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hedgewitchgarden · 1 year

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Parents are entering the 2024 election cycle facing higher costs, longer waitlists and fewer options in a child care system on the brink. Child care providers are stretched thin and struggling to stay afloat, with subsidies set to dry up this fall. Both groups and advocates say the system is at a breaking point — and that both political parties should make family care a significant priority on the campaign trail.

Efforts to invest in child care and paid leave in President Joe Biden’s proposed Build Back Better agenda stalled out in the Senate, but, advocates say, the push elevated child care to an indispensable part of the political discourse at both the federal and state levels. State lawmakers in both parties have picked up where Congress left off in investing in child care, and many are emphasizing the issue as part of their agendas.

“We’ve moved past the point now where child care is a side issue and a nice-to-have issue,” said Melissa Boteach, vice president for economic security and child care/early learning at the National Women’s Law Center. “The pandemic really underscored that child care is the backbone of the economy. And even though we didn’t ultimately make it into the final reconciliation bill, I do feel like the narrative has forever shifted on that and it’s now become a political imperative.”

Gender and the economy played a major role in the 2020 election when Biden ran on getting the economy back on track. In the 2022 midterms, backlash over abortion bans propelled many Democrats to victory. Both abortion and the burgeoning child care crisis will be top of mind for many voters — especially women voters crucial to both parties’ fortunes — in 2024.

The most significant investments in child care in recent history came through the American Rescue Plan (ARP), which Biden signed into law in March 2021. The law gave the child care industry a $39 billion lifeline, adding to $10 billion in emergency pandemic subsidies passed in December 2020 and $3.5 billion to child care block grants passed in March 2020 under the Trump administration.

Boteach lauded the ARP’s subsidies to states and localities as “the largest investment in child care we’ve seen” and “an enormous accomplishment from the child care perspective.” But those funds are set to expire in September, threatening to send parents and providers over a cliff.

“Already, half of families lived in a child care desert before COVID,” she said. “And so we’re not even recovered to that place, and now we’re about to lose the funding that was stabilizing states.”

Elliot Haspel, director of climate & young children at think tank Capita and author of “Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It,” said the industry was “treading water” before COVID-19 but still in the same pool as other sectors.

But the effects of the pandemic combined with a lack of sustained public investment, he said, means “the crisis is deeper now than it ever has been in the recent past.”

“It leaves us on the precipice of working parents facing down a wasteland of care options before the 2024 elections,” he added. “This is a pain point that goes into the middle class and upper middle class.”

Child care, Haspel argued, is fundamentally “a human service masquerading as a private market.” And the industry’s economics aren’t working, either, for child care providers, who face low wages, little to no benefits and increasing difficulty keeping their doors open.

“The workforce is paid poverty wages — half of them are turning to public assistance just to make ends meet. These are the people who are caring for our children and they make less than dog walkers,” Boteach said. “On the other side, you have parents who are struggling to afford care already, even with the providers making poverty wages. And so the solution is public dollars.”

On Monday, Community Change Action and over 725 child care professionals are holding the second annual national Day Without Child Care. Providers are closing their doors for the day to hold over 50 actions, including news conferences and rallies in 20 states and the District of Columbia drawing attention to the crisis.

“When we don’t have a fully funded child care system, the true cost of care is financial, emotional and socioeconomic,” BriTanya Brown, a Texas-based child care provider and advocate with Community Change Action, said in a Thursday call with reporters. “And it gets placed on the shoulders of women — especially Black and brown women who make up a disproportionate amount of the child care workforce.”

The child care and paid leave spending failed to pass due to unanimous opposition from Republican senators and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. But Manchin wasn’t the only Democrat who prioritized other provisions over care when drafting Build Back Better’s successor, the Inflation Reduction Act. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a climate-focused progressive, told Insider in April 2022 that “social investments can be accomplished later,” saying, “There’s a different nature to getting climate right now” than child care.

“It’s not the first time that women, particularly women of color, were the casualties of compromise,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, director at Paid Leave for All Action. “There’s just an expectation that care work will continue to get done, that it will be done undervalued or unvalued.”

Biden is framing his reelection bid around economic and personal freedom and highlighting child care as a critical part of his message.

Without Congress, Biden has few tools to bolster child care access. But he and his administration have taken actions, including a new executive order on caregiving and a Commerce Department rule requiring companies seeking over $150 million in funds from the CHIPS and Science Act to provide employee child care.

“I think his commitment to funding a child care system that works for us is probably one of the strongest things that he has going,” said Jennifer Wells, a West Virginia-based organizer and Director of Economic Justice for Community Change.

Republicans have traditionally balked at endorsing ambitious social spending programs, and many decried Democrats’ child care proposals in Build Back Better as a “toddler takeover.” But some conservatives have endorsed higher social spending and support after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Celinda Lake, a top Democratic pollster and president of Lake Research Partners, said that backing child care, paid leave, and other family and social programs could help Republicans among women voters who strongly disapprove of abortion bans.

Bipartisan polling from Lake Research Partners and the Tarrance Group conducted in December 2022 found that 78 percent of all voters, including 83 percent of suburban mothers, 75 percent of independents and 62 percent of Republicans, support expanding funding for child care while letting parents choose their providers.

“These policies can be very mobilizing to this bipartisan agenda, and that puts Republicans under a lot of pressure,” Lake said.

Child care could also be a winning issue to court Latinx voters, who will be a key swing constituency in 2024. In the Lake Research and Tarrance Group survey, 95 percent of Latinas supported increasing funding for child care, and 89 percent supported 12 weeks of paid family leave, the highest levels of support from any demographic group.

“Latino voters are a real battleground,” Lake said. “These policies are off the charts for Latinos, even though they’re very tax-sensitive, even though they’re very job-sensitive. This is a way back into the Latino community. Particularly, Latinas are unbelievably, intensely supportive of these policies.”

With Congress divided, the states have taken the lead in addressing the child care crisis. Predominantly Latina advocates won a fight to get child care funding enshrined in New Mexico’s state constitution, a first-of-its-kind achievement in the nation. Some Democratic states, including California and Minnesota, are also pursuing significant investments in child care.

“The economics are broken — they do not work, in the same way that public education wouldn’t work if there wasn’t some public support,” Democratic state Rep. Dave Pinto of Minnesota said on the Community Change call. “There needs to be ongoing public support. We’re recognizing that in our state, and other states around the country are as well.”

Some Republicans at the state level are also making overtures to fund child care. Virginia, which has divided control of government and a Republican governor, passed millions in new child care funding in 2022. Republicans in North Carolina, who recently enacted an expansion of Medicaid, also allocated $170 million of funds for family programs and caregiving in a new, wide-ranging abortion restriction bill, including $75 million to child care and $20 million to fund paid parental leave for teachers and some other state employees over the next two fiscal years.

But in a debate over the bill Wednesday, Democratic state Rep. Laura Budd argued that it shouldn’t have taken abortion restrictions for Republicans to invest in child care, calling the measures “tokens” attempting to soften the blow of “fundamentally devastating” legislation.

Proponents of universal child care have long focused on the economic benefits and societal return on investment from child care and early childhood education. But as the child care crisis pushes women out of the workforce and limits where many families can live to access care, Haspel said that Biden and the Democrats should adjust their message to frame access to child care around freedom and liberty.

“I would like to see the president saying child care is patriotic in supporting families to be able to have the care they need to meet the family choices that they want,” he said. “Child care is much more about freedom, much more about choice and liberty. And it’s not an argument that Democrats have made very often.”

Boteach said Biden’s elevation of child care in his budget proposal and 2024 campaign messaging speaks to “that mothers everywhere and parents everywhere did not forget the experience of the pandemic.”

Now, it remains to be seen how — if at all —top Republicans will follow suit.

“There is a lot of trauma and anger that would serve all elected officials and all candidates to recognize,” Huckelbridge said. “It’s important to recognize that this is about common humanity.”

#us politics #parenting issues #childcare

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hardynwa · 9 months

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Imo Guber: Over 3000 APC, LP, ACCORD, AA, APGA members defect to PDP

Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Imo state, Senator Samuel Nnaemeka Anyanwu has finally captured Ngor Okpala, Owerri West, and Owerri North local government areas ahead of the November 11 Governorship election. This followed the defection of no fewer than 3000 leaders and members of coalition of political parties made up of All Progressives Congress (APC), Labour Party (LP), ACCORD, Action Alliance (AA) and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) respectively in the LGAs, citing unresolved issues that have created serious division as reason for dumping their former parties. Anyanwu got the big catch during the ongoing “Thank You Tour” to the LGAs on Wednesday. The PDP Governorship standard bearer commended them for the bold step, adding that the story of Imo liberation will not be told without referencing them for making the highest sacrifice. Receiving the decampees into PDP, the party Governorship candidate, Senator Anyanwu, assisted by his Deputy, Rt Hon Jones Onyereri and the state party chairman represented by the organizing Secretary, Nze Law Biaduo, told them to join hands with other patriotic Imo citizens to secure the state from the grip of wicked, corrupt, and greedy leaders whose stock in trade is to siphon the treasury of the state for their selfish desires, as well as to frustrate those that voted them into power. According to him, what every concerned Imo citizen should do is to join hands with the “Make Imo Safe Again” team to be able to set the state free from a vicious and cruel government, regretting that under the current administration, over 1,500 innocent people have lost their lives for committing no crime, and houses worth hundreds of millions razed. Anyanwu further decried the deplorable condition of roads in the three LGAs despite claims by the present government that it has constructed over 400 kilometer roads, and revived rural infrastructures, urging them to resist every pressure by anyone to use them to retain power. “I am happy today to receive you into our party, be rest assured that the decision you have taken today has liberated our state from the shackles of poverty, penury, and insecurity. Our collective aim is to build the society. For joining our party today, you shall receive and enjoy the same privileges every PDP member is enjoying. No one will ever discriminate against you. Infact, you are the champions. Let me also inform you that our state is currently bleeding, and in dire need of urgent liberation. This is what I have come to give to our people. My intention is neither to enrich myself nor to compound our problems, but to make things better for Ndi-Imo as well as to bring peace, unity and to gaurantee safety of lives and properties in our state. On this note, I want to call on anyone contesting the Governorship election from Orlu and Okigwe zones to step down on the basis of equity, fairness and justice” Continuing, Anyanwu assured the defectors that PDP would give everyone equal opportunity to be able to contribute their quota aimed at developing the state, and vowed to instill love and political sanity in the state that would be devoid of rancour and accrimony. “Today, there is no peace, no love and no development in our state. There is bloodshed everywhere. From Okigwe, Orsu, Oru East, Oru West, Orlu, Oguta, Ohaji Egbema and some part of Ngor Okpala local government areas, the blood of the innocent people is flowing without caution, what we need to do now is to secure the state, and inject lasting peace that won’t discriminate nor torment our people. All these problems in Imo state today are caused by greed, selfishness and lack of love. This is because those in government have selected their likes under the forum of “cabals”; Imo people are currently being governed by these group of cabals holding us hostage. By the grace of God, Isreal shall be secured from the hands of Pharaoh in November 11, 2023.” Expressing bitterness, Anyanwu wondered how the present APC administration in the state led by Hope Uzodinma could deliberately abandon Ngor Okpala, Owerri West and Owerri North LGA respectively despite their enormous contributions to the growth and development of the state, and promised to restore everything APC government has denied them under his watch. Some Ngor Okpala, Owerri West and Owerri North leaders on ground to join hands with the party’s Governorship candidate to receive the defectors into PDP are, Prof Jude Njoku, Hon Henry Ekpe, the three LGA party Chairmen, Ward chairmen of PDP in the three LGAs, Hon Henry Onwukwe, Rt Hon Nnaemeka Maduagwu, (former Speaker, IMHA), Oshieze Vincent Ehirim, Hon Onyewuchi Ukaegbu, Hon Ndubuisi Opara (Coordinator of Physically Challenged Persons), Hon Young Martins Opara, Chief Mrs. Ann Njoku, Hon Jasper Azuatalam, Hon Clifford Ahuaka, Chief Alwell Nwakali and Hon Aham Onyeneobi, amongst others. In his entourage include, his Deputy, Rt Hon Jones Onyereri, Imo PDP Chairman, Chief Charles Ugwu represented by the State Organizing Secretary, Nze Law Biaduo, acting State Secretary, Hon Njaka, South East Organizing Secretary of PDP, Hon Mike Ahumibe, PDP Owerri zone Chairman, Barr Uche Igbokwe, Okigwe zone, Hon Chidi Dike, Orlu zone, Hon Ugochukwu Carl Nwokoma and Hon Eric Offordirinwa (Mmahu Awo). Others include, Evang. Mike Ikoku, Barr Golden Nwosu, Chief Ben Duru, Hon Henry Onwukwe, Hon Athan Ogu, Hon Meekam Mgbenwelu, Dr Bruno Ekwelem, Barr (Sir) Tony Eze, Mrs Gertrude Obiefule, Dr Nnamdi Nsorom, and Chief Mike Okafor. Read the full article

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hillaryisaboss · 4 years

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President Clinton is TONIGHT -- Bill... please be our "explainer-in-chief" again!!

