is not targeting race.
And anti-racist! He just hates poor people, that’s all.
LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, he’s a racist, ‘ ” LaBruzzo said. “The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions.”
LaBruzzo said he opposes abortion and paying people to have abortions. He described a sterilization program as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe.
He acknowledged his idea might be a difficult sell politically.
NO SHIT.
Also: children are the cause of welfare, not poor economic situations, lack of opportunities, lack of funding for education (that never works, anyway!), or a culture that is constantly at war against those who don’t live like the assholes on Friends. No, none of that is to blame!
“He said more white people are on welfare than black people.”
Well, no shit sherlock! Nice of you to finally admit that fact. Probably won’t make the five o’clock news though. Seeing a black or brown face on welfare is just standard media operating procedure and gives the idiot contingent a target for blame.
Hasn’t this nonsense been tried before? So hey, let’s not go after the out-of-control corporate welfare that now wants a 700 Billion smacker blank check and NO oversight. Let’s pick on the poor folks because well, they’re POOR!!! Hmm, methinks the poor wouldn’t be that way if businesses weren’t so greedy that they’d rather ship good-paying jobs overseas. Maybe if we taxed the hell out of businesses that do that, and MAYBE if we raised the minimum wage and MAYBE if our educational system weren’t so screwed up–we could eliminate poverty…nah!!!
You know, this bailout shit is like giving a teenage kid a $500,000.00 car for FLUNKING out of school.
It is imperative that increased funding for social programs be found. Reducing the number of social workers will not solve the problem, neither will reducing the funding for existing programs. We need more programs, more money for existing programs.
These selfish taxpayers should just be silenced. Criticism of social spending is racism.
The suffragettes are turning in their graves.
i hope the christian right is all over this. that’s contraception don’t ya know- at taxpayer’s expense ;)
The Christian Right won’t say anything. It’s we Catholics (an American minority) who’ll be up at arms.
-Jimmy
…. crap like this just doesn’t surprise me anymore….
Hey,
Thanks for posting this.
I think it makes clear statement about the new way racists (the ruling class) are going to hide behind the idea of “helping” the “poor” etc
Sterilization, didn’t the Nazis have this, it was called eugenics!
The capitalist system is so weak right now, all of the old crap is getting exposed – socialist revolution would be like a giant clearing house for human kind!
-Shane
“Sterilization, didn’t the Nazis have this, it was called eugenics!”
Not just the Nazi’s but the U.S..government as well so the fucktard is bringing back something that was stopped around the 1970s I think. And I’m sure you can guess which peoples it was used on.
I can barely type these lines, because I am blinded by rage….Literally! After I read that first line, I got so angry, my vision started to blur.
“He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.”
…he’s got to realize that sterilization is something that the US government has tried on many different populations of “undesirables” over the course of the last century, right? I mean, he didn’t just propose a solution without first researching the history of the issue! There’s no way that he completely failed to do any reading about the connection between eugenics and the early birth control movement, right? He HAS to have at least heard of Margaret Sanger! To discuss this issue without at least some knowledge of her troubled legacy would just be the height of ignorance, and no elected official would–
Wait. Sorry. I forgot that I live in America. If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here, crying and clutching my Obama ’08 sticker.
…I can’t believe that anyone thinks this is a “new” solution. Jesus Christ…
Angel H, me too, I am shaking. I am having a hard enough time getting out of bed these days as it is and now this is just- I am so fucking baffled and angry and confused. I cannot believe this.
First a huge bailout to save the rich while people I love are turning tricks to feed their kids and now- this.
I am so destroyed today.
with the way the economy is doing we wont have to worry about paying for poor ppl, we wont have money for shit!
You see, that’s why they should stop marrying their cousins in the South. It makes you STUPID!!!
Hey now, no bashing on Southern people! You can find inbred crazy people everywhere on earth.
