You Will Anyway: Speaking of America's poor...

Friday, June 29, 2018

Speaking of America's poor...

“It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America,” [US ambassador to the UN Nikki] Haley said in a letter to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“The Special Rapporteur wasted the UN’s time and resources, deflecting attention from the world’s worst human rights abusers and focusing instead on the wealthiest and freest country in the world.”

The Hill

What is "patently ridiculous" is Nikki Haley. Just because the Trump administration is delusional, doesn't mean the rest of us can't see straight. America being the wealthtiest country, maybe. The freest? Hardly. The deflecting is being done by Haley when she implies "the world's worst human rights abusers" are countries other than the US. An interesting claim to make when the treatment of asylum seekers at the border is top news.

Sanders, along with several Democratic lawmakers in both chambers, earlier this month sent a letter to Haley asking her to show President Trump the conclusions of the report published by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

[...]

The report said American democracy "is being steadily undermined" and provided several suggestions for how to alleviate poverty in the U.S. The recommendations said American citizens must realize taxes "are in their interest" and that the U.S. "must recognize a right to health care."

[...]

The report blamed poverty in the United States on politics.

“At the end of the day, however, particularly in a rich country like the United States, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power,” the report reads. “With political will, it could readily be eliminated.”

[...]

Sanders quickly responded to Haley, saying he believes “it is totally appropriate” for the United Nations to publish a report on poverty in America.

“I hope you will agree that in a nation in which the top three people own more wealth than the bottom half, we can and must do much better than that,” Sanders wrote in his reply.

[...]

Sanders and the other Democrats called upon the Trump administration to provide Congress with a strategy to act on suggestions made in the United Nations report.

Yeah, maybe they could call upon Democratic presidents when they're in office, too.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.