Philip Alston is about to get a tweet blasting

The United States’ principal strategy for dealing with extreme poverty is to criminalise and stigmatise those in need of assistance, a report by a UN independent expert has found.

“For one of the world’s wealthiest countries to have 40 million people living in poverty and over five million living in ‘Third World’ conditions is cruel and inhuman,” the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, said in a new report.

The report, to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on 21 June, delivers Alston’s findings from a fact-finding visit to California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. from 1 to 15 December 2017.

“The Trump Administration has brought in massive tax breaks for corporations and the very wealthy, while orchestrating a systematic assault on the welfare system,” he said. “The strategy seems to be tailor-made to maximize inequality and to plunge millions of working Americans, and those unable to work, into penury.

[...]

“Contempt for the poor has intensified under the Trump Administration,” said Alston.

“Several political appointees with whom I spoke were completely sold on the narrative that the poor are scammers living high on welfare. This was reflected in the administration’s 2019 Budget which claims that many welfare recipients should instead be forced to find employment, and that many are defrauding the system. But the Trump Administration failed to provide me with any evidence of massive fraud or of the supposedly ample job opportunities for those currently receiving benefits. In fact, the evidence is that welfare fraud is not widespread and that most welfare recipients already work or are physically or mentally unable to work.

[...]

“Locking up the poor precisely because they are poor, greatly exaggerating the amount of fraud in the system, shaming those who need assistance, and devising ever more obstacles to prevent people from getting needed benefits, is not a strategy to reduce or eliminate poverty.

“It seems driven primarily by contempt, and sometimes even by hatred for the poor, along with a ‘winner takes all’ mentality”, said the independent human rights expert appointed by the Human Rights Council to look at poverty and human rights in countries around the world.

  UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner

Damn. That's rough. True, but rough. And there's plenty more.

How can Trump get rid of the UN?