Poor But Happy (If a Little Violent)

In case you didn't see it, the New York Times recently had a very effective interactive map of county-by-county food stamp use in the U.S. On the Times site, if you put your mouse over a county you'll get the details (county name, the percent of residents using food stamps, the percent of blacks, whites, and children, then finally the percent increase since 2007).

Dark gray is the lowest level of use, dark blue the highest level. So just at a glance, you can see that the heaviest use is in the South and states that border it closely, with significant levels in the Southwest, Northwest and Maine.

New York and California both have moderately low numbers enrolled, which surprised me. (But hearing this morning on NPR that New York City and the state of California require people to submit to fingerprinting before enrolling may have cleared that up. Perhaps a lot of folks who are eligible balk at that infringement.)

When I first saw this map, I wanted to try my hand at a data mashup, but I couldn't think of one right away. Then I saw the perfect data in today's Pioneer Press: an AP story about a study that ranked the states by how happy their residents said they are.

To add a twist, I thought I would find some data on violent crime rates, and see what came out of all that. My hypothesis was that people would be happiest in states with low violent crime and low food stamp use. Seems reasonable, right?

Not so:

• #1 for happiness: Louisiana, which was also #5 for violent crime, and high for food stamps.
• #4 for happiness: Tennessee... #2 for crime, high for food stamps.
• #6 for happiness: South Carolina. #1 for crime, high for food stamps.

Florida was #3 for happiness, while also #4 for crime but only medium for food stamps, so that was a little closer to my hypothesis. And two other happy states (Arizona, #5 and Mississippi #7), were moderate for crime (#16 and #31) but high for food stamps.

Maine (#9 happiness) was #50 for violent crime (it's a pretty darn safe place!) but the whole state is blue on the food stamp map, except for one county (I believe it's the county where the Bushes have their house).

Hawaii (#2 for happiness) was #36 for violent crime and medium for food stamps. Montana, #8 for happiness, was #41 for crime and medium for food stamps. Those come the closest to supporting my hypothesis.

There wasn't a single state in the top 10 for happiness that was low for crime and low for food stamp use.

In summary:

• 7 of 10 of the happiest states had high rates of food stamp use
  
• 3 of 10 of the happiest states had medium rates of food stamp use
  
• 4 of 10 of the least happy states had low rates of food stamp use
  
• 5 of 10 of the least happy states had medium rates of food stamp use
  

Only 1 state in the bottom 10 of the happiness ranking also had high food stamp use (Michigan -- which was also #10 for violent crime).

Six of the 10 happiest states had above-average violent crime rates, with four of them in the top 10 for violent crime.

Michigan was the only one of the 10 most unhappy states to appear in the top 10 for violent crime; the saddest 10 states only had two members that ranked high for food stamp use (Michigan and Ohio).

So high crime rates don't make people unhappy, generally. Being poor doesn't make people unhappy. I guess being warm in the winter makes people happy (unless you're in Maine, which seems to be plenty happy despite being cold in the winter).

Note: I assessed the state-wide level of food stamp use as low, medium or high by visually averaging the colors from the Times map. The violent crime rate statistics are from the 2006 Statistical Abstract of the United States. The happiness rankings are from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2005 and 2006, as reported by Associated Press.

If you'd like a copy of the Excel file I used to do these comparisons, send me an email at daughternumberthree@gmail.com.

Charity or Subsidy?

I love the Nuns on the Bus.

Most people on food stamps work full time. They work full time but they don’t have enough money to pay for food for their kids. So really, in some ways, food stamps are about a business subsidy because it allows low wage business workers to… feed their families and continue working. But we call it charity, or the Republicans call it charity.

They want to cut food stamps so badly that every church, synagogue, mosque, house of worship in the United States—every single one—[would] have to raise an additional $50,000 every year for ten years to replace what he wants to cut. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna work.

—Sister Simone Campbell

Sounds kind of like the Walmart subsidies we used to talk about... like when they advised employees to apply for food stamps and Medicaid.

Undermining the Safety Net

From today's Star Tribune letters, this bit of thoughtfulness from Donna Pususta Neste of Minneapolis:

Food stamps
Fraud focus is really an attempt to demolish

Regarding the May 25 article Food stamp program targeted: This reminds me of the way the safety-net program of welfare was brought down. From President Ronald Reagan onward, we read and heard stories about "welfare queens," until President Bill Clinton pretty much destroyed the program. It's no accident now that there are stories in major newspapers about food stamp fraud. They will continue until the food stamp program is brought down.

When I read about the 1 percent fraud rate of the food stamp program, I wanted to say, "Really?" The military should receive such scrutiny. Sixty percent of the food stamps that are issued feed children, and 19 percent go to the elderly. The cost of this program is so small relative to the total federal budget that it would be like taking a child's allowance away in order to pay the mortgage.

Thank you, Donna.
________

A past related post:

Is Your Grandma a Welfare Queen?

SNAP Facts

I've written pretty frequently about food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), especially about how the supposed fraud rate is minuscule compared to the good the program does, and that the number of people eligible is much lower than the number who use it, even after the Great Recession. So that small fraud rate is greatly offset by under-use.

The Washington Post recently ran a Q&A with Craig Gunderson, a University of Illinois professor of agriculture and consumer economics who has been studying the program for 20 years. Gunderson covers the key topics we all need to know to understand what SNAP is and isn't, plus who its users are and aren't. And how they use the program, despite claims to the contrary that most of us hear from our right-wing uncles.

• The average SNAP beneficiary is a child. Among the minority who are not children, the vast majority are  either retired, disabled, caring for someone else, going to school, or working.
• SNAP does not discourage paid work. Gunderson says that Medicaid, for instance, can discourage work because it has a hard income cutoff; SNAP benefits gradually decrease instead of ending abruptly. That is a good thing.
• SNAP recipients don't buy junk food any more than comparable populations who don't get SNAP. Gunderson argues the way to think about this is to compare SNAP folks to all of the others who are eligible but don't file for the program for whatever reason. He also explains why a recently publicized study (which appeared to show higher rates of junk food purchases) was methodologically flawed.
• SNAP cannot be used at fast food restaurants. No, Uncle Marvin, that's not true.
• The EBT cards now used to distribute SNAP benefits (which replaced the paper coupons we all still call "food stamps") cannot be sold unless the user also gives up their PIN, and trusts the person to bring the card back. Would you sell your card to a stranger on the hope they would bring it back?

Gunderson told this anecdote about that last point:

I was giving [a SNAP presentation] to a group of farmers. One guy in the audience stood up and said that, in his community, people sold their EBT cards outside of grocery stores. He claimed to have purchased one, if I remember.

And I kind of paused and said, so -- did that person also give you his PIN number? Because you can’t use the card without it. And I said -- do you realize that was a federal offense? Then he kind of backed down: “Oh, actually I didn’t buy the card, I heard about it from someone else.”

Likewise, stories about people buying high-value foods like infant formula with their EBT cards in order to resell it are confused or wrong, he said.

Another myth: that undocumented immigrants receive SNAP benefits. Not true, he said. The U.S.-born children of an undocumented immigrant may be receiving SNAP, but those kids have as much right to it as anyone else.

As far as the "I saw a person drive up in a Cadillac and use EBT" story goes... A car worth more than $4,600 is a disqualifying asset. Maybe the car is borrowed. Maybe it's old and not worth as much as you assume. You don't know. Why do you care so much about other people's business, anyway?

The average amount of time that people get SNAP benefits is seven to nine months.

These Problems Are About Policy

The first time I read Eli Saslow's now-Pulitzer-winning article on a family that gets by using government programs, including SNAP (food stamps), I was a bit depressed by the reality of it. The family just seemed like they weren't trying to get out of the trap they were in.

The second time I read it, though, several passages stood out that are both more important and more actionable. The mother in the family, Raphael Richmond, who is 41, has six children of her own (ages 11 to 25) and also feeds other kids from the neighborhood and her extended family.

Only once, when [Raphael] was in her early 30s, had she lived without government assistance. She had moved her children into a two-bedroom apartment near the Southwest waterfront and signed a lease for $925, working as a home health aide during the day and as a prep cook at RFK Stadium at night. "Climbing the ladder," she said, but then came the reality of what that meant. The increase in her income disqualified her from food stamps, and buying food with cash left nothing to pay the gas bill, and cutting off the heat made the winter seem endless, and the combination of the cold house and the 60-hour workweeks aggravated her arthritis, damaged her heart and compelled her to quit work and apply for disability.

After nine months, she packed three duffel bags and took a bus to the homeless shelter. Her family spent two months in the shelter and two years in transitional housing and then received a voucher for a four-bedroom house in Anacostia with a leaky ceiling and a front-porch view of a highway underpass. The subsidized rent was $139 a month.

This bit of detail points up a problem that is fixable. Why don't we figure out how to better cushion those transition points when benefits cut out, so people can continue to make progress to self-sufficiency, rather than driving them back to survival mode?

The other passages concern Raphael's daughter Tiara:

For 22 years, Tiara had successfully avoided what she referred to as the "ghetto woman traps." She had arrived at adulthood single and childless, a talented musician with a high school diploma and a clean record - "a miracle," Raphael called her. And yet none of those successes had earned her anything like stability, and she had little in her life that qualified as support. Her mother, fearing the next trip to the emergency room, had made her the default guardian for four younger siblings. Her absentee father, a Puerto Rican, had given her nothing but smooth brown skin, soft dreadlocks and, with some reluctance a few years earlier, a phone number where he could be reached in case of emergencies. Believing her life consisted of one long emergency, Tiara had called him the next day, only to learn the number was fake.

At the moment, the only "options" she could list for her caseworker were the new EBT card with her name on it and a food training class hosted by DC Central Kitchen. The class was free, but it was also three months of training that didn't guarantee a job. The class flier had been sitting on the kitchen table for weeks. "Must be able to lift 50 pounds," it read. Must stand for hours. Must work in a noisy environment.

And:

The ads made it sound so easy to get a job in the budding economic recovery of 2013—"Hiring now!" one read; "Start tomorrow!" promised another—but recent experience made Tiara believe she had better odds "playing lotto," she said. The unemployment rate in Ward 8 was 24 percent, triple the national average, and there were an estimated 13 job seekers for every open position. She had been offered a security job, but first the company wanted $500 to train her. Marriott had openings at a new hotel, but the application required her to submit a background check online. So she had gone to the police station and paid $9 for a form showing that she had no criminal record. And then enrolled with a nonprofit group that gave out free computers and scanners, since the ones at the nearby library always seemed to be broken. And then learned that she could only pick up the computer in Rockville, four bus transfers and a Metro ride away.

The latest advice from a caseworker assigned to help with her job search was to "make a list of options" and "stay prayerful"...

Yeah, stay prayerful, Tiara. That'll help. But not as much as if we were using the federal tax dollars that go to subsidize oil companies, agribusiness, and other big corporations to instead fund a jobs program like CETA.

These problems are about policy. As Matt Bruenig points out, single motherhood doesn't have to cause child poverty. That's something we as a society let happen.

Jon Tevlin -- Can't Wait to Read Your Columns

If you've ever wondered how far back my filing cabinet goes, this is your chance to get an idea.

In today's Star Tribune, the editor, Nancy Barnes, announced the names of two new columnists. Both have been at the paper for a number of years as reporters, but each had an earlier career at the local weeklies or monthlies before joining up with the Strib.

Gail Rosenblum did a wonderful stint as editor of the monthly Minnesota Parent. Jon Tevlin was on staff at the now-defunct weekly Twin Cities Reader when I first became aware of his writing. I look forward to what both of them will have to say each week.

Here, from the filing cabinet (in a folder labeled "Great Writing/Art in Media," which has now morphed into the blog's Media Goodness category) is this story by Jon Tevlin from the December 13-19, 1995 Twin Cities Reader:

Toy Story
Being a toys-for-tots kid brings joy, embarrassment and weird presents
By Jon Tevlin

In the days before Christmas they'd come dressed in long gray car coats and fedoras and rubbers that they slid over loafers. They smelled of Aqua Velva and talked in the small, measured voices that I used to hear in the back pews of the church.

I never recognized them. Later I heard that church and charity groups preferred anonymity; I guess they were doing it for us. We were on the list of local poor families who got presents and food at the holidays, and such was the shame of poverty, at least in the 1960s, that it should be handled quietly, behind closed doors and away from the curious gaze of the rest of the congregation.

If the church thought it was protecting us kids from the bitter truths, they should know that most poor kids are veterans of shame. I had years to practice the humble-yet-grateful face of a child beholden to whatever kind favor someone chose to bestow on me. I was embarrassed when my mother sent me to the store the first time with food stamps (under instruction not to buy anything conspicuous), for example, and when she sent me to pick up the government cheese, rice and honey they doled out periodically as symbolic alms to the poor.

After a while, the shame was so strong and I was so proud that I chose not to participate in our poverty. I refused to bring food stamps to the nearby Penny's Market, or pick up the free blocks of cheddar. Whenever I saw the church men coming up the steps with a bag full of Christmas presents, I did what my older brother and sister did: I hid.

It's not that we didn't appreciate the gesture. We did, and still do. They were kind people with righteous intentions doing the good deed. But the holiday charity rituals, from the receiving end, are more complex than the obligatory smiling-kid shots you see on TV at holiday time. To us, these strangers left more than gifts; they left an indelible mark about the holidays, our poverty, the nature of giving in America and the glaring discrepancy between the haves and have-nots.

Getting a few gifts was probably better for us as kids than not getting a few gifts, but, for me at least, the kindness of strangers was a kind of further evidence that somehow in this great country one of two things had happened: My parents failed me, or my country failed me. Neither option was terribly uplifting. To this day it has shaped the way I receive gifts -- awkwardly and reluctantly -- and to a certain extent the way I see the world.

