The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is potentially facinganother court case. It’s once more over Universal Credit. The claimant in the case is having to appeal to the highest court in England. But will it listen?
Universal Credit and childcare
Nichola Salvato is a lone parent from Brighton. She’s a Universal Credit claimant who works. Under the system, Universal Credit should give Salvato her childcare costs back. But for her and potentially 500,000 other claimants, there’s a major flaw with this.
In September 2018 she began working full time as a welfare rights adviser for a housing association, and needed up to 3.5 hours childcare per day for her then 10-year-old daughter.
Although Nichola was working full time, she could not afford the £377.40 of upfront childcare costs that arose in September-October, so she had to borrow the money.
She had to borrow the money because Universal Credit does not pay childcare costs up-front. Claimants have to pay them first before the DWP gives the cost back to them. So, as Leigh Day wrote:
this situation continued in the months that followed and gave rise to what she described as a “cycle of debt where I was constantly owing childcare as well as loan providers and struggling to find the money to cover payments”.
“Overwhelmed”
The situation worsened for Salvato. Leigh Day wrote that:
By January 2019, Nichola was “becoming overwhelmed with the juggle of work, childcare, parenting and ongoing poverty”. She took as much time off as she could to minimise childcare costs and was constantly stressed and worried. Eventually Nichola had to cut her work to 32 hours, then 25.5 hours, which reduced her monthly income and increased her dependence on benefits.
So, she decided enough was enough and started a legal challenge against the DWP. Her case argued that Universal Credit should pay childcare costs upfront. The DWP said that the system was like it is to reduce “error and fraud”. But the judge agreed with Salvato. He ruled in January that the DWP had acted irrationally and discriminated against her based on her sex. Justice Chamberlain said:
It is not obvious why a system of awards based on liability to pay (evidenced by an invoice) would be any more likely to result in error or fraud than a system based on actual payment (evidenced by a receipt).
There is no evidence that the decision to make payment of the [childcare costs element] dependent on proof of payment (rather than proof that the charges have been incurred) was ever directly considered by Ministers.
But this wasn’t the end.
DWP: appealing common sense?
The DWP appealed the ruling in July. The Court of Appeal, according to Leigh Day, found:
that while the “proof of payment” rule does indirectly discriminate, the difference in treatment is justifiable and the rule is not irrational.
In other words, the DWP won. But Salvato is not accepting this. She has applied to appeal the previous Court of Appeal decision in the Supreme Court. Salvato said in a press release:
Although I’m very disappointed that the Court of Appeal did not uphold the High Court ruling, I am hopeful that that the Supreme Court will address the issue. So many of us single parents want to work but find the upfront childcare costs through Universal Credit an impossible barrier, meanwhile the government continues to support better off families with their childcare costs in advance via the tax-free childcare system.
Of course, this is not the first time claimants have taken the DWP to court over Universal Credit. Recently, a claimant won a case over hardship payments and how the DWP made people pay them back. The department has also been back in court for a third time over Universal Credit’s discriminatory treatment of severely disabled people.
The system is clearly discriminatory, and the Court of Appeal agrees that it is discriminatory, but has said the government is entitled to discriminate unless I can show that there is an easy and better way. I don’t think that is correct and I will continue my fight to get our voices heard. Affordable, accessible childcare support is fundamental to our infrastructure if the government want to achieve higher levels of employment among single mums and reduce child poverty.
Now, if Salvato’s appeal is granted, it will be down to the Supreme Court to decide if what seems to be common sense prevails, or if the DWP gets away with this alleged discrimination.
The chancellor has appeared to reject a call from footballer Marcus Rashford to extend the free school meal programme into the school holidays for the next three years.
Rejecting children
In a letter to the Sunday Times, England and Manchester United forward Rashford joined with supermarket bosses and food industry leaders to demand ministers continue providing the meals to vulnerable children, even when they were not in the classroom.
The signatories said that doing so during the earlier stages of the pandemic, after campaigning from Rashford forced a government U-turn, had been “a great success, bringing nutritional and educational benefits to children”.
Protestors hang up paper plates carrying slogans calling for the Government to extend the free school meals provision (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
They added that to go against recommendations in the National Food Strategy to extend this by three years would “both deepen and extend the scarring caused by the pandemic on our youngest citizens and ultimately our economy”.
However, Rishi Sunak told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One that as other support such as the furlough scheme had come to an end, so should the provision of free school meals in the holidays. The chancellor said:
So we put in place some measures to help families during coronavirus, that was the right thing to do, and in common with the other things that have now come to an end, whether it was furlough or other things, that’s right that we’ve transitioned to a more normal way of doing things.
But we have replaced… but we have actually already acted, is what I’d say to Marcus and everyone else. We’ve put in place something called the holiday activities program, which provides not just meals but also activities for children during holiday periods for those families that need extra help.
That is a new programme, it was announced earlier this year, it’s being rolled out across the country, and I think that can make an enormous difference to people.
Rishi Sunak on The Andrew Marr Show (Jeff Overs/BBC)
Help needed
The joint letter in the Sunday Times said:
Better jobs are the route out of poverty, and the virtue of these children’s food schemes is that when working families shore up their income they can buy school and holiday meals themselves.
Until this happens, surely equality of opportunity and levelling-up begin with guaranteeing that every child in Britain can eat well – at least once a day.
It added that extending the free school meal scheme and the Healthy Start programme, which provides free vouchers to buy milk, fruit and vegetables, would cost £1.1bn a year, equivalent to 1% of the education budget and 4% of annual spending on the immediate consequences of obesity.
Rashford also previously called for the expansion of free school meal eligibility to all children aged 7-18 in all households earning £20,000 or less after benefits, and to children that are undocumented or living in immigrant households with “no recourse to public funds”.
Asked whether this would be part of his Budget, Sunak told Times Radio:
Well, I obviously wouldn’t… you wouldn’t expect me to comment on these things in advance of next week.
What I will say on that general agenda, which obviously Marcus has been passionate about and rightly ensured that we all talk about is, we acted during the crisis to put expanded support in place, that was the right thing to do.
A major report by Labour MP Jon Trickett has called for a wealth tax as part of a major overhaul of the UK’s tax system. It estimates that if the richest paid more in tax, it could raise nearly half a trillion pounds across five years.
A stark divide
The report is called The Nature of Wealth in Britain. It looks at various measures of how wealth is distributed in the UK; how our current tax system affects the richest and poorest, and what could be done to make the system fairer. A press release said that the report’s launch:
comes ahead of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement that looks set to propose cuts to public services after the Chancellor has asked departments to find “at least 5 percent of savings and efficiencies from their day-to-day budgets.
Trickett launched the report with a video:
Gaping inequality
As the report lays out, the situation is stark.
It notes:
There are now more billionaires in the UK than at any other time in the 33-year history of the Times Rich List. And the richest 250 people have seen an increase of £106 billion in their wealth since before the pandemic.
Juxtapose this with the fact that over 11 million people have had their jobs furloughed, 14 million are living in poverty (9 million of whom are actually in work) and there has been a 33% increase in the use of food banks in the last 12 months.
To add to this, the Tory government is cutting Universal Credit, breaking an election promise by hiking up National Insurance and overseeing a huge jump in inflation.
Moreover, it notes that:
The richest people have seen their wealth increase, by £538 billion between the financial crash and just before the start of covid. Even under covid, the richest 250 increased their wealth by another £106.7 billion.
Unfairness, entrenched
The report also shows just how weighted in favour of the rich the UK tax system is. It details how:
More working families are in poverty than ever before.
Life expectancy in the poorest areas is declining. But in the richest areas, it’s increasing.
Our system of income tax unfairly favours the rich.
Meanwhile, it outlined how:
The London Stock Exchange has increased its value by over £600bn in the last year alone.
UK businesses’ cash reserves have nearly trebled to £909m since 2006.
“The UK is responsible for 558% of tax lost globally to corporate tax abuse – the second worst in Europe. Globally, only the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands are responsible for higher shares of tax loss”.
We’re the 12th most financially secret jurisdiction in the global Financial Secrecy Index. That is, we’re one of the worst countries for letting people hide their wealth.
The report also detailed that:
Corporate lobbying of government is a major problem. Only 1% of lobbyists fall under legislation.
The “revolving door” between politicians and corporations is still an issue.
10 big donors to the Tories have given over £13.6m to the party since Boris Johnson came to power. During this time, these 10 have increased their wealth by over £1.1bn.
Government outsourcing of public services to private companies equates to £3,500 per household.
So, what can be done?
A wealth tax
Trickett’s report proposes four ways to start fixing this gaping inequality:
An additional 5% tax on income over £500,000 as a one-off wealth tax. This could raise £260bn.
Another type of one-off wealth tax would be on wealth over £2m with graduated increases. It could raise £197.6bn.
An annual wealth tax on wealth over £2m with graduated increases. This could raise £22.5bn a year.
The report also proposes a “hybrid wealth tax”. It says that this would include the second tax outlined above, plus a tax on wealth people made after this. It noted that:
Over Covid, the richest 250 people, as listed in the Sunday Times, increased their wealth by £106.7 billion. If we taxed wealth increases at the same base rate of income tax (20%) it would raise £21.3 billion each year.
Closing loopholes
The report says that:
Dividends (like money from selling shares) should be taxed the same as income. This could raise £37bn in five years.
If the same was done for capital gains tax, this would raise £90bn over five years.
If tax loopholes were closed and avoidance and evasion properly clamped down on, this could raise an additional £145.5bn in five years.
Overall the report’s proposals could raise £490.9bn in five years.
Public support appears high for some sort of wealth tax. For example, as the report noted:
In May 2020 YouGov produced a poll which showed that 61% support a wealth tax for people with assets worth more than £750,000 (excluding pensions and main homes)… In October 2020 IPSOS MORI also polled people about a wealth tax, with 41% strongly supporting one.
But what could this fairer taxation pay for?
Where could half a trillion go?
The report noted that just under half a trillion in additional tax could pay for:
15% NHS pay increase (£5.1bn nominal cost).
Making the £20 Universal Credit uplift permanent (£5bn).
Plug the Social Care funding gap (£4.3bn).
Restore Sure Start funding (£1.2bn).
Local Council funding gap (£7.4bn).
Reverse education funding cuts (7bn).
Levelling up transport by matching UK wide spending on transport to London levels of spend (£19bn).
Insulating all homes, reducing energy bills and cutting carbon emissions by 10% through “Warm Homes for All” (£250bn).
Building 150,000 houses a year (£75bn).
So, will it happen? Trickett thinks it must.
Trickett: a “cycle of inequality” that needs to be broken
Trickett said in a press release:
A wealth tax would transform our public finances making money available for our neglected public services…
It is also necessary to address extreme wealth inequality. Our political system is rigged in favour of global corporations and the super-rich. Wealth is turned into political power through donations and lobbying. Political power is used to advance policies that financially benefit the elite at everyone else’s expense. It is a cycle of inequality that leads towards oligarchy and threatens our democracy.
Bringing taxes on wealth into line with those on income is both morally as well as fiscally correct. But it is also a bold policy which will appeal to both voters and the labour movement precisely because it has one of our core values, fairness, at its centre.
Now, it’s up to the political parties to act. The Labour leadership must read and adopt Trickett’s report. Then, its proposals should be tabled as an opposition day debate. Moreover, it should form the basis for Labour policy at the next election. Anything less is missing a golden opportunity to truly ‘level up’ the UK.
Featured image via the Office of Jon Trickett – screengrab
In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results.
Progressive leaders in the U.S. Congress are refusing to back down on the Democrats’ promises to American voters to reduce poverty, expand rights to healthcare, education and clean energy, and repair a shredded social safety net. After decades of tax cuts for the rich, they are also committed to raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for this popular agenda.
Germany has elected a ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats that excludes the conservative Christian Democrats for the first time since 2000. The new government promises a $14 minimum wage, solar panels on all suitable roof space, 2% of land for wind farms and the closure of Germany’s last coal-fired power plants by 2030.
Iraqis voted in an election that was called in response to a popular protest movement launched in October 2019 to challenge the endemic corruption of the post-2003 political class and its subservience to U.S. and Iranian interests. The protest movement was split between taking part in the election and boycotting it, but its candidates still won about 35 seats and will have a voice in parliament. The party of long-time Iraqi nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr won 73 seats, the largest of any single party, while Iranian-backed parties whose armed militias killed hundreds of protesters in 2019 lost popular support and many of their seats.
Chile’s billionaire president, Sebastian Piñera, is being impeached after the Pandora Papers revealed details of bribery and tax evasion in his sale of a mining company, and he could face up to 5 years in prison. Mass street protests in 2019 forced Piñera to agree to a new constitution to replace the one written under the Pinochet military dictatorship, and a convention that includes representatives of indigenous and other marginalized communities has been elected to draft the constitution. Progressive parties and candidates are expected to do well in the general election in November.
Maybe the greatest success of people power has come in Bolivia. In 2020, only a year after a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup, a mass mobilization of mostly indigenous working people forced a new election, and the socialist MAS Party of Evo Morales was returned to power. Since then it has already introduced a new wealth tax and welfare payments to four million people to help eliminate hunger in Bolivia.
The Ideological Context
Since the 1970s, Western political and corporate leaders have peddled a quasi-religious belief in the power of “free” markets and unbridled capitalism to solve all the world’s problems. This new “neoliberal” orthodoxy is a thinly disguised reversion to the systematic injustice of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, which led to gross inequality and poverty even in wealthy countries, famines that killed tens of millions of people in India and China, and horrific exploitation of the poor and vulnerable worldwide.
For most of the 20th century, Western countries gradually responded to the excesses and injustices of capitalism by using the power of government to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation and a growing public sector, and ensure broad access to public goods like education and healthcare. This led to a gradual expansion of broadly shared prosperity in the United States and Western Europe through a strong public sector that balanced the power of private corporations and their owners.
The steadily growing shared prosperity of the post-WWII years in the West was derailed by a combination of factors, including the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Nixon’s freeze on prices and wages, runaway inflation caused by dropping the gold standard, and then a second oil crisis after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Right-wing politicians led by Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. blamed the power of organized labor and the public sector for the economic crisis. They launched a “neoliberal” counter-revolution to bust unions, shrink and privatize the public sector, cut taxes, deregulate industries and supposedly unleash “the magic of the market.” Then they took credit for a return to economic growth that really owed more to the end of the oil crises.
The United States and United Kingdom used their economic, military and media power to spread their neoliberal gospel across the world. Chile’s experiment in neoliberalism under Pinochet’s military dictatorship became a model for U.S. efforts to roll back the “pink tide” in Latin America. When the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opened to the West at the end of the Cold War, it was the extreme, neoliberal brand of capitalism that Western economists imposed as “shock therapy” to privatize state-owned enterprises and open countries to Western corporations.
In the United States, the mass media shy away from the word “neoliberalism” to describe the changes in society since the 1980s. They describe its effects in less systemic terms, as globalization, privatization, deregulation, consumerism and so on, without calling attention to their common ideological roots. This allows them to treat its impacts as separate, unconnected problems: poverty and inequality, mass incarceration, environmental degradation, ballooning debt, money in politics, disinvestment in public services, declines in public health, permanent war, and record military spending.