Let us remember that the ECONOMY does better under a DEMOCRAT.

Clinton saved us from the Reagan/Bush trickle-down. Obama saved us from the Bush recession. BIDEN/HARRIS can save us from the Trump disaster. Bill Clinton was the first two-term Democratic President in 30 years. Sure -- he had to be against gay marriage publicly to win (don't hate the player -- hate the game). But Reagan let HIV/AIDS spread like wildfire because it was labeled a "gay disease." The Clinton Administration was the first U.S. administration to meet with, respect, and fully support (through funding and research) gays living with HIV/AIDS. People forget how big of a shift this was during the early 1990s. Yes -- of course the 1990s weren't progressive compared to today’s standards. But we must remember -- if not for Bill Clinton re-branding the Democratic Party, we would have been stuck with another 4 disastrous years of Bush Senior continuing Reaganomics. Again -- Bill Clinton was the first two-term Democratic President in 30 years. The Clintons saved our party and our country. They deserve much more respect and credit than they are given. Two-time winners that left us a booming economy and won back power from the Republicans. The Clinton Administration: —4-balanced budgets due to the superb compromising ability of Bill Clinton. —Surplus. —22 million new jobs. —7 million fewer Americans living in poverty. —Minimum wage up 20%. —Assault Weapons Ban. —Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. —Closet we have ever been to peace in the Middle East. —Northern Ireland Peace Process. —Campaign Against Teen Pregnancy: all-time low abortion rates. —Office on Violence Against Women. —Violence Against Women Act. —Children’s Health Insurance Program: 8.9 million children insured.

OUR COUNTRY DOES BETTER UNDER A DEMOCRAT:

Republicans vilified them for decades. Still do to this very day. Why? Because the Clintons revived the Democratic Party from the abyss. And succeeded in office as the ultimate power couple -- truly "2-for-the-price-of-1." If Republicans had the Clinton record, they'd *NEVER* let us forget it.

youtube

Life is better under a DEMOCRAT.

Bill... please be our "explainer-in-chief" again!!

#bill clinton #hillary clinton #michelle obama #joe biden #donald trump

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olaentertainmentgist · 2 years

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PDP suffering from ‘memory loss’ after 16-year maladministration —Pro-Buhari group

The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has lambasted the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over what it said is the party’s 16-year tenure of maladministration.

This was contained in a press statement signed by its Chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke, on Thursday.

The statement was in response to a comment made by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr Debo Ologunagba who had described the APC–led federal government as ‘rudderless’.

According to the BMO, the PDP is suffering from “an apparent loss of memory. From the year 2000 up until 2014 Nigeria witnessed an economic boom, but the PDP administrations frittered the gains and opportunities away.

“Instead of using the abundant oil revenues to turn the country around and bring prosperity to Nigerians, the PDP and its leaders embarked on an unbridled corruption leading to the World Bank classifying six out of every ten Nigerians as living below one dollar.

According to the BMO, under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, the World Bank has rated four out of every ten Nigerians as poor, thereby signifying a significant reduction in the poverty level.

“This did not happen by chance, but through deliberate economic diversification programmes, put in place by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

“Let us remind the PDP, that is living in denial, that the numerous infrastructural projects which they denied Nigerians over a period of 16 years are today being delivered by the Buhari administration and they are visible for Nigerians to see.

“We also want to state that the Buhari administration has been able to accomplish much with fewer resources and despite several global challenges like the Covid-19 pandemic and global recession.

“Even in the impact of inflation on the economy, the Buhari administration has been able to manage the economy to avoid plunging the country into spiralling inflation as is the case with some major economies across the globe.

“PDP should therefore hide its face in shame for using its 16 years in power to underdevelop the country, and acknowledge President Buhari’s efforts to make amends where they failed woefully,” the statement added.

Reference

Ripples Nigeria.com

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, September 20, 2021

Biden’s Entire Presidential Agenda Rests on Expansive Spending Bill (NYT) Biden’s entire presidential agenda is riding on the reconciliation bill being crafted in Congress right now. No president has ever packed as much of his agenda, domestic and foreign, into a single piece of legislation as President Biden has with the $3.5 trillion spending plan that Democrats are trying to wrangle through Congress over the next six weeks,” Tankersley writes. “It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years. If he succeeds, Biden’s far-reaching attempt could result in a presidency-defining victory that delivers on a decades-long campaign by Democrats to expand the federal government to combat social problems and spread the gains of a growing economy to workers. If he fails, he could end up with nothing. As Democrats are increasingly seeing, the sheer weight of Mr. Biden’s progressive push could cause it to collapse, leaving the party empty-handed, with the president’s top priorities going unfulfilled. … If Mr. Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, the president will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities.

Child care in the US is a ‘broken market,’ Treasury report finds (Yahoo Money) A Treasury Department report this week characterized the U.S. child care system as “unworkable” as Democrats push reform that experts say is an “overdue and critical investment.” The average American family with at least one child under age 5 uses 13% of their income to pay for child care, according to the report, nearly double the 7% that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable. Additionally, less than 20% of the children eligible for the Child Care and Development Fund—a federal assistance program for low-income families—are getting that funding. “Child care is a textbook example of a broken market, and one reason is that when you pay for it, the price does not account for all the positive things it confers on our society,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement on Wednesday. “When we underinvest in child care, we forgo that; we give up a happier, healthier, more prosperous labor force in the future.”

Inspiration4 Astronauts Beam After Return From 3-Day Journey to Orbit (NYT) After three days in orbit, a physician assistant, a community college professor, a data engineer and the billionaire who financed their trip arrived back on Earth, heralding a new era of space travel with a dramatic and successful Saturday evening landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission, which is known as Inspiration4, splashed down off the Florida coast at 7:06 p.m. on Saturday. Each step of the return unfolded on schedule, without problems. Within an hour, all four crew members walked out of the spacecraft, one at a time, each beaming with excitement as recovery crews assisted them.

Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them (AP) Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico. Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio. Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans. “We are all looking for a better life,” he said.

Three Weeks After Hurricane Ida, Parts of Southeast Louisiana Are Still Dark (NYT) For Tiffany Brown, the drive home from New Orleans begins as usual: She can see the lights on in the city’s central business district and people gathering in bars and restaurants. But as she drives west along Interstate 10, signs of Hurricane Ida’s destruction emerge. Trees with missing limbs fill the swamp on either side of the highway. With each passing mile, more blue tarps appear on rooftops, and more electric poles lay fallen by the road, some snapped in half. By the time Ms. Brown gets to her exit in Destrehan 30 minutes later, the lights illuminating the highway have disappeared, and another night of total darkness has fallen on her suburban subdivision. For Ms. Brown, who works as an office manager at a pediatric clinic, life at work can feel nearly normal. But at home, with no electricity, it is anything but. “I keep hoping every day that I’m going to go home and it’ll be on,” she said. Three weeks have passed since Hurricane Ida knocked down electric wires, poles and transmission towers serving more than one million people in southeast Louisiana. In New Orleans, power was almost entirely restored by Sept. 10, and businesses and schools have reopened. But outside the city, more than 100,000 customers were without lights through Sept. 13. As of Friday evening there were still about 38,000 customers without power, and many people remained displaced from damaged homes.

Favela centennial shows Brazil communities’ endurance (AP) Dozens of children lined up at a community center in Sao Paulo for a slice of creamy, blue cake. None was celebrating a birthday; their poor neighborhood, the favela of Paraisopolis, was commemorating 100 years of existence. “People started coming (to the city) for construction jobs and settled in,” community leader Gilson Rodrigues said. “There was no planning, not even streets. People started growing crops. It was all disorganized. Authorities didn’t do much, so we learned to organize ourselves.” The favela’s centennial, which was marked on Thursday, underscores the permanence of its roots and of other communities like it, even as Brazilians in wealthier parts of town often view them as temporary and precarious. Favelas struggle to shed that stigma as they defy simple definition, not least because they evolved over decades. Paraisopolis is Sao Paulo’s second-biggest favela, home to 43,000 people, according to the most-recent census, in 2010. Recent, unofficial counts put its population around 100,000.

The barbecue king: British royals praise Philip’s deft touch (AP) When Prince Philip died nearly six months ago at 99, the tributes poured in from far and wide, praising him for his supportive role at the side of Queen Elizabeth II over her near 70-year reign. Now, it has emerged that Philip had another crucial role within the royal family. He was the family’s barbecue king—perhaps testament to his Greek heritage. “He adored barbecuing and he turned that into an interesting art form,” his oldest son Prince Charles said in a BBC tribute program that will be broadcast on Wednesday. “And if I ever tried to do it he ... I could never get the fire to light or something ghastly, so (he’d say): ‘Go away!’” In excerpts of ‘Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers’ released late Saturday, members of the royal family spoke admiringly of the late Duke of Edinburgh’s barbecuing skills. “Every barbecue that I’ve ever been on, the Duke of Edinburgh has been there cooking,” said Prince William, Philip’s oldest grandson. “He’s definitely a dab hand at the barbecue ... I can safely say there’s never been a case of food poisoning in the family that’s attributed to the Duke of Edinburgh.” The program, which was filmed before and after Philip’s death on April 9, was originally conceived to mark his 100th birthday in June.

Relations between France and the U.S. have sunk to their lowest level in decades. (NYT) The U.S. and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling a defense contract worth at least $60 billion. President Emmanuel Macron of France was so enraged that he recalled the country’s ambassadors to both nations. Australia approached the new administration soon after President Biden’s inauguration. The conventionally powered French subs, the Australians feared, would be obsolete by the time they were delivered. The Biden administration, bent on containing China, saw the deal as a way to cement ties with a Pacific ally. But the unlikely winner is Britain, who played an early role in brokering the alliance. For its prime minister, Boris Johnson, who will meet this coming week with Biden at the White House and speak at the U.N., it is his first tangible victory in a campaign to make post-Brexit Britain a player on the global stage.

Hong Kong’s first ‘patriots-only’ election kicks off (Reuters) Fewer than 5,000 Hong Kong people from mostly pro-establishment circles began voting on Sunday for candidates to an election committee, vetted as loyal to Beijing, who will pick the city’s next China-backed leader and some of its legislature. Pro-democracy candidates are nearly absent from Hong Kong’s first election since Beijing overhauled the city’s electoral system to ensure that “only patriots” rule China’s freest city. The election committee will select 40 seats in the revamped Legislative Council in December, and choose a chief executive in March. Changes to the political system are the latest in a string of moves—including a national security law that punishes anything Beijing deems as subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces—that have placed the international financial hub on an authoritarian path. Most prominent democratic activists and politicians are now in jail or have fled abroad.

The Remote-Control Killing Machine (Politico/NYT) For 14 years, Israel wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Then they came up with a way to do it while using a trained sniper who was more than 1,000 miles away—and fired remotely. It was also the debut test of a high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera eyes, operated via satellite and capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. The souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun now joins the combat drone in the arsenal of high-tech weapons for remote targeted killing. But unlike a drone, the robotic machine gun draws no attention in the sky, where a drone could be shot down, and can be situated anywhere, qualities likely to reshape the worlds of security and espionage.

Israeli army arrests last 2 of 6 Palestinian prison escapees (AP) Israeli forces on Sunday arrested the last two of six Palestinian prisoners who escaped a maximum-security Israeli prison two weeks ago, closing an intense, embarrassing episode that exposed deep security flaws in Israel and turned the fugitives into Palestinian heroes. The Israeli military said the two men surrendered in Jenin, their hometown in the occupied West Bank, after they were surrounded at a hideout that had been located with the help of “accurate intelligence.” The prisoners all managed to tunnel out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel on Sept. 6. The bold escape dominated newscasts for days and sparked heavy criticism of Israel’s prison service. According to various reports, the men dug a hole in the floor of their shared cell undetected over several months and managed to slip past a sleeping prison guard after emerging through a hole outside the facility. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have celebrated the escape and held demonstrations in support of the prisoners. Taking part in attacks against the Israeli military or even civilians is a source of pride for many Palestinians, who view it as legitimate resistance to military occupation.

Jaw-dropping moments in WSJ's bombshell Facebook investigation (CNN Business) This week the Wall Street Journal released a series of scathing articles about Facebook, citing leaked internal documents that detail in remarkably frank terms how the company is not only well aware of its platforms’ negative effects on users but also how it has repeatedly failed to address them. Here are some of the more jaw-dropping moments from the Journal’s series. In the Journal’s report on Instagram’s impact on teens, it cites Facebook’s own researchers’ slide deck, stating the app harms mental health. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, according to the WSJ. Another reads: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression ... This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” In 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a change in Facebook’s algorithm was intended to improve interactions among friends and family and reduce the amount of professionally produced content in their feeds. But according to the documents published by the Journal, staffers warned the change was having the opposite effect: Facebook was becoming an angrier place. A team of data scientists put it bluntly: “Misinformation, toxicity and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares,” they said, according to the Journal’s report.