The gift-getting ritual was even harder on my parents, particularly my father. He had worked the same factory job for 25-odd years before being knocked out of work by illness. The stress of the holidays was actually compounded, I think, by the sight of good-hearted people giving the gifts he could no longer give to his own children. Every knock on the door was another reminder that he could not provide. So every year he'd get depressed, go into the hospital and thus avoid the pressure.

In the early 1960s, we were probably the typical poor family, struggling to make do on a small pension and Social Security. We were not unlike a lot of our neighbors. Like a lot of them, we got care packages every Christmas from people we would never see the rest of the year.

One wealthy old friend of my father used to drive up to our small apartment building (which was across from a homeless shelter, where we volunteered for the people my parents considered truly needy), in his Cadillac and drop off a box of apples and a ham. He wore a topcoat, and his wife wore a mink. They patted me on the head, hugged my parents, said kind words and then retreated to a world my parents would never know, leaving a world they never cared to know.

In contrast was the person who every year sent a crisp $50 bill in the mail. For years it came, unmarked, unsigned, unaccompanied by a letter; a symbol of anonymous generosity without strings. I still wonder who they were, and can't help but think well of them; I'm sure the money they gave away helped them think well of themselves.

But most of all I remember the men from church, the ones with the gifts, wrapped in paper with pictures of Wise Men and cards that read: Boy, 9; Girl, 14. We were the generic poor kids, the kids without names, the kids whose faces you see on the news Christmas Day, who make you so happy and warm.

The gifts themselves were odd, funny, sad. I remember only a hideous pair of green knitted slippers with red tassels -- given to me as a teen -- and one of those snow globes, which if I recall correctly, came from the Wisconsin Dells. At age 14, my sister got a plastic Indian doll like ones you see in phony Native American stores. We still laugh uncomfortably at the presents. Or perhaps we laugh uncomfortably at being in a position to receive such odd expressions of charity.

Every year, as I grapple with my own charity, I think of what impact my gifts will have and how the recipients will feel. I think of the strangers who passed through at the holidays, bearing weird gifts. To me they possessed an alluring, mysterious aura; they were the Christmas People, consistent yet ephemeral. They came, they gave, they left. I didn't dislike them, but I didn't cherish them, either. We owed each other nothing. They were simply visitors in my own odd little winter wonderland.

(Copyright 1995 Jon Tevlin)

At the time I first read this essay, I was involved in a reading group about class consciousness, and found this piece challenged a lot of my assumptions. I had never thought about the idea of charity from the point of view of the receiver. Rereading it now, what strikes me is how balanced Tevlin is, in spite of the strong emotions that motivated him to write.

John Scalzi's blog Whatever, which I've belatedly discovered and caught up on via his compilation book Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, includes several short essays along similar lines: Being Poor, from September 2005, and Shaming the Poor from March 2008. Both of these pieces reminded me of Tevlin's essay, and I had planned to write about them, possibly referring to Tevlin, when lo and behold, today Tevlin was announced as a columnist.

As people who grew up poor, Scalzi and Tevlin share a background that is somewhat unusual among writers in America's land of theoretical plenty. I hope Jon Tevlin will use his new position to write columns that add nuance to the Strib's coverage of regular people's lives.

He's clearly got the gift of words, and I look forward to this new chance for him to share it with all of us.

All This from a Pile of Newsprint

You wouldn't believe the mound of newspaper clippings on my desk that await write-ups. In fact, it's so unbelievable I feel the need to include a photo:


These are in roughly reverse chronological order, since that's how it works when you deconstruct a mound.

Judge OKs extension of NSA phone-monitoring program (New York Times via Star Tribune). Two different FISA court judges (both women, grrrr) found that the NSA can collect phone call metadata because the Supreme Court in 1979 allowed police to get phone usage records for people being investigated for a crime. Seems to me like a pretty big difference between that and getting usage data on every person in the country. The reasoning in the 1979 case rests on the idea that you can't have a reasonable expectation of privacy for this data if the phone company has records of your usage. A 2012 Supreme Court decision, which found that a warrant was required to put a GPS tracker onto a suspect's car, would seem more applicable, but the second judge ruled that precedent didn't matter in the NSA case for no apparently good reason. It's time for the courts to catch up to technological change and give up on notions premised on the horse-and-buggy days.

Women scientists targeting Wikipedia (Associated Press via Star Tribune). Targeting, in this case, means holding an edit-a-thon to add or flesh out Wikipedia entries on women scientists. Get this: One example is Ingeborg Hochmair, "who does not have a page even though last month she won the prestigious Lasker Award for medical research for her work developing the modern cochlear implant. By contrast, her husband, Erwin Hochmair, an accomplished engineer who helped develop the device but did not win a Lasker prize, has his own page." And this: "Sara Hartse and Jacqueline Gu, both Brown freshmen and computer science students, said they first became aware of gender inequity on Wikipedia during an uproar in the spring when someone began systematically moving female novelists including Harper Lee and Ann Rice off the 'American Novelists' page and onto the 'American Women Novelists' subcategory."

Report: Fast-food wages have high cost (Washington Post via Star Tribune). The seven largest fast-food companies made $7.4 billion in profits last year. 900,000 of their employees (half their workforce) use federal safety net programs like SNAP, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Medicaid, amounting to $6.8 billion in taxpayer subsidies to the corporations.

This reminded me of a link I never managed to post about six months ago: Apple, Walmart, McDonald's: Who's the biggest wage stiffer? The answer depends on how you measure it. Walmart underpays the most people, McDonald's pays the lowest wages, and Apple makes the most per employee without sharing it with the employees (half a million dollars per employee... and that doesn't count the subcontracted workers in the Chinese factories, of course).

A nifty, somewhat lengthy article from the Pioneer Press on whether to decrease city and suburban speed limits from 30 to 25 miles per hour: Neighborhood speed limit fight stuck in neutral. I'm a fan of lowering speed limits (or heck, let's ban private cars inside city limits), but the article gives a good explanation of the case against it, as well as the one for it. Police, surprisingly to me, are against lowering limits because "enforcing it would drain time and resources." The DOT says lowering the limit will create an unsafe mix of low and high speeds. Wisconsin, which has 25 mph speed limits in its towns and cities, has much higher rates of injury and fatalities in pedestrian crashes than Minnesota. Things are never as simple as they seem. As shown in Tom Vanderbilt's book Traffic, wider roads make people drive faster. So maybe we need to narrow lanes and make things more complicated for drivers, not less.

Your state wants no part of Obamacare? Have it your way (Star Tribune commentary by David Morris from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance). Written during the government shutdown, Morris has a plan to let states opt out altogether if they meet three conditions: 1) They have to go without any provisions of the law, including no exclusion of preexisting conditions and allowing young adults on their parents' plans. 2) States that are implementing the law can have greater latitude to design their own, including single-payer now instead of waiting until 2017, as under the current law. 3) People in the opt-out states have to approve the opt-out by referendum, their legislature must approve it, and their governor must sign it. And how about we hold those referenda in 2014. Then, as Morris says, "the United States will become the world’s biggest social laboratory. Some states will operate under a pre-2009 health structure with large numbers of uninsured and a system dominated by private insurance companies. Others will create systems that provide universal access, likely with a public option."

What to do today if tomorrow never comes? (New York Times commentary via Star Tribune). Philosophy professor Samuel Scheffer ruminates on the importance of knowing that humans in general will continue after we're gone, rather than the need to believe there's a personal afterlife. "The knowledge that we and everyone we know and love will someday die does not cause most of us to lose confidence in the value of our daily activities. But the knowledge that no new people would come into existence would make many of those things seem pointless."

Pills made from poop cure serious gut woes (Associated Press via Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel). I already knew about fecal transplants, but I hadn't heard that advances have been made on turning the transplants into individualized pills. "Donor stool, usually from a relative, is processed in the lab to take out food and extract the bacteria and clean it. It is packed into triple-coated gel capsules so they won't dissolve until they reach the intestines." After downing two or three dozen of these capsules, all of the 27 trial patients with Clostridium difficile infections were cured.

Charity: Cargill skirting land laws. Oxfam says large land buy in Colombia illegal (Pioneer Press). Colombia passed laws over the past few decades to sell state-owned land to small-scale farmers in order to counter the country's extreme levels of land-ownership concentration. To grab land in spite of those restrictions, Cargill (a privately held, Minnesota-based ag company) set up shell companies to acquire over 125,000 acres of land. "Each of Cargill's 39 adjoining tracts shares the same address, same board member and same economic activity -- growing corn, soybeans and other crops." Nice move, Cargill.

Male sensitivity written in genes (New York Times via Star Tribune). "...the gene responsible for activating male development is surprisingly unstable, leaving the pathway to male sexuality fraught with inconsistency, a study finds.... This tenuous switch is what underlies the variability of testosterone secretion in utero,” he said, producing men with a wide range of gender styles and capabilities that can help ensure a community’s survival."

Guess what? The world is an improving place (commentary from Foreign Policy via Star Tribune). The number of democracies has nearly doubled in the past 25 years. Per capita income has increased from $6,200 to almost $10,000 since 1985, literacy rates have risen from 75 to 85 percent in the past 20 years. And smart phone adoption rates in developing countries put many people into touch with the web of innovation. It's like a page out of Steven Pinker's notes.

To that irritated lady at the store...I'm sorry—I should have told you to your face you were being presumptuous (commentary by Minneapolis resident Sue Bulger from the Star Tribune). Bulger was shopping for food for her adult disabled son, using his EBT card, when she was disparaged by a nearby shopper for using food stamps. "I thought I could handle your disdain, since I am a professional working at a local corporation where I am surrounded every day by people who respect me and care about me. But it still made me feel a little dirty — unworthy — and I still went home and cried in the privacy of my shower so my family would not know I was hurt by you."

I really don't get why people feel the need to police the payment methods and basket contents of people in line next to them. A recent Facebook post by a relative of mine went like this: "I was in line at the grocery store yesterday...... I noticed the woman ahead of me was using food stamps. Then I noticed she was in work clothes used by those in the medical profession. Then I noticed she had a stethoscope around her neck.... and a badge from [particular health care organization]. None of my business but I thought nurses made pretty good money." Followed by, of course, lots of comments from her right-wing friends about fraud. Until I shared a link to Bulger's Star Tribune commentary and another relative who uses WIC commented. That shut everyone up.

Whose Entitlement?

Ed Lotterman strikes again with his April 21 column on solving the "entitlement problem."

His solution? Last in first out -- which would require dropping the Medicare Part D drug coverage added in 2003 and the Medicare Advantage coverage of the 1990s. These two cuts would reduce deficits by $750 billion over the 10-year period discussed in Paul Ryan's plan.

I'll let him explain his logic:

If you recoil from these suggestions, but are one of the people who have been calling for lower taxes, lower deficits and smaller government, my counsel is simple: Shut up! Abolishing these two entitlements is the most concrete step the nation could take to give you exactly what you have been asking for.

Harsh words? Yes, but there has been so much demagoguery, so much willful fostering of self-serving misinformation around fiscal issues that we are not going to solve these problems without someone's feelings getting hurt.

People have to face realities. But based on the number of emails I get from people who believe that we could balance the budget by cutting foreign aid (0.6 percent of federal outlays) or curbing federal employee compensation (all civilian personnel costs come to less than 5 percent of outlays), it is clear that self-delusion still is rampant.

He continues later in the essay:

Many people did just fine without the [Part D drug] benefit. Indeed, studies showed that paying drug bills posed serious problems for less than 15 percent of Medicare beneficiaries. But most of the rest naturally have been glad to slurp free gravy offered to them....

It is true that, in the past three years, outlays for older programs like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP (formerly called Food Stamps) and unemployment compensation also have risen sharply. But increased spending for SNAP stems from more people meeting existing criteria due to the sour economy, not from any major expansion of benefits. If unemployment drops, outlays on SNAP will return to more usual levels.

The same is true for unemployment compensation. New claims will fall if the economy recovers. The initial 26 weeks of coverage is statutory. Anything beyond that, including the extensions of up to 99 weeks of coverage in force at times during the past three years, depends on congressional action. If Congress does nothing, outlays will drop.

So if you are looking for new, big entitlement programs enacted because a special interest group had the power to wrest money for itself from the rest of society, you are talking about Part D Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans....

Other big welfare programs like Medicaid, food stamps or Supplemental Security Income, and even minor ones like the Women, Infants and Children program are means-tested. Unless your income and net worth fall below specified amounts, you don't get the benefit. Medicare Part D and Advantage plans are not tied to need. Warren Buffett or George Soros is as eligible as some widow living on an $800-a-month Social Security check.

This is a litmus test. If you are all for curtailing entitlements, ending deficit spending and cutting taxes, but are unwilling to contemplate ending these two programs, then you are either very poorly educated about fiscal realities or hypocritical about defending your own benefits at the expense of the general good. [emphasis added]

Way to kick some cognitive dissonance butt, Ed!

Is Your Grandma a Welfare Queen?

Pioneer Press economics columnist Ed Lotterman recently shed some light on a topic that's received more than enough attention via the Drudge Report, Fox News and Katherine Kersten's column: the widely quoted statistic that 47 percent of Americans pay no taxes.

Of course, many of these same people do pay taxes: sales tax, state income tax, and payroll taxes to Social Security and Medicare. What they don't pay is federal income taxes.

The implied (or sometimes overtly stated) fear is that these "freeloaders" will use their voting power to vote themselves even more of other people's money.