After a generation of systematic neoliberal control, it is now obvious to people all over the world that neoliberalism has utterly failed to solve the world’s problems. As many predicted all along, it has just enabled the rich to get much, much richer, while structural and even existential problems remain unsolved.
Even once people have grasped the self-serving, predatory nature of this system that has overtaken their political and economic life, many still fall victim to the demoralization and powerlessness that are among its most insidious products, as they are brainwashed to see themselves only as individuals and consumers, instead of as active and collectively powerful citizens.
In effect, confronting neoliberalism—whether as individuals, groups, communities or countries—requires a two-step process. First, we must understand the nature of the beast that has us and the world in its grip, whatever we choose to call it. Second, we must overcome our own demoralization and powerlessness, and rekindle our collective power as political and economic actors to build the better world we know is possible.
We will see that collective power in the streets and the suites at COP26 in Glasgow, when the world’s leaders will gather to confront the reality that neoliberalism has allowed corporate profits to trump a rational response to the devastating impact of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate. Extinction Rebellion and other groups will be in the streets in Glasgow, demanding the long-delayed action that is required to solve the problem, including an end to net carbon emissions by 2025.
While scientists warned us for decades what the result would be, political and business leaders have peddled their neoliberal snake oil to keep filling their coffers at the expense of the future of life on Earth. If we fail to stop them now, living conditions will keep deteriorating for people everywhere, as the natural world our lives depend on is washed out from under our feet, goes up in smoke and, species by species, dies and disappears forever.
The Covid pandemic is another real world case study on the impact of neoliberalism. As the official death toll reaches 5 million and many more deaths go unreported, rich countries are still hoarding vaccines, drug companies are reaping a bonanza of profits from vaccines and new drugs, and the lethal, devastating injustice of the entire neoliberal “market” system is laid bare for the whole world to see. Calls for a “people’s vaccine” and “vaccine justice” have been challenging what has now been termed “vaccine apartheid.”
Conclusion
In the 1980s, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher often told the world, “There is no alternative” to the neoliberal order she and President Reagan were unleashing. After only one or two generations, the self-serving insanity they prescribed and the crises it has caused have made it a question of survival for humanity to find alternatives.
Around the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand real change. The people of Iraq, Chile and Bolivia have overcome the incredible traumas inflicted on them to take to the streets in the thousands and demand better government. Americans should likewise demand that our government stop wasting trillions of dollars to militarize the world and destroy countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and start solving our real problems, here and abroad.
People around the world understand the nature of the problems we face better than we did a generation or even a decade ago. Now we must overcome demoralization and powerlessness in order to act. It helps to understand that the demoralization and powerlessness we may feel are themselves products of this neoliberal system, and that simply overcoming them is a victory in itself.
As we reject the inevitability of neoliberalism and Thatcher’s lie that there is no alternative, we must also reject the lie that we are just passive, powerless consumers. As human beings, we have the same collective power that human beings have always had to build a better world for ourselves and our children – and now is the time to harness that power.
It’s a question that everyone already seems to have an answer for.
“The poor are lazy.”
“The poor can’t manage money.”
“The poor don’t have the right mindset.”
These theories are anecdotal at best and downright insulting at worst. The problem with these arguments is that they are based on small sample sizesrather than empirical data. While I agree that some people are poor because of these things, there has been little experimental research done on this topic…until now.
Earlier this year researchers at the London School of Economics released a paper titled, “Why Do People Stay Poor?” that illustrated how thelack of initial wealth (and not motivation or talent) is what keeps people in poverty. The researchers tested this by randomly allocating wealth (i.e. livestock) to female villagers in Bangladesh and then waited to see how that wealth transfer would affect their future finances. As their paper states:
[We] find that, if the program pushes individuals above a threshold level of initial assets, then they escape poverty, but, if it does not, they slide back into poverty…Our findings imply that large one-off transfers that enable people to take on more productive occupations can help alleviate persistent poverty.
Their paper clearly illustrates that many poor people stay poor not because of their talent/motivation, but because they are in low-paying jobs that they must work to survive.
They are, in essence, in a poverty trap. This is a poverty trap where their lack of money prevents them from ever getting training/capital to work in higher paying jobs. You might be skeptical of these findings, but similar things have been found by experimental researchers doing random cash transfers in Kenya as well.
The fact is that money begets money. In investing we all know this to be true, but these empirical studies suggest that this is also true in the labor market. Without financial resources people find it incredibly difficult to get the skills and training to get ahead. I know this all too well as a first-generation college student who was fortunate enough to have their tuition paid for by a need-based scholarship.
And I can tell you that without that financial support there is almost no way I am here today. I know this because in the spring quarter of my junior year I didn’t have an internship lined up for that summer. I had been rejected from every one I had applied to. Luckily, my aunt was nice enough to offer me a job working in the warehouse she ran back home. If I had taken it I would’ve been paid minimum wage to move boxes while many of my peers were working at various Fortune 500 companies across the country.
However, late in the spring quarter one of my professors asked me what I was doing for the summer. I told him the unfortunate truth about the warehouse job and he immediately replied, “You are not doing that.” He then basically forced me to send my resume to a healthcare consulting firm that was run by another professor at our university. I did as he said, got the job, and spent my summer learning computer programming. It was amazing.
When I think back on it now, it was probably the most pivotal moment in my career. Without that initial nudge into a corporate role, a role that taught me my first technical skills, nothing in my career exists. I likely would have interned at my aunt’s warehouse and probably worked there full-time at a fraction of what I got paid in my first actual job out of college. But, even that result would have been incredibly fortunate because I would have had a guaranteed job coming out of college no matter what.
I only tell this story because it illustrates the immense amount of wealth/resources that were needed to change my career trajectory from one of low income to one of high income. The financial capital provided by my university, the social capital provided by my professor, and the career capital provided by my aunt were all things that most other first-generation college students wouldn’t have had access to. I am lucky to know the transformative power of wealth and how it can affect someone’s life.
I was reminded of this truth after hearing about the recent passing of famed actor Chadwick Boseman, most well known for his role in Black Panther. Boseman, who didn’t come from money, had his time at Oxford’s Drama Academy paid for by a secret benefactor who later turned out to be Denzel Washington.
Rather than summarize the power of Washington’s gift on Boseman, I’ll let Boseman’s words to Washington speak for themselves:
An offering from a sage and a king is more than silver and gold. It is a seed of hope. A bud of faith. There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington. And not just because of me, but my cast, that whole generation, stands on your shoulders. The daily battles won. The thousand territories gained. The many sacrifices you made for the culture on film sets through your career. The things you refused to compromise along the way, laid the blueprint for us to follow.
That is the power of wealth. Not the fancy cars. Not the private planes. Not the mansions. But the ability to change someone’s life. Think about the compounded effects of Washington’s gift on Boseman’s career and, eventually, on the world. Think about the number of young black children that will forever be inspired by Black Panther because of that gift long ago.
This is why wealth can be so powerful. Because it gives people the ability to change their world in meaningful ways. Whether that means getting a cow in Bangladesh or getting funds to pursue an acting scholarship in a foreign country, wealth is the change agent.
[Author’s note: If you are interested in learning more about cash giving and its effectiveness, check out the research from GiveDirectly here.]
A recently released research paper from the Becker-Friedman institute has challenged the consensus view that the new Child Tax Credit (CTC) program would have limited effects on employment. The authors — Kevin Corinth, Bruce D. Meyer, Matthew Stadnicki, and Derek Wu — use data from the Comprehensive Income Dataset. They find that the CTC expansion proposed by the Biden administration (and currently being debated for permanent renewal by Congress) would reduce total employment by 1.5 million and reduce poverty rates by 22 percent. This differs substantially from previous estimates, which have generally found limited effects on employment as well as larger effects on poverty reduction (usually around 40 percent).
This is a new working paper that has not been peer-reviewed. We expect other economists to question the validity of some of the papers’ assumptions (some have already begun to do so). The paper is complex and necessarily makes certain assumptions about how to model different decisions and which parameter estimates to use. While we expect that most of these decisions are reasonable, similarly reasonable modeling choices would likely yield very different estimates.
This is especially important because the significant effects the paper suggests are hard to reconcile with the observations of other countries that have created similar programs. In our previous white paper, we noted that there was no such decline in labor force participation after a similar program was introduced in Canada.
Nevertheless, it is worth taking the paper’s findings seriously as given.
A Refundable CTC Does Not Lead To An Entitlement Society
It’s first worth noting that this paper agrees with the previous literature in one crucial capacity. The paper estimates that relatively few parents (0.14 million) will leave the labor force because of the additional cash provided to parents by the expanded CTC (what economists call “the income effect”). Parents will not decide to stop working because the money provided by the CTC makes it possible for one or more parents to get by without a job. This should not be surprising: $300 a month per child is not nearly high enough to replace labor income.
If you, like Senator Manchin, are concerned that the CTC expansion will create an “entitlement society,” this paper should alleviate those concerns.
A Refundable CTC Takes the Government’s Thumb Off The Scale
Instead, the findings are driven by the “substitution effect.” The previous version of the Child Tax Credit “phased in” (such that only parents who were earning at least $24,000 a year would receive the full credit). This meant that the CTC previously operated as a subsidy for employment, effectively increasing the wages of someone who earned $24,000 to $26,000. Effectively, the government is choosing to supplement parents’ wages who decide to work rather than remain at home.
It’s worth asking whether this is the proper role for the government. While the government (or society more broadly) arguably does have an interest in helping people find work (and may choose to limit assistance for people who can work and choose not to), to claim that the government should specifically push parents into the workforce goes against many conservative principles. Some social conservatives, including Reihan Salam, Senate candidate Blake Masters, and Lyman Stone, have gone so far as to suggest that lower workforce participation by parents should be a policy objective. The Niskanen Center has previously argued that the government should largely be neutral in this decision, neither pushing parents into or away from the workforce. A fully refundable CTC achieves this goal, whereas the previous phase-in did not.
A Refundable CTC Lets Employers Phase-In
Finally, it’s worth noting that, if ending the phase-in of the CTC decreases the incentive to work provided by the federal government, there is a group that may be better suited to increasing that incentive: employers themselves.
The Becker-Friedman paper assumes that offered wages will not change in the presence of the fully refundable CTC. But if 1.5 million people are considering leaving the workforce, as the paper suggests, firms will, of course, consider how they can attract more job candidates. This may take the form of increased wages–effectively replacing the funding previously provided by the government. A result of these increased wages would be that many parents decide to keep working.
And certainly, employers may be able to come up with better solutions for attracting parents than money alone. If parents are considering leaving the workforce, businesses will look for new ways to attract them. Most obviously, this could include options such as more regular hours or limited hours that make it easier for parents to be home before and after school. That’s a pro-family policy we should all get behind.
Fiji’s opposition National Federation Party has blamed 1150 pandemic deaths on the Bainimarama government’s “shameful and despicable” ego-driven leadership.
“Stop bragging and taking the Lord’s name in vain when you have presided over the single biggest disaster and loss of lives in our country’s 51 years of independence,” said Dr Biman Prasad, a former professor of economics at the University of the South Pacific.
“Talk about issues like how to alleviate poverty that reached almost 30 percent at the time of the so-called ‘Bainimarama Boom’ but has now escalated to about 50 percent due to economic depression caused by covid-19.”
This is the message to Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama from Dr Prasad after a message posted on the Fiji government social media page this week showing the prime minister as saying the battle against covid-19 pandemic was about to end — and declaring he had proved critics wrong and was in firm control.
“This is a national leader who brags about himself and claims he will secure every Fijian from clear and present danger,” Dr Prasad said in a statement.
“The prime minister forgets what he announced at the start of the second wave of the pandemic on April 19.”
“Then, he spoke about a grave and present danger to the lives of our people and the need to comply with strict measures and enforcement of lockdowns to contain and eliminate the virus.
‘1150 citizens’ lose their lives
“Almost six months later with the virus out of control due to the PM’s egoistic and ‘My Way or the Highway’ leadership in deciding to open up containment zones, 1150 citizens have lost their lives through no fault of theirs and more than 51,200 people have so far been infected”.
The Johns Hopkins University global covid dashboard (with data supplied by the Fiji government) states 649 deaths and 51,386 confirmed cases in Fiji as at today.
“And in a bid to keep a lid on the death toll and rate of infection, the Health Ministry split the death toll into two categories as well as significantly reduced testing and contact tracing.”
Dr Prasad claimed the ministry was now announcing deaths that occurred in the last three months saying it took time to investigate and determine the cause of death.
“It is shameful and despicable that instead of sympathising with the families who have lost loved ones and offering his genuine and sincere condolences, the PM showers himself with praise for his handling of the crisis,” Dr Prasad said.
“Does he have the courage to go to each individual family, undoubtedly, still grieving the loss of a loved one, and tell them that he is in firm control and protecting them from the grave danger posed by the pandemic?”
‘From containment to containers’
It was the prime minister, his government and their “From containment to containers” policy — allowing the virus to spread freely by opening up containment zones and installing three 12m container freezers as morgues — who must be held responsible for the “needless loss of life of our citizens and heaping pain, suffering and misery on the people”.
“The nation is at the crossroads, at odds with itself, due to failed leadership. Yet, we have a PM who says he is in firm control of the situation,” he said.
“This is symptomatic of a typical dictator who thinks he or she is always right despite the fact that people are dying, poverty is increasing and people are struggling to put food on the table.
“This façade must end at the next elections,” Dr Prasad added.
On 6 October, footage emerged of secretary of state for work and pensions Thérèse Coffey singing ‘The Time of My Life’ to Tory party conference delegates. Coffey performed her enthusiastic rendition of the Dirty Dancing hit just an hour after the government’s £20 cut to universal credit came into effect.
Many took to Twitter to express their disgust at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) chief’s carefree karaoke having overseen a cut which is predicted to plunge 840,000 more people into poverty, including 290,000 children.
Having the time of her life
Sharing a clip of the unfortunate footage, Politics Home reporter John Johnson tweeted:
DWP Secretary Therese Coffey singing ‘I’m having the time of my life’ at Tory conference just an hour after the £20 Universal Cut came into force. pic.twitter.com/lspuFKGs4Q
Expressing her ‘disgust’ at Coffey’s conduct, Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana tweeted:
While 6 million families went to bed last night in fear of the £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit, @ThereseCoffey, the woman overseeing the cut, was out singing "I've had the time of my life" at the Conservative Party conference. Disgusting.pic.twitter.com/t1lQhYX0ad
This is the biggest overnight cut to welfare Britain has seen. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, it will take £1,040 from around 5.5 million households across Britain each year. Highlighting this, Hertsmere Borough councillor for Potters Bar Chris Myers shared:
— Jack Meredith (He/Him/His) (@VerySocialLeft) October 6, 2021
Taking Coffey’s rambunctious rendition of the Dirty Dancing hit as a grim reflection of Tory party culture, Brendan May tweeted:
Therese Coffey singing ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ at the #CPC21 just as the benefits cut comes into force is a new low; the footage a reminder the the Tory Party is a culture free ideological crack den of unsurpassed grimness and vacuity. #ToryBritainpic.twitter.com/RDjCXXHKAP
As they slash #UniversalCredit for millions of vulnerable people Welfare Secretary Therese Coffey is belting out 'I'm having the time of my life' at the tory conference, they are the most grotesque people ever to govern this nation, beyond sickening..
