Years ago, I was conducting a months-long journalistic investigation into the street violence plaguing a small community in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Doing that reporting was brutal. But a theme emerged among the moms that has never left me.

They felt shame, so much shame they forwent government help. That’s the opposite of what too many conservatives had been telling the public for decades about welfare, a narrative popularized by the welfare-queen myth conjured up by Ronald Reagan.

It illustrates the cruelty of recent decisions by a growing number of Republican governors to cut off extended unemployment benefits to working families because the benefits are supposedly so generous they discourage those on the economic margins from re-entering the workforce as the covid pandemic winds down.

Those moms had lost children to that street violence in multiple ways, often because of the violent drug game. One recounted having to identify her son’s body in the medical examiner’s office. A piece of preserved skin was unrolled in her presence. On it was a tattoo. That’s how she confirmed it was […]