As Lotterman put it in his Sunday column, A Profound Misunderstanding of Taxes:

To some, the idea that a fifth of all households get 75 percent of their money [from the federal government] conjures up images of welfare queens driving their Cadillacs down to the supermarket to buy frozen pizzas with food stamps....

A much truer picture of this group on the public dole would be a bunch of blue-haired old ladies playing Rummikub in a senior citizens center. That is because the biggest single set of households in this lowest-income group are retirees on Social Security. And a disproportionate number are women who have outlived their husbands.

In many cases, they are not indigent. They may live in a house they own and may be drawing down their retirement savings. But if a modest Social Security payment is their primary source of income, as it is for many retirees, they would both fall into this income class and get most of their income from the government. Are these really leeches whose voting threatens our society?

Disabled people on Supplemental Security Income are another set in this poorest fifth of all households. Many are not eligible for Social Security because their physical or mental problems kept them from ever working long enough to become vested in the system. Some may have jobs but their SSI payments, together with food stamps and other transfer payments for low-income people, mean that what they get from government is large relative to their earned income.

Is our economy becoming less fair to higher income people and less economically efficient because people who spend their days in sheltered workshops or who are blind or confined to motorized wheelchairs throw their political weight around?

In concluding, Lotterman writes, "Yes, there also are people among the poorest 20 percent of households who are lazy, who make bad decisions, ... and who are dishonest. But I find such people at all income levels."

The same can be said, I would add, among that newest group of individuals -- corporations.

Summer, All a-Twitter

Another July, and Twitter is still here. Though I hear they may start filtering our feeds, similar to Facebook, based on some mysterious algorithm that figures out what you're interested in.

Regular readers of my best-of-Twitter posts may note a bunch here from a new source named Jamie Kilstein, a male feminist vegan atheist comedian. He has a podcast called Citizen Radio.

I noticed that several of this month's tweets are about the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case:

Is it illegal for me to ask what religion a corporation is during a job interview?
By Mat Honan

An illustrated guide to American personhood:


By Sarah Baker

It's almost as if the linkage between employment and health care is a fundamentally terrible idea.
By Tom Tomorrow

You know, I *did* have this sneaky feeling that making a basic human right dependent on market/employer whims was kinda iffy.
By Blake Stacey

Reminder: It's 2014 and still conservatives are all fussy pants that women can suppress our own ovulation like it belongs to us.
By Amanda Marcotte 

I wonder how many corporations would object to paying for female contraception if they had to pay for maternity leave...
By Jason Sweeney

Still waiting for a corporation to have a religious objection to paying so little that their employees have to live off food stamps.
By Pete Nicely

Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus.
By Sarah Silverman 

Am always intrigued when Rush Limbaugh, married like 20 times & childless, says how birth control is just for hos.
By Josh Marshall Also faved by: Jen Deaderick

If a business’ owners want religious protection, they should lose all corporate/LLC protections and isolations, as the company is personal.
By Marco Arment

And others are about the child refugee build-up at our southern border:

BREAKING: Nation of immigrants who fled persecution persecutes immigrants fleeing persecution, irony surrenders to stupidity
By Rex Huppke 

The Statue of Liberty, traditionally the symbol of Protecting The Homeland from immigrants:


By David Roth

Nothing shows your pride in America more than standing at the border and screaming at people who want to be Americans.
By Frank Conniff

God, grant me the serenity to yell at immigrant children, the courage to still say I'm a Christian, and the ignorance to not get the irony.
By Rex Huppke

But otherwise, no major patterns, other than my usual topics, strewn throughout:

An English teacher discussing homophones on a school's website was fired for "promoting a gay agenda." Really.
By Hemant Mehta

Attn Business Insider, that's not his "torso":


By Rob Beschizza

There's something vaguely terrifying about a grown man wearing overalls. If only one side is buttoned, the end is near.
By Aparna Nancherla

If they put Shirley Chisholm on the $20 I would cash out my bank account in $20s and roll around in them.
By Sarah Jaffe

It's still strikes me as really weird that we debate how to seriously cut poverty as if no one else has figured it out.
By Matt Bruenig

Here is a cool monster from a medieval map if you needed that today. It is a “sea-pig.” (via smithsonianmag.com)


By mapzen

Markets structurally impoverish the disabled, elderly, young, families with children -- the constant churn of those it unemploys.
By Matt Bruenig

Is it inevitable that with age, even smart people start saying things that are okay, but slightly, weirdly, out of touch? Don't answer that.
By Monika Bauerlein

America’s debt load:


By Demos_Org

Play With It As It Lays. #DogMovies.
By Frank Conniff

Poor kids need democratic schooling the most because they're often the ones confined in the most regimented, authoritarian environments.
By Nikhil Goyal

Segregation within school is at least as much of a problem as segregation by school. Aggregate number's hide this.
By Adam Holman

"Whiteness is the original identity politics. And, worse still, it was militarized identity politics." – Gerald Horne
By Greg Carr

"The redemptive power of _______" is a phrase usually applied to things that don't work for me.
By Chris Steller

We should question the sacrosanct nature of college, but also acknowledge that alternatives to college aren't attainable for low-income.
By Nikhil Goyal

I hate hipsters. Their smug faces, their vegan diet, tiny feet and sawdust bedding. No wait, I meant hamsters.
By Athena Scalzi

I look forward to the day when motorists have to roll down the window and push a button...


By Highchair Kings

"I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all." – E. B. White
By Jon Winokur

My mind boggles at the amount of effort spent on the technical solution of a CMS [content management system, used on websites] when content and people problems are virtually ignored.
By Mark Boulton

When will they make a movie about a bunch of cool dudes having one last adventure before settling down? Come on, Hollywood!
By jamiekilstein

We went directly from "gays destroy society" (actually still in TX GOP platform) to "waaa stop oppressing me" without pausing at "I'm sorry."
By Josh Barro

In 2013 Cook County [Chicago] spent $500M on prisons and $1.9M on violence prevention. What if we reversed those numbers?
By Emily McGinley

Good thing the USA has "In God We Trust" on their money, otherwise I might think they were some greedy, selfish, corrupt jerks.
By almightygod

ITS NOT ABOUT LACK OF WATER. IT'S ABOUT RICH MOTHERFUCKERS TAKING WATER FROM POOR PEOPLE TO MAKE A HEARTLESS POINT. JESUS.
By jamiekilstein

Who benefits from getting society to believe the sky is falling?
By Sisyphus38

It's sad to live in a country where you dread important cases going to the Supreme Court.
By jamiekilstein

Unclear on the concept:


By Stacey Burns

"People talking about traditional marriage between a man & a woman usually also mean the woman should be submissive." Quoting #citizenradio
By Faith Beauchemin

I have an alert set up for when we all stop capitalizing the Web.
By Chris Steller

The idea that we can't have legitimate critiques of elected officials we support is absurd.
By Brittney Cooper

Before you marry a person you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.
By Bill Murray

People often forget that when Milton Glaser designed the “I ❤ NY” logo, he also gave birth to the whole idea of using “I ❤ for anything.
By Nick Sherman

Cooking pasta when suddenly, Cookie Monster:


By Halloween Costumes 

I hate when adults call kids lazy. It means that the kid doesn’t want to do what you want him to do but would rather do what he wants to do.
By Sisyphus38

I really wish Star Trek hadn't skipped over the part about how Earth became a peaceful planet. That seems like useful information right now.
By pourmecoffee

It’s very important that the department stores of the world keep fat people looking frumpy. So you can spot us in a crowd.
By Rainbow Rowell

New female Thor to be paid less than male Thor. Reports already suggest she is "bossy" and displays "God-like" arrogance.
By Wajahat Ali

You think people are pissed about a black Captain America & female Thor, wait until they realize Superman was an undocumented immigrant baby
By Steve Marmel

Here's what happens if you wash and blow-dry a cow.


By Matt Owen

It's weird that when it comes to the idea of Love Thy Neighbor, many Conservative Christians want a religious exemption.
By Frank Conniff

Since I ride a bike I keep getting told to OBEY ALL TRAFFIC LAWS, but when I do that in the car it pisses people off. Super confusing.
By Ken Paulman

Used to be afraid of Jehovah's Witnesses talking to me about Jesus & God, now afraid of foodies talking to me about cast iron pans and chili.
By Rich Lowtax Kyanka

If you get in arguments about the atrocities happening in Gaza feel free to use me as your "Jewish Friend."
By jamiekilstein

Talking about charter schools without talking about selection bias is just talking.
By Patrick Steele

Are political reporters legally required to use the term "partisan wrangling" in every article they write?
By Jonathan Blake

"Each of us values what we read differently. Rubrics depend on the pretense that all readers can or should agree." – Maja Wilson
By Alfie Kohn

I get chain mail and chain letters mixed up.
By Chris Steller

Efficiency is bullshit. Efficiency is the demand of an industrial system wanting us to bend humanity to the demand of money and machine
By Audrey Watters

Whenever writing seems too hard, I remember that Black Beauty managed to write his autobiography, and he didn't even have hands.
By M. Molly Backes

One more time: Jails and prisons ARE inherently violent. They ARE violence.
By Prison Culture

If I found out Michael Bay was going to make a 3D Calvin and Hobbes movie I think that's when I would stop joking and actually hunt him down.
By jamiekilstein

Asking Dick and Liz Cheney about public policy is like asking Jenny McCarthy about vaccines.
By Josh Barro

Problem: Daughter got totally gendered toys for her birthday. Solution: teach her to disassemble them.


By Don Neufeld

Gazans seem to have a lot of grit and persistence to withstand this stuff every few months. Bet their test scores are through the roof.
By Matt Bruenig

We're giving $8 million a day to Israel to help the occupation while people in Detroit are getting their water turned off.
By Dawud Walid

In a world where graphic design is crime one brave frog stuck in white cube in the fog zone won't forget his passion:


By AD

When you use data to study people, ask "who gains power with this info?" If it's not the people whose data you are using, there's a problem.
By Hilary Mason

Seriously though, Hollywood is never more committed to non-traditional casting than when it's picking Northern Europeans for bible epics.
By AdamSerwer

"The emotional, sexual and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'" — Shirley Chisholm
By The Crisis Magazine

I don't believe in broad statements.
By Chris Steller

"Why buy a cow if you get the milk for free?" the man asked. "I'm not for sale," growled the cow. The man screamed as a talking cow ate him.
By Julieanne Smolinski

They told me I couldn't have a pet dinosaur. They LIED:



By Erin Schmalfeld

One way that power factions train people to submit is to make them so jaded they say "this doesn't surprise us" for every abuse.
By Glenn Greenwald

$400 billion for warplanes. There's no financial crisis in the US. We simply care more about killing brown people than we do anything else.
By Saladin Ahmed

When you concentrate on my many weaknesses, I will too, and I will become that story.
By Sisyphus38

Being a lady means realizing that, if you went back in time to meet your heroes, a lot of them would probably try to grope you.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker

I am embarrassed at some of the opinions I held 10 years ago. I wonder if I will think the same 10 years from now.
By Sisyphus38

Never liked the term “nonfiction." The truth should have its own word, and not be shackled to its antonym.
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neither standards nor testing nor weakening tenure address the opportunity gap; these are red herrings unlike equity in funding & class size.
By leonie haimson

Tweets about food stamps are fun to read because a lot of them are impossible, e.g. people claiming someone used food stamps at McDonalds.
By Matt Bruenig

Good food stamp critics are also clairvoyant -- they know people's intentions and home life details.
By David Kaib

Thanking God for sparing you in a natural disaster is like sending a thank-you note to a serial killer for stabbing the family next door.
By Mrs. Betty Bowers

Something has gone very wrong if we'll pay $5 for a greeting card, $3 for gift wrap, but resent paying more than $2.99 for a book.
By John Connolly

"We need to invade the Middle East to get those women back their rights! ...Just not equal pay, birth control and a say in their bodies!"
By jamiekilstein

"We show grace to the institutions of systemic sin while condemning the individual sinner. It should be the other way around."
By Craig Greenfield

We need less hackathons, more apprenticeships. Less bootcamps, more classes. Less rockstars, more mentors. Develop people instead of product.
By Jordan Rinke

If you want great public schools, start with children and work UPWARD. Instead, our policy makers start with corporations and work DOWNWARD.
By Mark Naison

YOU are likely a WORKER, and thus, it is in YOUR best interest for EVERY WORKER to have the RIGHTS you want for yourself.
By Paul Thomas

If a type designer is staring a little too intently at your chest, you're probably wearing a shirt with their font on it.
By Process Type Foundry

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." —James Baldwin
By Paul Thomas

Someone found Godzilla in Michigan:


By Halloween Costumes

Look at it this way, if there were no hypocrites there would be no cartoonists.
By Mathew Paust

FACT: In recent study, majority of white grads found a job through friends/family. 68% of black grads found it on their own.
By ColorLines.com

This generation is bad because they spend too much time on their phones, unlike the Good Generation that fire-hosed black people.
By Alaina Grey

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
By Socrates

Ha!


By Marcus Brigstocke

How to ruin a book: Step 1) Assigned Reading. Step 2) Chapter Questions. Step 3) Vocabulary.
By Paul Pichurski

I think the Melissa Harris Perry Show is the only news show whose idea of covering women's issues isn't shopping tips or keeping-your-hubby-in-line segments.
By jamiekilstein

It's almost crazy to think that before Twitter, all of this nonsense stayed in people's heads.
By Chris Rock

Two Posts from the Handbasket

The tabs are getting unmanageable again, but for today I can only manage two because they both overwhelm me.

The first is a piece from Pacific Standard that I read yesterday, called Authoritarianism: the terrifying trait that Trump triggers. Karen Stenner, a psychology researcher and leading expert on authoritarianism, was interviewed about recent research. The key point — and it's super-depressing to hear this — is that "Western liberal democracies have now exceeded many people's capacity to tolerate them."