The £20-a-week cut to universal credit will leave most claimants surviving off a meagre £59 per week. Comparing this with Coffey’s extravagant expenses, one Twitter user shared:
Member of Parliament for Suffolk Coastal Teresa Coffey. Has claimed more than £201,000 in parliamentary expenses between 2019 and 2020. "While having the time of her Life" she cut the Universal Credit uplift of £20 to millions of people.
In September, the Legatum Institute thinktank predicted that the £20-a-week cut to universal credit could plunge 840,000 more people into poverty, including 290,000 children. Some 5.8 million people currently claim universal credit. Nearly 40% of universal credit claimants are currently employed.
Ahead of the cut, Resolution Foundation chief executive Torsten Bell explained the devastating impact it will have on millions of households in England, Scotland and Wales. He tweeted:
While the government has withdrawn the universal credit uplift, the cost of living continues to increase. Indeed, food and fuel prices, housing costs and energy bills are set to rise dramatically. Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome shared:
Energy bills are set to soar by hundreds of pounds next year.
Meanwhile, Universal Credit has been cut by £20 a week, National Insurance contributions are up and council tax is likely to rise.
This isn't just a winter of discontent – it's years of misery under this government.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has forecast that the cut will leave 1 in 3 families living in poverty. Underlining the devastating human cost of the cut, Sultana tweeted:
If anyone says politics doesn't matter, tell them about Sophie, a single mum from Coventry, and the cruelty of the Tories' cut to Universal Credit:
“I’m terrified. How am I going to feed my child this winter? How am I going to cope? I can’t stop crying."https://t.co/1tcLqrdBZF
The government’s deliberate cut to universal credit at a time in which the poorest and most vulnerable in society need more support than ever is nothing short of inhumane.
Council tax must be raised to keep local services at pre-pandemic levels, a right-wing thinktank has said. The Institute for Fiscal Studies claims a 3.6% rise on council tax will be needed over the next four years. But it could be as high as 5%.
And the news comes as the Tory government cuts £20 from universal credit, leaving many at risk, and at a time when gas prices are extremely volatile. It also follows the recent revelations of the so-called Pandora Papers.
Regressive
On Twitter, people warned the hike would hit the poorest:
It’s not levelling up if you cut £1,000 from the poorest households, if you raise taxes for lower paid workers and if you put up council tax which makes up 5 times more of the budgets of poorer people than those of the well off.
Are SHROPSHIRE MPs aware that by increasing regressive taxes like Council Tax means the poorest in society will bear the burden disproportionately resulting in stress & mental health problems. What are you going to do about it?@OwenPaterson@DKShrewsbury@Dunne4Ludlow@lucyallan
Another pointed out council tax was already unfair:
Council Tax needs to be abolished. Why? Because it isn't based on the ability to pay and is, instead, based on property prices that were out of date when the tax was first introduced in 1993.
The pandemic has pushed up councils’ spending and reduced their local revenues, with the UK and devolved governments having to provide substantial top-ups to councils’ grant funding over the last 18 months to help them weather this storm.
Some of these pressures are likely to persist, and will come on top of underlying increases in the demand for and cost of council-provided services. And a range of reforms to councils’ funding arrangements and responsibilities are set to take effect over the next few years – or should be considered by the UK and devolved governments.
Pandemic effects
And the IFS says that up to £10bn must be raised over the next 2-4 years:
Under our central projections, English councils would need a £10 billion increase in revenues between 2019–20 and 2024–25 to maintain service levels.
The IFS suggested that the Chancellor “should consider setting a baseline amount of funding (plus principles for council tax increases), with a commitment to top this up in later Budgets (or even between Budgets) if necessary”.
Tax the rich?
One thing the IFS forecast does not seem keen on is taxing the rich. Meaning that the recommendations would place the burden on the less well-off if followed by the government.
The Pandora Papers revealed details of how the global elite evade tax. The papers raised questions about individuals like Tony Blair, as well as major Tory donors. The Guardian reported the Pandora Papers reveal Tony and Cherie Blair “saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in property taxes”.
Now more than ever, it is time for the rich to pay their way.
We’ve all heard the argument that “poverty is a choice.” The reality is that’s true — but not for the reason one might think. As former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs reminds us, “poverty is a policy choice, not a personal one.” The reality is that poverty has more to do with the policies behind how resources get distributed in a nation with more than enough to financially stabilize every family.
Across the country, Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) is transforming from a vision on the margins to a mainstream policy goal.
While stimulus checks have significantly aided families throughout the pandemic, census data show that the further we get from the last federal stimulus check dispersed in March 2021, the more families struggle to eat and pay rent. GBI proposals used to face more skepticism, even from those who are theoretically supportive of a social safety net. That was until a bold mayor put the idea to the test and produced stunning results. Mayor Tubbs championed GBI through the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), granting low-income families monthly cash payments of $500 over 24 months. The analysis revealed that the participants spent the money on basic needs, were more likely to find full-time employment, experienced less depression and anxiety, and were more willing to take risks to invest in their futures.
The real, tangible benefits of giving money directly to families who are struggling to make ends meet are simply undeniable.
Fresno has some of the highest rates of poverty and concentrated poverty in the nation. Over the past year, Fresno County had the second highest increase in rents in the country and many workers were at least $1,000 short of the monthly income needed to afford the average rent.
For many Fresno families, a GBI could literally make the difference between their rent going from unaffordable to affordable. It would address longstanding systemic racial inequities, given that Black and Latino communities carry much of the economic and social burdens of poverty. It would also create a more resilient economy and provide greater financial freedom.
Our vision for GBI in Fresno — making it the second such program in the Central Valley — could be a game changer, first and foremost for the families it serves, but also for the national understanding of how to provide a safety net and opportunities for all of our most vulnerable neighbors.
For one, Fresno’s urban and rural communities have different needs, but a shared lack of basic resources, making us unique among many current guaranteed income project locations. Second, a GBI program in Fresno would revitalize the struggling local economy as Fresno families spend more money at local businesses.
With growing local and national support combined with recent state legislation that has allocated $35 million to support local GBI programs, it is clear that this is the right next step for Fresno. Multiple local organizations have formed a coalition to advance a Fresno program, including the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission, Faith in the Valley, and the Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce. Fresno State’s newly launched Center for Community Voices will provide on-the-ground research on the program’s impact and support recipients to tell their own stories.
Solutions to poverty don’t have to be complicated. It really is as simple as giving people the money that they need to stop surviving day to day, find stable ground, and start planning for the future.
Dr. Amber Crowell is associate professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for Community Voices at Fresno State.
Heather Brown is the chief administrative officer of the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission (EOC).
Almost 20 years ago, a police shooting left David Makara without an arm and facing jail. Inspired by the blind lawyer who saved him, he now defends others facing injustice
When the police started shooting at David Makara in his home town of Nyahururu, in Kenya, he ran before quickly collapsing. Two bullets had hit him – one in his right arm, one in his hip – but he only realised when he looked down and saw his hand dangling from his wrist and blood pouring out.
Is it too much to expect to be able to meet your basic needs and have the resources to obtain what contributes to your well-being? Is it too much to expect to be able to pay your rent/mortgage, buy nutritious food, or visit your out-of-state family? What about buying a tube of Carmex, knee socks, a large kitchen spoon, or having car repairs done? How about going to lunch or a movie with a friend? These experiences I describe are part of what creates a fulfilling life. Don’t we all deserve that?
As I turn 64 years old, I am just now learning that I am worthy of being able to meet my basic needs and more. Until recently, I didn’t know that I was supposed to have what I needed to bring me joy and pleasure. Things like basic health, safety, and loving connections with my family and friends seemed so out of reach to me. In the past year or so, I’ve realized that I have been depriving myself of what so many other people take for granted. For instance, the ability to run to the store to buy some glue to repair something in the kitchen, and not have to wait on two paychecks before doing so. Or feeling excited and able to say “yes” to a friend who asks you to join them for a night on the town or a simple dinner out.
These desires and experiences all seem so ordinary and something many people seem to be able to do — but not me. The lack of money and not feeling worthy of having what I need has kept me from being able to enjoy life’s simple pleasures all too often. I haven’t been able to fully live my life in a way that honors me. In discovering that all deserve to live a fulfilling life, I am having to learn how to embody a mindset of worthiness and abundance.
For me, a mindset of abundance includes the freedom to live a life filled with love, joy, financial resources, health, and the ability to provide self-care. The financial freedom to buy nutritious food, proper clothing, and household items for ourselves and our families should be everyone’s birthright. Having the ability to go to a health practitioner and purchase medicine when needed keeps individuals healthy. Providing our loved one with proper caregiving services and making sure our children have school supplies creates a healthy community. That is abundance.
This deprivation I’ve been living with has been extremely painful. I have so often judged and criticized myself, asking: “What’s wrong with me?” and “Why can’t I manage to get a job that pays a livable and prosperous income?” Now that I am older, I see my friends and family retiring, being able to travel, own their own homes, and spend money on what’s important to them. Disconcertingly at age 63, I only have about $30,000 in retirement funds. I have a job that mostly pays for the basics and very few “extras.” IfI were to draw social security at this age, it would only be approximately $1,027 a month — adding up to a yearly income of $12,324. That is over $500 below the poverty line.
At times, I feel ashamed and a sense of failure. That little voice in my head tells me that I don’t have what it takes to fully financially support myself. I feel afraid and hopeless as I question how I will ever be able to live a richer life in all its forms. The anxiety, guilt, and sense of defeat I have felt due to not being able to meet my basic needs with ease has resulted in physical symptoms. Grief and self-rejection make appearances often. At times, a sense of futility and not wanting to be on this planet any longer contribute to paralyzingly crippling moments.
Now, at this age, with less physical energy, a slower rhythm, and more time needing to be spent on self-care, I wonder how I will ever ‘catch up.’ I yearn to be able to take care of myself with greater freedom, dignity, to have the ability to meet my needs in a plentiful, healthy, and safe way. In Brené Brown’s book, Rising Strong, she writes about “the reckoning, the rumble, the revolution” of the self. It feels like I go back and forth between reckoning with my past, rumbling through the present, and revolutionizing my future, which I am realizing is simply and gloriously the “dance of life.”
Deep down, I know that I am supposed to be thriving rather than just surviving. My many attempts to learn about my roots of poverty and deprivation have been a struggle. I realized that I wasn’t worthy of or even aware that I was supposed to be worthy of being able to meet my needs and to have plenty of whatever contributed to my state of well-being. In order to learn, I read an excellent book called The Trance of Scarcity, by Victoria Castle, which beautifully describes how we have come to believe in the lies of scarcity.
Even with many resources to help me learn how to increase my income, at some point, I got tired of it all. At first going to financial advisors, workshops, practicing prosperity activities and affirmations was an inspiration. It eventually became draining and deepened my already existing state of depression and anxiety.
I know that I have a strong life force within me and I continue to move forward determined that I will not die in destitution. I now realize that I have a right to live with dignity. That we all have the right to experience the richness of life and all the world has to offer us. I am gradually discovering that I am worthy of having a prosperous life and that I am not alone. So many of us are on this journey to find financial freedom and stability. Millions of people are experiencing poverty of mind, body, and spirit. However, I believe this is the time in our spiritual and human evolution to examine our beliefs and actions. We must have the courage to elevate our quality of life.
It’s time to take a stand for abundance! A stand for a society and global family that thrives not only financially, but supports equity and love for one another.
I felt some hope when I learned about an idea called basic income, also known as guaranteed income, which is when a governing body provides a certain amount of money to some members of society. The main purpose of basic income is to be a powerful solution to alleviate poverty. Around the world there are many pilots and studies being conducted on basic income with much success. Here in the U.S. we have seen cash transfer programs launched during the COVID pandemic helping families weather the crisis. In many states, counties, and even cities, pilots are underway and providing data for us to demonstrate the power of cash. An organization called Income Movement is the organization that I’m most familiar with that supports basic income. I feel grateful to know that there are organizations such as this one to support an unconditional monthly income for people who are suffering financially.
If you are struggling financially, I invite you to trust your inner guidance system and know that there is nothing wrong with you, and there never has been. I believe we arehere to live full and abundant lives. If you feel moved by the idea of providing abundance to everyone through a guaranteed basic income, then join our efforts with Income Movement.Your voice is powerful, and together we can create a world where there is enough for everyone. A world where we can all thrive, not just survive.
It is not too much to ask for. We are all worthy of living lives abundant with freedom, connection, and joy.
Footballer-turned-campaigner Marcus Rashford has added his voice to the fight against the Tories’ Universal Credit cut. His intervention comes as activists plan protests and more evidence of the cut’s devastating effects has come to light.
Universal Credit chaos
The Canary has been documenting the chaos surrounding Universal Credit. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will be cutting £20-a-week from claimants in a matter of days. It will hit various people hard, including 660,000 low-paid key workers, 3.4 million children, and six out of 10 lone parent families. The cut will plunge a further 500,000 people, including 200,000 children, into poverty. Trade unions and campaign groups have expressed fury over the cut.
Meanwhile, The Canary recently reported that Citizens Advice has warned of more misery for claimants. Its research found that the cut could force as many as 1.5 million working people into hardship this winter. Citizens Advice found that two-thirds of working claimants are bracing themselves to face hardship when the Tories cut Universal Credit at the end of the month. Their financial fears include struggling to pay their bills, getting into debt, or being forced to sell belongings to make up for the shortfall in their income.
Another quarter of working claimants could face even greater difficulties. Citizens Advice found that as many as 600,000 working claimants are worried they might not be able to afford food or other basic necessities like toiletries after the reduction in their income is introduced.
Now, Rashford has intervened.
Enter Rashford
As part of a campaign with charity the Food Foundation, Rashford is encouraging people to write to their MPs and tell them to end child food poverty. You can use the Food Foundation’s online form to do that here. The letter encourages MPs to support Rashford and the charity’s plan. This includes expanding Free School Meals and funding more free holiday clubs.
On the Tories’ Universal Credit cut, Rashford told the Mirror:
Instead of removing vital support, we should be focusing on developing a long-term roadmap out of this child hunger pandemic.
He added:
On October 6, millions lose a lifeline. It’s a move that Child Poverty Action Group says will raise child poverty to one in three.
Rashford is not the only one taking action.
£20 more for everyone
Grassroots disability rights group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) is currently directing a week of action over the Tories’ governance. On Friday 24 September, it held an online rally. Speakers included filmmaker Ken Loach and disability rights activist Paula Peters. It’s also holding two protests in a matter of days. On Tuesday 28 September, DPAC is organising an “audio riot” outside Kings Cross station, in the courtyard in front of it, from 11:30am. Then, on Thursday 30 September at 5:30pm, it and other groups will be protesting outside Downing Street. You can find out more here.
