Not easy being a poodle on a short leash… Three days after striking a conciliatory tone, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said the North must stop nuclear threats before any possible talks.
Category Archives: Viva!
Anti-trans zealots, know this: history will judge you | Owen Jones
Those who resisted gay rights have been damned. The same fate awaits bigots who dismiss trans rights
It all seems so chillingly familiar. As gay and bisexual men and women were making limited strides in the struggle for equality not so long ago, a furious backlash followed. Today’s media-driven moral panic over trans people and their rights seems like history repeating itself. Over the past few weeks, there have been almost daily articles in the press targeting trans rights and trans people. The tropes are the same. Back then, gay people were sexual predators; a “gay lobby” was brainwashing children; being gay was a mental illness, or just a phase; and gay rights was political correctness gone mad. Replace “gay” with “trans”, and that’s the state of the British press in 2017.
Related: Trans people already face a hostile world. Now the media is making it worse | Paris Lees
Mike Pence’s Holy Land visit in disarray after Jerusalem recognition
Tour was intended to draw attention to plight of Christians in Middle East, but many are now refusing to meet him
The lights are already illuminated on Bethlehem’s huge Christmas tree in Manger Square.
Nearby, at the narrow entrance to the Church of the Nativity, holiday pilgrims queue daily for their chance to descend into the cramped subterranean shrine said to be the birthplace of Jesus.
Trump judicial nominee can’t answer basic legal questions at hearing – video
US senator John Kennedy asked one of Trump’s district court judge nominees, Matthew Petersen, a series of questions on basic law, and he was unable to answer them. Concerns have been raised over the suitability of the five nominees for the role, including Matthew Petersen. The American Bar Association declared one of the nominees ‘unqualified’
yesterdaysprint:The Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Massachusetts,…
3 myths about the poor that Republicans are using to support slashing US safety net
By Michele Gilman
The Conversation
Republicans continue to use long-debunked myths about the poor as they defend lower taxes for the rich and deep cuts to the social safety netto pay for them. In so doing, they are essentially expressing scorn for working class and low-income Americans.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, recently justified reducing the number of wealthy families exposed to the estate tax as a way to recognize “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Similarly, Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.
These statements, the likes of which I expect we’ll all hear more of in coming months, reinforce three harmful narratives about low-income Americans: People who receive benefits don’t work, they don’t deserve help and the money spent on the social safety net is a waste of money.
Based on my research and 20 years of experience as a clinical law professor representing low-income clients, I know that these statements are false and only serve to reinforce misconceptions about working class and poor Americans.
Food participants get an average of $125 a month, hardly enough to feed a family without earning money as well. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
Most welfare recipients are makers not takers
The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are “takers” rather than “makers,” is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.
Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal – hardly enough to justify quitting a job.
As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.
In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “We have a welfare system that’s trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.”
Not true. Welfare – officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.
Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.
In addition to wage stagnation, most Americans are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, which is increasingly unaffordable. There are 11 million renter households paying more than half their income on housing. And there is no county in America where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom home. Still, only 1 in 4eligible households receive any form of government housing assistance.
To be sure, there are recipients of public benefits who do not work. They are primarily children, the disabled and the elderly – in other words, people who cannot or should not work. These groups constitute the majority of public benefits recipients.
Society should support these people out of basic decency, but there are self-interested reasons as well. To begin with, all working adults have been children, will someday be old and, at any time, might face calamities that take them out of the workforce. The safety net exists to rescue people during these vulnerable periods. Indeed, most people who receive public benefits leave the programs within three years.
Moreover, many public benefits pay for themselves over time, as healthier and financially secure people are more productive and contribute to the overall economy. For example, every dollar in SNAP spending is estimated to generate more than $1.70 in economic activity.
Similarly, Medicaid benefits are associated with enhancing work opportunities. The earned income tax credit contributes to work rates, improves the health of recipient families and has long-term educational and earnings benefits for children.
The current federal minimum wage is hardly enough to feed a family. AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato
What the needy deserve
The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.
This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.
Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile – the poorest 20 percent – will stay there. And the same “stickiness” exists in the top quintile.
As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.
The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesn’t accomplish its goals.
In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.