True, but the South seems to have more than their fair share! Frankly, they’ve just never gotten over that slavery thing.
I linked to this as part of a post on “Gender, Race, and the Bailout”
http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2008/09/gender-race-and.html
i know i’m late in responding but….
offering financial incentives to poor people for tubal ligation sterilization is not offering a “choice” and participation isn’t “voluntary”…choice is an unequal matter when you use money as a carrot stick for the poor
…here we are, once again in american history, using women’s reproductive capacity as a scapegoat for social problems, governmental failures, and reluctance to come up with sound solutions and programs. generational poverty is an issue but sterilization is hardly the answer…
forgot to add that this sounds a lot like the private org CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity) who paid drug addicted women of childbearing age cash to get sterilized. rather than invest that money into treatment and prevention programs, they were more concerned about reproduction
their new name: project prevention
their tactic: the same as above
I have written at
http://nonviolentchoice.blogspot.com/2008/10/eugenics-alive-and-still-kickingthe.html
about how this not only *sounds* like eugenics–it is.
Making sterilization available is good. Dangling substantial rewards in front of poor women is bad. Forbidding businesses from firing workers for taking time off to go get a voluntary sterilization or preventive care procedure is a good thing. Providing an emergency day-care voucher and transportation vouchers, medibus arrangement, whatever – good. Providing voucher for one day’s wages (or even jury duty rates) for the poorest women would help make the decision money-neutral.
I would support anything that made the decision free of constraints in either direction. Sometimes small things get in the way of accessing medical care (of any kind, but especially of preventive care). Poor women should be able to access whatever birth control method they would like to use – or to refuse.
It goes without saying that dude is racist and classist as ****! But with that said, nothing is stopping affluent people from having kids to offset the rate! Some of the younger upwardly mobile adults that are having kids are having families with six and seven kids anyway! Why not the sweat over this! But even if all of this was or wasn’t the case, it light of the gradual phasing out of social security, medicare, and other safety nets-it would behoove folks to have more kids-minorities/POC especially. Although we would have to cut down on the excessive ways we(as a group and other folks) produce and consume resources to keep us from depleted the earth of resources!
“Hey now, no bashing on Southern people! You can find inbred crazy people everywhere on earth.”
Thanks for pointing that out, ABW. Being from the South (Louisiana) myself, I appreciate your rebuking that stereotype. This is the first I’ve heard about this, it’s disgusting.
Don’t shoot me please! I am an African-American female in Texas. Let’s be real here. I don’t agree with what Rep. LaBruzzo is saying at all. However, there needs to be personal responsibility. Why would you have unprotected sex, knowing full well that you do not have the means to support a child in the first place? Then say “Woe is me, I’m poor, so you must accomidate me?” And that goes for any race. Some of these young ladies are putting the cart before the horse. You get the husband first,then the kids. Not the kids,then HOPE he will marry you, then use welfare as a failsafe to help you take care of the children. If you can’t afford them, you shouldn’t have them. I know it’s not a perfect worldand people make mistakes. But with all the sex education and options available, this is still occuring WAY too much. You’d have ti literaly be under a rock on a deserted island to not be a ware that having unprotected sex can lead to an unplanned pregnancy.And again, don’t shoot me for saying this either. A lot of the expense is coming from illegal immigrants that rush to have their children on US soil to get benifits. As a border state resident and a medical professional, the hospitals are clogged with illegal Latinas having babies. Welfare is for people that truly need a helping hand. But it has become a lifestyle to some people that actually beleive that this is normal. If we as Americans think that this behavior is OK, then somebody has to pay for it! Just my two cents, let me live.
Real Talk,
We have known since the 60’s that welfare destroys the American family. So don’t be mad cuz the shit works. How about putting money into programs that educate people about their bodies and enrich the lives of young women( statics show girls involved in extra circulars or who have good grades are less likely to get pregnant. Also there is a correlation between higher education and giving birth later in life, with less children.)