Jackson Free Press

"We're going to ask the Legislature to remove any winnings at a casino from a parent who may owe child support. So you won't be going around gambling and winning at the dice table and not taking care of your children."

— Republican Gov. Phil Bryant in an Associated Press interview on his solution to chronic poverty.

 Why It Stinks: The logical assumption is that Gov. Bryant hasn't spent a lot of time around people in poverty considering that he and his fellow Republicans can only seem to come with solutions to caricatures of poverty rather than the real roots of the problems. Hence, we wind up with laws to drug-test welfare recipients and to garnish casino winnings even though scant evidence exist that either is any more prevalent among the poor than the general population. But Bryant hails from the Delta and should know that folks are not poor because they're spending welfare checks on dope and dice games. Poverty exists because of lack of education, poor health care (including reproductive) and systemic inequality. Gov. Bryant, come up with solutions to those problems and stop trying to shame the poor—an unconscionable way to get votes.