#headlines #news

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laliberty · 4 years

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Left-wing Democrats in Congress have decided on a new version of “Medicare for All.” Turns out its going to be nothing like the Medicare program seniors are used to. What they have in mind is what we see in Canada.

Everyone (except American Indians and veterans) will be in the same system. Health care will be nominally free. Access to it will be determined by bureaucratic decision making.

Here’s what to expect.

Overproviding to the Healthy, Underproviding to the Sick. The first thing politicians learn about health care is this: most people are healthy. In fact, they are very heathy – spending only a few dollars on medical care in any given year. By contrast, 50% of the health care dollars will be spent on only 5% of the population in a typical year.

Politicians in charge of health care, however, can’t afford to spend half their budget on only 5% of the voters, including those who may be too sick to vote at all. So, there is ever-present pressure to divert spending away from the sick toward the healthy.

In Canada and in Britain, patients see primary care physicians more often than Americans do. In fact, the ease with which relatively healthy people can see doctors is probably what accounts for the popularity of these system in both countries.

But once they get to the doctor’s office British and Canadians patients receive fewer services. For real medical problems, Canadians often go to hospital emergency rooms – where the average wait in Canada is four hours. In Britain, one of every ten emergency room patients leave without ever seeing a doctor.

A study by former Congressional Budget Office director June O’Neill and her husband Dave O’Neill found that:

The proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice the U.S. rate.

Three times as many Canadian women have never had a pap smear.

Fewer than 20% of Canadian men have ever been tested for prostate cancer, compared with about 50% of U.S. men.

Only 10% of adult Canadians have ever had a colonoscopy, compared with 30% of US adults.

These differences in screening may partly explain why the mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cancer, and 13% higher for colorectal cancer.

A study by Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron and his colleagues found that:

Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners as the U.S. and one-third as many MRI scanners.

The rate at which the British provide coronary bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth of the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds of the U.S. rate.

The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients age 45 to 84 and nine times higher for patients 85 years of age or older.

We can see the political pressure to provide services to the healthy at the expense of the sick in our own country’s Medicare program. Courtesy of Obamacare, every senior is entitled to a free wellness exam, which most doctors regard as virtually worthless. Yet if elderly patients endure an extended hospital stay, they can face unlimited out-of-pocket costs.

Rationing by Waiting. Although Canada has no limits on how frequently a relatively healthy patient may see a doctor, it imposes strict limits on the purchase of medical technology and on the availability of specialists. Hospitals are subject to global budgets – which limit their spending, regardless of actual health needs.

In addition to having to wait many hours in emergency rooms, Canadians have some of the longest waits in the developed world for care that could cure diseases and save lives. The most recent study by the Fraser Institute finds that

In 2016, Canadians waited an average of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner to receipt of treatment by a specialist – the longest wait time in over a quarter of a century of such measurements.

Patents waited 4.1 weeks for a CT scan, 10.8 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound.

Similarly, a survey of hospital administrators in 2003 found that:

21% of Canadian hospital administrators, but less than 1% of American administrators, said that it would take over three weeks to do a biopsy for possible breast cancer on a 50-year-old woman.

50% of Canadian administrators versus none of their American counterparts said that it would take over six months for a 65-year-old to undergo a routine hip replacement surgery.

Jumping the Queue. Aneurin Bevan, father of the British National Health Service, declared, “the essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth is not advantaged.” Yet, more than thirty years after the NHS was founded an official task force (The Black Report) found little evidence that the creation of the NHS had equalized health care access. Another study (The Acheson Report), fifty years after the NHS founding, concluded that access had become more unequal in the years between the two studies.

In Canada, studies find that the wealthy and powerful have significantly greater access to medical specialists than less-well-connected poor. High-profile patients enjoy more frequent services, shorter waiting times and greater choice of specialists. Moreover, among the nonelderly white population, low-income Canadians are 22% more likely to be in poor health than their U.S. counterparts.

These results should not be surprising. Rationing by waiting is as much an obstacle to care as rationing by price. It seems that the talents and skills that allow people to earn high incomes are similar to the talents and skills that are useful in successfully circumventing bureaucratic waiting lines.

No Exit. The worst features of the U.S. health care system are the way in which impersonal bureaucracies interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. Those are also the worst features of Canadian medical care. In Canada, when patients see a doctor the visit is free. In the U.S., the visit is almost free – with patients paying only 10 cents out of pocket for every dollar they spend, on average. In both countries, people primarily pay for care with time, not with money. The two systems are far more similar than they are different.

In Britain, private sector medicine allows patients to obtain care they are supposed to get for free from government. Middle and upper-middle income employees frequently have private health insurance, obtained through an employer. A much larger number of Britons use private doctors from time to time. The rule seems to be, “If your condition is serious, go private.”

Canada, by contrast, has basically outlawed private sector medical services that are theoretically provided by the government. If doctors, patients and entrepreneurs think of better ways of meeting patient needs they have no way of acting on those thoughts.

This is where the U.S. system is so much better—even though, as in the Canadian system, U.S. Medicare pays doctors the same way it did in the last century, before there were iPhones and email messages. Many U.S. employer plans are just as bad.

But because U.S. employers are free to meet the needs of their employees rather than live under the dictates of a politically pressured bureaucracy, one of the fastest growing employee benefits is concierge care. For as little as $50 a month for a young adult, patients can have 24/7 access to a doctor by phone and email and all the normal services that primary care physicians provide.

Uber-type house calls, consultations by phone, email and Skype, cellphone apps that allow people to manage their own care and other innovations in telemedicine are taking some parts of the private sector by storm.

These are the kinds of innovations that would be outlawed if the congressional Democrats have their way.

For more on these and other issues, interested readers may want to consult my congressional testimony, delivered with Linda Gorman, Devon Herrick and Robert Sade.

#politics #Health Care #libertarian

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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What Do Republicans Believe About The Role Of Government

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-do-republicans-believe-about-the-role-of-government/

What Do Republicans Believe About The Role Of Government

Civil Rights United States Citizens In Puerto Rico

What Do Republicans Believe?

The 2016 Republican Party Platform declares: “We support the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state. We further recognize the historic significance of the 2012 local referendum in which a 54 percent majority voted to end Puerto Rico’s current status as a U.S. territory, and 61 percent chose statehood over options for sovereign nationhood. We support the federally sponsored political status referendum authorized and funded by an Act of Congress in 2014 to ascertain the aspirations of the people of Puerto Rico. Once the 2012 local vote for statehood is ratified, Congress should approve an enabling act with terms for Puerto Rico’s future admission as the 51st state of the Union”.

America Should Deport Illegal Immigrants

Republicans believe that illegal immigrants, no matter the reason they are in this country, should be forcibly removed from the U.S. Although illegal immigrants are often motivated to come to the U.S. by companies who hire them, Republicans generally believe that the focus of the law should be on the illegal immigrants and not on the corporations that hire them.

The Party Thats Actually Best For The Economy

Many analyses look at which party is best for the economy. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Democratic presidents since World War II have performed much better than Republicans. On average, Democratic presidents grew the economy 4.4% each year versus 2.5% for Republicans.

A study by Princeton University economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found that the economy performs better when the president is a Democrat. They report that by many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large. Between Truman and Obama, growth was 1.8% higher under Democrats than Republicans.

A Hudson Institute study found that the six years with the best growth were evenly split between Republican and Democrat presidents.

Most of these evaluations measure growth during the presidents term in office. But no president has control over the growth added during his first year. The budget for that fiscal year was already set by the previous president, so you should compare the gross domestic product at the end of the presidents last budget to the end of his predecessors last budget.

For Obama, that would be the fiscal year from October 1, 2009, to September 30, 2018. Thats FY 2010 through FY 2017. During that time, GDP increased from $15.6 trillion to $17.7 trillion, or by 14%. Thats 1.7% a year.

The chart below ranks the presidents since 1929 on the average annual increase in GDP.

President

1.4%

A president would have better growth if he had no recession.

Read Also: Leader Of The Radical Republicans

A Conservative Vision Of Government

Peter Wehner&Michael Gerson

Winter 2014

The past few years have put the size and role of government at center stage of our national politics. But the raging debates about how much Washington is doing and spending have involved almost exclusively yes-or-no questions about the left’s vision of government. The right has been very clear about what government should not be doing, or should be doing much less of, but it has not had nearly enough to say about just what government should;do.

It is not hard to see why. The Obama years have set a high-water mark for the size and reach of the federal government, including a post-World War II record for federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product at 25.2% . The United States has amassed more than $6 trillion in debt since January 2009. Prior to Obama, no president had submitted a budget with a trillion-dollar deficit; he has submitted four of them. And even as the administration’s projections for the coming years promise smaller deficits, they also promise a larger and more expensive government than Americans have ever seen.

Republicans have argued that unrestrained spending, and particularly unreformed entitlements, will burden the nation with unmanageable levels of debt in the coming decades and starve the budget of funds for other essential purposes. They further contend that a large, meddlesome, intrusive state not only undermines the private economy but also crowds out civil society and enervates civic character.

Regulating The Economy Democratic Style

The Democratic Party is generally considered more willing to intervene in the economy, subscribing to the belief that government power is needed to regulate businesses that ignore social interests in the pursuit of earning a return for shareholders. This intervention can come in the form of regulation or taxation to support social programs. Opponents often describe the Democratic approach to governing as “tax and spend.”

Also Check: We Are All Republicansâwe Are All Federalists

Government Should Help People

It is the role of government to help people. And it should help to solve problems. While Democrats, like Republicans, are capitalists, everyone believe in the free market. Their disagreements are over degree. How much government regulation is okay? The Left clearly believes that government should play a larger role in our lives. Among those roles are regulating business and protecting consumers. Government should also help people with poverty. Basically, the Left favors more government. The Right favors less government.

Republicanism In The Thirteen British Colonies In North America

In recent years a debate has developed over the role of republicanism in the American Revolution and in the British radicalism of the 18th century. For many decades the consensus was that liberalism, especially that of John Locke, was paramount and that republicanism had a distinctly secondary role.

The new interpretations were pioneered by J.G.A. Pocock, who argued in The Machiavellian Moment that, at least in the early 18th century, republican ideas were just as important as liberal ones. Pocock’s view is now widely accepted.Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood pioneered the argument that the American founding fathers were more influenced by republicanism than they were by liberalism. Cornell University professor Isaac Kramnick, on the other hand, argues that Americans have always been highly individualistic and therefore Lockean.Joyce Appleby has argued similarly for the Lockean influence on America.

In the decades before the American Revolution , the intellectual and political leaders of the colonies studied history intently, looking for models of good government. They especially followed the development of republican ideas in England. Pocock explained the intellectual sources in America:

The commitment of most Americans to these republican values made the American Revolution inevitable. Britain was increasingly seen as corrupt and hostile to republicanism, and as a threat to the established liberties the Americans enjoyed.

Recommended Reading: How Many Republicans Voted

Republican Ideological Divides On Government Role And Performance

Among Republicans and Republican leaners, those who describe themselves as conservative are more critical of government performance than those who describe their political views as moderate or liberal.

The largest ideological gap among Republicans is over the job the government is doing strengthening the economy. Overall, 46% of moderate and liberal Republicans and Republican leaners say the government is doing a good job strengthening the economy. By contrast, conservative Republicans and leaners are 20 points less likely to hold this view .

Conservative Republicans are less likely than moderates to say the government is doing a good job on a range of other issues, including keeping the country safe from terrorism , helping people get out of poverty and managing the nations immigration system . But on poverty and immigration, fewer than half of both groups say the government is doing a good job.

There are no issues for which moderate and liberal Republicans are more critical of government performance than conservatives. However, there are several issues for which there are hardly any ideological gaps among Republicans, including protecting the environment and ensuring safe food and medicine.

Ensuring access to quality education is another area where most moderate and liberal Republicans say the government should play a major role , but no more than about half of conservatives say the same.

Senator Jim Inhofe Republican Of Oklahoma

Political Parties: Crash Course Government and Politics #40

Incoming chairman of the Senate committee on the environment and public works

Inhofe is the poster boy for Republican climate change denialism, not only for his stridency on the issue but because he is the once and future leader of the key Senate committee on environmental policy. Inhofe will be able to lead the committee for two years before running up against term limits . This time around, Inhofes committee is expected to focus on transportation and infrastructure bills.

But it seems likely that Inhofe will devote some energy to blocking the regulation of carbon emissions. We think this because on 12 November he told the Washington Post: As we enter a new Congress, I will do everything in my power to rein in and shed light on the EPAs unchecked regulations.

Inhofe has climate change the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people, has said God, not humans, controls the weather, and has denied climate change in many other ways.

Also Check: Republicans 2016

Reviewing And Using The Lesson

What is republican government?

Define “common welfare.” Give examples of how your school helps the common welfare.

Define “civic virtue.” Give examples of people with civic virtue in your school and community.

Where was civic virtue taught in early America?

