The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #156395   Message #3687925
Posted By: pdq
22-Dec-14 - 06:53 PM
Thread Name: BS: Just the facts
Subject: RE: BS: Just the facts
In the link from the initial post, the author claims:


"In 1976, when Ronald Reagan was running for president of the United States, he often told a story about a Chicago woman who was scamming the welfare system to earn her income.

Reagan said the woman had 80 names, 30 addresses and 12 Social Security cards which she used to get food stamps along with more than her share of money from Medicaid and other welfare entitlements. He said she drove a Cadillac, didn't work and didn't pay taxes. He talked about this woman, who he never named, in just about every small town he visited, and it tended to infuriate his audiences. The story solidified the term "Welfare Queen" in American political discourse and influenced not only the national conversation for the next 30 years, but public policy as well. It also wasn't true.

Sure, there have always been people who scam the government, but no one who fit Reagan's description ever existed. The woman most historians believe Reagan's anecdote was based on was a con artist with four aliases who moved from place to place wearing disguises, not some stay-at-home mom surrounded by mewling children."


The author then goes on to accuse all of the last few Republican presidents and Bob Dole of lying or being uninformed.

The article is nothing but a hit piece by a Democrat house organ, the NY Times.

Read about The Wefare Queen here in Slate. This article shows a haeadline dated 1974 in the Chicago Tribune using that term, yet the author in the OP link accuses Reagan of coining it as a form of hate speach in 1976.

What Reagan said (as researched by his staff) is mild compared to factual case:



Read aout the real Welfare Queen from Chicago,Linda Taylor (article is long but