On top of all this, think tank the Resolution Foundation recently issued a stark warning. It said inflation, rising energy bills, the looming rise in National Insurance, and the Universal Credit cut could leave low-income households more than £1,000 a year worse off. That’s even after accounting for increases in the minimum wage. Plus, another study has found that councils could place 1,500 more children into care each year due to the cut. And there could also be 5,500 more children on child protection plans.
The Tories: changing course?
Currently, the Tories are not budging. Transport secretary Grant Shapps indicated on TV on 26 September that nothing had changed. But the DWP and the Treasury are reportedly considering changing the rules for working claimants. This could let them keep more of their earnings, though it’ll do nothing for sick and disabled people, carers and lone parents who can’t work, among others.
However, collective action from Rashford, DPAC and others could well apply enough pressure for a last-minute Tory U-turn. Now, millions of families will wait to see if this happens.
Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao is leaving the sport that propelled him to stardom as he seeks the Philippine presidency in 2022
He is no longer fighting in the ring.
“My boxing career? My boxing career is already over,” Senator Pacquiao told actress Toni Gonzaga in Filipino on her YouTube programme Toni Talks at the weekend.
“It’s done because I’ve been in boxing for a long time and my family says that it is enough. I just continued [to box] because I’m passionate about this sport.
Pacquiao, who declared he is running for the Philippines presidency under the PDP-Laban faction of his and fellow Senator Koko Pimentel on Sunday, made it clear, however, that he was not leaving boxing altogether.
“I will just support other boxers for us to have a champion again.”
Pacquiao, boxing’s lone eight-division world champion, has long been helping Filipino boxers by way of his MP (Manny Pacquiao) Promotions headed by Sean Gibbons.
Already in the MP stable are World Boxing Organisation bantamweight champion Johnriel Casimero and International Boxing Federation super flyweight king Jerwin Ancajas.
Also in the fold is unbeaten featherweight Mark Magsayo, Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist Eumir Marcial, and world title contender Jonas Sultan.
“Panahon na upang manalo naman ang mga naaapi. Panahon na para makabangon ang bayan natin na lugmok sa kahirap. Panahon na nang isang malinis na gobyerno na kung saan ang bawat sentimo ay mapupunta sa bawat Pilipino,” said Pacquiao.
(I accept your nomination as the candidate for president of the Republic of the Philippines. It is now the time for the oppressed to win. It is now the time for our nation to rise from poverty. It is now the time for a clean government where every centavo goes to Filipinos.)
In a Pulse Asia survey conducted in June, Pacquiao ranked 5th among preferred presidential candidates for the 2022 elections. He was far behind top choices Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno.
Its owner, Basil Fawlty, is a man who thinks he is always right. His attempts to cover up small problems quickly turn into major disasters.
If you are already drawing comparisons between Fawlty Towers and the current Fiji government, you would not be the only one.
The most popular of its (only 12) episodes is called “The Germans”. A group of German tourists comes to stay. Basil doesn’t much like Germans but it’s money after all. Obsessed with not offending them he instructs everybody “don’t mention the war”.
The more he tries not to mention the war, the worse it gets. By the end of the episode he is doing frog-marching Hitler impressions and his guests are asking: “How did they ever win?”
This is what comes to mind when I think of our government and ethnic population data.
The more the government tries to pretend it doesn’t exist, the more public the issue becomes.
Statistics saga
The media was treated last week to an 8pm peroration from Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. Maybe he forgot that this was way past every media company’s news deadline (the editors of the Fiji Sun, however, seemed to extend theirs so they could report the speech the next day).
The head of the Statistics Bureau was fired, marched out from his office by security personnel.
That guaranteed another cycle of bad press as opposition parties and NGOs issued statements and social media lit up.
Immediately the critics reminded us of what happens when the Attorney-General loses an argument. Vice-chancellors get deported.
The media is attacked for bias. He blasts his own lawyers for losing a court case (the “winning argument” he says they missed would be laughed out of any remotely sane court).
Why?
Comedy aside, surely the question to ask about this disaster-prone policy is “why”? I know of no other nation in the world where the government tells the people “you are not allowed to know the ethnic breakdown of people in your own country because it is bad for you”.
Those who question this policy are attacked by the Attorney-General as “obsessed with ethnicity”.
But a lot of effort and drama has gone into suppressing what is usual (and critically important) demographic information. Now it has been applied to punishing the man who made it available.
All of this seems to suggest that it is the Attorney-General, not us, who is obsessed.
“It is a big issue,” he told the media. “If you are going to start having compassion for people based on their ethnicity, then you are losing your sense of humanity and that’s precisely what has happened”.
Really? When did that happen?
When did we all decide that we would “have compassion” for only one ethnic group? We’ve barely had time to understand the data.
Mind-numbingly obvious It is mind-numbingly obvious why ethnic data is important to government policymaking and operations.
As opposition MP Lenora Qereqeretabua put it two years ago, calling us all “Fijians” doesn’t make us the same”.
New Zealand health authorities have heart disease profiles for Indo-Fijians, a tiny slice of their own society. Why? Because they are “obsessed with ethnicity”?
No, because they understand that different ethnic groups have particular physiologies, diets and even lifestyles. They use the information to save lives.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that in Fiji the take up of coronavirus vaccines is lower in the indigenous population than for other races.
If everybody had the data, NGOs and health authorities could co-operate in working out why. They could upgrade the messaging and vaccination strategies to respond.
Because as we are all reminded, no Fijian is safe until everyone is vaccinated.
In the middle of the coronavirus it took weeks for the government to even start communicating virus information in vernacular languages.
Why? Were they instructed not to be “obsessed with ethnicity”?
Affirmative action
We need to understand ethnic performance gaps in critical areas such as education and poverty, representation in business and professional life. If we don’t, how are we going to fix them?
Are we going to pretend that cultures and lifestyles play no part in these gaps? Are we going to pretend that we can’t use targeted programmes and information to close them?
Past governments – yes, those evil “past governments” which get blamed for everything bad — tried to respond to these gaps with “affirmative action” policies in education and economic support. They were not, in my opinion, very effective.
In my view they addressed the symptoms, rather than the causes, of these gaps. So (in my view) it was necessary to re-think the affirmative action policies, look critically at what had gone wrong, and re-design them.
The gaps have not gone away. But for 15 years we have not been allowed to talk about them. So that is 15 years in which we have lost the opportunity to look for new, imaginative ways to deal with the gaps.
Fiji is like every other multiracial country in the world. Race is a natural fault line.
You cannot paper it over by saying “the Constitution says we are all Fijians now”.
When things go wrong, in times of economic, social and political stress, people look for simple answers to their problems.
Sometimes they are encouraged to find those simple answers by blaming people who do not look like them or speak like them.
And that’s when things go wrong. The explosions of 1987 and 2000 are not so long ago.
Are we all trying to pretend that these things could not happen again?
The current government seems to think that warning us against racism, or arresting people who criticise Bill 17, will deal with the problem (or maybe solve their own future election problems).
Nation-building
But like everything in the stunted and short-sighted vision they have offered us for 15 years, this government doesn’t seem to understand the essence of nation-building.
Our government seems to think that a nation is built when everyone is brought under control by the government and ordered around.
So, apparently, we must all call ourselves “Fijians”. We must pretend that we are all the same.
We must not be allowed our own local governments in case they disagree with the people in Suva. We must not be allowed autonomy in the schools that in many cases our own forefathers or religious communities built.
In the midst of our worst ever health and economic crisis, non-governmental organisations, charities and private citizens should not get government support because they cannot be controlled.
Instead, government will do everything. Dial 161 and take your chances.
But nations are not built like that. Nations are built by their people, helped by (not ordered around by) their governments.
Citizens do the building
In a well-run nation, it is the citizens who do the building. It is the citizens working together, in business, in community organisations, schools, health, in advocacy for minority groups, in town and city councils, who build.
They know what their communities need and respond to those needs.
The citizens, through their councils and committees and charitable trusts, argue with and criticise and demand things from the government. Because after all, the people who run the government are supposed to work for them.
It is citizens who can come up with the ideas and demand action and support from the government to deal with the obvious ethnic differences in income and poverty levels, in education and in other critical areas of national life.
But how can they do that when they don’t have the information and are not allowed to talk about it? All we have to talk about, it seems, is what will be the next episode in our very own series of Fawlty Towers.
Richard Naidu is a Suva lawyer, media commentator and former journalist in New Zealand and Fiji. His workmates think he is a bit like Basil Fawlty. This article was originally published in The Fiji Times and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
Questions have been raised about why the head of Fiji’s Bureau of Statistics was fired by the Bainimarama government this week.
Kemueli Naiqama recently published this year’s household income and expenditure survey that showed three quarters of Fiji’s poorest people are indigenous Fijians, or i-Taukei.
It is the first time ethnicity has featured in data published in the annual survey.
RNZ’s correspondent in the capital Suva, Lice Movono, told RNZ FirstUp the bureau had been “enhancing their ability to report information” and trying to be in line with sustainable development goals reporting.
“And the latest report shows that the poorest people in this country are the i-Taukei people,” Movono said.
“But more importantly that our poverty population — or the population that is living well below the poverty line — is very high.
“It would be directly opposite to the policies of this government to give information segregated according to ethnicity — it would be extremely embarrassing for a government that has been talking about producing an all time record high boom – economic growth,” she said.
Sacking defended
The Statistics Department comes under the Ministry for Economy.
The Minister, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum who is also Fiji’s Attorney-General, has defended his sacking of the country’s chief statistician.
Sayed-Khaiyum questioned the methodology used for the study and labelled it flawed.
“Poverty in Fiji is now measured by consumption, including the food grown in a family backyard, and not just income,” he said.
Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum … “Poverty in Fiji is now measured by consumption.” Image: Fiji government/FB
Sayed-Khaiyum told a media conference in Suva he had issues with the bureau’s analysis of ethnic and religious data in its 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES).
“We appreciate any independent office carrying out a proper, professional independent analysis of any data and understand the importance of reliable, timely and accurate statistics,” Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“And many may not know this or many may not delve further into this — we in fact approved this new methodology of moving away from what we call using the traditional income measure for welfare analysis — to using consumption expenditure for poverty measurement.”
New measuring yardstick
Sayed-Khaiyum said the consumption-based methodology for measuring poverty would “accurately and better assist in policy-making”.
He said the new yardstick did not just look at how much money a household earned but also at how they had access to services.
But there were many who disagreed with the attorney-general.
The University of the South Pacific’s senior lecturer in economics, Dr Neelesh Gounder, said the poverty estimates produced at all levels were reliable.
He said those not happy with the ethnic-based policy needed to target the policy and not the data.
Gounder said the survey was just the “messenger and shooting the messenger would not help.”
“Regarding data on ethnicity, there are several policy areas where ethnic-based data is relevant and required,” Dr Gounder said.
USP senior economics lecturer Dr Neelesh Gounder … “shooting the messenger would not help.” Image: RNZ/University of the South Pacific
Ethnic data important
“Ethnic data allows us to see beyond presumed beliefs and prejudices that underly ethnic groups and it seems the government wants to avoid race-based policies that may arise from ethnic data.
“Recognising diversity based on ethnicity does not necessarily mean such differences should also lead to policy based on ethnicity.”
However, the government needs to understand that it is not the census or HIES that is causing ethnic tension in Fiji, Dr Gounder said.
The leader of the opposition Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), Bill Gavoka, said reports Naiqama was escorted out of his office were “shameful”.
“It is truly troubling,” Gavoka said.
He said the Bureau of Statistics is independent of ministers and instead reported directly to Parliament, with staff who are civil servants, but without being under ministerial control.
“The statistics they generate are independent of government and to hear that the FBoS CEO Kemueli Naiqama was unceremoniously dismissed and escorted off-premises for the report of poverty in Fiji, says a lot about the type of democracy we have in Fiji,” Gavoka said.
Independence needed
He said SODELPA wants the Statistics Bureau to have independence from any undue outside influence, especially from a government that has been hyping about a “boom” that many knew was not true.
“The collection, compilation, analysis, abstraction, and publishing of statistical information relating to the economic and general activities must be carried out without fear and SODELPA tells the Attorney-General and FijiFirst, ‘hands off’,” Gavoka said.
By exceeding the scope of data collection and ignoring fact-based methodology, the government said Naiqama had breached the terms of his contract with the ministry.
Under his employment contract, Naiqama will be paid all salary and accrued entitlements for the period up to September 15, 2021.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
On 15 September, prime minister Boris Johnson began reshuffling his cabinet of senior ministers. This dramatic turn of events coincided with the parliamentary debate on the government’s proposed £20 per week cut to universal credit. Some have speculated that the cabinet reshuffle was a technique to distract the public from the government’s drastic cuts.
All change
In spite of the significant changes to the prime minister’s cabinet, people took to Twitter to point out that replacing one Tory with another is fairly inconsequential, as there is no such thing as a good Tory. Rosie Holt shared:
It’s a bit exciting wondering what new awful people will replace the old awful people isn’t it
Possibly referring to Raab’s comments suggesting that the UK should trade with nations known to violate the European Convention on Human Rights in the name of growth, David Osland said:
Dominic Raab is an outspoken opponent of the Human Rights Act. He's just been appointed justice secretary.
The dramatic turn of events coincided with a parliamentary debate on the government’s plan to cut an uplift to universal credit by £20 per week. Arguing that the prime minister’s cabinet reshuffle is simply a distraction from the Tories’ cut to universal credit, Rachel Wearmouth shared:
This reshuffle completely distracts from the vote on Universal Credit, btw, and the fact that slashing the £20 uplift is going to push people into poverty.
National secretary of The People’s Assembly Laura Pidcock added:
So many journos drooling over the reshuffle, using their large platforms to share *breaking* news with us whilst a seismic cut to Universal Credit is being made. A grotesque assault on working class people is taking place & they are largely silent on it. Utterly reprehensible.
UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Olivier De Schutter has written a letter urging the UK government to reconsider the proposed cut. He argues that it may be in breach of international human rights law and is likely to push an estimated half a million households into poverty:
— UN Special Rapporteur on poverty and human rights (@srpoverty) September 16, 2021
Sharing a video of her speech at the House of Commons debate – in which she recounted correspondence from constituents on the potentially devastating impact of the cut on their lives – Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana tweeted:
When I asked people to contact me about the impact of the £20-a-week Universal Credit cut, I was overwhelmed by the response. The messages were heartbreaking.
I can't do justice to the depth of pain and anger, but today I spoke and voted against this attack on the working class. pic.twitter.com/Z8mdQKZ5Pw
Highlighting that the £20 per week cut to universal credit will disproportionately impact poor and disabled people, Labour MP for Hemsworth John Trickett tweeted:
Disabled & poorer families are facing winter with a lethal mix of price rises & universal credit cuts.
Stripping away £20 a week from the disabled while putting their energy bills up £139 should be a criminal offence.