Describe a situation in which your interests might conflict with the common welfare.

Explain these terms: republican government, representative, interests, common welfare, civic virtue.

ISBN 0-89818-169-0

Do The Republicans Even Believe In Democracy Anymore

They pay lip service to it, but they actively try to undermine its institutions.

By Michael Tomasky

Contributing Opinion Writer

A number of observers, myself included, have written pieces in recent years arguing that the Republican Party is no longer simply trying to compete with and defeat the Democratic Party on a level playing field. Today, rather than simply playing the game, the Republicans are simultaneously trying to rig the games rules so that they never lose.

The aggressive gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court just declared to be a matter beyond its purview; the voter suppression schemes; the dubious proposals that havent gone anywhere yet like trying to award presidential electoral votes by congressional district rather than by state, a scheme that Republicans in five states considered after the 2012 election and that is still discussed: These are not ideas aimed at invigorating democracy. They are hatched and executed for the express purpose of essentially fixing elections.

We have been brought up to believe that American political parties are the same that they are similar creatures with similar traits and similar ways of behaving. Political science spent decades teaching us this. The idea that one party has become so radically different from the other, despite mountains of evidence, is a tough sell.

Or is there?

So were not there right now. But we may well be on the way, and its abundantly clear who wants to take us there.

Don’t Miss: Democrat And Republican Switch Platforms

Figure 26 Proportion Of Each Group Who Thought That Us Businesses Should Do More About Global Warming

US businesses should do more to deal with global warming. Since 1997, majorities of Democrats and Independents have believe that US business should do more about global warming. In 2020, 92% of Democrats and 69% of Independents believe that businesses should do more. Minorities of Republicans have favored increased action from businesses, with all-time highs of 5859% in 1997 and 1998. The partisan gap is 49 percentage points in 2020.

Average people should do more to deal with global warming. Since 1997, majorities of Democrats and Independents have believed that average people should do more about global warming. In 2020, 90% of Democrats and 70% of Independents think that average people should do more. Smaller proportions of Republicans have also favored increased individual action, with all-time highs of 60% in 1997 and 1998. The partisan gap is 43 percentage points in 2020.

John Maynard Keynes Is A Good Guy

John Maynard Keynes was a 20th century economist. Most Democratic economic theory derives from his ideas. Keynes put forth the idea that supports a government role in regulating the business cycle. For instance, Keynes believed in the idea of stimulus funds as a solution for recession. Traditionally, deficits don’t bother the Left. Spending money is fine if it produces growth. Growth pays for itself. Although the Right often accuses the Left of uncontrolled spending, both sides have created much debt. They argue over the kind of debt. The Left prefers welfare debt. The Right prefers military debt. That’s one example.

Don’t Miss: Are There More Rich Republicans Or Democrats

Which Republican President Inspired The Teddy Bear

Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican U.S. president from 1901 to 1909, inspired the teddy bear when he refused to shoot a tied-up bear on a hunting trip. The story reached toy maker Morris Michtom, who decided to make stuffed bears as a dedication to Roosevelt. The name comes from Roosevelts nickname, Teddy.

Republican Party, byname Grand Old Party , in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Democratic Party. During the 19th century the Republican Party stood against the extension of slavery to the countrys new territories and, ultimately, for slaverys complete abolition. During the 20th and 21st centuries the party came to be associated with laissez-fairecapitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The party acquired the acronym GOP, widely understood as Grand Old Party, in the 1870s. The partys official logo, the elephant, is derived from a cartoon by Thomas Nast and also dates from the 1870s.

Are Liberals To Blame For Our Crisis Of Faith In Government

Save this story for later.

Content

Do you trust the federal government? When voters were asked that question in December, 1958, by pollsters from a center now called the American National Election Studies, at the University of Michigan, seventy-three per cent said yes, they had confidence in the government to do the right thing either almost all the time or most of the time. Six years later, they were asked basically the same question, and seventy-seven per cent said yes.

Pollsters ask the question regularly. In a Pew survey from April, 2021, only twenty-four per cent of respondents said yes. And that represented an uptick. During Obamas and Trumps Presidencies, the figure was sometimes as low as seventeen per cent. Sixty years ago, an overwhelming majority of Americans said they had faith in the government. Today, an overwhelming majority say they dont. Who is to blame?

Eight months later, Ronald Reagan, a man who opposed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare, which he called an attempt to impose socialism, and who wanted to make Social Security voluntarya man who essentially ran against the New Deal and the Great Society, a.k.a. the welfare statewas elected President. He defeated the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, by almost ten percentage points in the popular vote. In this present crisis, Reagan said in his Inaugural Address, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.

Shopping

Read Also: Trump Calling Iowans Stupid

What The World Thinks About Climate Change In 7 Charts

On April 22, leaders and representatives from more than 150 countries will gather at the United Nations to sign the global climate change agreement reached in Paris in December. Pew Research Centers spring 2015 survey found that people around the world are concerned about climate change and want their governments to take action. Here are seven key findings from the poll:

1Majorities in all 40 nations polled say climate change is a serious problem, and a global median of 54% believe it is a very serious problem. Still, the intensity of concern varies substantially across regions and nations. Latin Americans and sub-Saharan Africans are particularly worried about climate change. Americans and Chinese, whose countries have the highest overall carbon dioxide emissions, are less concerned.

2People in countries with high per-capita levels of carbon emissions are less intensely concerned about climate change. Among the nations we surveyed, the U.S. has the highest carbon emissions per capita, but it is among the least concerned about climate change and its potential impact. Others in this category are Australia, Canada and Russia. Publics in Africa, Latin America and Asia, many of which have very low emissions per capita, are frequently the most concerned about the negative effects of climate change.

Also Check: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

The Founders Studied History

Introduction: Crash Course U.S. Government and Politics

The Founders studied the history of governments. They were very interested in what they read about the government of the Roman Republic. It was located in what is now the country of Italy. The Roman Republic existed more than 2,000 years before our nation began.

The Founders liked what they read about the Roman Republic. They learned some important ideas from their study of the government of ancient Rome. They used some of these ideas when they created our government.

You May Like: Democrats Switched Platforms

Illegal Immigration Is A Bigger Problem That Deportation Doesn’t Solve

People emigrate to America for a chance at a better life. We have always been a welcoming land. Democrats believe immigrants enter America with hope. We have a responsibility to be a beacon. The Left supports ways to allow illegal immigrants to stay in this country. This is particularly important if those people are paying taxes and working jobs. Most immigrants contribute to our country. They work hard jobs. They pay taxes. Democrats support penalizing companies who hire illegal immigrants as a first step to curbing illegal immigration.

Democrats believe that most immigration issues, including illegal immigration, are human rights issues. America has an obligation to help persecuted people. When they come to America, we should welcome them, not attack them.

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differentnutpeace · 3 years

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Trying To Assess COVID's Impact On Arab-American Communities Is Complicated

Dr. Hassan Fehmi started his podcast, Arab American Cafe, in October 2020 because he felt like Arab American perspectives were not widely represented in the podcasting industry. Initially, the English and Arabic conversations focused on politics, but soon enough they started talking about the pandemic and other health care issues affecting the community. หวย บอล เกมส์ กีฬา คาสิโนออนไลน์

"My partner and I are healthcare professionals, so it only made sense that we start talking about health care," says Fehmi, a nephrologist and specialist in kidney disease based in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country's highest concentration of Arab American communities. "We were actually able to share with our audience some of the relevant information about COVID."

One of their recent episodes provided answers to listeners about COVID-19 vaccines and masking among other public health questions in Arabic.

"It's not only because we are Arab Americans and we care about our community. It's because we are doctors and we care about the community at large," he says. "You can't have a group of individuals who are at risk of having all of those problems and don't really try to spend some time and energy to understand them."

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As Pandemic Deaths Add Up, Racial Disparities Persist — And In Some Cases Worsen

He found that people who are mostly Arabic speakers had fewer resources for information, especially earlier on in the pandemic. They relied on Arab satellite channels, social media, or messaging platforms, like Whatsapp, where misinformation was widespread. Much of the needed information is easy to find in English, but not the same could be said for Arabic.

"There was some concerted effort on our part as doctors and the local organizations and our community, at least here in southeast Michigan, to actually start targeting this community with the correct information," Fehmi says.

Arab communities in the U.S. have significant COVID high-risk factors, according to Fehmi. But it's difficult to understand how much Arab Americans and other people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa (MENA) have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We don't have data. We don't have a checkmark that says MENA or Arab American," Fehmi says. "When somebody gets admitted to the hospital, it's very hard to identify who they are if they are unable to identify themselves."

Dr. Hassan Bencheqroun, an interventional pulmonary and critical care physician, based in San Diego County says that he and several colleagues started noticing late last year that Arab American and immigrant communities were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in terms of infections and hospital visits. In the case of Arab communities, he saw entire families come to the emergency room together.

His colleague, Dr. Raed Al-Naser, president of the San Diego Chapter of the National Arab American Medical Association, contacted other Arab American doctors in different parts of the country, such as Michigan, New York and New Jersey. They saw similar trends.

"It's very anecdotal because we don't have specific studies, but those that work in the Intensive Care Unit, we started to notice in some chapters, especially on the East Coast and and so on, there's anywhere between seven to 10% up to 11% of the admissions to the ICU are of Arab Americans," Bencheqroun says.

Arab Americans and the MENA checkbox

The problem is two-fold. Arab Americans and people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa are currently classified as white by standards set by the White House Office of Management and Budget. All federal agencies — including the U.S. Census Bureau, the country's largest statistical organization — must follow these standards and some individual hospitals, municipalities and counties that follow federal standards do the same.

But with no separate checkbox for MENA origins on the census and other government forms, understanding the exact size of the population is difficult. This can mean that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Arab communities can be hard to measure.

NATIONAL

Biden Wants Census To See 'Invisible' Groups: LGBTQ, Middle Eastern, North African

Although there has been a decades-long push by advocacy groups such as the Arab American Institute to add MENA as a category for ethnicity, the Census Bureau decided against it under the Trump administration in 2018.

"The continued absences of this ethnic category contributes to erasing us, our living, working," Michigan Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib said last year during a U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on the census.

Tlaib, who is Palestinian American, said that she did not see herself represented on the census form.

"You are making us invisible," she said to then-Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, adding that she doesn't tell other people how to identify themselves.

The lack of a separate MENA checkbox is important to address especially because it's related to how the community can receive federal funding, Tlaib said, as reported by NPR in 2020. It's also crucial to determining language assistance resources, along with health research, and generally how the community is going to be treated.

Higher risk, yet invisible

Bencheqroun says that there is a prevalence of pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure, high body mass index (BMI), and cardiovascular diabetes in Arab communities. A high rate of smoking is also prevalent among many Arab Americans.

"There is a lot of diversity in the Arab American community. I don't want to brush all the Arab American community with one brush," Fehmi says.

More recent immigrants and refugees, who lack social or economic structures to protect them, are currently the most at risk, according to Al-Naser.

"This particular group has really special needs. They lack the financial resources. They usually live under poverty level. They are not well insured, and they are less educated in general," Al-Naser says. "This is the most vulnerable group to health care disparities," he says. "And their needs have been denied by this unjust classification."

CORONAVIRUS UPDATES

Early Data Shows Striking Racial Disparities In Who's Getting The COVID-19 Vaccine

In addition to being at a higher risk, there are other barriers that prevent Arab immigrants and refugees from seeking help.

"Immigrant and refugee community members have been on the front lines of this pandemic," says Zahra Ali, development and communications manager at the Arab-American Family Support Center, a nonprofit organization providing services to immigrant and refugee families in New York City, many of whom are Arab.

Ali says that many immigrants and refugees work in the foodservice sector or hospitality industries, where there are no options to work remotely. The difficulty of social distancing on the job is further compounded by the fact that many of these workers live in multigenerational homes and overcrowded dwellings, making it more difficult to contain infections.

According to a recent report released by the Arab-American Family Support Center, 26% of respondents indicated that they experienced COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive for the disease. Many felt reluctant to get tested due to the lack of medical access and fear of being asked about their immigration status or other immigration-related repercussions.

Community members and organizations try to fill the gap

Ramah Awad, a community organizer with Majdal Center, which is an Arab resource and community center in El Cajon, says that her organization partnered with San Diego County to ensure public health information was relayed to their communities in effective ways through a community health worker.

"The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the county have materials in Arabic, but there was still this gap in information, and so we were seeking to fill that gap," Awad says.

Ramah Awad, community organizer at Majdal center in San Diego County, Calif., carrying a box of PPE.

Nao Kabashima

In Southeast Michigan, there was a similar effort as well when physicians and local organizations started noticing that some Arab community members were not getting information from trusted sources, according to Fehmi.

But there's only so much community organizations can do to help Arab communities without proper data collection. Awad says it's hard to find out more about the needs of Arab communities or basic information about their education levels. In turn, it's challenging to shape outreach efforts.

