The cruelty is the point

 

Listen to Naomi

Dump Trump

In the spring of 2017, the newly elected president met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. During that meeting, one of the members mentioned to Trump that welfare reform would be detrimental to her constituents— adding, “Not all of whom are black,” according to NBC News.

The president was incredulous. “Really? Then what are they?”

  Newsweek

Jesus wept.

White people without a college degree ages 18 to 64 are the largest class of adults lifted out of poverty by such programs, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The think tank’s 2017 report stated that 6.2 million working-age whites were lifted above the poverty line in 2014 compared to 2.8 million blacks and 2.4 million Hispanics.

When it comes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—the initiative formerly known as food stamps—the numbers look similar.

Just over 40 percent of SNAP recipients are white. Another 25.7 percent are black, 10.3 percent are Hispanic, 2.1 percent are Asian and 1.2 percent are Native American, according to a 2015 Department of Agriculture report.

Also...

Republicans are now making an end run around Congress to accomplish one of their harshest goals: kicking economically vulnerable people off Medicaid.

The administration’s new approach — one that no administration before it has taken — is to provide waivers to states that allow them to impose work requirements for Medicaid benefits. Thus far, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has received requests for such waivers from 10 states.

[...]

Instead of requiring states to increase and strengthen coverage, C.M.S. will now allow them to use waivers to promote “upward mobility” or “responsible decision-making.” If those sound good to you, understand that they are known euphemisms for work requirements. The key point, as the Medicaid analyst Jessica Schubel points out, is that neither of those goals align with Medicaid’s mission of providing comprehensive health insurance to low-income people.

[...]

There’s no evidence that Medicaid discourages work, which comports with common sense: You can’t pay rent or buy groceries with health coverage. About 80 percent of able-bodied adult Medicaid recipients are part of working families (that is, either they or their spouses work), and about 60 percent work themselves. Among adults on Medicaid who don’t work and could be subject to the work requirement, more than a third have a chronic health problem or disability, about half take care of their family or go to school, and just under 10 percent can’t find work.

[...]

By providing coverage for workers in jobs that are unlikely to provide such benefits, and by helping to stabilize the finances of people with illnesses, Medicaid has been found to help people stay employed or find work.

  NYT

Welcome to the New Amerika.

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

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Compassionate conservatism was a hoax to begin with, and they're not even trying to sell you that these days.

Well, now you won't feel so bad when she's back in the norm.

Maybe they want to be Republicans

Perpetual and ubiquitous

No doubt.  However, they do this all the time, and they have never managed to pull it off.  I don't think they ever will.  So the question then becomes, "Where do they make the cuts?"  More out of education?  More out of what's left of programs to feed and house the poorest of the poor?  Veterans? 

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

Perseverance Porn

You’ve seen or heard or read the personal interest story a thousand times: An enterprising seven-year-old collects cans to save for college (ABC7, 2/8/17), a man with unmatched moxie walks 15 miles to his job (Today, 2/20/17), a low-wage worker buys shoes for a kid whose mother can’t afford them (Fox5, 12/14/16), an “inspiring teen” goes right back to work after being injured in a car accident (CBS News, 12/16/16). All heartwarming tales of perseverance in the face of impossible odds—and all ideological agitprop meant to obscure and decontextualize the harsh reality of dog-eat-dog capitalism.

  FAIR

This is akin to making individuals responsible for the planet's survival - recycle, cut down on waste, etc - when it should be a global government effort to reduce pollution and encourage/insist on/subsidize sustainable corporate practices.

In the case of perseverance porn, we get to overlook the fact that a world of haves and have-nots is a world destined to remain a world of hunger, neglect and strife.  How many brilliant minds that could otherwise contribute to human and global advancement are instead being used to simply survive?

[The individuals in the story don't matter. T]heir humanity is irrelevant. They’re clickbait, stand-in bootstrap archetypes meant to validate the bourgeois morality of click-happy media consumers.

[...]

Here we have a story highlighting how society has colossally failed its most vulnerable populations—the poor, ethnic minorities, children and the homeless—and the take-home point is, “Ah gee, look at that scrappy kid.”

