In the words of Iowa’s Joni Kay Ernst: “As a young girl, I plowed the fields of our family farm. I worked construction with my dad. To save for college, I worked the morning biscuit line at Hardees. We were raised to live simply, not to waste. It was a lesson my mother taught me every rainy morning. You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry. But I was never embarrassed, because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet. Our parents may not have had much, but they worked hard for what they did have…”

Her life was very impoverished, what with all those bread bag shoe covers, and such. One wonders how the hayell they could even afford the bread that was in the bags, let alone the shoes that were covered by the empty bags. Her impoverished Red Oakian family received not only half a million dollars in big government farm subsidies, but also $200,000.00 worth of government contracts while she was on the state’s payroll as auditor of Montgomery County, Iowa. As state auditor, it’s highly doubtful that her family still needed those “free” contracts, but they got them anyway.

Joni Ernst & Her GOP Swine: Pig Latin, Pig Politics, Pigs at the Welfare Tax Tables of the American People

We don’t know of too many poor people who have ever seen half a million dollars, let alone had access to nearly a quarter of million dollars in government contracts; however, but for some folks — anything less than five to seven million dollars is really really tragically low-income or poor. Which leaves the rest of us … where, exactly?

Now, we’ve got this “thing” dangling out here called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which for all intents and purposes, touts itself as “bipartisan.” Research turns up only ONE Democrat member, and there is a reason why Democrats shied away from that exploitation tool.

But … Let’s connect the dots.

Even if you can’t make a direct connection between Joni Ernst and ALEC, and even if she can hide that connection and keep it under lock and key (why?), it is not hard to understand that the Republican party -through the oligarchy of the Koch Brothers- co-signed ALEC into existence through their partisan Party affiliations which assert “state’s rights” as the law above the direction of the federal government. They do not question ALEC, nor do they make their connections to it totally transparent — that says all it needs to.

Now, let’s skip right over the obvious conflict of interest during Ernst’s time in public office–in which her family benefited from government benefits on her watch; and for a moment, let’s even get past the fact that ALEC’s “Stand Your Ground” legislation helped George Zimmerman get away with murdering 17-year old Trayvon Martin … let us talk about Joni Ernst and those welfare payments (“subsidies”) to her family.

Absolutely nobody in this nation has ever been totally “self-made.” Those who receive government benefits and assistance, in some form or fashion, tend to have better general life outcomes than those who do not get this help. As with anything else in life, there are no guarantees. However … be it

• Food Assistance
• Cash Assistance
• Education Assistance
• Homebuying Assistance
• Business Assistance

“Big Government” has always been there to help “the little guy” lift himself up by his own bootstraps; or in Ernst’s case, by their family bread bag shoes.

Though this has always been a fact which has majorly benefited white Americans, “welfare” only becomes something ‘wrong’ and ‘ugly’ in the hands of Black people, particularly single Black mothers whose children have been abandoned, or who have lost their jobs, or who work the lowest of the low income jobs, or those who have been widowed for whatever reason.

Take note that several tri-fold ideas are at work here: (a) Republicans who shipped the jobs offshore for cheap labor and nearly crashed the American economy to its knees on THEIR watch–then blamed it on the influx of too many “immigrants,” (b) Republicans who created legislation, through ALEC, to move jobs away from the American public and force inmates to work them for free and next to nothing–thus refusing to give up their historical ancestry’s addiction to free slave labor; and (c) Republicans who fight tooth and nail NOT to pay ‘certain’ working Americans a LIVING WAGE plus benefits–thus continuously creating and re-creating the cycle of welfare and poverty in society because of their own actions.

Joni Ernst’s family ‘made their own way in life’  alright … on Big Government subsidies; and it appears–with her election to the Iowa State Senate, that she is still not quite ready to give up those government benefits. Yet.