Research finds that about a "third of white responders across 29 liberal democracies proved to be authoritarian to some degree," with that number based on responses to a series of questions about child-rearing. The whole article is worth reading, but here are some key parts:

...how do you define authoritarianism? Authoritarianism is a deep-seated, relatively enduring psychological predisposition to prefer—indeed, to demand—obedience and conformity, or what I call "oneness and sameness," over freedom and diversity. Authoritarianism is substantially heritable—about 50 percent heritable, according to empirical studies of identical twins reared together and apart, a standard technique for separating out the influence of nature vs. nurture....

The conditions that significantly activate authoritarians, and greatly exacerbate the expression of their authoritarianism in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviors, are what I call "normative threats," (which are) threats to "oneness and sameness." In diverse, complex, modern societies not sharing a single racial/ethnic identity, the things that make "us" an "us"—that make us one and the same—are common authority, and shared values.

So the classic conditions that typically activate and aggravate authoritarians—rendering them more racially, morally, and politically intolerant—tend to be perceived loss of respect for/confidence in/obedience to leaders, authorities and institutions, or perceived value conflict and loss of societal consensus/shared beliefs, and/or erosion of racial/cultural/group identity. This is sometimes expressed as a loss of "who we are"/"our way of life."...

It is important to recognize that authoritarian predisposition is another way of being human and not intrinsically/necessarily evil. It is a natural variation in human "political character," largely heritable and relatively immutable, and, most importantly, pretty much immune to—and, in fact, more likely to be aggravated by—democratic experiences/socialization and the promotion of multiculturalism.

The most fundamental point is that a true democracy cannot just demean and dismiss a third of its citizens, and simply fail to take any account of (even allow the free expression of) their preferences. It is better that they should be openly expressed, and seriously considered, and managed within mainstream political processes, than suppressed and ultimately driven to extremes/to the lawless fringe. This is much more dangerous in the long run....

(Emphasis added.)

Stenner doesn't offer a lot in the way of solutions. She primarily calls for an "abundance of common and unifying rituals, institutions, and processes." Those would help, but at this point, it's hard to imagine what those unifiers would be that wouldn't also become polarized (the 4th of July? NASCAR? professional sports? all militarized and politicized by the Right, making them unpalatable to progressives).

If we could find a way to encourage media (both Right and mainstream) to inflame fears less, that would be helpful as well. But the economic base of media works against that possibility because terrified people watch more ads.

Research shows that making conservatives feel safe pushes their opinions in decidedly liberal directions, so maybe we could come up with a way to do that. (Back to the idea of putting the lithium in the drinking water, yet again.) But as long as they're watching Fox and listening to Alex Jones, there doesn't seem to be much hope of making them feel safer.

The second piece is today's featured post on Doug Muder's The Weekly Sift, called Why does the Right hate victims? Muder starts it off with this cartoon:


I've written before about the Sandy Hook truthers (I still can't believe there is such a thing, but after the swift-boating of John Kerry anything is in the realm of possibility). Now we have the Parkland truthers with their Photoshopped images of Emma Gonzalez and stories about David Hogg. It's hard to keep up with these stupidities.

It's notable that this is something that happens only on the Right. For instance, no one attacked the families Republicans parade around, whose loved ones died because of an action by an undocumented immigrant. We may say we feel sorry for them because they're being taken advantage of. But no one says their kid didn't die, or didn't exist in the first place, or that they're "crisis actors," right?

After laying out the situation and some history of attacks from the Right, Muder concludes with this cogent analysis:

Why is attacking victims such an important part of conservative rhetoric that when it’s taken away (by victims who are simultaneously too sympathetic and too skilled), they feel that they’re being silenced?

It’s simple: At its root, conservative policy is about giving the powerful even more power. So, by its nature, conservatism is constantly producing victims: When guns are everywhere, people get shot. When you take away health insurance, people die. When you rev up deportations, families get ripped apart. When you restrict food stamps, people go hungry. When you defund food inspectors, people get food poisoning. When you stop policing polluters, people get cancer.

Real people. Innocent people who are just trying to live their lives. People you would sympathize with if you met them.

To be a conservative at all, you have to live in denial of all this: There are no victims. Cuts in government spending don’t impact real people, they just prevent more money from swirling down a drain somewhere. There are no transgender soldiers who just want to serve their country. There are no committed same-sex couples who just want to get married like everybody else. There are no young black men getting shot by police for no reason.

When you deny something, and then somebody tries to make you see it, you get angry. That’s how people are: I was happy in my denial, and then these victims came along and screwed everything up for me. How dare they!

When people get angry, they want to strike back. They want to make the victims go away, or at least to make them stop showing up on TV where they’re hard to ignore.

The basic pattern — denial leads to anger leads to striking back at victims — is human. You can find examples of it across the political spectrum. But denial is much more central to conservatism than to liberalism. So victim-bashing has to be at the center of nearly every issue. 

Emphasis added to the part that was the biggest epiphany for me. They don't really believe there are victims. That's it.

___

Going through the other tabs, I just found this older piece from Pacific Standard that fits with the more recent one: Inside the minds of hardcore Trump supporters. It identifies different types of authoritarian mindsets, and declares Mulligan's acolytes are of the "authoritarian aggressive" type. "So the very things a majority of Americans find disconcerting, if not disqualifying, about Trump—his need to dominate, his thinly veiled white supremacism, and his blunt, bullying language—is precisely what appeals to his hardcore fans." Grrrreat.

Where Did My Taxes Go?

I wish every voter would look at the website wheredidmytaxesgo.com before tossing out opinions about NPR, Planned Parenthood or any other budget-related topic. It's a neat interactive pie chart: You plug in the amount you made in 2010, and it shows how the money got used.


Tiny budgetary items like NPR or Planned Parenthood don't show up in it, I admit, but that's only because they're so small.

When you put your mouse over any wedge, it tells you the dollar amount and percentage. If you click, it gives you detail on how that portion broke down, explaining what goes into each.

For instance, I had no idea what "Income Security" meant -- and it was one of the largest parts. Well, here's the breakdown of how the 16 percent of budget called Income Security is spent:

• 34 percent: unemployment
  
• 16 percent: retirement funds for civil servants and military
• 15 percent: what most people think of as "welfare" in some sense -- food stamps at 9 percent make up most of it, with about 2 percent each to TANF (what used to be called AFDC), rental assistance, and child nutrition (school lunches and breakfasts, and summer food programs)
• 6 percent: SSI, direct payments to adults with disabilities who cannot work
• 15 percent: Tax credits to low-wage workers, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, child credit, first-time homebuyers, and other credits you may have just been asked about on your tax forms
• 13 percent to a variety of smaller programs
  

Because my mind was on this tool even as I was doing my own tax forms, I couldn't help reading an op-ed in today's Pioneer Press by someone from the Heritage Foundation on the same exact topic. Brian Riedl explains where Federal spending per household goes, but he divides his numbers up differently and even includes some contradictory ones.

Riedl combines Medicare and Social Security into a single 32 percent chunk, I suspect because he didn't want Defense to be the largest single item, as it is in the wheredidmytaxesgo.com charts. Even so, his Defense number is higher: 20 percent of the total. His listing of interest on the federal debt is only a bit over 5 percent -- what's up with that big decrease? And somehow, his anti-poverty programs (which include all of the income support items outlined above) are said to account for 17 percent of the total instead of 16, even though he lists unemployment benefits separately at over 3 percent.

How is it possible that these two analyses are so different? I'm not sure, but on the whole, I think I'll take the online tool over Riedl's groupings because its methods are much more transparent and a lot more detail is available.

By the way, despite public misconceptions that NPR (or actually the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which also supports public television) gets as much as 5 percent of the budget, it's actually .01 of 1 percent ($420 million). Planned Parenthood gets even less ($360 million). Each uses the money to support a network of stations or clinics across the country. Ironically, those dollar amounts are very similar to moneys allocated for several Defense line items that even the Defense Department doesn't want, but which Congress has passed anyway.

Simulating Poverty to Make a Point

This is a new one for me: the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches holds an interactive poverty simulation periodically, the next of which is this Thursday at the GMCC offices on Lake Street near Chicago Ave.

According to the Star Tribune's Rose French, the simulation is "board-game-like, with up to 50 'players.' They're divided into small groups, each representing a family of five (two parents and children ages 2, 4 and 11) living in the Twin Cities on $3,000 a month. The challenge is to find housing, day care, transportation and health insurance, plus pay for household expenses, food, clothing and entertainment."

That level of income wouldn't put such a family below the official poverty line, but would be called low-income and mean living check to check, just one illness or broken car away from financial ruin.

French quotes GMCC's Gennae Falconer as saying "One of the overlying beliefs people have about poverty is there's a level of choice involved. That they [the poor] have the power to change it." After going through the simulation, participants usually see the complexities and feel stressed by it.

I did an online poverty simulator called Spent a few months ago. The premise of Spent is that you've lost your job and your house, and you're down to your last thousand dollars. You have to find a job, and you're offered options as a restaurant server or as a warehouse or temp worker. To do temp work (my selection), you have to pass a 55-word-per-minute typing test (which I passed). For this, I can get $9 an hour ($306 per week after taxes). Health insurance is then offered, but it costs $275, almost as much as a week's pay. I opted out.

The simulator then offers a slider to figure out where you'll live. It's more expensive to live near work, even though transportation costs go down. If I opt to live 50 miles away, my cost is $762 per month; right next to the office, it's $855. Either way, it's about two-thirds of my income. I think I see problems ahead.

I opted for everything the simulator offered that would bring in money (selling my extra stuff instead of storing it, letting a friend sleep on the couch for $200/month). By making every hard decision they offered (not going to see my kid's play, letting my car's registration lapse, and a lot of other things I can't remember) I made it through the month, but I could see I was on a downward spiral.

It was enlightening, but there were problems I could see with the Spent simulator:

• It doesn't mention anything about the Earned Income Credit, which would have zeroed out my taxes if I did my withholding correctly.
• It didn't offer the possibility of renting in a house with other unrelated adults at a much lower cost. (This is how I lived for most of my 20s.) Although the simulator also assumes you're a single parent of a school-age child, so perhaps I'm being unrealistic about that possibility, and the friend on the couch scenario resulted in just about the same thing.
• The simulator insists I have a car, even though I chose to be close enough to work that I could  bus. Then it threw unexpected car expenses at me, which I would not have had if it had let me go carless. So why bother letting me live that close if you're going to insist on a car?
• The grocery purchase doesn't acknowledge either the existence of food stamps or that I might participate in a community garden for part of the year.

I'd love to try the GMCC simulation to see if or how it limits choices to make its point. I can't make it to this Thursday's, but I think I'll find out when their future sessions will be. Like the Doctors Without Borders mock refugee camp I visited several years ago, I'm sure it will be informative and moving.

A Tale of Two Columnists

The Pioneer Press's Ed Lotterman is retiring soon, and once he does, the paper's readers will have lost a voice of reason. The good news is he's spending his last months at work turning out columns that should be compiled into a book of economic sanity.

Today's column is titled Reality of Federal Spending Doesn't Fit Myth, and I'll quote it completely since the PiPress has the annoying habit of taking their stories down after they've been up for only a few weeks:

Charles Mackay wrote his book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" 170 years ago, but the phenomenon is alive and well today.

The fact that people cling to beliefs that are at odds with readily available data might be amusing if the social costs in terms of bad government policies driven by voter ignorance were not so high.

France faces this right now. Protests, peaceful and violent, are part of French national culture, but any dispassionate observer can tell that nation's current work and pension system is fiscally unsustainable. The longer they delay reform, the harder the adjustment will be.

Many in the United States snicker at the French but cling to their own denial about the choices we face. People who think we simultaneously can lower taxes and eliminate budget deficits while not cutting Social Security or Medicare or other widely supported programs are as misinformed as any marching French citizen.

Since we are just over a week from the election, it is useful to look at the actual data related to some of these popular misconceptions. To do that, we turn to two sources: the Economic Report of the President, 2010, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce.

For example, the idea that federal taxes and spending grow inexorably, year after year, is widely accepted.

Yes, both have grown in dollar terms, but relative to the overall size of the economy, the changes are much less striking.

One can "prove" that government outlays relative to GDP have mushroomed by cherry-picking specific years. For example, from Fiscal Year 1950 to FY 2011, federal spending as a percentage of GDP grew from 15.6 percent of GDP to 25.1 percent.

But if one takes average by decade, the change is less dramatic. In the 1950s, the average was 17.6 percent, rising to 22.2 percent in the 1980s. But in the 1990s, it fell to 20.7 percent and was an even 20 percent from 2000 through 2009.

Yes, the average for 2009, the last Bush budget year; 2010, the first Obama one; and projected numbers for FY 2011 that started a few weeks ago, is 25 percent of GDP. But that is skewed by the $700 billion TARP program initiated by Bush and Obama's $787 stimulus program, along with sharply higher outlays for unemployment benefits.

But these recession levels are only slightly above the 23.5 percent in Ronald Reagan's third year in office. No president until Obama had average outlays as high as the 22.3 percent average for Reagan's eight fiscal years. A growth of 2.7 percent of GDP in 30 years is hardly explosive.

Federal taxes relative to GDP are remarkably stable, tracking from 17.2 percent to 18.5 percent of GDP over six decades. At 14.8 percent for 2009 and 2010, they were the lowest since the recession year of 1959 at the end of the Eisenhower administration. Some of these low receipts are due to the one-time $116 billion tax cut embodied in the Obama stimulus and delivered through lower withholdings, but most of it is due to recession-driven lower incomes.