Journalism is as much—if not more—about what isn’t reported as what is. Here a local reporter is faced with a cruel example of people falling through the cracks of the richest country on Earth, and their only contribution is to cherry-pick one guy who managed—just barely—to cling on to the edge.

[...]

Perseverance porn goes hand in hand with the rise of a GoFundMe economy that relies on personal narrative over collective policy, emotional appeals over baseline human rights.

[...]

$930 million out of the $2 billion raised on GoFundMe since its inception in 2010 was for healthcare expenses, while an estimated 45,000 people a year die  [...]  due to a lack of medical treatment. Meanwhile, anchors across cable news insist that single-payer healthcare is “unaffordable.”

[...]

It’s part of a broader media culture of [...] moralizing “success” rather than questioning systemic problems.

[...]

After all, if they can do it, so can you—right?

[...]

A healthy press would take these anecdotes of “can do” spirit and ask bigger questions, like why are these people forced into such absurd hardship? Who benefits from skyrocketing college costs? Why does the public transit in this person’s city not have subsidies for the poor? Why aren’t employers forced to offer time off for catastrophic accidents? But time and again, the media mindlessly tells the bootstrap human interest story, never questioning the underlying system at work.

Reminds me of the Democrats (and Republicans too) take after the 2008 financial crash and scandal - bail out the banksters and finance criminals, and tell the public things are not going to get better for a long time, so we need to tighten our belts.

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

Will Trump Erase the "Progress" of the Obama Administration?

Glen Ford (co-founder of Black Agenda Report) talks about Obama's legacy and what the Trump administration might change.

Campaigns Are for Children

Fantasy.

The GOP’s presumptive nominee, instead of moderating his views and positioning himself to attract non-Republican voters, is actually becoming more conservative on certain issues. Case in point, on Wednesday Trump’s chief policy adviser, Sam Clovis, said for the first time a President Trump would be willing to “take a look at all of the programs, including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare,” while whittling down the federal budget.

A spokesperson later clarified to the Wall Street Journal that Clovis was talking about the “need to examine budgetary discipline,” and not necessarily calling for outright entitlement cuts. But it was still a stark shift from Trump’s earlier pledge to leave benefit programs like Social Security untouched.

The reversal was particularly odd because most polling shows that bipartisan majorities are opposed to raiding programs like Social Security and Medicare for savings.

  IBTimes

So, why's he doing it?

Wealthy Americans, and wealthy Republican donors in particular, are much likelier to want cuts than the population at large. And while Trump made it through primary season largely without the support of the wealthiest 1 percent, he needs their money to compete in the general election.

[...]

[T]he billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch — who together run the most influential conservative donor network in the United States — have poured hundreds of millions into think tanks and advocacy groups that prioritize shrinking the safety net.

[...]

The Kochs are also enthusiastic patrons of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

[...]

Trump has publicly taunted both Ryan and the Koch brothers in the past, but raising $1.5 billion could be tough without their imprimatur. At the moment, he doesn’t have it. Ryan said last week he was “not ready” to endorse Trump and was waiting to see whether the GOP’s presumptive nominee could successfully unite the party.

Charles G. Koch, the billionaire industrialist, suggested in an interview Sunday that he was open to supporting Hillary Clinton for president and said it was possible she would make a better president than her Republican rivals.

  NYT

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan struck a conciliatory tone after meeting in Washington Thursday, seeking to ease tensions that flared last week when Ryan said he is not ready to endorse the business mogul in his bid for the White House.

“While we were honest about our few differences, we recognize that there are also many important areas of common ground,” Trump and Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a joint statement shortly after their meeting at the Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill. “We will be having additional discussions, but remain confident there’s a great opportunity to unify our party and win this fall, and we are totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.”

  WaPo

Perhaps Ryan will even be Trump's VP choice.

So, apparently, the Koch Brothers run this country.

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

The Rich Get Richer, Etc.