"If there's not the data to back that up, then we are oftentimes going off of informal needs assessment, anecdotes from individual community members," Awad says. "But with the data, I think it would empower us to better apply for funding, get grants, develop programming, develop services that are meeting the specific needs."

To some advocates, collecting more precise census data about Arab Americans is important to understanding public health inequalities among other issues. The hope is it could lead to a better allocation of resources.

Hadia Bakkar is an intern on NPR's National Desk.

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theliberaltony · 6 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

At the Clinica Sierra Vista offices in Fresno, the heart of California’s Central Valley, Melissa Reyna and her colleagues have spent the past several weeks prepping for open enrollment, the time of year when people who buy private insurance on the state’s health insurance marketplace can pick a plan for the following year’s coverage.

This year’s period, which kicked off Wednesday, comes after several tumultuous months for the Affordable Care Act that included multiple attempts by Congress to repeal and replace the law and numerous policy changes from the Trump administration, one of which left many states scrambling to determine insurance prices just days before the plans go on sale.

But the week before open enrollment began, Clinica Sierra Vista was calm. “It’s business as usual,” said Reyna, who is in charge of the clinic’s program to help people sign up for coverage.

As insurers, state governments and the more than 20 million people across the country who buy private insurance prepare for Obamacare’s fifth open enrollment period, the nation’s largest state has managed to shield its residents from the full impact of a very chaotic year in health policy. Unlike some other states, where insurers are fleeing and rates are jumping, California is doing pretty well by most metrics.

Although news coverage has focused on states where the marketplaces have been upended, California offers a different view into the soul of the Affordable Care Act: What does the law look like in a state that wants to make it work? California has wholeheartedly embraced the law, using it to get insurance to millions of people. It has also successfully deflected changes by the Trump administration that have caused insurance prices to go up in other states. And yet, despite its best efforts, several million people are still uninsured.

When it comes to the marketplaces themselves, California has been particularly successful at getting insurers to participate and maintaining relatively stable prices. Although about half the counties in the U.S. have just one insurer willing to sell coverage on the ACA marketplaces, all but five of California’s 58 counties have at least two.1 Eighty-two percent of Californians who used the marketplace to obtain coverage for 2017 will have at least three plans to choose from for next year, according to Covered California, the state’s insurance marketplace. Taking into account the kinds of plans people have purchased historically, the average price increase for 2018 is just 12.5 percent.2 The state is expecting nearly as many people to sign up this year as they have in previous years, even as enrollment is likely to decline nationally.

Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, the state’s private health insurance marketplace, spread the word about the open enrollment period in fall of 2014 in front of Los Angeles’s city hall. Three years later, people gathered in the same place to protest congressional Republicans’ efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

GETTY IMAGES

And California hasn’t just been content with making the law work within its borders — it also has its eyes set on keeping it going nationally. After the Trump administration announced that it would be cutting advertising for open enrollment, money that’s mostly spent on the 39 state marketplaces run by the federal government, the executive director of Covered California held a press briefing in Washington, D.C., to explain that if the federal government spent comparatively as much as California does, an additional 2.1 million people would be insured at the end of three years.3 California later joined a court case with 17 other states asking a judge to force the Trump administration to keep reimbursing insurers for discounts they provide to the poorest enrollees, even though it had mostly found a workaround for its own residents.

But California is also confronting challenges keeping insurance affordable and accessible for everyone, concerns that are national and difficult to fix: Health care is really expensive in the U.S., which means so is health insurance. And even though the Affordable Care Act provides subsidies for people making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line, people who earn more than that are finding it tough to pay the full price for coverage. Others fall through gaps in the law that disqualify them for subsidies, despite being in families with low incomes. Those problems — combined with the ongoing difficulty of insuring immigrants, both documented and undocumented — have left about 3 million people in California uninsured.

In 2013, before the ACA’s biggest provisions kicked in, California had one of the highest uninsured rates, between 15 percent and 20 percent among non-elderly people,4 which was surprising in some ways. Unlike states with large rural populations, which have long struggled to recruit insurers and provide care to rural residents at reasonable costs, the bulk of California’s population lives in urban areas. The state’s gross domestic product is about the size of France’s, and it has long had pretty liberal policies for welfare and entitlement programs.

But even though it’s a wealthy state, many of its residents are very poor. It also has a lot of undocumented immigrants, who are barred from being covered with federal dollars. And it’s economy fluctuates, regularly swapping deficits with a balanced budget. In the pre-ACA era, that made it difficult to find a consistent funding stream to pay for coverage, said Richard Figueroa, who is a director with the California Endowment, one of the state’s largest health-focused philanthropies, and who previously worked on health policy under both Democratic and Republican state administrations.

“The sheer volume of uninsured, the millions of people, it just costs a lot of money,” Figueroa said. “And without some ability to leverage federal dollars, it was just a really tough nut to crack.”

California had tried in the past to overhaul its insurance system so that it would cover more people. It had established a high-risk pool for those with pre-existing conditions. It had expanded Medi-Cal — the state’s Medicaid program — to higher-income groups, and it ran county programs that provided limited care to the state’s poorest residents. Still, when the ACA passed, about 7 million people didn’t have insurance. Today, it’s fewer than one in 10, and of those remaining uninsured, half are undocumented immigrants. If you exclude that group, fewer than 5 percent of Californians are uninsured, according to Covered California.

That dramatic drop is the result of the state going all in when the ACA became law. With the new stream of federal money to expand Medicaid to cover people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line and to help subsidize private insurance premiums, California began providing coverage for undocumented children using state dollars.

It also adopted the ideas behind the ACA with vigor. Many of the former private insurance plans that weren’t compliant with strict Obamacare rules on services that must be covered were ended,5 which ultimately made the marketplace plans cheaper. (That’s because people who already had coverage, and were therefore more likely to be healthy, then became part of the same risk pool as people who were previously uninsured and more likely to have health problems.6) And to encourage people to sign up, its open enrollment period still runs from Nov. 1 through Jan. 31, twice as long as that of the federally run marketplaces.

As a result, California has gone back and forth with Colorado for the highest ratio of healthy to sick enrollees of any state. And with that healthy balance have come relatively stable insurance marketplaces that haven’t seen the kind of dramatic price increases that have plagued other states.

And it has also been fending off what the Trump administration has been throwing its way. Take the recent decision by Trump to stop reimbursing insurers for a discount they give to the lowest-income enrollees, which rocked some states’ health insurance markets just days before open enrollment was set to begin. Anticipating the move, California figured out how to add the cost to plans in a way that kept buyers from seeing much of an increase in the price they pay.

Once again, California held a news conference to explain how the complicated actuarial maneuver would work — weeks before Trump had officially announced the payments would end. The state was so successful at staving off the price increases on consumers that a judge cited it as among the reasons he denied the 18-state requested injunction to keep the payments going, saying that it wasn’t clear who would be harmed by their termination.

Even though the private marketplaces are the part of the Affordable Care Act that gets the lion’s share of attention, the law’s expansion of Medicaid has in some ways affected the largest number of people nationwide. Perhaps nowhere is the impact of that change more clear than in California, where nearly 3.7 million people who had little hope of affording full-price insurance — mostly people of color — gained Medicaid coverage.

More minorities than whites gained coverage under ACA

Change in number and share of uninsured among people younger than 65 in California from 2013 to 2016, by race/ethnicity

UNINSURED RATE RACE/ETHNICITY 2013 2016 CHANGE IN NUMBER OF INSURED, IN THOUSANDS Latino 21.4% 12.3% 1,200

–

African American (non-Latino) 13.8 5.8 148

–

Asian 13.6 5.5 341

–

White (non-Latino) 10.3 5.8 532

–

Source: California Health Interview Survey

But the state didn’t just sign up millions of previously ineligible people for Medicaid coverage. It also increased the services available to Medicaid recipients by using money made available through the ACA to expand community health centers. As a result, Californians think Medi-Cal is more important than ever. “It’s pretty incredible to increase your Medicaid program as dramatically as we did and not have glitches,” Figueroa said.

That doesn’t mean California has been without Affordable Care Act woes. The nation’s second-largest insurer, Anthem, which has about 19 percent of the Covered California market this year, decided to stop selling individual plans in half the state’s counties for 2018. That highlights one of the central challenges of the Affordable Care Act: The marketplaces rely on participation from insurers to work. And it’s the insurers that have the ultimate say as to whether the profits and incentives are sufficient.

But California — just like other states — has an even bigger hurdle: Health care is expensive.

Bill Carmany and his wife live in Los Angeles, where they own a small business that provides legal services to immigrants. Although they qualified for a subsidy to buy insurance on the ACA marketplace last year, their income this year is a little too high, and they will have to pay full price for 2018.

Before the ACA, Carmany had been denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. He and his wife managed to get insurance through their business but were suddenly dropped by the plan. They then turned to Covered California but weren’t happy with their first plan (it left his wife driving long distances to get to a doctor in that network). After switching again last year, they have an insurer they are really happy with. Even though Covered California has made a point of advertising that those who shop around may find even cheaper plans for 2018, Carmany and his wife are loath to have to switch doctors again.

“Just because our income is going up doesn’t mean we feel it,” Carmany said. “Our other costs have also gone up, so it doesn’t feel like we’re doing better.”

The high cost of care is a problem across the country, and no matter how involved the state is, premiums will remain high. One short-term solution that California’s legislators have advocated for is raising the income limit to allow more people to qualify for subsidies. But that’s a political non-starter in Washington right now, and without federal funding, it’s unlikely to happen.

California Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat, spoke in favor of the the Affordable Care Act at a rally in Los Angeles in January.

Damian Dovarganes / AP

And just as California is pushing to make the ACA work, it’s also looking at a future without it.

The state’s elected officials have spent considerable time this year pushing back on Republican efforts to repeal and replace parts of the ACA, but they have also been pushing forward on a bold proposal to create a single-payer system. The hope is that it would cover the people who are still uninsured — a group that includes, among others, people who don’t qualify for subsidies but are by no means wealthy in a state with an extraordinarily high cost of living, as well as undocumented immigrants who currently can’t access any public assistance.

In many ways, this conversation about a single-payer system is happening precisely because Obamacare has worked so well in California — at its best, the ACA can push the insured rate to 90 percent of the population and keep prices stable. But that can still leave millions uninsured, and stable prices don’t necessarily mean low prices. Health care is expensive. If universal coverage is the goal, as is often declared in the Golden State, it’s unlikely to happen through the Affordable Care Act. But it also can’t happen without federal dollars, as made clear by attempts in Vermont, Colorado … and California to establish a single-payer system. At the very least, that means California wants to save the ACA to keep the federal funds flowing for now — so it can rely on that money for whatever comes next.

But for now, the state has the Affordable Care Act. And California wants the country to know that despite what President Trump has said, the law is far from dead.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Anna Maria Barry-Jester

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bluewatsons · 6 years

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Sara Goodkind & Kess Ballentine, Feminist Social Work and Political Engagement: Working Toward Social Justice Through Local Policy, 32 Affilia (2017)

“The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy but democracy.” (Kincade, 2012, p. 276)

Elizabeth Kincade draws this conclusion—that democracy is the opposite of patriarchy—based on her review of Carol Gilligan’s (2011) Joining the Resistance. In a political era in which neoliberal capitalism increasingly threatens our (never more than partial) democracies—a partiality now thrown into relief by the 2016 U.S. presidential election—many feminist social workers fear that our work and any progress we have made toward social justice, and the participatory democracy it requires, are more than ever endangered. Thus, we feel ever more compelled to “join the resistance.” This editorial considers the complicated question of how to resist, drawing on an example of local policy advocacy that challenges the care/justice divide, while questioning the problematics of plutocracy masquerading as democracy and the neoliberal co-optation of feminism.

Our application of Kincade’s powerful statement engages with conceptualizations of democracy as a necessary aspect of a just society; as described by Iris Marion Young (1990), “social justice…requires not the melting away of differences, but institutions that promote reproduction of and respect for group differences without oppression” (p. 47). At this political moment, many of us feel that we have moved farther away from this goal than we were just a year ago. We observed the racist sentiments of right-wing White supremacists given legitimacy by media and government leaders. President Trump has, among other social justice atrocities, laid blame for the death of a Charlottesville protestor not only on the racist domestic terrorist who killed her but also on the peaceful protestors joining her to demonstrate. Within the academic community, the right wing has increased efforts to monitor and blacklist professors who participate in critical, intersectional, and equity-focused scholarship. These and many other disheartening events may tempt us the feminist social work academics to retreat, to lay low, to keep our heads down. However, our scholarship and advocacy must continue. The question is not whether but how to proceed.

Thus, this editorial draws and builds on “Feminism in These Dangerous Times” (2017), the first Affilia editorial under the new U.S. political regime, which was also Yoosun Park, Stéphanie Wahab, and Rupaleem Bhuyan’s first editorial as Affilia’s editors in chief. In this compelling and thoughtful articulation of the challenges we face and means to address them via feminist scholarship, they focused on the value of feminist scholarship as practice, the necessity of questioning our certainties, and the importance of generating critical feminist social work research. Our editorial highlights opportunities and considerations for connecting feminist scholarship to political engagement, for engaging in the process of critical reflection and action termed praxis. To illustrate, we draw on our own experiences. We use an example of local policy work—specifically the creation, organizing of support for, and passage of a city ordinance in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania1, to implement the principles of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Through this discussion, we consider how feminist perspectives can help us to reclaim the social justice focus of social work while we support and care for those who are ever more marginalized under the new regime.