The facts of welfare
In trotting out these myths, Republican lawmakers are also tapping into long-standing racist stereotypes about who receives support. For instance, the “welfare queen” – a code word for an African-American woman with too many children who refuses to work – is a fiction.
The facts of welfare are that most recipients are white, families that receive aid are smaller on average than other families and the program requires recipients to work and is tiny in relation to the overall federal budget – about half a percent. Yet, the welfare queen is an archetype invoked to generate public antagonism against the safety net. Expect her to make frequent appearances in the months to come.
Americans should demand fact-based justifications for tax and entitlement reforms. It is time to retire the welfare queen and related tropes that paint needy Americans as undeserving.
Featured Photo Credit: Politico
Michele Gilman is Venable Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Another victim .. Ibrahim abu Thurayah
Jerusalem needs protection from the brutality of Israel
I am not sure how to put my feelings towards what is happening in Palestine and in Jerusalem in order. It seems all too frustrating. A state of injustice continues to overrule. However, that country of killing is becoming more visible to be seen. Four five, six are the victims of today. The martyrs that were killed in cold blood by the Israeli war soldiers. More than three hundred are wounded. And God knows how many are being arrested.
In Jerusalem the brutality takes a different form of oppression. Horses, beating, hitting violently, lynching and harassing passerbys. We can no longer sit on the stairs of the Damascus gate. These people are just scared to hell from our presence. Or I would say they are full of hatred and rage for our existence.
Practicing the simple acts of life is becoming the most impossible. Worse, is that increasing scene of having oppressing soldiers who are Arabs. It is so conflicting. I really cannot imagine what the heart or mind that exist in those people is. how do they expect it, and how can they really stand with a weapon facing their own people. Yes… maybe they are not our people. Zionism is no longer about Jewish people. Those Arabs have been in the loop of Zionism since many decades, it is only time that they pop up in forms of soldiers.
israel continue to prove that occupation can never have a human side. a state of occupation can only be state of terror. Terror is not only wearing explosive belts and a beard killing innocents. Terror is wearing a military uniform brutally abusing, breaching, killing unarmend people.
We in Jerusalem need to be protected from the brutality of this terror state of oppression.
Dulce García: Sueños y Resistencia
Al igual que miles de inmigrantes indocumentados conocidos como “Dreamers”, cuyo futuro permanece en suspenso, Dulce García, abogada local de inmigración y defensa criminal, lucha para compartir sus historias y encontrar una solución permanente para estos jóvenes inmigrantes.
García está entre los demandantes nombrados en la demanda contra el Presidente Donald Trump y su administración por terminar el programa de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA, por su sigla en inglés) que proporcionó permisos de trabajo y protección a jóvenes indocumentados que llegaron a los Estados Unidos como menores de ser deportados.
Este es un tema que apasiona a García porque ella es una de las aproximadamente 800 mil jóvenes conocidas como “Dreamers”.
“He aprendido a no darme por vencida a la primera cuando me cierran una puerta en mi cara, a ser resistente, y me ha hecho más fuerte y me ha convertido en quien ahora soy”, dijo García.
García tiene su despacho jurídico en Barrio Logan y recientemente abrió otro en Chula Vista. Ella está involucrada con varias organizaciones como San Diego Border Dreamers y participa en eventos enfocados en informar a los miembros indocumentados en las comunidades de San Diego sobre sus derechos.
“Sabía que quería ser una abogada de defensa criminal”, dijo García. “Nunca se me ocurrió que estaría practicando la ley de inmigración”.
Pero eso cambió cuando su hermano menor fue detenido por un policía y se le acusó de conducir con una licencia suspendida, a pesar de que no tenía una licencia, y luego fue entregado a ICE, dijo García.
Su hermano fue detenido en El Centro, y aunque aún era estudiante en la universidad, García y su hermano mayor decidieron arriesgarse a ser detenidos en un retén de control para visitar a su hermano detenido.
“Cuando lo vi detenido no era él mismo, le rompieron su espíritu”, dijo. “No pude reconocerlo y entonces supe que tenía que aprender la ley de inmigración”.
García dijo que en ese punto, la ley de inmigración se volvió una necesidad para que ella la entendiera en profundidad.
“He visto tantas personas muy fuertes en mi trabajo”, dijo García. “Mis clientes, he escuchado sus historias y algunos de ellos han pasado por cosas increíbles y hacen que mi historia parezca una buena historia en comparación con algunas de las cosas difíciles por las que ellos han pasado”.
