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Don’t Lose the Scent on TANF · Commentary - TJ Meadows

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  Speaker 1: He was born in seventeen sixty three in Farnham, England,
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  Speaker 1: the son of a farmer and tavern keeper. William Cobbot
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  Speaker 1: would remember his childhood fondly, long days working outdoors, learning
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  Speaker 1: practical skills and roaming the countryside. That upbringing shaped his writing,
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  Speaker 1: particularly his admiration for rural British life and his contempt
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  Speaker 1: for London, which he viewed as a habitat of political corruption.
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  Speaker 1: Cobbot became one of Britain's most influential political writers. In
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  Speaker 1: eighteen oh seven, he accused British newspapers of distracting the
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  Speaker 1: public from important issues by exaggerating reports that Napoleon had
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  Speaker 1: suffered a major defeat. What endured was not the controversy,
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  Speaker 1: but how Cobbot described it. He recalled dragging a smoked
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  Speaker 1: fish across a trail as a boy, causing hunting dogs
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  Speaker 1: to lose the scent of a hare. The newspaper's coverage,
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  Speaker 1: he suggested, was that fish something placed across the trail
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  Speaker 1: to divert attention from what actually mattered. You know it
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  Speaker 1: as the red herring. Today, in politics, a red herring
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  Speaker 1: is defined as an argument introduced to distract from a
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  Speaker 1: different and often more important issue which brings us to
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  Speaker 1: West Virginia. Does the emerging argument over Taniff benefits being
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  Speaker 1: used to buy beer and cigarettes qualify? West Virginians should
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  Speaker 1: ask whether a red herring has been dragged across the trail,
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  Speaker 1: because the question isn't whether beer and cigarettes produce a
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  Speaker 1: provocative political argument. They do. The question is whether that
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  Speaker 1: argument has anything to do with the issue we were
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  Speaker 1: originally attempting to resolve a supposed Taniff fiscal crisis and
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  Speaker 1: whether children's needs are being met. Whether Taniff benefits should
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  Speaker 1: be available as cash, and whether stronger safeguards are warranted
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  Speaker 1: is a legitimate policy question, but it does not reconcile
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  Speaker 1: the numbers. It does not explain the school clothing allowance
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  Speaker 1: program opening late. It does not justify why the program
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  Speaker 1: closed early. Those were the questions before the public when
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  Speaker 1: beer and cigarettes were dragged across the trail. Would Cobbats
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  Speaker 1: say that's a red herring? Once again? West Virginians should
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  Speaker 1: ask and answer that question for themselves.