The Pittsburgh CEDAW Ordinance

The United States is one of only six countries yet to ratify CEDAW. Adopted by the UN in 1979, CEDAW was signed by President Carter in 1980; however, it has never come to a vote in the U.S. Senate, a step required for its ratification. In response to the refusal of the Senate to consider the ratification of CEDAW, the U.S. Cities for CEDAW campaign began in the 1990s, aiming to implement CEDAW at the local level, raise awareness about the utility of a human rights framework, and build support for U.S. ratification of CEDAW. Pittsburgh’s effort to enact local CEDAW legislation began in late 2015, with the recognition of the devastating local impact of gender discrimination. For example, The gender pay gap in southwestern Pennsylvania is 70 cents paid to women for every dollar paid to men (vs. 80 cents per dollar paid to men nationally). Our county (Allegheny) also has had the highest number of intimate partner homicides of any Pennsylvania county for the past 3 years. There is also clear evidence that women lack basic representation in our government. Although 51% of Pennsylvanians are women, fewer than 20% of the seats in our state legislature are held by women (Pennsylvania General Assembly, 2017). All 20 members of the U.S. congressional delegation from Pennsylvania are men, all but one White, and only 1 out of 23 state legislators from our county is a woman, just elected in 2016. As of 2015, only 9% of the Pennsylvania legislature were people of color (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2015). Lack of numerical representation is a clear indicator that the neoliberal rhetoric suggesting we are a postfeminist, postracial society is quite obviously false. As social workers, we consider such beliefs a barrier undermining all social justice efforts.

We believe that feminist theories and practices can help us fight for an institutional paradigm that will embrace and meet the complex experiences and needs of women and other oppressed groups. The successful passage of Pittsburgh CEDAW legislation in December 2016 made Pittsburgh just the sixth U.S. city to pass a CEDAW ordinance. This ordinance mandates the creation of a Gender Equity Commission, with a paid executive director and 13 volunteer members to be drawn from various constituencies (detailed in the ordinance), and requires the execution of a gender analysis to examine and describe “discrimination against all women, including intersectional discrimination and including trans women, and to identify gender equity problems in the City of Pittsburgh” with a focus on economic inequity, education, violence against women and girls, and health care (Pittsburgh City Ordinance 2016-0905, 2016, p. 4). Social workers were deeply involved in the organizing around and advocacy for the ordinance, initially in the testimony and presentations that helped it pass, and serving on the hiring committee for the executive director of the Gender Equity Commission that supports its implementation. The Gender Equity Commission will “advise…in the development of an action plan to address equity disparities identified by the Gender Analysis” and will be responsible for overseeing the implementation and monitoring of the action plan (Pittsburgh City Ordinance 2016-0905, 2016, p. 4). As of this writing, a woman of color has been hired as the executive director of the Gender Equity Commission, and the next steps are beginning.

Feminist Social Workers’ Role in Participatory Democracy: Providing Care While Pursuing Social Justice

Within a patriarchal framework, care is a feminine ethic. Within a democratic framework, care is a human ethic. (Gilligan, 2011, p. 22)

The current U.S. administration, as Park, Wahab, and Bhuyan’s (2017) note, did not create the misogynist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic attitudes currently on display, though it certainly has helped to foster an environment accepting of their expression and is currently working to enshrine, or re-enshrine, them in public policy. The Pittsburgh CEDAW effort highlights how inequitable representation can make the needs of women, people of color, people with disabilities, people living in poverty, and other marginalized groups experiencing violence and discrimination invisible, as well as obscure the efforts of those working to meet these needs, leaving the voices of the “impartial” unchallenged. In other words, the pathway to the recent expressions of racist and sexist sentiments many progressive Whites and cis-gendered advocates hoped were eliminated by the Civil, Women’s, and Gay Rights movements is directly tied to the lack of representation of women, trans, and people of color in political leadership.

In such an environment, especially, we believe it is necessary to highlight the importance and value of the care work we do as social workers and simultaneously challenge the notion of care work as a woman’s domain. Many social workers provide necessary care to communities and individuals by addressing the immediate needs of people experiencing marginalization. As we know well, moreover, most of those doing care work—social workers as well as child care, personal care, and other service workers—are women. By describing how the devaluing of care work is a product of patriarchy, Gilligan’s work has been enormously influential. At the same time, in her classic book In a Different Voice, Gilligan (1982) problematically contrasts care and justice as two different standards of moral reasoning. Young (1990, p. 121) reveals how the juxtaposition of care and justice is a false divide, explaining that:

challenging the traditional opposition between public and private that aligns it with oppositions between universality and particularity, reason and affectivity, implies challenging a conception of justice that opposes it to care.…As a virtue, justice cannot stand opposed to personal need, feeling, and desire, but names the institutional conditions that enable people to meet their needs and express their desires.

In other words, the just society toward which we work means creating social conditions that will enable us to give and receive the care that we need.

Challenging this care/justice binary is a means of challenging neoliberal feminism and the false divide within social work of micro and macro practice, which feminist social work shows us are inextricably linked. We will often be most effective in supporting individuals when we engage them in consciousness-raising that allows them to see the sociopolitical roots of what sometimes seem like (and society tells them are) personal failings. At the same time, our social change work will only succeed when we are able to meet people where they are; micro-level social work skills are enormously useful in this regard. At this bleak moment in our history, we find solace, strength, and encouragement in the work of feminist scholars and activists, be they published academics, die-hard activists, or the newly engaged feminists we frequently encounter in our own teaching, learning, and activism.

The implementation of CEDAW provides an opportunity to accomplish a political project that connects justice and care and is informed by the work of feminist scholars and activists. By examining gender discrimination and violence and analyzing the mechanisms through which city policy and social conditions support them, the CEDAW effort constructively violates a number of key tools of the neoliberal and distributive justice paradigms. First, it expressly challenges the idea of impartiality. Young (1990) holds up impartiality as the political implementation of the “dispassionate investigator” (Jaggar, 1989, p. 158) where the (masculine) politician (from the dominant, White culture) can separate his own needs from the average needs of “others.” Feminist scholars have long determined such an internal separation between positionality and self-benefiting policy making impossible. Rather, this separation benefits homogeneity while making invisible both valuable diversity and the structural tools of oppressive difference, including racism, sexism, and classism. An effort, such as our local CEDAW legislation, that sets out to explore difference expressly, will be better informed than the so-called “impartial” politics and has the potential to lead to more just social policy. Second, CEDAW efforts helpfully threaten the public/private divide by using a political (i.e., public) project to examine the experiences of women not only in the workplace but also in their homes and families (i.e., private). Third, by examining women’s lives in Pittsburgh with an awareness of hardships caused by institutional and structural racism and heteronormativity, CEDAW leaders endeavor to effectively implement the feminist method of intersectionality. Finally, CEDAW efforts are an exemplar of the interdependence of micro–macro practices. In a climate where neoliberal policies often result in social workers focusing on individual change to the exclusion of changing the unjust social environment, CEDAW’s politicization of care recognizes that the individual needs of women must be addressed through both micro- and macro-level interventions. These methods align with feminist practice that focuses on collective advocacy for structural and community change. Additionally, though local CEDAW legislation alone will not create a truly representational democracy in our nation, or state, or probably even Pittsburgh, it nevertheless seeks to recognize difference and empower the women whose lives it aims to improve. In this way, our CEDAW efforts present a microcosm of a participatory democracy.

Troubling Neoliberal Feminism Through Political Engagement

Social justice is an ideology and an action. (Reflection from a student in a feminist social work course)

Park et al. (2017) note that many feminist social work scholars call their work “feminist” without explaining what makes it so or engaging with feminist theorizing and debates. By not explicating what we mean by feminism, we risk its co-optation. We note, therefore, that the feminism undertaken by the local adoption of CEDAW, the ordinance created through the collaborative work of a grassroots coalition, is explicitly intersectional, nonbinary, and inclusive. It mandates, as a first step, a gender analysis that considers intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, immigration status, parental status, language, ability, and age, and the ways in which these identities function in the mechanisms that allow discrimination to persist in our city. It also defines “women” as “all persons who identify with the sex category woman, whether or not assigned to that category at birth” and delineates that “gender equity” includes “the redress of discriminatory practices and establishment of conditions enabling all persons identifying as transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming to achieve full equality” (Pittsburgh City Ordinance 2016-0905, 2016, p. 2).

The co-optation of feminism by neoliberalism is particularly troubling problematic for feminist social work (Goodkind, 2009). Empowerment is perhaps the best example of this. In its original sense, empowerment was arguably the feminist method, a melding of micro and macro that involved the development of critical consciousness, growing confidence in one’s abilities and actions, and connection with others, which enabled people to enact change at the personal, interpersonal, and political levels (Gutierrez & Lewis, 1999). Changes at these levels are interdependent, meaning that personal and interpersonal changes are necessary steps in the process toward achieving broader social changes, at the same time that the development of critical consciousness constitutes a necessary step in changing one’s views of oneself.

However, popular empowerment discourse is not the kind of empowerment originally conceived of by feminist social workers aiming for collective social change (Bay-Cheng, 2012). Rather, empowerment has become a buzzword within and outside of social work that is often vaguely defined and is, at times, used in extremely problematic ways—for instance, within the juvenile justice system in ways that focus on “empowering” girls to be compliant inmates and independent. Rather, empowerment has become a buzzword within and outside of social work that is often vaguely defined and is, at times, used in extremely problematic ways. For instance, within the juvenile justice system programs that train girls to be compliant inmates and independent adults do not empower them but instead set up a culture where girls are blamed for their own marginalization (Goodkind, 2009). This version of empowerment has been enabled by what has variously been called choice feminism, postfeminism, or commercialized feminism, that is, a neoliberal co-optation of feminist principles and goals (Goodkind, 2009; Ferguson, 2010). In these versions of feminism, exemplified by Sheryl Sandberg’s (2013)Lean In, external barriers and constraints are minimized or ignored and girls and women are told they can achieve whatever they want, as long as they speak up and believe in themselves. However, such ideas are antithetical to the collective efforts for social change advocated by other versions of feminism.

What better way to challenge the neoliberal co-optation of feminism than to engage in collective efforts to develop supportive social policies that can enable all of us to thrive? Yet, under a neoliberal version of feminism, the implementation of local CEDAW legislation might play out in a way that does little to further social justice efforts. It could find gender inequity to be a result of women’s failure to comply with the rules of business and community. Such conclusions would smack of victim-blaming rhetoric enabled by both neoliberal feminism and neoliberal social work. As critical social workers have argued, social work has become complicit in neoliberal governmental regimes, by holding clients accountable for social inequities by focusing only on micro-level change, by implementing (often under duress) business (specifically profit)-oriented models that limit choice and further marginalize clients, and by devaluing care through poor compensation of frontline social workers (Ferguson & Lavalette, 2006).

By critically applying feminist theories and methods in political engagement, social workers can counter the devastating effects of neoliberal capitalism on the most marginalized among us. Through such a lens, CEDAW legislation can instead be implemented to counter the negative consequences of neoliberal feminism specifically for women and girls as well as for all those instructed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. A critical gender analysis can be the first step in a political project that expressly rejects paternalistic “impartiality” and the public–private divide that juxtaposes care with justice.

Conclusion: Uncertainty and Critical Self-reflection

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. (Audre Lorde, 1984, pp. 132–133)

Young (1990, p. 116) explains how participatory democracy necessarily includes members of diverse groups:

If we give up the ideal of impartiality, there remains no moral justification for undemocratic processes of decision-making concerning collective action. Instead of a fictional contract, we require real participatory structures in which actual people, with their geographical, ethnic, gender, and occupational differences, assert their perspectives on social issues within institutions that encourage the representation of their distinct voices.

She continues, “To promote a politics of inclusion, then, participatory democrats must promote the ideal of a heterogeneous public, in which persons stand forth with their differences acknowledged and respected, though perhaps not completely understood, by others” (1990, p. 119).

As White, middle-class, heterosexual, nonimmigrant, cis women social workers, we recognize that we will not adequately understand the experiences of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia of many of the people for whom we advocate justice. Feminism has been justifiably criticized for representing the interests of women with a similar standpoint to ours and for excluding women with a multiplicity of other experiences of oppression. Young reminds us that we may not ever completely understand another’s experiences, but we can certainly honor and respect them and create a society in which we do not try to erase difference but value it. Young also reminds us that there is no substitute for the messy democratic process and that we must continue to engage in the complicated work of coalition building, listening, discussion, and compromise (see also, Young, 1994, for more on how to acknowledge and combat gender oppression without essentializing women). Mindful of those who are always asked to yield, the compromise must be asked of the more privileged among us, and we must listen and participate with cultural humility (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998), which means not assuming we know or understand another’s perspective and engaging in an ongoing process of critical self-reflection.

