Renewable Revolution

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Inequality Media Civic Action

Published on Feb 1, 2018

On tonight's Resistance Report we talk about the controversy over the memo that Trump 🦀 and Republicans 🦖 want to release, and what it means for Mueller investigation.

New Twist on Steele Dossier Is Frightening Civil Liberties Activists (w/Guest Greg Palast)

In the excitement to get Donald Trump out of office, are we empowering groups like the FBI and NSA to go after American Citizens with little evidence and less transparency? Investigative Reporter Greg Palast joins to inform us on the dark side of the Steele Dossier and how the state could use it against activists like you.

Thom Hartmann Feb. 6, 2018 2:30 pm

America's infrastructure problem is approaching dire, and who owns the infrastructure might be a clue as to why. Do you think our public infrastructure should be owned by for profit groups?

Thom Hartmann Feb. 9, 2018 3:00 pm



Republicans keep telling us that less government means more freedom and they are right if we were talking about the rich. Less Healthcare for us, more "freedom" for them 🦖.

Thom HartmannFeb. 9, 2018 3:30 pm

It doesn't come close to spending enough to fix the nation's roads, bridges and tunnels.

By Barry Ritholtz

February 13, 2018, 1:02 PM EST

snippet:

The White House had an opportunity to create a robust, economically sound plan to modernize America. Instead, the administration seems ready to give private investors 🐉🦕🦖 a gift at the expense of the taxpaying public. About the last thing this will do is make America great again.

Full article:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-12/who-produced-trump-s-budget-not-trump

FEB 13, 2018 TD ORIGINALS


SNIPPET:

Doctors seek a unifying diagnosis to explain symptoms and inform a prognosis. My diagnosis for a Trumped-up White House with pseudo-populism as a diversion is naked greed. “Trust me” winks from the far-right wing predict a dire prognosis for the 99 percent.

In one career, my 38 working years as an oncologist, U.S. society has done a “180”—from a Peace Corps legacy🕊 to TV’s “Apprentice” and a mentality of social Darwinism 🦀. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox, echoing the Koch brother’s ALEC , the Cato Institute, and James Buchanan/Milton Friedman libertarianism have made “you eat what you kill” the sacred creed of their right-wing propaganda machine. And much of America  has joined in the chant of “money over all 🦖.”

Soul searching over civil rights, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate once prompted a national catharsis and predicted an era of enlightened, transparent governance of America. But since those innocent days, the decades of my medical career have witnessed health care turned from a noble profession into “profit center” exploitation among Big Insurance, Big Pharma and Big Hospitals.

Many physicians joined in the gold rush, emboldened by Wall Street’s “greed is great ” mantra. One of the executives over me, his salary measured in the millions per year, would interrogate me regularly—“Fangman, is there any money in stem cell transplants” or other research trends du jour he’d seen a headline for in The Wall Street Journal. Never did the question he was paid to ask arise: Will innovation x, y or z improve our community’s health care?

That same slickster CEO was also an early adopter of Beltway hyper-polarization. His oft-used curse—“those dirty Democrats”—was a warning to anyone with a liberal instinct in his sphere of influence.

Understand that I am no socialist or partisan advocate. I’ve always been an independent. I earned money by hard work and respect a foundational tenet of capitalism: If you snooze, you lose. There was bad governance by Wendy Lee Gramm, Bill Clinton, Lawrence Summers, George W. Bush, Barack Obama. They coddled and then bailed out the pervasive greed of Wall Street and that of greedy mortgage bankers like Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide, as it flushed away much of my career’s work and the security of millions of others in the Great Recession. This casino mentality is still taking the 99 percent for suckers. Trump’s “tax reform” is yet another smoke screen for unvarnished greed. Read about Kimberly Clark’s tax cut plans as an example.

I don’t write to grind my ax. I write because con men running this nation are confusing American voters. Since the 1980s, hucksters too numerous to recount—see Bush/Dick Cheney, Henry Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and now Donald Trump 🦀 —have seduced solid, hard-working Americans to believe in bogus scams like invading Iraq. The Koch brothers’ anti-democracy libertarianism has taken Friedman’s dog-eat-dog “trickle down” to new lows.