Setting out the impact of the planned cut coupled with the rise in national insurance tax on disadvantaged young people, Howard Beckett shared:
For an 18-20 year old the UK minimum wage went from a meagre £6.45 to a miserly £6.56 in April ‘21. A pathetic 1.7% rise. Inflation is running at 3.2%; £20 is about to be taken from Universal Credit & they face a National Insurance tax rise. Austerity for our youth is lost hope.
Summarising the government’s war on the working-class, senior economist Sarah Arnold shared:
In the next few months, low income working households face:
Rising energy bills and food costs £1040 cut to Universal Credit Up to 2.5% effective increase in National Insurance contributions#KeepTheLifelinehttps://t.co/X89zIieMxD
On 15 September, Liz Truss replaced Dominic Raab as foreign secretary. The prime minister appointed Raab justice secretary and deputy prime minister. Former education secretary Gavin Williamson, former housing, communities and local government secretary Robert Jenrick, and former justice secretary Robert Buckland lost their roles as cabinet ministers, having all faced scandals over the course of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, chancellor Rishi Sunak and home secretary Priti Patel remain in place. Other ministers, including newly appointed housing secretary Michael Gove and culture secretary Nadine Dorries, have moved positions.
Campaigners from organisations including the People’s Assembly, Black Lives Matter, the National Education Union and Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament are coming together. They’re holding a national demonstration against the government’s “corruption, cronyism and exploitation” during the Tory party conference in Manchester on 3rd October.
Accounting for government aid programs, poverty fell in 2020 to the lowest rate on record since the Census Bureau began keeping records in 2009. The dip, which happened in spite of declining median household incomes last year, shows that the direct aid from the stimulus packages was incredibly effective at reducing poverty.
While the official poverty rate rose due in part to a 2.9 percent decrease in median household incomes, the supplemental poverty rate fell from 11.8 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2020. The supplemental poverty rate takes into account more government aid than the official rate, including things like food stamps, housing assistance and the stimulus checks.
The stimulus packages passed in 2020 helped significantly in the overall poverty reduction, the Census found. The $1,200 stimulus checks alone lifted 11.7 million people out of poverty. Supplemental unemployment aid — $600 a week for much of 2020, thanks in large part to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) — protected an additional 5.5 million people from experiencing poverty.
Without the stimulus payments, the Census Bureau wrote, the poverty rate would have been 12.7 percent rather than 9.1 percent. While the additional government aid helped lift millions out of poverty, Social Security still had the largest impact in 2020, lifting 26.5 million out of poverty.
The government aid worked in reducing poverty across the board: People of all ages, races, ethnicities and education levels saw a reduction, The Washington Postreports. Households headed by single moms and Black and Latinx people saw the largest declines.
The data shows the powerful impact of direct aid from the government, which was able to reverse some of the harmful effects of the pandemic on the economy, such as mass layoffs.
“What the data tells us is clear: when government responds to the needs of the working class, millions of families are lifted out of poverty,” Sanders wrote on Twitter in response to the Census report. “We must not stop here. We must pass the $3.5T reconciliation bill and invest in working families.”
To many progressives, reports such as these showing that aid in stimulus packages like last years’ bills and this year’s American Rescue Plan reduce poverty are proof positive that lawmakers should implement further direct aid measures.
“For the record, poverty dropped last year despite the pandemic — because of government aid. Lesson: Poverty is a policy choice,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote on Twitter.
Experts at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) echoed Reich’s tweet, writing “The poverty rate reduction highlights how much poverty the nation and its policymakers tolerate is a choice.” EPI recommended immediately reinstating the supplemental unemployment checks, which ended nationally on Labor Day but were cut off prematurely by 26 states, nearly all of them with Republican governors.
Republicans piled onto the unemployment checks this year, blaming them for a so-called “worker shortage” that didn’t actually exist. But states that cut off the unemployment checks early didn’t find a significant increase in employment — in fact, data from the Department of Labor found that the states that stopped the unemployment checks had slightly slower job growth.
Data from Tuesday’s Census Bureau suggests that employment can have a limited effect on reducing poverty in comparison to direct relief programs. However, Republicans and conservative Democrats, have shown little interest in pursuing poverty reduction as a goal.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was among a small group of U.S. citizens who sat on milk crates or stood holding signs, across from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan. We had been fasting from solid foods for a month, calling for an end to brutal economic warfare waged against Iraq through imposition of U.N. sanctions. Each Friday of our fast, we approached the entrance to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations carrying lentils and rice, asking the U.S. officials to break our fast with us, asking them to hear our reports, gathered after visiting destitute Iraqi hospitals and homes. On four successive Friday afternoons, New York police handcuffed us and took us to jail.
Two days after the passenger planes attacked the World Trade Center, U.S. Mission to the UN officials called us and asked that we visit with them.
I had naively hoped this overture could signify empathy on the part of U.S. officials. Perhaps the 9/11 attack would engender sorrow over the suffering and pain endured by people of Iraq and other lands when the U.S. attacks them. The officials at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations wanted to know why we went to Iraq but we sensed they were mainly interested in filling out forms to comply with an order to gather more information about U.S. people going to Iraq.
The U.S. government and military exploited the grief and shock following 9/11 attacks to raise fears, promote Islamophobia and launch forever wars which continue to this day. Under the guise of “counter-terrorism,” the U.S. now pledges to combine drone attacks, surveillance, airstrikes, and covert operations to continue waging war in Afghanistan. Terror among Afghans persists.
I visited Kabul, Afghanistan in September 2019. While there, a young friend whom I’ve known for five years greeted me and then spoke in a hushed voice. “Kathy,” he asked, “do you know about Qazi Qadir, Bahadir, Jehanzeb and Saboor?” I nodded. I had read a news account, shortly before I arrived, about Afghan Special Operations commandos, trained by the CIA, having waged a night raid in the city of Jalalabad at the home of four brothers. They awakened the young men, then shot and killed them. Neighbors said the young men had gathered to welcome their father back from the Hajj; numerous colleagues insisted the young men were innocent.
My young friend has been deeply troubled by many other incidents in which the United States directly attacked innocent people or trained Afghan units to do so. Two decades of U.S. combat in Afghanistan have made civilians vulnerable to drone attacks, night raids, airstrikes and arrests. Over 4 million people have become internally displaced as they fled from battles or could no longer survive on scarred, drought stricken lands.
In an earlier visit to Kabul, at the height of the U.S. troop surge, another young friend earnestly asked me to tell parents in the United States not to send their sons and daughters to Afghanistan. “Here it is very dangerous for them,” he said. “And they do not really help us.”
For many years, the United States claimed its mission in Afghanistan improved the lives of Afghan women and children. But essentially, the U.S. war improved the livelihoods of those who designed, manufactured, sold and used weaponry to kill Afghans.
When the U.S. was winding down its troop surge in 2014, but not its occupation, military officials undertook what they called “the largest retrograde mission in U.S. military history,” incurring enormous expenses. One estimate suggested the war in Afghanistan, that year, was costing $2 million per U.S. soldier. That same year, UNICEF officials calculated that the cost of adding iodized salt into the diet of an Afghan infant, a step which could prevent chronic brain damage in children suffering from acute malnourishment, would be 5 cents per child per year.
Which endeavor would the majority of U.S. people have opted to support, in their personal budgets, had they ever been given a choice? Profligate U.S. military spending in Afghanistan or vital assistance for a starving Afghan child?
One of my young Afghan friends says he is now an anarchist. He doesn’t place much trust in governments and militaries. He feels strong allegiance toward the grassroots network he has helped build, a group I would normally name and celebrate, but must now refer to as “our young friends in Afghanistan,” in hopes of protecting them from hostile groups.
The brave and passionate dedication they showed as they worked tirelessly to share resources, care for the environment, and practice nonviolence has made them quite vulnerable to potential accusers who may believe they were too connected with westerners.
In recent weeks, I’ve been part of an ad hoc team assisting 60 young people and their family members who feel alarmed about remaining in Kabul and are sorting out their options to flee the country.
It’s difficult to forecast how Taliban rule will affect them.
Already, some extraordinarily brave people have held protests in in the provinces of Herat, Nimroz, Balkh and Farah, and in the city of Kabul where dozens of women took to the streets to demand representation in the new government and to insist that their rights must be protected.
In many provinces in Afghanistan, the Taliban may find themselves ruling over increasingly resentful people. Half the population already lives in poverty and economic catastrophe looms. In damage caused by war, people have lost harvests, homes and livestock. A third wave of COVID afflicts the country and three million Afghans face consequences of severe drought. Will the Taliban government have the resources and skills to cope with these overwhelming problems?
On the other hand, in some provinces, Taliban rule has seemed preferable to the previous government’s incompetence and corruption, particularly in regard to property or land disputes.
We should be honest. The Taliban are in power today because of a colossal mess the U.S. helped create.
Now, we U.S. citizens must insist on paying reparations for destruction caused by 20 years of war. To be meaningful, reparations must also include dismantling the warfare systems that caused so much havoc and misery. Our wars of choice were waged against people who meant us no harm. We must choose, now, to lay aside the cruel futility of our forever wars.
My young friend who whispered to me about human rights abuses in 2019 recently fled Afghanistan. He said he doesn’t want to be driven by fear, but he deeply wants to use his life to do good, to build a better world.
Ultimately, Afghanistan will need people like him and his friends if the country is ever to experience a future where basic human rights to food, shelter, health care and education are met. It will need people who have already made dedicated sacrifices for peace, believing in an Afghan adage which says “blood doesn’t wash away blood.”
Essentially, people in Afghanistan will need U.S. people to embrace this same teaching. We must express true sorrow, seek forgiveness, and show valor similar to that of the brave people insisting on human rights in Afghanistan today.
Collectively, recognizing the terrible legacy of 9/11, we must agree: To counter terror, abolish war.
Since the attacks on the United States by 15 Saudi Arabian Islamic fanatics on 11 September 2001 — now known as 9/11 — the world has been divided by a “war on terror” with any protest group defined as “terrorists”.
New anti-terror laws have been introduced both in the West and elsewhere in the past 20 years and used extensively to suppress such movements in the name of “national security”.
It is interesting to note that the 9/11 attacks came at a time when a huge “global justice” movement was building up across the world against the injustices of globalisation.
Using the internet as the medium of mobilisation, they gathered in Seattle in 1999 and were successful in closing down the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting.
They opposed what they saw as large multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets, facilitated by governments.
Their main targets were the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), OECD, World Bank, and international trade agreements.
The movement brought “civil society” people from the North and the South together under common goals.
Poorest country debts
In parallel, the “Jubilee 2000” international movement led by liberal Christian and Catholic churches called for the cancellation of US$90 billion of debts owed by the world’s poorest nations to banks and governments in the West.
Along with the churches, youth groups, music, and entertainment industry groups were involved. The 9/11 attacks killed these movements as “national security” took precedence over “freedom to dissent”.
Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, a former vice-president of the UN Human Rights Council and a Sri Lankan political scientist, notes that when “capitalism turned neoliberal and went on the rampage” after the demise of the Soviet Union, resistance started to develop with the rise of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (Mexico) against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and culminating in the 1999 Seattle protests using a term coined by Cuban leader Fidel Castro “another world is possible”.
“All that came crashing down with the Twin Towers,” he notes. “With 9/11 the Islamic Jihadist opposition to the USA (and the war on terror) cut across and buried the progressive resistance we saw emerging in Chiapas and Seattle.”
Geoffrey Robertson QC, a British human rights campaigner and TV personality, warns: “9/11 panicked us into the ‘war on terror’ using lethal weapons of questionable legality which inspired more terrorists.
“Twenty years on, those same adversaries are back and we now have a fear of US perfidy—over Taiwan or ANZUS or whatever. There will be many consequences.”
But, he sees some silver lining that has come out of this “war on terror”.
Targeted sanctions
“One reasonably successful tactic developed in the war on terror was to use targeted sanctions on its sponsors. This has been developed by so-called ‘Magnitsky acts’, enabling the targeting of human rights abusers—31 democracies now have them and Australia will shortly be the 32nd.
“I foresee their coordination as part of the fightback—a war not on terror but state cruelty,” he told In-Depth News.
When asked about the US’s humiliation in Afghanistan, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, founder of the International Movement for a Just World told IDN that the West needed to understand that they too needed to stop funding terror to achieve their own agendas.
“The ‘war on terror’ was doomed to failure from the outset because those who initiated the war were not prepared to admit that it was their occupation and oppression that compelled others to retaliate through acts of terror.” he argues.
“Popular antagonism towards the occupiers was one of the main reasons for the humiliating defeat of the US and NATO in Afghanistan,” he added.
Looking at Western attempts to introduce democracy under the pretext of “war on terror” and the chaos created by the “Arab Spring”, a youth movement driven by Western-funded NGOs, Iranian-born Australian Farzin Yekta, who worked in Lebanon for 15 years as a community multimedia worker, argues that the Arab region needs a different democracy.
“In the Middle East, the nations should aspire to a system based on social justice rather than the Western democratic model. Corrupt political and economic apparatus, external interference and dysfunctional infrastructure are the main obstacles for moving towards establishing a system based on social justice,” he says, adding that there are signs of growing social movements being revived in the region while “resisting all kinds of attacks”.
Palestinian refugee lessons
Yekta told IDN that while working with Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon he had seen how peoples’ movements could be undermined by so-called “civil society” NGOs.
“Alternative social movements are infested by ‘civil society’ institutions comprising primarily NGO institutions.
“‘Civil society’ is effective leverage for the establishment and foreign (Western) interference to pacify radical social movements. Social movements find themselves in a web of funded entities which push for ‘agendas’ drawn by funding buddies,” noted Yekta.
Looking at the failure of Western forces in Afghanistan, he argues that what they did by building up “civil society” was encouraging corruption and cronyism that is entangled in ethnic and tribal structures of society.
“The Western nation-building plan was limited to setting up a glasshouse pseudo-democratic space in the green zone part of Kabul.
“One just needed to go to the countryside to confront the utter poverty and lack of infrastructure,” Yekta notes.
”We need to understand that people’s struggle is occurring at places with poor or no infrastructure.”
Social movements reviving
Dr Jayatilleka also sees positive signs of social movements beginning to raise their heads after two decades of repression.
“Black Lives Matter drew in perhaps more young whites than blacks and constituted the largest ever protest movement in history. The globalised solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza, including large demonstrations in US cities, is further evidence.
“In Latin America, the left-populist Pink Tide 2.0 began with the victory of Lopez Obrador in Mexico and has produced the victory of Pedro Castillo in Peru.
“The slogan of justice, both individual and social, is more globalised, more universalised today, than ever before in my lifetime,” he told IDN.
There may be ample issues for peoples’ movements to take up with TPP (Transpacific Partnership) and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade agreements coming into force in Asia where companies would be able to sue governments if their social policies infringe on company profits.
But Dr Jayatilleka is less optimistic of social movements rising in Asia.
Asian social inequities
“Sadly, the social justice movement is considerably more complicated in Asia than elsewhere, though one would have assumed that given the social inequities in Asian societies, the struggle for social justice would be a torrent. It is not,” he argues.