Some categories of spending have increased sharply. Defense outlays surged after 2001 and have grown as a share of GDP in the two Obama budgets. This is due to large inflation-adjusted dollar increases but also to the fact that the denominator — GDP — remains below 2007 levels. Yet at 4.9 percent of GDP, 2011 defense outlays are a full percentage point lower than under Reagan and half of what they were in the 1960s.

Health is the one area that does increase inexorably in both absolute dollars and relative to GDP. There are two categories — Medicare, funded through FICA taxes, and "health" that is primarily Medicaid but includes the VA and Indian Health systems and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Inflation-adjusted Medicare outlays for 2010 were 5.4 times as high as in 1980, and all other health grew by a factor of 6.1. The average annual growth rates were 5.8 percent and 6.2 percent respectively, while inflation-adjusted national output only grew 2.8 percent annually.

So health spending outpaced real GDP growth while federal outlays as a proportion of the overall economy remained constant. This means federal spending on other items is dropping in relative terms. All government outside of health care fell steadily from a post-World War II high of 20.6 percent in the Reagan administration to an even 15 percent for 2000-2009. In the Obama budgets, it is back up near 20 percent but will fall if the stimulus package and defense increases are not renewed.

"Tea party" enthusiasts often argue that burgeoning federal spending is driven by exploding "entitlements" but then stridently deny that Social Security and Medicare fall into that category. As the expression goes, "Against ignorance, even the gods struggle in vain."

Yes, "income security," the category that includes unemployment benefits, food stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, rent subsidies and other programs thought of as "welfare," has grown slightly faster than GDP, if one includes the big unemployment and Food Stamp increases since the current recession began. But otherwise, outlays relative to GDP in 2000-2007 were exactly equal to the averages under three presidents from 1980-1999 and only slightly above levels in the 1970s under Nixon, Ford and Carter.

The important fact remains that even with sharply increased spending in the past three fiscal years, if one excludes medical spending, the relative size of government is smaller than in the last major recession. With medical programs included, it is only 2 percentage points of GDP higher.

A few miles up the river, Katherine Kersten writes in her Star Tribune column about a new book that's probably getting lots of attention on Fox News, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. Kersten describes its writer, Stanley Kurtz, as if he were an impartial academic (gee, he has a Ph.D. from Harvard!) who had an open mind going into the project, never mentioning the fact that Kurtz is part of the Hudson Institute and the Hoover Institution, two conservative think tanks.

I haven't read the book, obviously, since I just heard of it today, but Kersten's column is full of quoted terms such a "hard Marxist," followed by her own use of heavily connoted words like "cronies" to describe Obama's advisers. She then goes on to write one of the most astounding statements I've ever seen, even from her:

We see [Saul] Alinsky's ghost in Obama's tactical ruthlessness, and his ferocious, unprecedented demonization of opponents.

Unprecedented demonization of opponents!? Obama, who can't even put on a good fight against the Party of No? And Kersten pretends to think he tops the demonization work of Republican operatives like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove? Not to mention the literal demonization seen in the many images of Obama as the Joker, the devil, and Death.

If Kersten really wanted to know if Obama is a socialist, she wouldn't have to rely on a book like Kurtz's. She could just ask people who are socialists if they feel like Obama is carrying out their agenda. The answer would be a big red no.

The Last Tweets of 2019 and the Decade

It's time for one last Twitter round-up of the twenty-teens. This morning before I got up, I had an idea for this intro but by the time I started working on it I couldn't remember what it was, so — as my mom used to say — it must have been a lie. Or at least, not a very good idea. I hope.

The New Year, New Years Eve, and 2020:

I don't know what will happen in the future. That's exactly why I remain hopeful. Certainty is the death of hope. Looking forward to working with comrades in 2020 to do what we can, where we are, with the resources we can marshal to continue working towards the horizon we seek.
@prisonculture

If you were born in 1981 or before, then on more than half of your days on Earth, the year contained "19." Tuesday is your last such day -- THAT IS, IT'S THE LAST DAY YOU WILL BE ALIVE IN A YEAR THAT CONTAINS "19"
Chris Steller

My wish for 2020 is for people to stop asking climate activists what gives us hope and start asking “how can I help?” Quit worrying about hope and start worrying about not being complicit.
Mary Annaïse Heglar

Christmas-related:

One of Langston Hughes homemade Christmas cards from 1950:


Beinecke Library

The moral of a Christmas Carol is that it takes extreme supernatural intervention to get the rich to be generous so it’d probably just be easier to tax them
@hobbsisme

Christmas Celebrates the Birth of a Refugee Who Was Killed by the State:


Alexis Goldstein
Don't fear what lies ahead as we head into the new year, y'all. Be brave. Be bold. Remember that what freedom we have is owed to the bravery of those who came before us and pay it forward by being brave today.
Bree Newsome Bass

Am I the only person out there not afraid to say that after weeks of this bruising election, the new Banksy piece made me cry? Sprinkling empathic imagination dust in a world that has forgotten what both those things mean. "Art is the highest form of hope" –Gerhard Richter:


Rob Hopkins

The race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination:

Only 17% of Americans trust the government to do the right thing at least most of the time. I get the cynicism -- but that's what the wealthy and well-connected want. They want you to give up so they have free rein to get more special tax giveaways and roll back public health rules. Elizabeth Warren is saying we shouldn't give up. We should take on the corruption head on. And when we win, we'll restore faith in government and the great things we can achieve together. (And we'll fix those tax rules so giant corporations have to pay up.)
Bharat Ramamurti

by voting for elizabeth warren you can simultaneously give the finger to both neera tanden and david sirota, I can make no stronger case for her
Will Stancil

Sanders and Warren sweating where they buy pens while Trump LIVES at a business that charges a $200,000 membership fee to watch people open Diet Cokes for him is the Aesop's Fable of this time.
LOLGOP

Clock it! My child has been alive 54 days before a random stranger at a holiday party, unprompted, gave me pro-tips on juking 529 college savings plans. Here, smart ins-and-outs of grandparent-owned 529s. But we can't have universal free college because a better-off person might benefit.
Mike Konczal @rortybomb

Free college is about PUBLIC higher education. There are over 4000 colleges in the U.S. Of those about 1600 are public. That 1600 includes:
~1100 community colleges
~450 regional comprehensives
~50 research and flagship unis
Yet most people think about those 50!
Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab

If you want to see America encapsulated, it is this: A bunch of white people talking about how money corrupts politics after they kicked the black people out of the room for not having enough money.
michaelharriot

I wish there was a way to endorse multiple candidates. Or at least have people understand that you can like one candidate most but still respect several others and would be excited for their campaigns?
Mary Annaïse Heglar

Too bad two billionaires are engaged in a losing vanity project to spend millions on a Presidential campaign when they could be funding a takeover of the Senate.
@DrJamesJTeeth

Steyer candidacy almost feels like a political scientist designed an extremely expensive experiment into the efficacy of TV ad buys.
Chris Hayes

Bloomberg and Steyer's TV spend could have paid for EVERY SINGLE Democratic candidate running for state legislature in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin in 2018. Every. single. state. candidate.
Catherine Vaughan

It’s not escaping my notice that Biden and Sanders have been skating through this last month with almost no scrutiny as press trains their fire on Warren. Again.
@TheStagmania

pete buttiegig represents everything that formerly gifted kids never wanted to become. just a fervent white knuckling psycho hell bent on resume building nonstop since he was 13 years old, who nobody was ever brave enough to tell how absolutely fucking miserably irritating he is
@argumentwinner

If I were Joe Biden, every time I was asked about Hunter’s qualifications to serve on the board of an energy company, I’d say “Ivanka Trump is serving as an advisor to the President of the United States. Please show me her qualifications.”
@littledeekay

The treatment Warren is getting from the media just goes to show that it was never “but, her emails.” It was always “but, she’s female.”
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt

If you think a 3% wealth tax only on those assets you have above a billion is vilification, you need to get out more. You may be living in such a cosseted, cotton-ball bubble that you don’t even know what it means to have anybody tell you the truth.
Anand Giridharadas

I have now heard more about trumped-up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter than I have heard about who paid off Brett Kavanaugh’s $92,000 country club fees plus his $200,000 credit card debt plus his $1.2 million mortgage, and purchased themselves a SCOTUS seat.
Andrea Junker

Jill Lepore in THESE TRUTHS makes a compelling case that every program exclusively for the hard-up has been in perpetual trouble, whereas every program that has been for everyone has wide support. Subsidizing rich usage (which they’ve paid taxes for) helps buy political support. Imagine two ships. On one, the public rafts are free to all passengers and workers. On the other, the public rafts are free to workers and economy passengers. But first-class passengers have to pay $100. So they organize private ones. Which ship’s public rafts will be better?
Anand Giridharadas

Money spent on ads so far:
Steyer: $47M
Bloomberg: $39M (in two weeks!!!))
All other Democrats combined: $15M
Nate Silver (as of December 7)

The reason it’s worth paying for millionaires and billionaires to use public goods is because you end up with public goods for everyone so good even millionaires and billionaires use them.
Anand Giridharadas

I think we should all just take a minute to appreciate the fact that Pete’s explanation for why he can’t tell us what he did at McKinsey is literally that he’s at the mercy of a giant, predatory corporation.
Adam Jentleson

Kirsten, Beto, Kamala. All 3 out MONTHS before any votes have been cast based on fundraising, media coverage and polls about how predominantly White voters in predominantly White states feel about them (if they even know they exist). This is what they’re calling a primary now.
Propane Jane™ @docrocktex26

If you don’t think racism and misogyny are playing a role in the Dem primary, ask yourself, what is a single data point that Mayor Pete is actually “electable?” What’s a single sign he will actually be the one to beat Trump in the Midwest? The Southwest? Let’s be real, folks.
Stephen Miles @SPMiles42

At Kamala Harris's lowest moments in the polls, she has outpolled Mike Bloomberg. That she is now out and he's just getting started tells you so much about how money, power, race, and gender work in America. So don't tell me Mike Bloomberg is too rich to be corrupt. His candidacy incarnates the fundamental corruption at the heart of our political order.
Anand Giridharadas

There’s something really wrong with a system where Kamala Harris can’t make it to Iowa and billionaires with no base and no message are just gliding through.
Jared Yates Sexton

Remember when Sanders had a heart attack a few weeks ago and basically it’s down the memory hole? A dude whose only winning election had 8000 votes and with no black support is treated as a front runner. Yet Harris couldn’t sneeze without four articles attacking her.
Bartleby @the_scrivener

No matter your candidate, you have to recognize that going from the most diverse field ever in January to a potentially all-white debate stage in December is catastrophic. The implicit racism and sexism of "electability" is deeply damaging to democracy.
Leah Greenberg

I'm primarily a Warren person, full disclosure, but it's infuriating to me that Kamala's dropping out while Bloomberg waltzes in, buying entry. She's a great candidate who'd be a great president.
Elizabeth Spiers

The single best thing Mike Bloomberg could do for US democracy is buy Fox News and shut it down (or make it into a real news outlet). Would that even be possible? Discuss.
David Roberts

Mafia Mulligan, including his impeachment, but also his policies and appointees:

John Bolton: He's brave enough to send your kids to war with Iran, but he's not brave enough to testify about Trump for two hours.
Matthew Chapman @fawfulfan

The destruction of the liberal international order -- i.e. break up of NATO, EU, WTO, etc -- and weakening of democracies. He'd love to go back to the 19th century with Russia as a major power in a multipolar word in which values do not play a prominent role in int affairs.
[Former ambassador to Russia] Michael McFaul, answering the question: what would you say Putin’s ultimate goal is?