[Bernie] Sanders took offense when [Lloyd Blankfein, longtime CEO of Goldman Sachs], in a 2012 segment on “60 Minutes,” said, “You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations” that they will get their full Social Security and Medicare benefits because “we can’t afford it.” Blankfein advocated an increase in the eligibility age for both programs as well as other cuts because “entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.”

Soon afterward, Sanders excoriated Blankfein in a speech from the floor of the Senate.

SANDERS: Sometimes there is no end to arrogance. … Lloyd Blankfein is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. … During the financial crisis Goldman Sachs received a total of $814 billion in virtually zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve and a $10 billion bailout from the Treasury Department. … And now with his huge wealth he is coming here to Washington to lecture the American people on how we have got to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for tens of millions of Americans who are struggling now to keep their heads above water.

Just a few weeks ago on Bloomberg TV Sanders returned to the subject, citing Blankfein as a Wall Street executive who “really irks me” because such executives “make huge sums of money, help destroy our economy, they come to Congress and [...] say, ‘You’ve got to cut Social Security and you’ve got to cut Medicare and you’ve got to cut Medicaid.’”

That’s what Blankfein was responding to on CNBC last week when he said, “To personalize it, it has the potential to be a dangerous moment."
  The Intercept

For Bernie, maybe.

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

Mastering Bad Analogies

President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law an agriculture spending bill that will spread benefits to farmers in every region of the country.

[...]

As he penned his name on the five-year measure at Michigan State University, the president said the wide-ranging bill "multitasks" by helping boost jobs, innovation, research and conservation. "It's like a Swiss Army knife," he joked.

  alJazeera

Indeed, cutting out a portion of food stamp aid to hungry families.

The bill expands federal crop insurance, and ends direct government payments that go to farmers whether they produce anything or not. But the bulk of its nearly $100 billion-per-year cost is for the food stamp program

If crops can have federal insurance, why can’t US citizens? Oh, wait. I think I know. Crop insurance covers BANKS from losses due to defaults on crop loans if crops fail.

Gaming: The System

President Obama has rejected raising America's debt ceiling for 6 weeks beyond the October 17 deadline. The compromise was put forward by congressional Republicans, who sought to win time for negotiation and avert an unprecedented US default next week.

  RT

Of course.  Now HE is the one refusing to raise the ceiling.  The game goes on while you go down the tubes.

No specific budget decision was taken in the White House on Thursday, where President Obama met with 20 House Republicans, including Speaker John Boehner, for 90 minutes of talks. However, a White House spokesman said President Obama "looks forward to continued progress with members on both sides".

Continued?

Obama insisted he won’t significantly cut Medicare and Medicaid spending, if Republicans don’t agree to raise revenues from reduced tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals. Mr. Boehner in turn has been reaffirming his party was against tightening taxation, which suggests that future talks could founder.

So that’s the trigger for cutting Medicare/Medicaid. When the rich are willing to be taxed more, the poor can expect to be given less. What a deal.

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

And Another Reason...

President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans.

  NYT

Is he really Charlie Brown?  Or is he the Manchurian Candidate?

For the love of Pete.

No Cuts Petition

I realize there are abuses in these programs. I may not be averse to adjustments. But one thing I do know is that if we don't stake a radical claim to the moneys for them, those funds will be reappropriated to military expenditures and bailing out banksters.

Spoken Like a Texan

Just hours after a federal court issued an injunction against Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s plan to revoke public funding for Planned Parenthood, a judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans knocked that ruling down and permitted the state to proceed — at least for now.

Judge Jerry Smith, appointed by President George W. Bush, granted the state’s request for an emergency stay. Democrats were quick to point out that it’s not the first time Smith has weighed in on partisan politics, having recently corrected some of the president’s rhetoric on the authority of the judiciary.

Smith’s ruling gave Planned Parenthood until 5 p.m. on Tuesday to respond to the state’s appeal. It’s not clear if he’ll change his mind but, if he does not, Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding in Texas will have officially gone dry, throwing needed health care for over 130,000 lower income women into question — a dire situation that could last for months as the case makes its way through federal courts.

  Raw Story

Lower income women don't have any power, least of all here in Texas.  And they cant join the Occupy movement because they have to work.  Two jobs.

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