“The brightest recent spark in Asia, according to Dr Jayatilleka, was the rise of the Nepali Communist Party to power through the ballot box after a protracted peoples’ war, but ‘sectarianism’ has led to the subsiding of what was the brightest hope for the social justice movement in Asia.”
Robertson feels that the time is ripe for the social movements suppressed by post 9/11 anti-terror laws to be reincarnated in a different life.
“The broader demand for social justice will revive, initially behind the imperative of dealing with climate change but then with tax havens, the power of multinationals, and the obscene inequalities in the world’s wealth.
“So, I do not despair of social justice momentum in the future,” he says.
Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.
A few days ago, I spoke to a senior official at the World Health Organisation (WHO). I asked her if she knew how many people lived their lives on our planet without shoes. The reason I asked her this question is because I was wondering about Tungiasis, an ailment caused by the infection that results from the entry of a female sand flea (Tunga penetrans) into the skin. This problem has a variety of names in many different languages – from jigger or chigoe to niguá (Spanish) or bicho do pé (Portuguese) to funza (Kiswahili) or tukutuku (Zande). It is a terrible problem that disfigures the feet and makes mobility difficult. Shoes prevent these fleas from burrowing into the skin. She was not sure about the number but presumed that at least a billion people must live without shoes.
Northerners were more likely to die from coronavirus (Covid-19), spent almost six weeks longer in lockdowns, and were made poorer than the rest of England during the first year of the pandemic, official figures have revealed.
English disparity
Academics have analysed government statistics to show just how much worse it affected the North East, North West, and Yorkshire and the Humber compared to the rest of England. Public health experts said much of the blame for the increased mortality could be explained by the higher deprivation levels and worse pre-pandemic health in the North.
People in Newcastle queued to get vaccinated in January (Owen Humphreys/PA)
The report, commissioned by the Northern Health Science Alliance, found:
People living in the North had a 17% higher mortality rate due to coronavirus than in the rest of England, and a 14% higher overall mortality due to all causes.
The North’s care home coronavirus mortality was 26% higher than the rest of England.
In the North 10% more hospital beds were occupied by coronavirus patients than in the rest of England.
On average people living in the North had 41 more days of the harshest lockdown restrictions than people in the rest of the country.
The North experienced a larger drop in mental well-being, more loneliness, and higher rates of antidepressant prescriptions.
Wages in the North, which were lower than the rest of England before the pandemic, fell further, whereas wages increased in the rest of the country.
The unemployment rate in the North was 19% higher than the rest of England.
“Hardest hit”
Dr Luke Munford, a lecturer in health economics at Manchester University, said:
The pandemic has hit us all hard in different ways, but our report shows that people living in the North were much more likely to be hardest hit, both in terms of health and wealth. The fact that over half of the increased Covid-19 mortality and two-thirds of all-cause mortality was potentially preventable should be a real wake-up call.
We need to invest in the health of people living in the North to ensure they are able to recover from the devastating impacts of the pandemic.
Professor Clare Bambra says England has gone through an “unequal pandemic”
Clare Bambra, professor of public health at Newcastle University, said:
Our report shows how regional health inequalities before coronavirus have resulted in an unequal pandemic, with higher rates of ill health, death and despair in the North. The economic impact of the lockdown is also looking likely to exacerbate the regional economic divide.
The Government’s levelling up agenda needs to seriously address health inequalities in the North, for all generations.
The report authors called for the government to boost funding to Northern hospitals to allow them to catch up, including on non-coronavirus care.
Bambra said:
The levelling up agenda needs to be centred on health, it cannot just be about trains and bridges.
She added that the report, which looked at March 2020 to March 2021, showed a higher percentage of people had been vaccinated in the North than elsewhere.
Footballer Marcus Rashford is calling on people to write to their MP about backing recommendations to end the “child hunger pandemic”.
‘Devastating’
The England and Manchester United player said that “devastatingly” child food poverty is getting worse instead of better. The three recommendations Rashford is supporting are part of Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy. They aim to guarantee that every child at risk of going hungry receives enough food every day.
The first recommendation is to expand free school meal eligibility to all children aged 7-18 in all households earning £20,000 or less after benefits, and to children that are undocumented or living in immigrant households with “no recourse to public funds”.
The second is to provide long-term funding for the Holiday Activities and Food Programme, increasing eligibility in line with free school meal expansion.
The third is to expand Healthy Start eligibility to all households with pregnant women or children under five earning £20,000 or less after benefits, and invest in a communications campaign to increase uptake of the scheme which provides free vouchers to buy milk, fruit, and vegetables.
Rashford is calling on the government to urgently support the recommendations and include the funds needed in the Spending Review. This follows his previous campaign, when more than 1.1 million people signed a petition on the parliamentary website.
Marcus Rashford (left) has worked with chef Tom Kerridge (Gemma Bell and Company/PA)
Food insecurity
New data from The Food Foundation shows that more UK households with children aged 17 and under are experiencing food insecurity than in the first wave of the pandemic. A survey of 6,490 UK households found that 15% have experienced food insecurity in the past six months. That’s approximately 27% higher than before the pandemic.
Rashford said:
Whilst we’ve come a long way in the last 20 months, placing the issue of child food poverty at the forefront, devastatingly, the issue is getting worse not better.
The entire nation got behind the national team this summer so let’s put these figures in football terms: You can fill 27 Wembley stadiums with the 2.5 million children that are struggling to know where their next meal might be coming from today. What is it going to take for these children to be prioritised? Instead of removing support through social security, we should be focusing efforts on developing a sustainable long-term road map out of this child hunger pandemic.
I am, today, pledging my support for three recommendations from Part 2 of the National Food Strategy. I hope that we see the required investment pledged during the Autumn Spending Review.
I will be writing to my MP about it, and I would encourage you all to do the same. It will take many of us to stand together on this, and show we care about reaching those most in need in our communities.
Anna Taylor, executive director of The Food Foundation, said:
It’s extremely distressing that now even more children lack a secure, nutritious diet compared with last year.
Despite a sense of ‘normality’ returning, this is no time for complacency – we can’t sit back and allow this damage to our children’s health, learning and life chances, not to mention the heavy burden it bears on our NHS.
We know children from deprived backgrounds have higher obesity rates, worse levels of diabetes, more tooth decay and even impaired height development, compared with their wealthier peers.
This will only get worse if left unaddressed and entrench inequalities deeper. So, today, we are asking Government to act appropriately to protect our youngest citizens.
High-profile
Rashford, 23, waged a high-profile campaign last year to persuade the government to provide free meals to vulnerable youngsters in England throughout the school holidays during the coronavirus pandemic. It forced prime minister Boris Johnson into a U-turn. He also became the youngest person to top the Sunday Times Giving List. He did so by raising £20m in donations from supermarkets for groups tackling child poverty.
The #WriteNow campaign encourages the public to visit Rashford’s campaign website End Child Food Poverty and follow the steps to write to their local MP.
A court case has forced the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to changes its rules. It surrounds the department issuing sanctions and taking money off people. But in reality – it was the DWP not following its own rules in the first place.
Hardship payments
The DWP offers hardship payments to some claimants. As the website Turn2Us noted:
Hardship payments are reduced-rate payments of jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), employment and support allowance (ESA) and universal credit (UC) that are made in limited circumstances, including if you have been sanctioned.
In short, hardship payments are what the DWP gives you if it sanctions but you’re too poor to live without money. For Universal Credit claimants, the DWP calculates a daily rate for hardship payments. In the case of sanctions, Turn2Us noted this as 60% of the sanction amount and that:
Important: Hardship payments… are recoverable so you must pay them back.
But now, a court case led to the DWP admitting this is not necessarily always the case.
The DWP: rogue sanctions
The Public Law Project (PLP) took on the case of a Universal Credit claimant who the DWP had sanctioned six times. As it noted, its client was:
a vulnerable care-leaver with physical and mental health problems and experience of domestic abuse.
The PLP said the DWP “unfairly sanctioned” her. It left her to live “on reduced benefits for over a year and a half”. Some of the DWP’s actions included sanctioning her for:
Not attending an appointment when she was at a funeral.
Missing appointments because she couldn’t afford the bus fare. This was due to Universal Credit’s built-in five week wait for a first payment.
So, the PLP supported the claimant with an appeal in 2020. She won this and the DWP had to pay her back the money. But then, there was another issue.
Waiving debt
During the time the DWP sanctioned her, the claimant applied for and received hardship payments. As the PLP said:
she was left in debt which included [hardship payments] that were taken on to cover her basic needs during the period of sanctioning.
So, the PLP started judicial review proceedings over this. At first, the DWP refused to waive its client’s debt. But after the PLP threatened to take the judicial review further, the DWP caved in. It wrote off the hardship payment debt.
Because of the case, the DWP changed its guidance. And this is the crucial part for countless claimants.
An important move for claimants
The DWP has admitted that its recovery of hardship payments due to sanctions was always discretionary. That is, claimants can ask it to waive the debt caused by them. This is even if a claimant has signed a declaration saying they will pay the DWP back the hardship payments. As the PLP noted:
This choice applies in all cases, including where the individual’s sanction has been subsequently overturned, for example following mandatory reconsideration or a tribunal appeal.
But the DWP’s own guidance did not previously say this. So, it was giving out the wrong information to both claimants and staff.
Thanks to both the PLP and the claimant in its case – everyone claiming Universal Credit should now be aware that the DWP’s recovery of hardship payments is discretionary. And if the DWP still refuses to waive them? Then the PLP said it may be able to help. You can email them via enquiries(at)publiclawproject.org.uk
Ivan Acosta is Nicaragua’s minister of housing and public credit, with responsibility for key aspects of government planning. In July, he presented the country’s new “National Plan for the Fight against Poverty and for Human Development.” This builds on the achievements of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government since it returned to power in 2007 and sets out how they will continue if Daniel Ortega’s government is returned at November’s elections. Ivan Acosta is currently subject to personal US sanctions, along with many other Nicaraguan government officials and their family members.
Codepinks’s Teri Mattson spoke to the minister in a Zoom call and asked him to explain the plan and its background.
The consensus is in — no choice, no life, no job, no nothing, without a passport. That medical, DNA scan, the retina scan, all biological systems covered, that all-encompassing passport that lists every move, every moment, every job, every purchase, every fine, penalty, tax, rental, home, significant or insignificant emotional and economic and familial event, captured in a chip. Americans are spoiled, for sure, as are Europeans, and Canadians. That mostly encompasses the Great White Hopes of those respective “countries.” The rest of us, in these “first world” environs are struggling, even with debit and credit and La-La Land accoutrements ad infinitum.
These new times in the west are old times, bubbling up, really, from the early conquest days of razing Indian families, destroying and taking over and plowing through villages, lands, territories. Entire rooms at elite Ivy League universities and museums with drawers and boxes of Native American skulls, bones, skins, eyes, belongings, sacred objects. It is the way of the Egyptologists, and it is the way of the Crusades. Pillage, set villages on fire, and now, set states and countries on fire with fear and terror campaigns in order to exact total compliancy. Services, labor, debt, future payments, extracted from us, capitalism’s marks. Victims. Useless eaters-breeders-breathers-squatters.
Here, from David Rovics, musician and protestor, with some great stuff on Dissident Voice over the years, just coming back from Denmark (and other countries in his gig line). He embraces progressivism and the forced jabs. He is a good fellow, who interviewed me, and we talked about other things tied to the ugly side of leftists and their canceling culture, censorship, etc., but this conversation about jab/mask/remote lockup mandates has not happened yet. I still have room in my brain to listen to what he says, though he misses so many points here:
Despite the prevalence of disinformation platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube being as popular in Denmark as anywhere else that doesn’t have the good sense to ban them, the anti-vaccine movement and anti-lockdown movement in Denmark never grew to the proportions of such movements in the US, Germany, France and elsewhere. But unlike those aforementioned countries, in Denmark most people have a well-founded reason to trust the government on matters of public health and safety.
In Denmark, if anyone jaywalks, they’re usually either a foreigner or an antisocial type. The overwhelming majority of Danes would never do that. This is also true in Germany and some other countries. Americans and Brits and others visiting from abroad tend to make typically American and British individualistic, antisocial assumptions about this conformist behavior. They see a crowd of Germans or Danes standing at a crosswalk, waiting for the “walk” signal, even if there’s no traffic in any direction, and they see something scary, from Children of the Corn or some other horror movie, a bunch of zombies who can’t think for themselves, or are afraid of getting a ticket. (source — David Rovics)
That’s a whole other set of discussion points from this tour he had in Denmark about what democratic socialism is, what society is, how science and government should be trusted (really?). Jaywalking and shoot, tossing banana peels on the side of the road. How dare us lazy, supercilious and egotistical North Americans! Yankees!
The unfolding global hysteria is congealing into even more lovely by-products of Big Pharma as Dictatorship. It comes in many forms and offshoots, for sure. The main functions of Western society are broken — neoliberal and conservative values (sic) have gutted infrastructure, have thrown trillions of bucks-euros to the few, have propped up this society into a very effective kleptocracy, have imbued a dog eat dog set of beliefs into a slew of folks.
We are at the point where billionaires and their lackeys in high places set the narrative, tone, and write the legislation, laws and force zero delimits on corporations and government in this “we the people” system we supposedly “fought” for. There is collapse, after collapse, after collapse, and it is apparent in the lack of governance over decades, and the adventures of imperial overreach, too.
In daily lives, professional managerial class actors are hitting the middle/upper middle class stratum, economically, through the systems of pain, fines, fees, tolls, penalties, regressive taxation, permits and litigation that eat at us, the 80 percent, from the soul and the brain and the body. We are in a time of most people not being able to navigate “the system,” and that can be any system — school, medical, social security, DMV, courts, and any number of systems of oppression and subjugation. So it is a time of chaos, now Covid Chaos, moving into more Chaos.
“People are fed up,” says Winni Paul, a management consultant whose clients have included campuses and higher-education groups. “The graciousness, the compassion, the ‘we do it for the students, we do it for the work’ — that’s gone.”
And I am with a group of teachers from many states, who are now scrambling to figure out what to do with the forced jabs, the forced proof of jabs, the forced masking, all of that, and many will not submit to the experimental mRNA, many have looked into these DNA-alternating medical devices, and they feel alone, big time. Their AFT (American Federation of Teachers) union has caved, and they see in big cities and small, all venues requiring, soon, a passport, CDC-approved vaccination card.
Delta airlines is forcing non-vaccinated employees to pay an additional $200 a month premium, AKA fine for not being jabbed. Oh, that was yesterday (August 25), and that will not be the end of it. Fools like Thom Hartman advocate ER physicians having the right to refuse treatment to anyone coming in — motorcycle accident, heart attack, broken leg, stroke — who are not vaccinated.