Full truth filled article: 

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/prognosis-america-2018/

7,735 views


Inequality Media Civic Action

Published on Feb 8, 2018

Today's Resistance Report about Donald Trump's "divide and conquer" strategy.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

By Robin Marty, Care2 | News Analysis



http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43539-four-signs-that-president-trump-is-becoming-more-dangerous

BY JOAN MAYA MAZELIS , OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 02/20/18 05:00 PM

President Reagan labeled poor people as “welfare queens” back in the 1970s, but our nation’s stigma against the poor is as strong as ever. And as a result, misguided welfare policies — like drug testing recipients of public assistance — are making a comeback.

Just look at the White House’s most recent assaults on America’s poor. In the past few weeks, the federal government opened the door to work requirements for people who receive housing subsidies and Medicaid coverage. States see an opening for various ways to limit Medicaid benefits and cover fewer people. The White House is also proposing cutting off millions of people who receive food assistance and limiting the food choice for those who still get benefits. These policies focus on policing behavior rather than addressing needs. And that’s because they are based on stigma, not facts.

Despite their popularity, these types of changes don’t guarantee an escape from poverty or a better life. Instead, they further demean poor Americans and make their lives more difficult.

To understand the depth of our nation’s stigma against the poor, let’s look at our track record with drug tests. There is overwhelming evidence that drug testing recipients of assistance saves no money and identifies few drug users, despite claims from prominent Republicans. The popularity of drug testing welfare recipients shows the power of the widespread belief that poverty and drugs go hand in hand.

The idea that welfare recipients are criminals who use illicit substances is a well-worn stereotype about the so-called undeserving poor. And it has real consequences for their lives.

People often mistakenly thought Rebecca, a poor woman in her early 30s I interviewed in Philadelphia, was a drug addict because she had no teeth. Many poor people without access to dental care find that the cheapest way to treat a serious tooth problem is to have it pulled, especially when dental issues go untreated until it’s too late for other interventions.

Rebecca longed for enough money to afford dentures, telling me she couldn’t wait to get a job “as soon as I get my teeth.” The irony of Rebecca — and so many others — losing medical assistance because she isn’t fulfilling work requirements is that affordable care is precisely what would help her secure work.

Meanwhile, misperceptions about poor people using drugs have led multiple states to pass legislation to drug test applicants or recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Now, states are seeking to drug test Medicaid recipients as well. Because testing eligible recipients costs more than the money that would be saved by withholding benefits from the tiny percentage who test positive, drug testing is not cost-effective.

Florida taxpayers, for example, spent $118,140 to reimburse people who tested negative for the cost of testing, which was $45,780 more than the state saved by denying benefits to the 2.6 percent of applicants who tested positive. And other states are doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Appeals courts declared the drug testing laws unconstitutional. But Florida spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to fight to overturn the ruling in court, and that means even more taxpayer money spent on these already costly and unwise policies.

It comes as no surprise that states and the White House 🦀 are reviving similar limits on Medicaid and housing programs as well. Our elected leaders are misinformed about the issue and rely on stereotypes of the poor to make these decisions.

During his term as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett claimed — in complete defiance of the evidence — “many employers…say we’re looking for people but we can’t find anybody that has passed a drug test, a lot of them.”

Statements like this translate into policies that punish and stigmatize the poor without saving any money. They also feed the public’s doubt in the moral worth of those experiencing poverty. It implies that poor people use drugs; otherwise, why would we even be considering such tests?

The fact that our public officials 🐉🦕🦖🦀 continue to waste taxpayer dollars makes clear that stigmatizing poor people is a higher priority than either sensible spending or helping the poor. The moral problem before us is not drug use or laziness, but rather the pervasive belief that poor people do not deserve our help unless they meet an arbitrary standard we do not apply to anyone else. 

It’s time we had policies to aid the most vulnerable among us that are based on evidence instead of derogatory stereotypes. Money spent on drug testing poor people — or on ensuring recipients of housing subsidies or Medicaid are fulfilling work requirements — would be better spent on affordable housing, increased child care subsidies, and the creation of jobs that pay a living wage.  


Joan Maya Mazelis 🕊 is an associate professor of sociology and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Urban Research and Education at Rutgers University-Camden. Her book “Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor” is available from NYU Press. Follow her on Twitter  @JoanieMazelis

http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/374700-punishing-the-poor-isnt-just-bad-policy-its-wasting-taxpayer-money