I’m all for impeaching/removing Trump by any means necessary, but it’ll never stop being appalling to me that a sociopath with blatantly progressive cognitive decline was permitted to make it this far and put us all in danger in the first place.
Propane Jane™ @docrocktex26

why are the navy SEALS who speak out against the "freaking evil" guy not the ones being celebrated by the president? It's almost as if he ... prefers evil.
@tomtomorrow

Well, now we’re up to 55% who say the Criminal should be removed. Does it have to get to 100% before Republicans grow some fucking spines?
Rob Reiner

They are still crying about Hillary’s emails. But Jared Kushner chatting over WhatsApp with Mohammed bin Salman on how to get away with murder after the Saudi prince slaughtered Jamal Khashoggi is totally cool, apparently. Can we please lock this treasonous weasel up already?
Andrea Junker

Giuliani arguing that he is “more of a Jew” than a literal Holocaust survivor is the logical conclusion of Trumpist Jews’ argument that liberal and left wing Jews (the majority of American Jews!) are not really Jewish.
Adam Serwer

(IDEA FOR MEDIA) Stop asking Republicans if what Trump did was wrong. You already know the lie they'll tell. Instead, pose this question: "Will you here, today, invite your 2020 or 2022 Democratic opponent to put out a worldwide call for foreign intelligence-sourced dirt on you?"
Seth Abramson

Hillary's emails were the most covered story of 2016. But Stephen Miller's emails to Breitbart, which proved beyond any doubt that Trump's top adviser is a white supremacist, were a one-day story and then corporate media moved on.
Frank Conniff

Remember after Bush/Cheney left, even Republicans you knew were like “okay, that was awful.” And then like six months later they were all crazier than ever? It’s gonna happen again isn’t it?
@GhostPanther

The Trump family isn't allowed to operate a charity in New York state because they STOLE money from a CHILDREN'S CANCER charity. Trump is taking away food stamps from 700,000 DURING CHRISTMAS. This year alone, Trump detained 70,000 children. Republicans call him "Christ-like."
Mikel Jollett

If I wanted to hear morally bankrupt cowards deny reality and praise the dear leader in identical talking points I’d have stayed in Russia. The GOP has sealed its fate as the party of Trump and Trumpism, and nothing else.
Garry Kasparov

You just don't meet too many people in life who consciously pick fights with widows by suggesting their husband is in hell
Sam Stein

Imagine being a morally depraved, lying, cheating, racist, sexual predator who was 73 years old before ever being held accountable for anything you’ve done.
Clint Smith

Listening to my spouse watch the news from another room has gotten more interesting in the last few years. Hearing random shouts of "projection," "liar" and other unrepeatedable words
kar nels

i'm going to bet that the biggest failure to occur to this nation besides slavery will be Donald J Trump's presidency.
@AntheaButler

Maxim: Men who whine about being subject to witch hunts are the very same men who would have burned witches, given half a chance.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish

BREAKING NEWS: Bizarrely envious 73-year-old man who sends 123 barely coherent tweets in one day tells 16-year-old Nobel Laureate Greta Thunberg with Aspergers, named TIME’s Person of the Year, to “chill.”
Laurence Tribe

Trump could sit on his couch eating KFC until next November and would get 40 percent of the vote, because white patriarchy. He can barely read or put two sentences together without uttering a malaprop or something traitorous. Of course he might not debate.
Jamil Smith

The attacks on Hunter Biden really bring into stark relief just how much our party and the press have given the trump kids a free pass.
Adam Parkhomenko

I want to point out again that the impeachment process has never had as much support from Americans as it does in this moment. The entire machine that wants to preserve white supremacy is trying to skew things toward Trump remaining in office one way or the other. Let me say it again a better way: in all the previous instances of a president being impeached, there was never as much public support for it as there is now. So when people are downplaying the support for impeachment they're ignoring history.
Bree Newsome Bass

Trump's White House Counsel Pat Cipollone was appointed one year ago today. The Office of Government Ethics still has not certified his initial financial disclosure report.
Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew

There is simply no way for anyone to say honestly that they thought Barr would be a noble institutionalist. That's a cover. His crimes were his pride. Like Trump, Stone and others, he was openly corrupt for decades. Damning info on him was Wikipedia-level easy to find.
Sarah Kendzior

There's a real danger that if the Senate does not convict on the obstruction of Congress count, congressional subpoenas will be forever unenforceable. If Congress itself rules that defiance of congressional subpoenas is no error, how could the courts in any future litigation?
Gabriel Malor

Stephen Castor, GOP impeachment lawyer, just argued that Hunter Biden wasn't qualified to be on Burisma board. Fair point. So what say House GOP and Castor about Ivanka and Jared, who are even less qualified for their White House positions. Or Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, ...
David Cay Johnston

One party is engaging in rampant criminality and blocking all attempts at investigation. The other party is trying to stop them, using established Constitutional procedures. I *suppose* that reflects "polarization," but is that the most relevant descriptor? "As RICO investigation proceeds, relations between the FBI and the mob grow frosty"
David Roberts

There are many things galling about the Trump cuts to SNAP, but perhaps most galling is the fact the savings amount to 1/14th (!) of the annual cost of the Trump direct welfare payments to agribusiness to make up for his trade war.
Chris Hayes

lol you fucking idiots. She said: Trump "can name his son Barron, but he can't make him a baron." That's not an attack on Barron, nor a smear on the president.
Lis Power

Calling minor Trayvon Martin a “thug” is a lie and an insult.
Calling minor Greta Thunberg a “freak” is a lie and an insult.
Calling minor Chelsea Clinton a “dog” is a lie and an insult.
Saying minor Barron isn’t a baron is a fucking factual statement.
Fuck your fake outrage.
Tony Posnanski

This non-attack on Barron will get far more attention than the very scary and vicious death threats made on Ilhan Omar's life.
Rebecca Katz

The fake Baron Trump controversy that all reporters know is fake and stupid but are dutifully reporting on anyway is why 2020 is going to be a nightmare.
Susan J. Demas

So to recap Bill Barr's platform:
1—govt should promote a particular religion
2—govt should kill people
3—no "respect," no protection
4—no need to investigate the Ukraine shakedown
5—I'll do what ethics officials say if I agree with them
6—Say, any of yous guys got dirt on Biden?
Walter Shaub

Remember when it came out 12 hours ago that Trump had directly, personally commandeered the Pentagon contracting process to steer $400 million to a GOP donor, which would have been the biggest US scandal in a third of a century, and then this morning everyone forgot about it?
Will Stancil

Am I losing my mind? Because from where I'm standing, the GOP is practically declaring allegiance to Putin, and all the Very Serious Beltway People have no answer but to just repeat the Ukraine facts over and over in the hope that the ninetieth recitation will finally slay Trump
Will Stancil

It's official: William Barr is the most dangerous man in America right now, whose name will live in infamy for centuries. He is turning our country into a Christian dictatorship, without caring what anyone thinks, and without the narcissistic insanity of his nominal boss
Will Bunch

Racism, white supremacy, and police brutality:

Whiteness is a political construct under European colonialism that is organized around the exclusion of various ethnicities. White is not an ethnicity and not really a "race" (there is only one human race). Whiteness is built upon systemic oppression & has no ID apart from it.
Bree Newsome Bass

In the very first session of my Race/Racism module, the first thing that I teach my students is that any kind of 'theory' that argues culture/language/history makes a WHOLE CATEGORY of people superior or inferior is simply euphemising biological race.
Laleh Khalili

I don’t think we are prepared as a society for what happens to public memory when the generations that lived through Jim Crow leave us
Adam Serwer (written after it was announced that John Lewis is being treated for stage 4 pancreatic cancer)

Watching people’s Don Imus tweets is a reminder that for so many white Americans racism is an incidental side-issue that says nothing about someone you like’s character but rather is just an unfortunate opinion to be overlooked and not rudely dwelled upon.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones

Right now we are living the vision of white men who died 200 years ago. You have to be bold and courageous enough to envision a better way for yourself and for those who come after you and to not just accept what others gave you even though it's killing you. Y'all get up everyday and live this thing called racism that was imagined by white men who had far less knowledge about humanity and the world than we have now. Why does it make sense to keep living according to an order established by people who died centuries ago?
Bree Newsome Bass

a lot of white northerners assume that they're not as racist because they typically exist in mostly white spaces.
@disco_socialist

I support the cultural mainstreaming of Kwanzaa. White supremacy is mainstreamed all day everyday. Society can't be transformed w/o new concepts & ideas moving from the margins to mainstream. I don't need to feel I have exclusive knowledge. I need society to stop being anti-Black. I want to wake up tomorrow in a society where no one needs me to tell them about Black liberation because it's common knowledge, and no one needs me to tell them about white supremacy because everybody's moved past it. I want anti-racism to be the norm, not the exception.
Bree Newsome Bass

Repeat after me: Identity politics is a right wing slur to describe civil rights. Repeat. Till it sinks in.
Sunny Singh

A lot of these claims by cops that they're targeted for harassment by food service employees seem to fall apart upon any investigation. Probably not worth thinking about what that implies about literally any part of a cop's job otherwise
@depechejoe

My mother deliberately surrounded me with positive conceptions of blackness & awareness of Black American history growing up so it's still jarring at times to recognize how wedded to white supremacy much of society is. Many people really think we should be grateful to Europeans for teaching us to be civilized & that we aren't capable of governing ourselves without the white ruling class. It's textbook racism but people believe it's both historical reality & the natural order of the world.
Bree Newsome Bass

I think that no white supremacist should be allowed to serve in our military or in any police force.
Matthew Dowd

Calm down, everyone. Those cadets were just flashing the white power hand gesture, it’s not like they did anything really disrespectful and offensive like kneel during a song.
The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt

The cruelest thing the Devil ever did was decide racists could win with extravagantly flawed messengers but anti-racists had to have perfect messengers.
David Brauer

Nothing exposes liberal hypocrisy more than efforts to integrate their children’s schools. Nothing.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones

Gaining physical proximity to the ruling white elite is not freedom.
Bree Newsome Bass

A Starbucks employee who called a police officer a pig is fired. Police officers who kill innocent people because they think they are Rambo aren't fired. The police are the least accountable people in the country, when the opposite should be true.
Existential Comics

There are one million cops in the country and 700k social workers. One group goes through less than a year of training and is licensed to kill, and the other has to get loans and a degree then 900 hours of supervision to get a license just to listen to people talk.
@ryandspox

The refusal to confront racism will be the ultimate undoing of this nation. It's a time bomb that was embedded in the nation at its founding.
Bree Newsome Bass

One-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.
Haymarket Books

On the anniversary of John Brown’s hanging, I’m thinking of all the ways white filmmakers want to insert fictional white saviors into Black narratives but won’t touch an *actual* white abolitionist who put his life (and his family’s life) on the line.
@mos_daf

cops lie about big shit, they lie about little shit, as a *matter of course.* there are no consequences for it. if you've been stopped for some BS reason and both you and the cop know it was BS, you bet that cop certainly logged it as something other than "complete bullshit." a cop stops you for bullshit. you both know it's bullshit. oh, and you point out that it's bullshit? oh, well that's "disorderly conduct" then. oh, you get mad at the disorderly conduct charge? that's "resisting arrest." it's all officialized bullshit. you know the reason they stopped you — *turns to camera* — but they aren't going to say that's the reason they stopped you, and so there's this entire universe comprised of thousands upon thousands of police records that are all effectively polite fictions. And each of those bullshit arrests that resulted from a bullshit stop ultimately helps shape larger, policy-level fictions about policing.
@GeeDee215

Sexism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity:

Can't tell if my desire for men's clothing to come in smaller sizes is because of my gender identity or my desire for pockets that I can put my hands in.
@risahustad

Have you ever noticed how every time an industry is completely dominated by men -- finance, tech, traffic engineering, autos -- their products are a complete catastrophe for humanity?
Angie Schmitt

bizarre that you all think bows are going to make your babies look more feminine rather than draw attention to their bald-headed androgyny
Kerry Howley

I'm watching a Simpsons marathon with my daughters. Is there a better role model than Lisa Simpson?
Joseph N. Cohen

In case you ever wondered why so many poison clusters happened throughout history...


Mikki Kendall @Karnythia

As I apply for writing residencies, I'm continually struck by how what they offer - peace and quiet, meals cooked for you, limited domestic labour to distract from your "real" work - is what so many men authors have had forever by virtue of having a wife.
Chloe Angyal

The climate crisis and clean energy:

The fact that capitalism's growth imperative is driving species extinction at 100-1,000 times faster than the normal rate renders it obsolete as a legitimate economic system for the 21st century.
Jason Hickel

I don't actually believe in Hell. But if it does exist, it should have a special place for climate science deniers who are motivated by political or financial convenience — which is basically all of them
Paul Krugman

"BP CEO BobDudley revealed that his daughter's friends are taking antidepressants because of their concerns about climate change" "...confessed he hated seeing 'young people so unhappy, so anxious about global warming"
Arne Storrønningen

Critics in 2030s Ask Why Teen Climate Activist Isn’t in Abandoned School Bailing Water and Shooting Enemy Foragers:


The Onion
This was the decade when the dangers posed by climate change became increasingly clear, and when governments worldwide woke up to the risks, signed the Paris Agreement, yet still failed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions at the pace & scale needed.
Inside Climate News

If the global economy continues to grow at 3% per year, we will consume as much energy and materials in the next 30 years as we did cumulatively in the past 10,000. This trajectory will radically destabilize earth systems. To assume otherwise is madness. #postgrowth
Jason Hickel

The fossil fuel industry has really convinced people that they can either have a job or a livable future. Not both. It’s wild.
Mary Annaïse Heglar

Please, for fuck's sake folks, DO NOT look to Europe as an example of how to live. It's super nice. But it's also a completely unsustainable model that's built on subjecting the rest of the world to terrible things. We need to do BETTER than Europe, not imitate it. The Slow Food movement in particular can go fuck itself. It's a whole movement based on "look how much better Europe is than you! You should all live leisurely like us even though you're the ones MAKING colonial tribute payments, not receiving them." Vacations and good food and universal healthcare access are all GOOD THINGS. But we need to have better ways of getting them than by uncritically aping European economic models. You can only carve up Africa once and you shouldn't have done it that one time either.
Dr Sarah Taber

Every time a media outlet gives updates on GDP growth, they should be made to also give updates on emissions, global temperatures, deforestation, soil depletion, insect biomass and species extinction.
Jason Hickel

Extinction Rebellion's 1st demand is to tell the truth. Yesterday the Welsh government agreed to do just that. They will work with us and other environmental organisations in Wales on a public messaging campaign which communicates the severity of the climate and ecological crisis to the people of Wales.
@XRCardiff

Yesterday, a court in The Hague ruled that rich countries violate human rights by failing to protect the climate. This means, legally, climate action is now inseparable from human rights. This is what it feels like to start winning back our future.
Eric Holthaus

Driving around in giant polluting death machines in soulless car-dominated suburbs, eating shitty fast food and guzzling sugar water, living in houses lit and heated by 19th century technology, getting ever-more lonely, resentful, and physically unhealthy ... to own the libs.
David Roberts

Kinda weird when people act like climate change isn’t a racial justice issue when the largest emitters are disproportionately white and wealthy and the people losing their homes and migrating around the world due to droughts and floods are mostly black and brown.
Waleed Shahid

Imagine thinking we need to find a compromised "middle ground" between saving the planet and the financial interests of some billionaires who don't want their stocks to lose value. –Existential Comics
Extinction Rebellion Twin Cities (XRTC)

An entire continent’s average temperature was 105 degrees yesterday. Let that sink in.
Eric Holthaus (describing Australia)

