If Democrats were getting votes from welfare dependency, Alabama would
be blue.
On 9/18/25 3:24 PM, Adam Moffett wrote:
That's a common theory....that Democratic party policies create
welfare dependency and thus create reliable Democratic voters. I
understand the reasoning, and for a while I believed it, but it
doesn't actually seem to work like that in real life. The first thing
that made me question it was seeing MAGA memes being posted by people
who I know are receiving benefits. I put some numbers below which
look to me like if the Democratic Party's evil plan is to make voters
dependent on them that it's not working because the recipients tend to
vote Republican about as often as the general population does. I
can't see inside their heads, so I don't know why that is, but I
assume the eye doth not see itself. I.e.: "I'm not on /welfare/; I
just get Medicaid and a Section 8 housing voucher and that's totally
different from /welfare/."
The welfare topic and the federal budget are the two that made me lose
faith in the Republican party. Have you guys noticed that the budget
is only a Republican talking point when there's a Democrat in the
White House? We're on track for higher spending and a higher deficit
in 2025 compared to 2024. There are a handful of representatives who
will talk about it, and a couple of hundred who it turns out don't
actually care. They'll never balance the budget because they'd have
to either raise taxes, reduce military spending, reduce entitlement
spending, or some combination of the 3. It's obvious why they don't
want to raise taxes or cut military spending, but why not reduce
entitlements since they're always complaining about them? Well, that
becomes obvious too when you find out that Republicans use those
programs just as much as Democrats do.
Obviously, Democrats aren't fixing it either. We're just going to
drive the bus off the cliff, and everybody will come up with reasons
why it was someone else's fault.
******Below here is the boring data stuff******
*Social Security Disability* - recipients have a similar spread of
political affiliations as the general public. A source I found
interesting:
https://www.lls.edu/media/loyolalawschool/coelhocenter/one%20pager.Disability%20Community%20Coelho.F.2018.10.30.pdf
<https://www.lls.edu/media/loyolalawschool/coelhocenter/one%20pager.Disability%20Community%20Coelho.F.2018.10.30.pdf>.
<-- According to this a majority of actual disability recipients were
Republicans at the time of the survey (2018). However, a majority
of the "disability community", which basically means the friends and
family of disability recipients, were Democrats.
This one: https://cpsblog.isr.umich.edu/?p=3152
<https://cpsblog.isr.umich.edu/?p=3152> makes the case that people
whose identity is wrapped up in being disabled are more likely to
support "socially liberal policies", but at the same time being
disabled made no discernable difference in their party affiliation.
*ACA (Obamacare)* - A majority of the working age recipients (18-64)
are Republican. And this struck me as odd, but both major parties
have a stronger representation among ACA participants than among the
general population.
*Medicaid recipients* - /Similar /party distributions as the general
population. According to Pew Research, the general population in 2025
is 31% Republican and 28% Democrat. The poll below shows 27%
Republicans and 37% Democrats among Medicaid enrollees. It's Democrat
heavy, compared to the general population, but not in a major way.
*
*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* AF <[email protected]> on behalf of [email protected]
<[email protected]>
*Sent:* Thursday, September 18, 2025 1:36 PM
*To:* 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT Politics (slow day, need my trolling fix,
dopamine you know)
If you are a slave of the welfare state, you are certainly to fall
into the "uneducated, pot smoking, un churched, [...] and poor as
dirt" category. Democrats know what they are doing…
*From:* AF <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Adam Moffett
*Sent:* Thursday, September 18, 2025 11:29 AM
*To:* 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT Politics (slow day, need my trolling fix,
dopamine you know)
I sometimes wonder if they're just doing things to get people talking
about something besides Epstein. If so, it's working.
I live in the den of evil over here in NY, and I too have never
encountered anyone who called themselves "Antifa". In contrast to
Chuck's statement, "uneducated, pot smoking, un churched, [...] and
poor as dirt" sounds like at least half of our MAGA people.
I wonder: NY's electoral votes haven't gone to a Republican since
1984. Utah's haven't gone to a Democrat since 1964. Maybe the poor and
disaffected are drawn to the opposition party in whatever state
they're in. I'll look up statistics later tonight.... if I remember
to. If that's not true then maybe Chuck and I are each putting our
personal bias on display.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* AF <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_> on behalf of Ken Hohhof
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>_>
*Sent:* Thursday, September 18, 2025 1:09 PM
*To:* 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT Politics (slow day, need my trolling fix,
dopamine you know)
Maybe they are saying this in an ironic or humorous way. Like if
grumpy old people are terrorists, I must be a terrorist.
Since antifa (upper or lower case a?) is a leaderless and
decentralized movement, not sure it could be declared an organization,
terrorist or otherwise. Kind of like idiots or assholes or for that
matter good samaritans, they exist, but are they organized? Can you
raid their clubhouse and imprison their leaders? Seems we are trying
to categorize people who disagree with us as an organization, no doubt
funded by George Soros (but not Elon Musk or Peter Thiel).
*From:* AF <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_> *On Behalf Of *[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_
*Sent:* Thursday, September 18, 2025 11:53 AM
*To:* 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT Politics (slow day, need my trolling fix,
dopamine you know)
Real life people, relatives, former employees etc.
It is coming up due to Trumps trying to declar antifa to be a
terrorist organization. Some of these people are saying they must be
terrorists now.
*From:* AF <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_> *On Behalf Of *Ken Hohhof
*Sent:* Thursday, September 18, 2025 10:46 AM
*To:* 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT Politics (slow day, need my trolling fix,
dopamine you know)
Is your sphere of influence real life people you know, or online
stuff? I honestly have never had a single person IRL mention Antifa,
much less belong to such an organization. And Utah seems an unlikely
place to have Antifa cells.
But Howard from Big Bang Theory reminds us you don’t need to
experience something to know you want it:
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXXcqDHEC0o
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXXcqDHEC0o>_
Maybe you mean nihilism and not literally Antifa. There seems to be a
bumper crop of disaffected nihilists these days. Not sure that fits
neatly into a left/right political narrative. More like there will
always be people who think the world has screwed them over and want to
burn the whole thing down.
*From:* AF <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_> *On Behalf Of *[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_
*Sent:* Thursday, September 18, 2025 11:16 AM
*To:* 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>_>
*Subject:* [AFMUG] OT Politics (slow day, need my trolling fix,
dopamine you know)
Odd that the majority of the people in my sphere of influence that are
espousing the goodness of antifa are all uniformly: uneducated, pot
smoking, un churched, and in many cases with minor criminal records,
but all of them are as poor as dirt it seems. Poverty is what drove
the Russian revolution. Perhaps that is the driver here.
I just cannot get behind the ideology. This is what Wikipedia says:
*I**_deology
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies>_*
_Anti-fascism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fascism>_
_Anti-authoritarianism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-authoritarianism>_
_Anti-capitalism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-capitalism>_
_Anti-statism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-statism>_
_Anti-Trumpism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_Donald_Trump>_
_Anarchism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism>_
_Socialism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism>_
_Communism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism>_
*_Political position <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum>_*
_Left-wing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics>_
*Major actions*
_Direct action <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action>_
_Community organizing
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_organizing>_
_Mutual aid <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid>_
_Harassment <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment>_
_Digital activism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_activism>_
_Doxing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing>_
_Picketing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picketing>_
_Political violence <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence>_
_Protest marching <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_march>_
*Status*
Active
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