This is the Brave New World already outlined by the eugenicists of the 1920s, of the Modest Proposal of Swift’s time, of the middle passage days of tossing overboard hundreds of sick shackled slaves in one one-way crossing. Multiply that by hundreds of ships, tossing human beings for the sharks, alive, shackled in chains. It is the genocidal policies of empires and their corporate thugs (overlords) in despoiling cultures, murdering millions, and enslaving regions for their rubber, silver, gold, lithium, any number of things the capitalists call loot and booty. Pirates compared to the thieves from history and today seem like Fred McFeely Rogers in comparison.
Even a saint, Fauci, he is a titan of terror in his old man’s way — “over his 50-year career with the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to address the cause, to prevent or cure the exploding epidemics of allergies and chronic disease that Congress charged him with curtailing. The chronic disease pandemic is his enduring legacy. Those ailments now debilitate 54% of American children compared to 6% when he joined NIAD.” (source — RFK Jr.)
In this group of teachers, daily there are emails announcing more and more statewide jab mandates, and the teachers that have to pay twice-a-week tests, if not jabbed, well, it is filling up those school districts; and many now in this group want out, since their email boxes are filling up. Teachers, youngish and not, with no money in the bank, really, and no place to go, since I predict all new rental agreements throughout the land (except in some Breaking Bad locales) will require proof of jab x, jab y, jab z, jab infinity.
The playing field shifts hourly, and while I have a literary reading manana, in Portland, for this hour, at least, the restaurant and community room demands all to be masked. There is no shot record demand, YET, but that’s on the horizon, since Oregon is the first state to reinstate mandatory outside masking policies. But the venue’s other locations, well, the rock and roll and progressives, they want to see vax cards or proof of SARS-CoV2 free tests. The Crystal Ballroom
It doesn’t matter how many millions of people worldwide are not happy with mRNA experimental chemicals forced into the bloodstream and across the blood-brain barrier; not happy with the bioweaponry aspect of Operation Warp Speed; not happy with the therapeutics that have been disavowed and censored, which could have saved millions of lives, possibly. One size fits all, baby. This news aggregator and news maker site, well, it is almost scrubbed from all search engines:
These stories above and below are verboten in the minds of tens of millions, hundreds of millions Westerners — even though there are robust stories on other topics, besides Fauci, jabs and mRNA, and fascism in this places.
I am finding people fighting, for sure, against mandates. Hell, my one time with the doctor recently points to this: “While I did get the vaccination, I am against mandates. I am against forcing people against their will to get this. I am of the mind that people have the right to make up their own minds.” He’s older, maybe 70, is a DO, and I know the university where he adjunct taught and matriculated from, Touro University Nevada (TUN) (a private university in Henderson, Nevada. It is part of the Touro College and University System.Touro University Nevada is a branch campus of its sister campus Touro University California.)
My niece is there, in her second year, and my DO stated, his one word of advice for her is, Cash. “Tell her to write notes to family and friends, and state: ‘please send cash.’” The doctor likes me, and he’s a jokester. He told me reads a lot, and that he did work in Amazonian for years, “saving one life at a time.” He is looking at my recent stress test, and alas, getting a cardiologist on board to maybe do more investigation on some electrical anomalies when I got up to 160 beats per minute, that is another example of the failed capitalist system: there are none here on Highway 101 on the central coast, and getting one to see me could take weeks, out of the cities of Salem or Corvallis. This is the state of medicine, after decades of gutting taxation of the rich and the corporations (who are getting us sick) and years turning medicine into a bizarre insurance scam, where doctors spend more time on the computer screen than with the patient.
So, this next reset is all about pushing more and more people into fewer and fewer public spheres, pushing people away from outliers or those defiant and dissident like me and millions. It is about controlling the masses, setting forth sophisticated bandwagon forms of propaganda, and setting afire all forms of community gatherings and robust discussions of the millions of topics of the day.
With this teachers’ group, the messages are coming in:
Governor Pritzker just announced mandatory vax for all IL teachers
Here is Dr. Peter McCullough talking about the dangers of vaccines, among other things: Basically, the vaxxed are projecting all the havoc they themselves are wreaking even as “life is pretty much back to normal among the vaccinated,” as many are bragging onto the unvaxxed. Many op-eds in publications like WaPo and the NYT are filling their pages with doctors martyring themselves and declaring they won’t treat unvaxxed anymore (to cheers from bots and humans alike in the comments section) and normalizing ending friendships based on vaccination status. But they are the super spreaders. They are the ones making children and Grandma sick. This is scapegoating at its finest.
Some great work is being done by Mike Williams @ Sage of Quay. Also, great Common Law shows being done by Crrow777 Radio Alfonso Faggiola and Lena Pu.
Want to see a man stand up to the controllers? Check out Paul Unslaved . You can also gain a little insight from some of the good First Amendment auditors like Long Island Audit.
California AB455 – this bill, if passed, will mandate the C19 vaccine for all CA employees and for CA citizens to enter any establishment except church and grocery stores:
Lastly, ICYMI – Illinois’ Vax Verify – vaccination verification is tied to Experian – meaning residents will have to go through a one-time verification process through Experian to access their vaccination records. So stating the obvious – this is opening the door increasingly towards a social credit system.
Then this from one of the people on this list wanting the mandates and the draconian measures stopped:
Just a quick note: This Sunday will mark 58 years of me being active in the political sphere. Back in ’64, it was as a Goldwater volunteer. Some 6 years later, i switched sides, a consequence of the Vietnam War, the counterculture, ecological crisis,… And became much more of an activist. I have no love whatsoever for the right. But I’ve also seen the “left” act at critical points as a defender of the capitalist status quo, particularly as a consequence of the dominant tendency within the left to accept the state as if it were an institution acting on behalf of society as a whole, rather than the instrument of class power it has been since it emerged in history thousands of years ago. Both left and right (and “center”) are fully on board with the onrushing police state, while each proclaims itself to be defending the interests of humanity against the others. People need to look to themselves for solutions, and learn from historical movements, including anarchists and anti-statist socialists.
I heartily accept the motto,—”That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men and women are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
— Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government, 1849
Succinctly, Communist approaches to anti-statism center on the relationship between political rule and class struggle. Karl Marx defined the state as the institution used by the ruling class of a country to maintain the conditions of its rule. To this extent, the ultimate goal of communist society was theorized as both stateless and classless.
We are at 8 billion, and the planet is run by Blackstone and BlackRock and around 30 financial organizations, and around 140 corporations. The bottleneck is what the planned pandemic was all about — getting people to run away from sanity, common sense, and running into the various insane asylums. For anyone to question why some of us — who are way beyond just coming out from under the Capitalist-Media-Education rock — might doubt the purveyors of capital, scientism, control, policing, finance and corrupt drug companies, well, that is where I am now — “since the majority of people are in line for the jab, what’s your fucking lunatic problem?”
The distortions that go on under capitalism are so obscene it’s hard to wrap your head around it sometimes, on a micro level as well as a macro level. I was riding on the subway and I took a couple of trains and I was looking at the ads. The average American sees about 3,000 ads a day. One ad was for a credit card, and this is the slogan for the credit card—“Less plastic, more human—Discover it is human.” Discover is the card that they were advertising. In other words, you can actually be more human by having this type of credit card. Another ad, and this gets to the quality of life, that I pass by was about online delivery of food—how you can order online instead of having to phone somebody—and the ad read, “You’ve perfected the odds of getting to third base faster. Food delivery date night.” The obscenity and depravity of capitalism knows no depths to which it will not plumb.
This is something that Karl Marx talked about quite a bit. He was speaking at the anniversary of the People’s Paper in 1856, and I think this resonates far more with us now than it did even in his time.
On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire.
That kind of sense of decay pervades our world as it is currently structured. He goes on:
In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labor, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character.
At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.
John Bellamy Foster on ecosocialism: “Ecological resistance in the twenty-first century has more and more been informed by the development of Marxian ecology and ecosocialism more generally. However, as ecosocialist analysis has grown, various divergent branches of thought have emerged, often in conflict with each other. Based on the conviction that clarity about capitalism’s relation to the environment is indispensable for the strategic understanding of present-day struggles, this talk will present some of the new research within Marxian ecology, bringing together the core issues of the expropriation of nature and the metabolic rift, and seeking to unite the ecosocialist movements of our time.”
Another set of notes from another teacher on this V is for Vendetta Vaccines email group — I’m calling it that as a joke:
I just attended a workshop for religious exemptions, and will forward the email for any of those who wish to attend. I am also happy to share insights and notes I took to help out anyone who wishes to take this route. However, I would like to share some notes and important information discussed in this workshop.
First, if you are part a union or teachers union, Collective Bargaining needs to take place. Many unions did not have a seat at the table and have sent cease and desist letters that could delay the mandates. Remember the unions represent both the majority and the minority of their union members and even if there is only 15 percent against the mandates, those individuals should be represented. It was recommended to call your Labor Relations Representative or Union Rep to see if they have sent a cease and desist letter or are planning on it. Key word is the Collective Bargaining aspect of the unions and you may be able to ask them to do so.
Additionally, I think if you are able to file for a religious exemption it is a good way to buy time. The common law approach may be a good option for those who do not have an option. Realistically, for Californians we are a Right to Work state, and employers have the right to fire and hire at will. With either method there is a possibility of job termination which has to be considered, and I do not know exactly how the outcome has been going for individuals who have filed religious vs. common law approaches. That said I do know there have been many religious exemptions accepted and there is an appeals process if denied. If you are on a timetable and need to be vaccinated by a date that is closely approaching, the religious exemption is probably more likely to be one way to hold onto employment a little longer. My understanding of the common law approach is that it can be more time consuming because legal notices have times frames for notices, responses, and actions to take place and may not work with your deadline which again can lead to termination. Because California is an At Will Work state there may be risk to filing for any unemployment as well, so all these things should be considered before deciding which route to take.
I am not saying one option is better than the other, I am just presenting them as Option A or Option B, because I think we all have differences in our personal situations. One may work better for you personally than the other. That said, we should also have our plan B in place if neither work. Helping each other is essential and it will be good to share with one another what has worked and what hasn’t, and I do not want to argue either method, just help out in any way possible. Our differences in ideology are unimportant to me at this time. I believe there is a good portion of us, who are strong personalities, opinionated and intelligence — and these may be the wonderful unifying qualities that have brought us together at this critical time to fight for our humanity.
Take up the White Man’s Burden, send for the best ye breed,
Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives need –
new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child…
Take up the White Man’s burden, the savage wars of peace.
Millions of Afghans have been displaced by the war. Photo: MikrofonNews
Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country – and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.
Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has frozen nearly all of the Afghan Central Bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government of funds that it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services.
Under pressure from the Biden administration, the International Monetary Fund decided not to release $450 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent to Afghanistan to help the country cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. and other Western countries have also halted humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. After chairing a G7 summit on Afghanistan on August 24, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that withholding aid and recognition gave them “very considerable leverage – economic, diplomatic and political” over the Taliban.
Western politicians couch this leverage in terms of human rights, but they are clearly trying to ensure that their Afghan allies retain some power in the new government, and that Western influence and interests in Afghanistan do not end with the Taliban’s return. This leverage is being exercised in dollars, pounds and euros, but it will be paid for in Afghan lives.
To read or listen to Western analysts, one would think that the United States and its allies’ 20-year war was a benign and beneficial effort to modernize the country, liberate Afghan women and provide healthcare, education and good jobs, and that this has all now been swept away by capitulation to the Taliban.
The reality is quite different, and not so hard to understand. The United States spent $2.26 trillion on its war in Afghanistan. Spending that kind of money in any country should have lifted most people out of poverty. But the vast bulk of those funds, about $1.5 trillion, went to absurd, stratospheric military spending to maintain the U.S. military occupation, drop over 80,000 bombs and missiles on Afghans, pay private contractors, and transport troops, weapons and military equipment back and forth around the world for 20 years.
Since the United States fought this war with borrowed money, it has also cost half a trillion dollars in interest payments alone, which will continue far into the future. Medical and disability costs for U.S. soldiers wounded in Afghanistan already amount to over $175 billion, and they will likewise keep mounting as the soldiers age. Medical and disability costs for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could eventually top a trillion dollars.
So what about “rebuilding Afghanistan”? Congress appropriated $144 billion for reconstruction in Afghanistan since 2001, but $88 billion of that was spent to recruit, arm, train and pay the Afghan “security forces” that have now disintegrated, with soldiers returning to their villages or joining the Taliban. Another $15.5 billion spent between 2008 and 2017 was documented as “waste, fraud and abuse” by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
The crumbs left over, less than 2% of total U.S. spending on Afghanistan, amount to about $40 billion, which should have provided some benefit to the Afghan people in economic development, healthcare, education, infrastructure and humanitarian aid.
But, as in Iraq, the government the U.S installed in Afghanistan was notoriously corrupt, and its corruption only became more entrenched and systemic over time. Transparency International (TI) has consistently ranked U.S.-occupied Afghanistan as among the most corrupt countries in the world.
Western readers may think that this corruption is a long-standing problem in Afghanistan, as opposed to a particular feature of the U.S. occupation, but this is not the case. TI notes that ”it is widely recognized that the scale of corruption in the post-2001 period has increased over previous levels.” A 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that “corruption has soared to levels not seen in previous administrations.”
Those administrations would include the Taliban government that U.S. invasion forces removed from power in 2001, and the Soviet-allied socialist governments that were overthrown by the U.S.-deployed precursors of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the 1980s, destroying the substantial progress they had made in education, healthcare and women’s rights.
A 2010 report by former Reagan Pentagon official Anthony H. Cordesman, entitled “How America Corrupted Afghanistan”, chastised the U.S. government for throwing gobs of money into that country with virtually no accountability.
The New York Timesreported in 2013 that every month for a decade, the CIA had been dropping off suitcases, backpacks and even plastic shopping bags stuffed with U.S. dollars for the Afghan president to bribe warlords and politicians.
Corruption also undermined the very areas that Western politicians now hold up as the successes of the occupation, like education and healthcare. The education system has been riddled with schools, teachers, and students that exist only on paper. Afghan pharmacies are stocked with fake, expired or low quality medicines, many smuggled in from neighboring Pakistan. At the personal level, corruption was fueled by civil servants like teachers earning only one-tenth the salaries of better-connected Afghans working for foreign NGOs and contractors.
Rooting out corruption and improving Afghan lives has always been secondary to the primary U.S. goal of fighting the Taliban and maintaining or extending its puppet government’s control. As TI reported, “The U.S. has intentionally paid different armed groups and Afghan civil servants to ensure cooperation and/or information, and cooperated with governors regardless of how corrupt they were… Corruption has undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan by fuelling grievances against the Afghan government and channelling material support to the insurgency.”
The endless violence of the U.S. occupation and the corruption of the U.S.-backed government boosted popular support for the Taliban, especially in rural areas where three quarters of Afghans live. The intractable poverty of occupied Afghanistan also contributed to the Taliban victory, as people naturally questioned how their occupation by wealthy countries like the United States and its Western allies could leave them in such abject poverty.
Well before the current crisis, the number of Afghans reporting that they were struggling to live on their current income increased from 60% in 2008 to 90% by 2018. A 2018 Gallup poll found the lowest levels of self-reported “well-being” that Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world. Afghans not only reported record levels of misery but also unprecedented hopelessness about their future.