In Living a Feminist Life (2017), Sara Ahmed writes, “There is no guarantee that in struggling for justice we ourselves will be just. We have to hesitate, to temper the strength of our tendencies with doubt, to waver when we are sure, or even because we are sure” (pp. 6–7). It can be difficult to give ourselves permission to not be certain, but we believe acknowledging and accounting for the complexity of our challenges is the only way we will be able to meaningfully address them. Recognizing our positionality, Sara as a faculty member and Kess as a doctoral student, we are glad to write this together and to engage in this care and social justice work embedded in the feminist social work community. We invite you to join us by critically reflecting on what feminism means to you, starting or continuing conversations with those with difference experiences and perspectives from you, engaging politically, submitting your critical feminist scholarship to Affilia, and cultivating the next generation of feminist scholar/activists.

In conclusion, we find the pursuit of participatory democracy exemplified by Pittsburgh’s CEDAW legislation to be one way to work toward a more just society. The pursuit of justice has always been a long and challenging road. Under the current U.S. political regime, the personal consequences of its pursuit seem potentially more risky. However, the neoliberal depoliticization of social work, of care, and of the individual experience, have contributed to an environment that has allowed for the mainstreaming of hate and injustice. Social workers, as care workers, are as much beneficiaries as champions of any gains in the politicization of care. We, together with our clients and communities, must work to reconnect care and justice and, in so doing, create a society in which all have the support and opportunities needed to thrive.

Notes

Pittsburgh City Ordinance 2016-0905. (2016). An ordinance supplementing the Pittsburgh code title one: Administration, article IX: Boards, commissions and authorities, to add chapter 177C: Gender equity commission to conduct analyses of city departments, employment, and services, and to uphold the principles of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

References

Ahmed S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Bay-Cheng L. Y. (2012). Recovering empowerment: De-personalizing and re-politicizing adolescent female sexuality (Commentary). Sex Roles, 66, 713–717. doi:10.1007/s11199-011-0070-x

Ferguson I., Lavalette M. (2006). Globalization and global justice: Toward a social work of resistance. International Social Work, 49, 309–318. doi:10.1177%2F0020872806063401

Ferguson M. L. (2009). Choice feminism and the fear of politics. Perspectives on Politics, 8, 247–253. doi:10.1017/S1537592709992830

Gilligan C. (2011). Joining the resistance. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Goodkind S. (2009). “You can be anything you want, but you have to believe it”: Commercialized feminism in gender-specific programs for girls. Signs, 34, 397–422. doi:10.1086/591086

Gutierrez L. M., Lewis E. A. (1999). Empowering women of color. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Kincade E. A. (2013). Resistance refined, patriarchy defined: Carol Gilligan reflects on her journey from difference to resistance. Sex Roles, 68, 275–278. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0204-9

Lorde A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

Park Y., Wahab S., Bhuyan R. (2017). Feminism in these dangerous times. Affilia, 32, 5–9. doi:10.1177/0886109916686271

Pennsylvania General Assembly. (2017). Members. Retrieved from www.legis.state.pa.us.

Pew Charitable Trusts. (2015). Legislative boundaries, lack of connections lead to few minority lawmakers. Retrieved from http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/12/09/legislative-boundaries-lack-of-connections-lead-to-few-minority-lawmakers.

Sandberg S. (2013). Lean in: Women, work, and the will to lead. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Tervalon M., Murray-García J. (1998). Cultural competence versus cultural humility: A critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes in multicultural education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 9, 117–125. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0204-9

Young I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Young I. M. (1994). Gender as seriality: Thinking about women as a social collective. Signs, 19, 713–738. doi:10.1086/494918

#social work #feminism #ethics of care #critique #democracy #neoliberalism #neoliberal feminism #social justice #gender #gender discrimination #CEDAW

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hillaryisaboss · 4 years

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President Clinton is TONIGHT -- Bill... please be our "explainer-in-chief" again!!

Let us remember that the ECONOMY does better under a DEMOCRAT.

Clinton saved us from the Reagan/Bush trickle-down.

Obama saved us from the Bush recession.

BIDEN/HARRIS can save us from the Trump disaster.

Bill Clinton was the first two-term Democratic President in 30 years.

Sure -- he had to be against gay marriage publicly to win (don't hate the player -- hate the game). But Reagan let HIV/AIDS spread like wildfire because it was labeled a "gay disease."

The Clinton Administration was the first U.S. administration to meet with, respect, and fully support (through funding and research) gays living with HIV/AIDS.

People forget how big of a shift this was during the early 1990s.

Yes -- of course the 1990s weren't progressive compared to today’s standards. But we must remember -- if not for Bill Clinton re-branding the Democratic Party, we would have been stuck with another 4 disastrous years of Bush Senior continuing Reaganomics.

Again -- Bill Clinton was the first two-term Democratic President in 30 years. The Clintons saved our party and our country. They deserve much more respect and credit than they are given. Two-time winners that left us a booming economy and won back power from the Republicans.

The Clinton Administration:

—4-balanced budgets due to the superb compromising ability of Bill Clinton.

—Surplus.

—22 million new jobs.

—7 million fewer Americans living in poverty.

—Minimum wage up 20%.

—Assault Weapons Ban.

—Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

—Closet we have ever been to peace in the Middle East.

—Northern Ireland Peace Process.

—Campaign Against Teen Pregnancy: all-time low abortion rates.

—Office on Violence Against Women.

—Violence Against Women Act.

—Children’s Health Insurance Program: 8.9 million children insured.

OUR COUNTRY DOES BETTER UNDER A DEMOCRAT.

Life is better under a DEMOCRAT.

Bill... please be our "explainer-in-chief" again!!

#bill clinton #hillary clinton #michelle obama #joe biden #donald trump

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fapangel · 7 years

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MSM is spinning the proposed immigration reform as a reduction of legal immigration from the Obama era but I've been unable to find numbers of whether there was an increase during the Obama administration. Nonetheless, I do think a point based system for entry to allow for more skilled immigrant to come is overall a better move for the US rather than just a simple lottery. Your thoughts?

Before anything else, I want you to see what I saw on NBC News tonight - skip the biased article and just watch the 1 minute clip from NBC News’s August 2nd 6PM broadcast. Note Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who’s commentary I will transcribe for posterity:

“The biggest flaw in this proposal is the notion that there are long lines of Americans waiting to pick fruit, work in hospitals, and hotels, and restaurants, and meat processing plants; exactly the opposite’s true.”

Let me boil that statement down to its essence: “we need those spics to do the scut-work white people are too good for.” This phrase, “immigrants do jobs Americans won’t do,” is a common utterance on the Left, but it’s still shocking to see a US Senator admit to it in as many words on national TV. I know people who live in rural, poverty-stricken Red America, and you know where they work? They often work in restaurants and meat-packing plants. Not that this asshole would know - to him and Democrats like him, Hispanic immigrants are just cheap labor to maintain the lawns of their expensive homes, to bring them food at restaurant, and to do all the other scut work of society - and cheaply. There aren’t any jobs “Americans won’t do,” if you pay them what it’s worth - ever seen an episode of Dirty Jobs? But that, apparently, would “wreck the economy,” according to reliable RHINO Lindsey Graham, (whom most Republicans would like to see right behind McCain on Musk’s Mars to Stay rocket.) Good thing we’ve got all those Mexicans to do the back-breaking labor on the cheap, eh?

It’s not just Dickface Durbin saying this - ABC News, and New York Times have also published passionate screeds attesting to the necessity of that poor underclass to maintaining our way of life. From the NYT:

Why? Immigrant workers aren’t a “cheap labor” alternative, as so many Americans think. They are the only labor available to do many unskilled jobs, and if they were eliminated, most would not be replaced. Instead, whole sectors of the economy would shrivel, and with them, many other jobs often filled by more skilled Americans.

If the spics don’t pick our cotton for us, who will? Not those fucking Americans!

In 1960, half of all the native-born men in the U.S. labor force were high school dropouts eager to take unskilled outdoor jobs in agriculture and construction. Today, fewer than 10 percent of the native-born men in the work force lack high school diplomas. But the economy still generates plenty of unskilled jobs, and most unskilled immigrants don’t displace American workers. They fill niches — not just farmhand, but also chambermaid, busboy and others — that would otherwise go empty. And they support more skilled, more desirable jobs — foremen, accountants, waiters, chefs and more — at the businesses where they work and others in the surrounding community.

It’s almost like they knew it was a waste of time to finish high school when they could get a job paying good money down at the sawmill - but only if they started their apprenticeship now. But that world’s over and done with - having a high school degree makes you physically incapable of flipping burgers, digging ditches, or picking fruit. True story.

Just raise the wage, you say, and an American would take the job? Not necessarily, and very unlikely if it’s a farm job. Farmers have been trying that — for decades. They raise the wage. They recruit in inner cities. They offer housing and transport and countless other benefits. Still, no one shows — or stays on the job, which is outdoors and grueling and must get done, no matter how hot or cold or otherwise unpleasant the weather.

That’s right - American farmers, already laboring in an industry with narrow profit margins, turned their backs on that vast pool of dirt-cheap, asks-no-questions labor and went to the inner city to hire Americans that’d cost them more money, instead. Nostalgia is powerful, but even if the Red South is as racist as Democrats believe, somehow I doubt lots of American farmers were journeying to the inner city and asking the predominantly black youth there if they were interested in picking cotton on their fucking farms.

And of course, at some point, there are limits to how high a wage a grower or dairy farmer can pay before he is forced out of business by a farmer who produces the same commodity in another country, where the labor actually is cheap.

Which we could handle easily with import/export controls, if not for those fucking free trade proponents - like most Democrats, eh? Of course that doesn’t do you any good when the cheap labor is already in the country and being used by your own domestic competitors.

But worst of all would be the jobs lost for Americans. According to economists, every farm job supports three to four others up and downstream in the local economy: from the people who make and sell fertilizer and farm machinery to those who work in trucking, food processing, grocery stores and restaurants.

A harvest-season fruit picker isn’t a fucking farm job. A farm job is a year-round thing, and there aren’t many of them. I live in rural Michigan, a very agriculture-heavy state, and I have a pony. An actual, living, breathing pony, who eats hay, hay that we purchase from a local farmer. He and his wife run a huge farm and they run it alone, as their sons are too young to do any of the serious work. He does this via automation - the shed under which he stores the hay that we buy also shelters two massive farm tractors, three bale wagons, a combine, and various other attachments and heavy equipment. In our own barn we have a Farmall Cub and a Farmall Super C, two crop-row tractors from yesteryear. They’re about one-quarter the size of those modern New Holland tractors. In fact you can watch the size progression, from the Farmall C to the beefier Farmall H to the imposingly large Farmall M. Tractors increased in size as farms got bigger and more corporatized, and as smaller farmers had to reduce labor and increase automation to stay competitive. For those crops that aren’t harvested en-masse by combines, I’m sure we’ll find some way to pick the fruit. That Farmall Super C in my barn was owned by my great-grandfather - the 3-point implements it used to haul around his farm are still in our possession. My mother picked fruit - for a dime a bushel basket - so she could earn money to buy hay for her own pony. Somehow, they managed. Hell, I managed - I was 12 years old when I was helping my folks put up hay we cut and baled off our own property to help feed our animals.

Arguments so facile that even someone with third-hand knowledge can see through them is one thing, but this is so obvious that the fucking Washington Post, of all places, has a relatively level-headed and informed article covering the matter that perilously resembles actual journalism. It both acknowledges the miserable conditions and low pay of the workers, and dismisses the sweeping claims of absolute economic necessity with actual numbers, provided by subject matter experts.

In absence of established economic necessity, how else are we to interpret statements like Dickface Durbins, but as endorsing class-based systems of oppression? The phrase “jobs Americans won’t do,” the NYT columnist’s equating having a high school diploma with the willingness to do unskilled labor, and Dick Durbin’s own commentary all speak to the same basic hubris: that Americans find these jobs beneath them. I have a 4 year college degree - but I’ve worked manual labor myself, and I never considered burger-flipping to be beneath my dignity. I guess the elite class, the ones that grow up in fabulously wealthy communities and adore their Nature Hikes in the National Parks but let the poor people mow their lawns on a hot day, see things differently. When you combine the Left Wing’s passionate and frequent arguments to the necessity of unskilled, underpaid immigrant labor to supporting our way of life, the inherent elitism that colors their tone and worldview of Americans who “won’t” do these jobs, and above all their unstinting efforts to inhibit the enforcement of immigration law or any initiative to halt illegal immigration, it’s impossible to see their position as anything but encouraging the formation of a permanent underclass of second-class citizens. What happens when those immigrants, or their children, get educated? Get those high school - or even college degrees - that so inhibit their willingness to work menial labor jobs? What happens to our economy then, if we have no cheap, miserably desperate people to exploit for the labor that our economy apparently depends so heavily upon? By their own logic, it would be bad for the country if those poor Hispanics ever worked their way out of the poverty ghetto.