García y su familia se mudaron a Barrio Logan en 1987, pero ella dijo que, al igual que hoy, había una retórica de odio en contra de los latinos, por lo que recuerda haber vivido en una vida protegida porque sus padres no querían que sus hijos estuvieran afuera.
Debido a su estado migratorio, García dijo que su familia temía tener alguna interacción con la policía e incluso con hospitales. Y su temor de que los deportaran fue tan grande que su padre, un soldador, una vez se lastimó el brazo de tal manera que, debido a evitar atención médica inmediata, estuvo cerca de que le amputaran el brazo, dijo García.
García no entendía qué significaba ser indocumentado y relacionó sus limitaciones como familia con su situación financiera, dijo.
Pero su situación legal y sus obstáculos salieron a la luz cuando estaba en el proceso de aplicar a universidades como muchos de sus amigos de la escuela secundaria.
“No me di cuenta de que había una diferencia entre mis compañeros de clase y yo”, dijo García. “No sabía que ser indocumentado iba a afectar el resto de mi vida”.
Después de ser aceptada en varios colegios y universidades, García dijo que decidió buscar el consejo de un consejero escolar muy respetado, pero en cambio le dijo que no podría asistir a la universidad porque ella era una “extranjera ilegal”.
“Estaba destrozada, pensé que mi consejero iba a ser un héroe para mí”, dijo con la voz quebrada. “Y en su lugar dijo ‘eres una extranjera ilegal, ni siquiera vas a ir a un colegio comunitario’”.
García recuerda que salio de la oficina del consejero, y, a pesar de sus comentarios, ella le respondió “mírame hacer esto”.
Ese verano, García asistió a clases nocturnas en un colegio comunitario mientras trabajaba de tiempo completo para un abogado. García luego se transfirió a UC San Diego y se graduó con una licenciatura en ciencias políticas.
En el momento en que García asistía a la universidad, el California Dream Act, que permitía a Dreamers solicitar ayuda financiera para la escuela, no estaba, así que trabajó hasta que ahorró para asistir a la escuela de leyes.
Ella atribuye su necedad para seguir adelante a su madre, a quien describe como una mujer muy fuerte, pero admite que su camino no ha sido fácil, especialmente con la administración presidencial actual.
“A veces me siento tan deprimida y sin esperanza”, dijo García.
Pero luego recuerda a los miembros de su familia y eso le da fuerzas, dijo.
Ella habló más abiertamente sobre su situación legal y su historia cuando la nueva administración amenazaba a DACA, pero ella dijo que simplemente estaba siguiendo los pasos de los activistas de DACA que han estado luchando durante más de 20 años.
“Lo menos que puedo hacer es replicar algunas de las cosas que valientemente han hecho durante 20 años y eso es contar mi historia”, dijo García.
García dijo que entiende que aunque DACA proporcionó alivio para ella y para los demás, muchas personas indocumentadas como su propio hermano mayor no calificaron para el programa.
“El es otra razón por la que sigo peleando porque se quedó fuera de este programa”, dijo García. “Es otra persona que tengo en mente cada vez que hablo en las oficinas del Congreso, cada vez que salgo a la calle a protestar, mis padres y él son los que tengo principalmente en mente”.
García dijo que siente que es su deber a los activistas originales de DACA de hablar tanto como pueda y usar su voz como una herramienta para seguir luchando.
“Hasta que tengamos una solución permanente a esta crisis de DACA, hasta que personas como mis padres estén a salvo, hasta que se reconozca a gente como mi hermano y le devolvamos un poco de dignidad y respeto, seguiremos luchando”, dijo.
‘Islamic State’ is fighting with weapons made in the EU: study
Foreign sales of military arms and equipment across the world totalled $374.8 billion in 2016, the first year of growth (by 1.9 per cent), after five years of decline. American companies had a $217.2 billion lion’s share of foreign arms sales. Seven out of ten of the world’s top arms companies were American, earning $152.1 billion, with Lockheed Martin leading with $40.8 billion.
More than a third of the weapons used by “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria came from European Union states — including Germany, a new report has found. The data shows that deadly arms can often up in the wrong hands.
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