If someone says that migrants from Europe or the Middle East or Latin America or wherever are "adding to our environmental burden" or taking us past biocapacity or whatever, have they previously spent all their time trying to dispossess the landed aristocracy?
@JKSteinberger

"The authors estimated, conservatively, that methane equivalent to 2.3 percent of all the natural gas produced in the nation is leaking during the production, processing and transportation of oil and gas every year."
William Lindeke

In an era of climate collapse, the most entitled thing an American can do right now is shit tons of carbon into the air so they can take the same fucking selfie they always take in a new place where the locals probably fucking hate us and only humor us for our dollars.
@girlziplocked

Question: What is the thing in your household that almost certainly uses the most power when in use?
Answer: Your shower! It's using energy at a rate of ~15 kW and uses a total of about 2 kWh of energy.
Brian Siana

Orders of magnitudes more livelihoods are put at risk by climate delay than are threatened by climate action. Not to mention the fact that climate delay is killing and impoverishing many people today, and will kill and impoverish many millions more if we let delay slow action.
Alex Steffen

A healthy air quality index is less than 50. In India, after Diwali, the air quality index was maxed out at 999. Right now in Sydney, Australia it's 2552. We are in a climate emergency.
Eric Holthaus

I think traveling is a little bit overrated/over-celebrated, especially in the age of Instagram. We might be able to learn more by reading a book sometimes than dropping into some unrepresentative tourist spot in some other country that's culturally similar to our own. It's also sort of a status symbol.
Angie Schmitt

The EU's Top 10 polluters were coal-fired power plants — until this year. Now a shipping group is No. 8, and an airline joined the list this year, too.
Inside Climate News

We must reject the assumption that scaling up clean energy will automatically replace fossil fuels. So far, clean energy is being added *on top of* fossil fuels, and emissions keep rising. The only way to achieve a clean energy transition is to actively scale down fossil fuels.
Jason Hickel

One of the things that keeps me up at night is all the people who think that 1.5 degrees of global temperature rise is actually safe...
Mary Annaïse Heglar

Don't miss this blockbuster report. Oil & gas from existing fields would push global temperature past 1.5 degrees. Meanwhile, in just the next 4 years, the O&G industry has plans to sink ***$1.4 trillion*** into new extraction projects. "85 percent of the expanded production is slated to come from the United States and Canada over that period." North America is going to lock in unthinkable suffering & irreversible damage in the next four years, while everyone is busy squabbling about stupid bullshit.
David Roberts (link in the original)

starting to think that a system that plans primarily in 3 month increments, treats basic human needs like chips in a global casino, and must produce millions of tons of useless stuff to stay solvent is not equipped to deal with climate change. ~@islacharlatan
Extinction Rebellion Twin Cities (XRTC)

Natural gas - industry's so-called 'greener' fuel - is now the main driver of global emissions rises. Energy companies are locking in decades of future emissions in the name of a "transition" fuel that needs subsidies to stay profitable #ClimateEmergency
Patrick Galey

"The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses." Never forget that you were born at exactly the right time to change everything.
Eric Holthaus

Washington State Ferries -- 2nd largest in the world -- is switching from diesel to batteries. Eliminates 20 million gallons per year of diesel, reducing GHGs and pollution while saving millions per year in fuel costs.
@facts_tesla

Transportation sanity and sustainable cities:

“I don’t have time to bike commute.” Well, this year I spent:
0 minutes looking for parking
0 minutes at gas stations
0 minutes stuck in traffic
0 minutes getting oil changes
0 minutes of work for car payment, gas, insurance, tires, etc
Not much time at the gym but stayed fit
Momifornia

Friendly question on a snowy Monday. A lot of my urbanist/transportation allies push/ask for what they think is politically feasible, not what we actually physically need for our communities/cities/planet. How can we break this deadly habit and work within our climate reality?
@happifydesign

lol 2 of 3 new passenger vehicles sold in the US this year have curb weights upwards of 3 tons and it was 60 degrees in chicago yesterday. anyway i'm sure these two phenomena are completely independent of one another and everything's fine. just thinkin about how many things have gone wrong with US policy for $50K+ 3-ton vehicles with less than 20 mpg to be the most popular consumer choice as we fly past even the most dire climate change predictions and income inequality grows the worst it's been in decades
@lieholepiehole

Same car model, 40 years between them:


@erik_griswold

Over the next few decades we’re going to have millions of Americans aging in place who can’t drive anymore in a place you can’t walk anywhere and have no transit access and we’re going to treat it as a private family problem for all the unpaid caregivers. It’s difficult to solve these access problems when a lot of suburbs whole reason for being is to be inaccessible for low income folks.
Angie Schmitt

People who love to argue that a bicycle isn’t a useful form of transportation bc it’s not built for long-distance road trips and/or hauling concrete somehow seem to miss that an SUV is absolutely the wrong vehicle for the vast majority of trips it takes
Momifornia

You can view the entire 20th century though the lens of the automobile. From the bitter lake agreement to atmospheric lead to sit-down strikes developed in unionized auto plants to white flight to chain stores to exurbinization to climate change to defunding public transit
John Leavitt

Unsignalized crosswalks are a decades-long gaslight perpetrated by traffic engineers on America's pedestrians.
@WarrenJWells

Japan has trains that can reach nearly 200 miles per hour. France began high-speed train service in the '80s. China has the world's fastest and largest high-speed rail network. And the U.S., well the U.S. has next to nothing.
CNBC

Chevy Blazer SUV vs. new Ford F-150. (Don’t ask me why I’m walking around a Walmart parking lot taking pictures like this):


Don Kostelec

We don’t need tech companies to redesign the wheel. We know what works in congested cities: put many people in one large vehicle and give it priority over many vehicles with few people in them.
Angie Schmitt

In the search for cleaner energy, options are:
1. A shift towards electric cars.
2. A shift away from cars.
One of these options makes most sense. The other one leads to corporate profit. Pick yours!


@fietsprofessor

It really is incredible. The convenience of people who want to park on the street for free overrides the law AND an opportunity to earn revenue in a city that seems like it’s in perpetual financial crisis
The Dependent Clause

Once again, the challenge to winter biking isn’t temperature. It’s space. Snow or parked cars, or both, have gone into the space where people would bike.
@ajm6792

Seattle going all the way down to 20mph on residential streets, 25 for arterials downtown. Take note!
William Lindeke

the biggest fallacy in Home Alone is that the McCallister family lives in the suburbs in a McMansion but 8-year-old Kevin can walk to get groceries.
@abigailmaryth

Paying for transit fares (that percent of the budget) with some other kind of tax would be a lot more efficient (less waste). In addition, it would almost certainly be a much more progressive source of funding.
Angie Schmitt

Is $9 billion too much for connecting the majority of Ohioans with passenger rail? Consider that ODOT is proposing a $6 billion bypass around Cincy. A bypass around *one city.*
@MobileHarv

Every time I see a picture of one of these shitmobiles I have the same thought: This is the vehicle of a society that has given up on hope and is getting ready for Thunderdome. This is the car of a failed people:


Karin Robinson


Ugh. This checks out. From gated communities to panic rooms to personal MRAPs, selling people "security." “The Cybertruck is not a Pickup Truck. It’s the First Entry in the New Industry of Secure Vehicles.”
Tara Goddard

The best thing about ending single-family zoning (or parking minimums) is that it doesn't cost cities anything to make these changes. Print a few new rulebooks and signs, that's it.
William Lindeke

One absurdity I haven’t heard many people talk about is heated parking ramps. How much energy is being used to keep empty cars warm so their owners don’t have to be cold for 3 minutes?
Philip Schwartz

How are these legal? Not to mention that the dude parked it on the sidewalk. My elderly cousin has enough trouble walking...


Martha Roskowski

I don’t understand when people rant about bikers not following rules. Daily, I see drivers blow through red lights at 40mph, roll through stop signs, and never stop for pedestrians. Do people really think bikers slowly rolling through a red light when clear are dangerous? Our traffic laws, roads, and signal timing are designed to move motor vehicles quickly and manage the operation of metal machines weighing thousands of pounds. Just because jaywalking or rolling through signals on a bike is illegal doesn’t make it dangerous.
Lindsey Aster Silas

These fancy European cities might have fast, comfortable intercity train travel but do they have 103 of these billion-dollar concrete spaghetti thingees that makes cars fly and saves suburban commuters 49 seconds? I'll wait.


Angie Schmitt


Are EVs clean when run from the grid? New article with Argonne’s full lifecycle model (batt+mfgr.+150K mi) shows EV cleaner in all US states, even Wyoming!
Lifetime tons CO2:
69 ICE car
56 EV, 98% coal (Wyoming)
31 EV, US grid avg.
6 EV, 100% renewable
Willett Kempton

Free choice may be a tenet of our society, but when the choices we make threaten the well-being of others – or the world we live in – government has a duty to intervene. That’s rationale for speed limits, pollution standards, smoking bans. Why should it be any different for SUVs?
G_Penalosa

Tips for pedestrian safety so often read like the “how not to get raped” tips, when it would be so much more sensible to focus on the actual culprits
Stacey Burns @WentRogue

People walking are not doing something dangerous. People driving are. Responsibility for safety should primary fall on those doing something dangerous.
Adam Miller

When you're trying to walk somewhere and every car is a tank, it's a depressing to know that the people driving them paid $10-$15k additional (new) to drive a car that would look intimidating to you.
Angie Schmitt

A question for you. How many ways would your town or city authorities ban this street if you dared to build it today?


createstreets

It is weird that Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed was probably one of the most famous and successful-at-galvanizing-change nonfiction book in American history and it was followed up by basically no additional books about traffic safety ever. This is an issue that kills ~40,000 Americans annually.
Angie Schmitt
86% of car fuel never reaches the wheels, most of what’s left moves the car, not people, and 96% of US car time is spent parked. Via @PhilippRode
Brent Toderian
Journalists: What's a story you wrote that flew under the radar but that you think about all the time? Mine: How police chases kill 355 Americans a year. 1/3 are innocent bystanders. Victims 3X more likely to be black.
Angie Schmitt

Almost 1% of US road fatalities are due to the police chasing suspects in cars.
@RachaelLudwick

I marvel (shake my head) at the endless infrastructure like concrete barriers and guard rails that have been installed to stop motorists running off the road and into things. It looks like evidence of a flawed system to me. Protective infrastructure for vulnerable road users should severely damage the vehicle of any driver that ignores it. More power, speed, size, cabin quietness (less sense of speed), plus in-car distractions. Every trend in car design (except perhaps anti-lock braking - but also see "risk compensation") has increased the risk to everyone else except the occupants. Street are really, really safe without cars. If people want to make them unsafe by driving on them (and they do), they should pay to make them safe again. Don't put this cost on people who aren't doing anything dangerous.
Neil Winkelmann

Protected bike lanes are car infrastructure
Bump-outs are car infrastructure
Sidewalks are car infrastructure
Signalization is car infrastructure
Speed limits are car infrastructure
Pedestrian refuge islands are car infrastructure
And car infrastructure is GHG infrastructure.
@happifydesign

What if there was a movie that showed a high-speed car chase, but instead of it being a plot device someone got killed and everyone just grapples with the aftermath of that? Probably everyone would hate the movie but that's the reality.
Angie Schmitt


My train take: Take a map of the US Interstate highway system. That's where the high-speed rail tracks should go.
@3amWaffleHouse

The way you can tell policy makers don’t ride the bus is that there aren’t bus lanes on every single downtown street, he tweeted, pressed against the wall of an overfilled bus stuck behind maybe fifteen single occupancy Honda CRVs.
Alex Schieferdecker

Still wondering why there’s been a spike in pedestrian deaths in cities in recent years?


Brent Toderian

Wage theft and worker mistreatment, income and wealth inequality, and better ways to organize an economy:

Isn't it kinda disgusting that banks made $34 billion in overdraft fees in 2017?? That's $34 billion they took from people that literally. Had. No. Money.
@elizahardy121

Zuckerberg raked in $75 million per day for destabilizing democracy and turning our privacy into a commodity.
Adam Best

ask who benefits from the patently absurd notion that 'our' economy is a natural thing of ebbs and tides and cycles rather than a fundamentally and permanently predatory construct
Saladin Ahmed

Do you think this is accurate?