This is the true import of what Dickface Durbin openly stated on national prime-time television. It’s also the strongest argument I can possibly make in favor of Trump’s proposed immigration reform - it is anathema to the class-based exploitation the “progressive left,” self-anointed champions of the poor and down-trodden, argue for so passionately.

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

Happiness Report: World shows resilience in face of COVID-19 (AP) The coronavirus brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and lockdown, and illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released Friday suggests the pandemic has not crushed people’s spirits. The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed as the pandemic set in, longer-term satisfaction with life was less affected. “What we have found is that when people take the long view, they’ve shown a lot of resilience in this past year,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-author, said from New York.

The Pandemic Stalls Growth in the Global Middle Class, Pushes Poverty Up Sharply (Pew Research Center) The COVID-19 pandemic is having a deep effect on the global economy. In January 2020, as reports of the novel coronavirus were emerging, the World Bank forecasted that the global economy would expand by 2.5% that year. In January 2021, with the pandemic still holding much of the world in its grip, the World Bank estimated that the global economy contracted by 4.3% in 2020, a turnabout of 6.8 percentage points. The economic downturn is likely to have diminished living standards around the world, pushing millions out of the global middle class and swelling the ranks of the poor. A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that the global middle class encompassed 54 million fewer people in 2020 than the number projected prior to the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of poor is estimated to have been 131 million higher because of the recession.

Fallout from riot, virus leaves toxic mood on Capitol Hill (AP) The mood is so bad at the U.S. Capitol that a Democratic congressman recently let an elevator pass him by rather than ride with Republican colleagues who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election. Republicans say it’s Democrats who just need to get over it—move on from the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, end the COVID-19 restrictions and make an effort to reach across the aisle toward bipartisanship. Not yet 100 days into the new Congress, the legislative branch has become an increasingly toxic and unsettled place, with lawmakers frustrated by the work-from-home limits imposed by the virus and suspicious of each other after the horrific riot over Trump’s presidency. Particularly in the House, which remains partly shuttered by the pandemic and where lawmakers heard gunshots ring out during the siege, trust is low, settled facts about the Jan. 6 riot are apparently up for debate and wary, exhausted lawmakers are unsure how or when the “People’s House” will return to normal.

US schools prepare summer of learning to help kids catch up (AP) After a dreary year spent largely at home in front of the computer, many U.S. children could be looking at summer school—and that’s just what many parents want. Although the last place most kids want to spend summer is in a classroom, experts say that after a year of interrupted study, it’s crucial to do at least some sort of learning over the break, even if it’s not in school and is incorporated into traditional camp offerings. Several governors, including in California, Kansas and Virginia, are pushing for more summer learning. And some states are considering extending their 2021-22 academic year or starting the fall semester early. Many cities, meanwhile, are talking about beefing up their summer school programs, including Los Angeles, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta—the latter of which considered making summer school compulsory before settling for strongly recommending that kids who are struggling take part.

Forecast for spring: Nasty drought worsens for much of US (AP) With nearly two-thirds of the United States abnormally dry or worse, the government’s spring forecast offers little hope for relief, especially in the West where a devastating megadrought has taken root and worsened. Weather service and agriculture officials warned of possible water use cutbacks in California and the Southwest, increased wildfires, low levels in key reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell and damage to wheat crops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s official spring outlook Thursday sees an expanding drought with a drier than normal April, May and June for a large swath of the country from Louisiana to Oregon. including some areas hardest hit by the most severe drought. And nearly all of the continental United States is looking at warmer than normal spring, except for tiny parts of the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska, which makes drought worse.

‘Tough’ U.S.-China talks signal rocky start to relations under Biden (Reuters) U.S. and Chinese officials concluded on Friday what Washington called “tough and direct” talks in Alaska, which laid bare the depth of tensions between the world’s two largest economies at the outset of the Biden administration. The two days of meetings, the first high-level in-person talks since President Joe Biden took office, wrapped up after a rare and fiery kickoff on Thursday when the two sides publicly skewered each others’ policies in front of TV cameras. The talks appeared to yield no diplomatic breakthroughs—as expected—but the bitter rivalry on display suggested the two countries had little common ground to reset relations that have sunk to the lowest level in decades. The run-up to the discussions in Anchorage, which followed visits by U.S. officials to allies Japan and South Korea, was marked by a flurry of moves by Washington that showed it was taking a firm stance, as well as by blunt talk from Beijing warning the United States to discard illusions that it would compromise.

Volcano Erupts In Southwestern Iceland After Thousands Of Earthquakes (NPR) A volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland erupted Friday evening, producing a river of lava that could be seen from the capital, Reykjavik, 20 miles away. The eruption took place about three miles inland from the coast and poses little threat to residents. They were advised to stay indoors with windows closed against any gases that are released. This is the first eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula in nearly 800 years, the Associated Press reported. Thousands of earthquakes took place in the weeks leading up to the eruption, the meteorological office reported. Earlier this week, swarms of earthquakes rattled the peninsula, with over 3,000 quakes on Sunday alone. Scientists attributed the earthquakes to magma intrusions, molten rock movement about a kilometer below the earth’s crust.

A New Year in Iran, but the country’s crises remain the same (AP) The Persian New Year, Nowruz, begins on the first day of spring and celebrates all things new. But as families across Iran hurried to greet the fresh start—eating copious crisp herbs, scrubbing their homes and buying new clothes—it was clear just how little the country had changed. A year into the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated Iran, killing over 61,500 people—the highest death toll in the Middle East—the nation is far from out of the woods. And although Iranians had welcomed the election of President Joe Biden with a profound sigh of relief after the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign, the sanctions that have throttled the country for three years remain in place. “I was counting down the seconds to see the end of this year,” said Hashem Sanjar, a 33-year-old food delivery worker with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “But I worry about next year.”

2 journalists detained as Myanmar junta clamps down on press (AP) Two more journalists were detained in Myanmar on Friday, part of the junta’s intensifying efforts to choke off information about resistance to last month’s coup. Mizzima News reported that one of its former reporters, Than Htike Aung, and Aung Thura, a journalist from the BBC’s Burmese-language service, were detained by men who appeared to be plainclothes security agents outside a court in the capital of Naypyitaw. The journalists were covering legal proceedings against Win Htein, a detained senior official from the National League for Democracy, the party that ran the country before the takeover. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. In the face of persistent strikes and protests against the takeover, the junta has responded with an increasingly violent crackdown and efforts to severely limit the information reaching the outside world. Security forces have fired on crowds, killing hundreds, internet access has been severely restricted, private newspapers have been barred from publishing, and protesters, journalists and politicians have been arrested in large numbers.

Spectators from abroad to be barred from Tokyo Olympics (AP) At last it’s official after countless unsourced news reports and rumors: spectators from abroad will be barred from the postponed Tokyo Olympics when they open in four months. Officials said the risk was too great to admit ticket holders from overseas during a pandemic. The Japanese public has also opposed fans from abroad. Several surveys have shown that up to 80% oppose holding the Olympics, and a similar percentage opposed fans from overseas attending.

‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia (The Guardian) Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another—an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least. It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams. After years of drought, rural NSW and parts of Queensland enjoyed a bumper crop due to the recent wet season. But this influx of new produce and grains has led to an explosion in the mouse population. Locals say they started noticing the swarms up north in October and the wave of rodents has been spreading south ever since, growing to biblical proportions.

#headlines #news

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plusorminuscongress · 5 years

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New story in Politics from Time: Trump’s Cuts to Central American Aid Won’t Slow Migration

For all the political hostility, President Donald Trump stumbled into a hard truth of international migration this week: No amount of foreign aid is going to stop the exodus of undocumented migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to the United States as long as those Central American countries remain impoverished, dangerous and unstable.

Trump, who plans to visit the southwestern border on Friday, directed the State Department on March 29 to halt about $500 million in aid for all three nations — collectively known as the Northern Triangle — as punishment for failing to prevent their citizens from coming to the U.S.

“We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us,” Trump told reporters.

The unprecedented move, which was derided by both Democrats and Republicans, was widely seen as counterproductive to U.S. goals. But it also left open the confounding question of what, precisely, will tamp the flow of emigrants from these troubled nations. Lawmakers and foreign policy analysts, while critical of what they saw as Trump’s ham-fisted declaration, were also quick to note an inherent contradiction in U.S. policy in the region: Ending aid to the Northern Triangle isn’t going to solve the problems at the border. But continually shelling it out won’t either.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, described a tricky balancing act. There’s a lot that the U.S. can do in the Northern Triangle at the local level to help alleviate poverty, counter the influence of gangs, and improve education and other basic services, which helps reduce migration, he told TIME. But at the national level, these nations’ leaders are often unethical and “their priority is staying in power and enriching themselves and their families,” he said.

“On the one hand, the President caught everyone off-guard,” Leahy said of Trump’s tactic to pull foreign aid. “If he does what he says we will be shooting ourselves in the foot. It makes no sense to cut off the aid that can improve people’s lives and lessen pressures for out-migration. But we also need to recognize that all the aid in the world — and we’ve been providing aid to these countries for a long time — is not going to make the difference unless they have leaders with integrity who care as much about addressing the needs of their own citizens as we do.”

Doris Meissner, who was commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000 and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said the U.S. should focus on the underlying issues that contribute to the surge of annual asylum seekers, which has spiked to more than 97,000 — a nearly 2,000% increase over the level in 2008, when fewer than 5,000 people apprehended by border agents expressed fear of returning home. “The Northern Triangle is among the most violent places on Earth,” she said. “This is a big issue. It is a big challenge. And it needs a set of solutions. Ensuring safety and better living conditions in these countries is an essential element.”

El Salvador’s homicide rate, driven by street gangs like MS-13, makes it one of the world’s deadliest countries not at war. Guatemala faces food shortages, kidnappings and extortion cases that forces many of its citizens to attempt the tortuous trip northward. Honduras is among the poorest in Latin America with more than half of the population living under the poverty line.

Meissner said that the only sensible way to both diminish the lure of the U.S. and stabilize the Northern Triangle is to pursue measures aimed tackling government corruption, drug trafficking and gang violence. Cutting the aid funding will likely increase the flow of refugee seekers, not reduce it.

The Trump Administration once shared this policy perspective. Vice President Mike Pence told representatives from the Northern Triangle countries that “we’re in this together” during a conference in Miami in June 2017. “We stand with you in your commitment to root out crime and corruption,” he said. “We stand with you in your commitment to stop the scourge of drug trafficking once and for all. And the United States of America stands with you as you build a more secure and prosperous future for the benefit of your people and the benefit of the Western Hemisphere.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) disperses much of the aid through non-government organizations through the Northern Triangle Countries’ Alliance for Prosperity Plan, which has a stated purpose of “decreasing high levels of violence and insecurity, pervasive poverty and chronic malnutrition” in the three nations. The programs support a wide array of work such as a $42.2 million five-year program in El Salvador to increase and improve employment of at-risk youth living in high-crime areas; or a three-year $3 million effort to improve the quality of water in western Guatemala; or a five-year $4.5 million project to work with Honduran state institutions to prevent, detect, investigate, and prosecute corruption cases.

USAID cited some success cases last summer. El Salvador saw homicides plummet 61% between 2015 and 2017 in the municipalities where USAID operates; new USAID investigation models in Guatemalan court houses boosted the number of convictions in extortion cases from a paltry 26 in 2015 to 180 as of October 2017; and USAID agriculture investments lifted 17,937 families in Honduras, or over 89,000 people, out of extreme poverty since 2011.

Still the flood of migrants from Central America has overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and immigration officers not accustomed to apprehending so many children and having to house them in facilities poorly suited for holding families and kids. Two children, both from Guatemala, died in December after being apprehended by U.S. border officials. And the Trump Administration, after coming under fire for separating at least 2,500 children from their parents in May and June of last year, is holding more families together, but that means it is running out of detention space as families continue to arrive at the border.

Trump has developed a grab bag of policies to stem the flow of migrants, including supposed deterrence measures like threatening the closure the U.S. border with Mexico. The dystopian optics of the U.S. closing the border with military force could be perceived as an alarming tactic to Latin America, a region that has suffered multiple incursions from the U.S. military over the past century.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters this week that Mexico was “not going to get into a confrontation with the government of the United States.” Since taking office in December, his administration agreed to a divisive plan in which some Central American asylum-seekers wait in Mexico while their U.S. immigration court hearings play out.

“Obviously, we have to help because Central American migrants pass through our territory and we have to bring order to this migration, make sure it’s legal,” Lopez Obrador told reporters April 1. “That’s what we’re doing. But serenely, calmly, without a commotion and with great prudence and responsibility.”

By W.J. Hennigan on April 04, 2019 at 09:44PM

#Time #politics #PlusOrMinusCongress #±Congress #Indega±#IndegaPlusOrMinus #TimeMag #TimeMagazine

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