@thischairrocks


Your holiday reminder that total consumer debt — including credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and student debt — is now higher than what it was in 2008, before the financial crisis. This can’t go on forever, folks.
Robert Reich

Based on logs from 28 Amazon facilities in 16 states, the study found workers at Amazon are more likely to be injured at work than lumberjacks or coal miners are. The injuries don't involve small cuts and bruises — they're serious enough where 88.9% involved have to miss work...
Noname's Book Club

We never went on food stamps because mom had been convinced they were only for poor white trash, and that we somehow weren’t. We ate less as a result. Kids everywhere qualify for free school lunches, but don’t apply. That’s the human cost of stigmatizing public assistance.
@DanRiffle

Twenty-five yrs ago, when my kids were little, I was a single mom on welfare. One Christmas, their presents were Christmas Cap’n Crunch & candy, bought w food stamps, because that’s all I had. The next time you judge the person in front of you at the grocers, be kind.
@mckra1g

How capitalism works: Walton family (of Walmart) and Bezos (of Amazon) are the richest because Walmart and Amazon workers are among worst paid with fewest benefits and least job security.
Richard D. Wolff

It's shame-inducing to many wealthy types to know they are prosperous for reasons other than their hard work and sacrifice. That they might merely be no better than Soviet style apparatchiks of US planning.
JimNichols

For the first time in history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class last year:


@TheRealMsMurphy

capitalists are really out there claiming it is human nature to give a third of your salary to your landlord because he inherited an apartment complex from his dad, on account of how humans are...uh...selfish or something
Existential Comics

Anyway, shaming poor parents for having trouble affording food is like saying:“oh, so you chose to be born into a society that distributes resources most generously to people over 40, while also choosing to be born into a body that’s most fertile in your 20s. Real smart buddy”
James Medlock

I want to emphasize that two companies that do nothing but pass paperwork and pharmaceuticals (that someone else manufactured) back and forth between Pharma and retail providers are the *8th and 10th biggest companies in the country* now.
@edburmila

"Boomers have removed the rungs of the ladder for those who come behind, all the while tut-tutting about the supposed irresponsibility and fragility of millennials." —From @IAmRichBenjamin's latest for EHRP and @latimes
@econhardship

"capitalism breeds innovation"


@bambipotf

The free-market says a banana duct-taped to a wall is worth $120,000, so it’s probably the best way to decide the value of healthcare, education and basic social services.
Ashley Fairbanks @ziibiing

If Republicans were willing to scrutinize billionaires *half* as much as they scrutinize people on food stamps, this country would be a much better place.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Real Estate Investment Trusts are going to buy these boomer houses and rent them at a premium to the next generation, who will struggle to afford home ownership because they've been saddled with student debt and anemic wage growth.
Ted Tatos

I would urge people to use a phrase like “unemployment sanctions“ instead of “work requirements” to better convey what they are: harsh punishments (in the form of not being able to eat, access medical care, etc.) for people who are unable to find or hold work.
Ben Spielberg

Giving back may be a sign that you took too much.
Anand Giridharadas

Health care:

Best wishes to all the expectant moms out there inducing birth today because they’ve hit their deductible for 2019, and to every single payer advocate trying to scrap this utterly ridiculous system.
@DanRiffle (written on New Years Eve)

SO MUCH WINNING -- Nearly 20 rural hospitals closed in 2019, more than any year in the past decade. And more are expected to close, with most closing in Southern states that did not expand Medicaid.
Steven Greenhouse

Imagine if Spotify was like U.S. healthcare:
- Pay $9.99/mo premium for some music
- Pay $7 per song listen til you spend $100, after that it's included (resets each yr)
- Pay $0.49 copay every listening session
- If you get fired, we cancel your Spotify and songs cost $999/listen
Michael Sayman

Has anyone tested out “do you support a healthcare system with no premiums, deductibles or copays, but higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations; or a healthcaera system with premiums, deductibles, and copays but lower taxes on the wealthy and corporations”?
@csilverandgold

"Much of what we accept as legal in medical billing would be regarded as fraud in any other sector."
Ben Taub

Guns and mass shootings:

Just like we got "used to" school shootings, we're getting "used to" attacks on Jews, gays, and blacks. This is the Bad Place.
Steve Silberman

The fact that Donald Trump is willing to spend taxpayer dollars to review toilet efficiency but not to study gun violence tells you pretty much everything you need to know about him.
Andrew Weinstein

Education:

Internal memos obtained by NPR show career staff at the Education Department recommended full debt relief for student borrowers who were defrauded by some for-profit colleges. Then Secretary Betsy DeVos stepped in.
NPR

“In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom.”
Paige Williams (linking to a story from The Atlantic)

I get how charter school parents are sympathetic, but as far as I can tell, at the absolute best all charters do is redistribute resources from kids with less engaged/involved parents to kids with more engaged/involved parents, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
@csilverandgold

I don't know what to call this grouping, but it's about the right and fascism, both in the U.S. and globally, and includes media coverage of such:

the right using their judicial court-packing to ban scabby the rat is one of the purest displays of "fuck you that's why" power politics - absolutely no principle or consistent rule at play, just "we don't like free speech when its used by unions":


Michael Tae Sweeney

Conservative friends keep telling me how lefty NPR is, and then once a year or so I listen to NPR and it just boggles my mind how much they bend over backwards to present conservative viewpoints.
Noah Smith

we really need to talk about Muslim-bashing as a central unifying factor across global fascisms
Saladin Ahmed

The Koch brothers oligarch network has systematically removed all spines from Republican office holders. They're all "on the take" now, often with big payoffs that arrive AFTER they've left office, a neat wrinkle in bribery!
Langdon Winner

I just read another one of those ‘worst trends of the decade’ pieces and yet again none of them was Fascism.
Hari Kunzru

Guess what? There is virtually perfect overlap between countries that count ballots observably in public by hand and those that have uncannily resisted engulfment by the global far-right electoral wave: New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Holland, Canada, France (mostly)...
Jonathan Simon

Yes! Garry Kasparov says it: We’re used to hearing from both sides — Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Today it’s simply truth vs. lies. #Media must focus only on facts and STOP GIVING EQUAL TIME TO LIES. The outdated sense of balance is killing our democracy.
Paula Chertok

Media discussions on “the center” and polarization fail because they rely on a completely fantastical belief that it’s been a symmetrical destruction instead of a planned, weaponized strategy exercised by the Republican Party in the face of diminishing power. This didn’t just happen. It’s trench warfare by Republicans who understand straight democracy and appeals based on actual political opinions won’t win anymore and necessitate rhetorical escalation, disenfranchisement, and a muddied game. Treating our polarization as anything besides Republican scorched earth policy is not only disingenuous and unhelpful, it actively gives cover to the GOP to continue scorching earth while hiding behind shared responsibility. The conversation has to be better, has to evolve.
Jared Yates Sexton

Watching Fox News for more than 10 seconds makes perfectly clear how we’ve arrived here.
Clint Smith

29% of Americans identify as Republicans. They are disproportionately white, male, racist and fascist. The (bigger) problem is that our political system empowers them to control at least two branches of the government and structure our entire society. Major structural deficiency.
Samuel Sinyangwe

why are old white man republicans always acting the most persecuted, like you want all the privilege and also all the persecution, pick a lane
Aparna Nancherla

The fixation on finding common ground with the party that represents white nationalists and is trying to currently overthrow what semblance of democracy we have in this country is insane. I don't understand anyone operating with that framework or anyone supporting it.
Bree Newsome Bass

History will record this era as one in which general voting populations repeatedly punched themselves in the face, while oligarchs swilling champagne flipped them small coins and said "That was great. Do it again."
John Scalzi

The collapse happening in the West right now is an inevitable outcome of colonialism and imperialism. They once said that the sun never set on the British empire. Now look.
Bree Newsome Bass

Imagine waking up from an 80-year coma and being told that the US and UK have been taken over by the far right and France is in flames and Russia is wreaking havoc across the globe and only Germany can hold liberal democracy together.
Aaron Wiener

I am full of grief and dread and have no wisdom, so I'm going to say what I think I need to hear to function. Fascism is the democracy killer. That is what it does, and that's what we're seeing. But nothing lasts forever. The work is mutual aid and protection until we win.
Erin Kissane

It’s time for the Left to formulate a new vision and message that addresses the inherent inequalities and cruelty of neoliberalism while declaring this worldwide Right Wing march toward madness what it is: an escalating crisis. Nibbling around the edges and living in perpetual fear that conservatives will call you a liberal or a socialist has gotten us here. The Left needs to be bold and meet the moment and it has failed in that regard.
Jared Yates Sexton

While we’re on this Richard Jewell thing: The real bomber was Eric Rudolph, who also bombed two abortion clinics (one in GA, one in AL) and a lesbian bar; he’s still alive at ADX Florence; and the Venn diagram of his ideology and the current GOP are basically a perfect circle.
@pinkrocktopus

People who play their game by tweaking ethnic fears and animus often come from monocultural communities. It is free for them to destroy the institutions of pluralism and tolerance. Pluralism is an important cultural institution upon which people in multicultural societies rely.
Joseph N. Cohen

As Republicans in Congress decry the downfall of our democracy during the impeachment inquiry, just *one Republican* voted with the Democrats yesterday to protect voting rights. That should tell you all you need to know about their priorities.
Robert Reich

The truth is not always “in the middle.” Especially when one side is blatantly lying.
Hari Kondabolu

Starving people is within acceptable politics. Fascism is within acceptable politics. But things like universal healthcare and debt relief are too extreme for the mainstream.
Bree Newsome Bass

And then finally, as always, the best of the rest:

It's important to be politically engaged and informed when you are young, because the second you turn 30 your brain crystalizes and you never change an opinion for the rest of your life, so if you don't have informed ideas before that time you'll have shit opinions forever.
Existential Comics

Obvious point but worth noting re: latest Census projections — in many cases, red states are gaining House seats because of population growth in their blue-leaning areas (suburbs) and blue states are losing seats because of population loss in their red-leaning areas (rural).
Ben Pershing

You have to be really dumb to trust the government. Instead I trust Company, whose stated primary purpose is to maximize profits at any cost, and who gets caught committing fraud every 5 years
@InternetHippo

I think my ancestors were full humans who probably had a whole lot of dreams and identities that had nothing to do with my lil basic self. If my great great grandkids walk around saying they're my wildest dream I will haunt them. child my wildest dream is to own a t-rex
@eveewing

Searching for ways to humiliate and diminish other people doesn’t make you edgy, it makes you a shitty shell of a person who, when faced with the choice to fill the hole in their soul with kindness or with venom, gleefully chose the latter.
feminist next door @emrazz

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Planned Perenthood has prevented 100x as many abortions as all the Republican “pro-life” laws combined.
almightygod

I hate when people talk about having children like they are pets.
Mother Bae I @tiersaj

The glass wing butterfly. Nature is amazing!


@StrangeAnimaIs

I never knew that growing up in an alcoholic home would provide me with superpowers but it did. I am always ready for violence and unexpected bad things, I usually know where the truth is hiding, or dad’s secret liquor money, and I always know when the adults are lying.
Xeni Jardin

Millennial sadly drinking in bar: Man, J.K. Rowling sucks…
Generation Xer angrily slamming down glass: LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVED ENDER'S GAME WHEN I WAS 13, OKAY?!?
@ouranosaurus

In case you were wondering, "how long has the Salvation Army been terrible to queer people?" I'm reading a file now where they denied a 17 year old homeless girl shelter because her mother said she was a lesbian... in 1948.
Hugh Ryan

Remember: "Fiscally conservative but socially liberal!" is a lie, because it means "I want low taxes and don't want to pay for programs for the betterment of society, but I am okay with gay people sometimes."
@betweenstations

90% of the House Republican caucus are white men. 90%!
Chris Hayes

Often, when people carp about social justice issues (which I mostly support), I wanna say, "Lighten up! Don't you realize how much progress we've made?" But that would make me just another OK boomer asshole, so I don't.
pete hautman

That baby toucans exist and look like this makes me smile:


@Shawpsych

88% of Tory ads contained lies.
They lied re Brexit, 50k nurses, 40 hospitals.
They faked a video and fact check site
They faked news about a 4-year old & Labour spending
They paid for bots to spread fake news.
They suppressed the Russia report.
CONCLUSION: Lies work
David Schneider

imagine having a passport that allows you to move freely between, live in and work in 28 countries, including many of the worlds most affluent, with excellent free health care and social services wherever you go and voting to tear that passport up and be stranded on an island.
Philip Gourevitch

There's an overton st in Portland and, as far as I know, not one person has opened a walk up coffee place called the overton window.
Doug Hageman

I’m sorry I haven’t replied to your email but I glanced at it, vowed to deal with it later, and now the very thought of even opening it fills me with crippling dread.
Olivia Nuzzi

Something about this group is strikingly different from The Squad, but I can't figure out what it is:


Gabe Schneider

awhile back someone tweeted at me that being a social scientist who isn’t a marxist is basically just repeating “well,,,it do be like that” until you die and i think about that every single day
@papa_rosh

White evangelicals are twice as likely (82%) as US Jews (40%) to believe God gave Israel to the Jewish people
Conrad Hackett

I almost never let myself get angry over anything in tech these days but holy shit am I tired of the implication that putting ethics at the center of career choices is some combination of unprofessional and childish.
Erin Kissane

I tripped over my weighted blanket and spilled farro salad on my rug and I have never been so far from where my people started.
Tressie McMillan Cottom

i think they should stop making nerd movies for like 20 years. no more star wars, marvel, DC or ghostbusters. i think we all deserve some peace.
@9_volt_

Took Me Eleven Minutes to Do That Thing I've Been Avoiding for Three Months: A Memoir
Kimberly King Parsons

This fact just floored me: “The United States has allocated more than $133 billion to build up Afghanistan — more than it spent, adjusted for inflation, to revive the whole of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II.”
Yonah Lieberman

I'm going to have a big celebration the first time a reporter notices the connection between patent monopolies and the incentive for drug companies to push opioids
Dean Baker

people who lecture about civility usually just mean they want you to make less noise when they're hitting you
@behindyourback

Yes, Bloomberg may be outspending any candidate, but does he come close to the real leader in ad spending?


@sciencequiche


It’s weird that the ones who say facts don’t care about your feelings are often the least willing to accept facts.
feminist next door @emrazz

I think we have turned politics into entertainment. That's what our problem is.
Sophia Ignatidou

I used to think one of the reasons celebrities are nuts is because constantly being watched/recorded/shouted at ruins you psychologically and now we've expanded that life to everyone. Probably fine
@InternetHippo

funny how Twitter/Facebook are capable of acting on copyright complaints, but insist they are too incompetent (especially Facebook) to remove lies
Dean Baker

Successful societies are those that believe in the potential of regular people. Unsuccessful societies are those that believe large portions of their populations are useless trash.
Noah Smith

JFC I want an atheist to run for office and be like - hey - know who’s gonna help us? Nobody but ourselves... we gotta do this shit on our own...
@rawales2