Despite some gains in education for girls, only a third of Afghan girls attended primary school in 2019 and only 37% of adolescent Afghan girls were literate. One reason that so few children go to school in Afghanistan is that more than two million children between the ages of 6 and 14 have to work to support their poverty-stricken families.
Yet instead of atoning for our role in keeping most Afghans mired in poverty, Western leaders are now cutting off desperately needed economic and humanitarian aid that was funding three quarters of Afghanistan’s public sector and made up 40% of its total GDP.
In effect, the United States and its allies are responding to losing the war by threatening the Taliban and the people of Afghanistan with a second, economic war. If the new Afghan government does not give in to their “leverage” and meet their demands, our leaders will starve their people and then blame the Taliban for the ensuing famine and humanitarian crisis, just as they demonize and blame other victims of U.S. economic warfare, from Cuba to Iran.
After pouring trillions of dollars into endless war in Afghanistan, America’s main duty now is to help the 40 million Afghans who have not fled their country, as they try to recover from the terrible wounds and trauma of the war America inflicted on them, as well as a massive drought that devastated 40% of their crops this year and a crippling third wave of covid-19.
The U.S. should release the $9.4 billion in Afghan funds held in U.S. banks. It should shift the $6 billion allocated for the now defunct Afghan armed forces to humanitarian aid, instead of diverting it to other forms of wasteful military spending. It should encourage European allies and the IMF not to withhold funds. Instead, they should fully fund the UN 2021 appeal for $1.3 billion in emergency aid, which as of late August was less than 40% funded.
Once upon a time, the United States helped its British and Soviet allies to defeat Germany and Japan, and then helped to rebuild them as healthy, peaceful and prosperous countries. For all America’s serious faults – its racism, its crimes against humanity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its neocolonial relations with poorer countries – America held up a promise of prosperity that people in many countries around the world were ready to follow.
If all the United States has to offer other countries today is the war, corruption and poverty it brought to Afghanistan, then the world is wise to be moving on and looking at new models to follow: new experiments in popular and social democracy; renewed emphasis on national sovereignty and international law; alternatives to the use of military force to resolve international problems; and more equitable ways of organizing internationally to tackle global crises like the Covid pandemic and the climate disaster.
The United States can either stumble on in its fruitless attempt to control the world through militarism and coercion, or it can use this opportunity to rethink its place in the world. Americans should be ready to turn the page on our fading role as global hegemon and see how we can make a meaningful, cooperative contribution to a future that we will never again be able to dominate, but which we must help to build.
The TV and film star was one of the speakers who addressed a major online conference organised from Glasgow last week, which brought together experts from around the world to discuss the idea of governments guaranteeing a regular minimum income to every citizen.
In a recorded message to the Basic Income Earth Network Congress, Wise, who is appearing in this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, said he enjoyed financial security today thanks to fortunate circumstances.
But he said: “Should accident of birth and luck be the only means not to live a precarious life? “A society is judged by how it deals with its least fortunate members – at least, that is how it should be. So how are we faring?
“Not terribly well. Even pre-pandemic we were seeing a rise in childhood hunger, the fast disappearing secure band of society, the huge gap between most of us and the few super-rich.”
Wise argued that “Victorian thinking” about the ethics of the workhouse and the undeserving poor were still ingrained in society in the UK.
He said an example was his wife, the Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, appearing on a radio show in which the presenter put forward the idea that childhood hunger was a result of the “fecklessness” of parents.
He said: “Maybe now with the furlough scheme having been seen as essential, we can look again at Universal Basic Income through a different lens, taking whatever toxic Victorian view that we have carried with us and see money given out from the state in a healthier way.”
He added: “Let’s give it a go, let’s try a Universal Basic Income and allow everyone the ability to at least in a small way feel they have some power to navigate, some sense of protection and availability to think beyond just struggling to the end of each month and try and access that principle human right – happiness.”
Scotland has looked at the feasibility of piloting Citizen’s Basic Income, concluding it would be desirable but the powers to run such a scheme lie with Westminster. Last week the Scottish Government announced plans to start work on a minimum income guarantee, which is targeted at those on lower incomes.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon also addressed the conference in a video message, saying the gathering was an opportunity to “make the case” how Universal Basic Income can help create fairer and more equal societies for the future.
She added: “That won’t be an easy task, but the past 18 months have shown us that things that can seem difficult or even impossible can indeed be implemented when we have the will, the imagination and the ambition.”
Experts from around the world shared research and experiences of Universal Basic Income at the gathering, which concluded yesterday.
Simone Cecchini, of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, said many countries in the region had introduced an emergency basic income as a response to the pandemic.
He said extending this into a full Universal Basic Income would be costly, but said it could be done gradually by initially targeting groups such as children, to prevent a “lost generation” as a result of the impact of Covid.
“We think the medium and long-term policy goal is to implement a universal basic income,” he said.
The Biden administration recently announced a record permanent increase in the value of food stamps aid going to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients around the country. The average amount received each month by each of the 42 million Americans relying on SNAP, formerly titled the Food Stamp Program, to put food on the table was $121 before the pandemic hit. It will now increase by $36, or 27 percent, reflecting what the Agriculture Department believes to be a more realistic cost of healthy foods.
This boost is nothing to sneeze at – it constitutes the largest permanent boost in the history of the public benefits program. But to truly end hunger in the United States and address the ongoing economic crises faced by people across this country, it’s vital for the same sort of boost to happen across all U.S. anti-poverty programs, with funds extracted from corporate profits and the ultra rich.
Bernie Sanders, chair of the powerful Senate Budget Committee has proposed just this, putting forward one bill to restore the corporate tax rate to 35 percent, which is where it was until Republicans reduced it to 21 percent in 2017. He has also introduced a second bill to create a progressive estate tax that would kick in on estates valued at $3.5 million and above. Such reforms would generate large sums of money that could be used to expand health care access, to put in place more programs tailored to low-income children, to expand safety net programs to noncitizen immigrants, and so on. These reforms will, however, take time; in the meanwhile, increasing the value of SNAP benefits is a good way to get bang-for-the-buck in reducing hunger, one of the most destructive consequences of poverty.
As with so many of the new social programs and spending being pushed by the Biden administration, the impetus for the recent boost in SNAP benefits came with temporary fixes put in place during the first two waves of the pandemic. Then, with tens of millions of Americans suddenly out of work and unable to meet their basic needs, Congress temporarily increased the value of food stamps aid sent out to recipients by 15 percent. But that boost was initially slated to expire at the end of September.
The GOP critique of these benefits was disingenuous. For even though the original increases were only meant to be temporary, the reality is that the United States has long failed to allocate enough resources to properly provide for the nutritional needs of its poorest residents. The COVID crisis shone a spotlight on the hunger crisis that has long been brewing in the shadows, and the temporary increases in food stamps and unemployment benefits were effective at taking millions of families out of absolute poverty; they showed that targeted government interventions can be dramatically powerful tools to mitigating the worst impacts of economic inequality.
The Biden administration’s permanent increase in food stamps this month is an overdue acknowledgement of this reality. And it stands in stark contrast to the efforts by his predecessor to block emergency SNAP payments to the poorest of recipients at the height of the public health crisis.
In fact, from the earliest days of the Trump administration, SNAP came under sustained fire from a political leadership that saw recipients as spongers and loafers, and viewed cutting SNAP as a key part of its toolkit to further limit the welfare system and further undermine vital anti-poverty programs. In the very first months after Trump’s inauguration, administration officials proposed cutting the program by $191 billion over 10 years. Luckily, that didn’t fly. Then, in late 2019, members of the Trump administration unveiled rules tightening up work requirements for recipients without children — putting the food stamps of roughly 700,000 people at risk. They also sought to make states more rigorously police who could enroll in SNAP, and recalculate income of applicants in a way that made it easier to deny benefits. All told, the Urban Institute estimated that if these reforms were fully implemented, the number of recipients in several states would fall by at least 15 percent in 13 states. Then, during the pandemic, the Trump administration continued to wage war on SNAP, despite private food bank and food pantry networks being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of suddenly hungry people lining up on foot and in cars to access their food supplies.
Thankfully, Trump’s team never really managed to implement its draconian cuts to food stamps. There was no congressional consensus to accept these cuts, and no public support to impose hunger on millions of Americans already living on the margins. In fact, by the time the pandemic rolled around, the administration had been participating in a yearly stunt for three years already, regularly promising huge cuts to food stamps as a way to assuage its anti-government base, while knowing full well that of all the big pillars of the U.S. welfare system, food assistance is the one that has garnered more bipartisan support in Congress — and among the public — than virtually any other part of the social support web outside of social security and Medicare.
Biden came to power last January projecting ambitions to use government in the way Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson had done, as a counterbalance against economic policy that kept millions of Americans in dire poverty. He had, as a result, a dramatically different understanding of the social safety net from his predecessor, and a willingness to put his weight behind huge expansions in government programs ranging from the provision of health care to low-income people to child tax credit payments offered to parents by the federal government.
Biden has ambitions to use the power of government to massively reduce poverty in this country. In particular, he has focused on halving child poverty in the coming years, through direct monthly payments to families, and through a better use of existing programs such as SNAP.
But to truly change the landscape of poverty and inequality in this country, this turn toward state spending can’t just be framed in limited ways as a project to restore consumer spending. And the expansions to public benefits programs can’t adequately be paid for through tax revenues without a targeted effort to redistribute the gross profits that corporations have been hogging in increasing proportions each year.
The U.S. was at its most dynamic economically in the post-WWII decades, when income inequality was lower than at other moments in the country’s history, and when corporate tax rates were higher. Today, wealthy individuals and corporations pay less into the tax pot and, in consequence, public systems and benefits programs are chronically underfunded. The president has the public behind him on the changes needed to tackle poverty in the U.S. Now he needs to marshal his negotiating skills to get the fractious Democratic coalition in Congress to coalesce around this agenda.
When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
It’s become clear to me that almost anyone penning anything that gets stuffed into any number of hundreds of “news” or “opinion” digital dungeons believes that their take on the world, on global affairs, on the political nightmares, on the various financial and military and digital happenings and what have you is, well, somehow theirs is a uniquely formed commentary to add something new and penetrating to the already hundreds of daily articles on Afghanistan or on the Pan-Plan-En-DEMIC.
I’ll give it to them, for sure, but how many pieces containing more or less 90 percent similar views and “facts” on a given subject really do much for humanity. I see the world from a different lens, and sure, it’s fun to rumble in the jungle looking at Biden-Wall Street-MIC-Trump-Celebrity Culture-Scientism-Entertainment-Media-Medicine-Et Al, but when I get down to brass tacks, I look at the ground level stories, sometimes about one person or family or situation at a time, to understand the larger issue of this perverse, predatory and people-killing Capitalism.
Yep, of course, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Earth Charter, and the Golden Rule, those are great starts to abide by. Survival International, looking at and from indigenous communities’ perspectives and needs, that too is A-Okay. Yet, sometimes, it’s one person at a time to understand the fragility of belief systems, or economic systems that not only rape-pollute-colonize land-air-water-soil-life, but put so many of my fellow women and men behind the eight ball, AKA, in the sights of those ruthless elites and their armies of Eichmann’s and thugs.
A mark and sucker and victim and limping along-useless-eater-but-useful-exploitable-breeder may be born every nanosecond in the eyes of the overlords of corporations and the boardroom beasts of banks and Military Everything/Everywhere Industrial Complex, but to winnow through that and spend time with one of those soon-to-be-victims-of-capitalism, for me, that is the narrative flow and truth I am more interested in these days.
Big City Boy in a Townie Coastal Hamlet
It does feel lonely out here, even among the 600 harbor seals just outside our door, on sand spits in their haul-outs after going for the salmon running up and down the Alsea River. A hundred bird sightings, sure, in a month. Green hitting the Pacific. A constant snake of cars and RVs and logging trucks up and down Highway 101. A pretty cool bridge just outside the window on the near horizon.
I’ve written about this area, the original home of the Alsi Tribe, a place, like in most of Turtle Island, which was never given or sold to and rented to the white man. We are, in so many places, entrenched on sacred and holy ground, on burial mounds.
This day, a few days ago, I was kicking up speed on the bicycle when I saw a fellow — big, nice sternum-touching beard — unloading cedar pickets from a truck into a garage. It’s a nice family home on a corner near the USPS, and I have been trying to get help putting up a cedar fence, so, much so that it’s been four months, or three, since the first fellow came out, said he’d do it, and never followed through. Two others came out, and two others failed to follow through.
Let’s call him Clint, and I said hello, and he seemed a bit skeptical of me showing up inside his fence, but soon, we hit it off. I asked about his fence, and he gave me the names and numbers for a landscaping team, father-son, that did his work for him. He made sure to let me know they were not bonded, and, well, that’s the way I want to go. The father-son is Mexican. The son, let’s call him Enrique, went to school with Clint. The middle school in Waldport.
“When he was first here, all he’d do is draw farm equipment and fields of corn. He didn’t speak English, but he did say, ‘I want go home Mexico.’ He’s my friend, and he speaks and read English so well that he helps his father with he contracts and bills and translation.”
While I was anxious to contact Pedro’s Landscaping, I spent time with Clint to learn his story. That is how I roll, and within one 25-year-old’s story the entire country and entire financial and entire educational and political system sometimes are anchored.
He was on a two-month respite before resuming the Alaska fishing he’s been engaged in shortly after he dropped out of high school. He’s got buddies who also dropped out, but who also got hooked into the drug scene, boozing and helping justify the criminal injustice systems of cells, ankle bracelets, militarized cops, overpaid arrogant judges, DAs who lie, and all the attendants in the system.
Clint never got into drugs, and he said his drinking — not super heavy — just interfered with his relationship to his girlfriend who is the mother of their six-year-old daughter. So he quit.
Clint was brought up by an alcoholic mother and never had much to do with a violent and absent father. Clint did not like school, and he says he probably had this or that learning “issue,” but in the end, Clint got his act together, left school at 16, never looked back, and never got a GED. He stated that he bought the house I was at age 22, and that last year he made upwards of $130,000 as a fisherman for Alaskan fleets. For most of his friends who did graduate high school, they are living poor lives, working for minimum wage, still living with parents; and some with college, they are straddled with minimum wage jobs and huge school loan debts.
This story is not the story of those elites from the Ivy League or the top (sic) 100 schools. I know because I have been to a few of them (not getting my degrees from them, however), and I have family that tends to rah-rah those schools, as if they are the Holy Grail. I have met with and interviewed many people (authors, scientists, creatives) from those so-called elite institutions. I have organized for a union at Georgetown U. I have been to a huge conference in Mexico City with higher education people, mostly adjuncts, many of whom come from elite schools. Even in my three degree programs at state colleges/universities, many of my professors were graduates of the elite schools. I was never impressed with those laurels.
But the point is that I consume so much from the elites’ research, from their books, from their journalism, and from their literature as in fiction. It is a daily reminder of the chosen few either leaving out the 80 percent of the USA population, or writing about us. Writing about Adverse Childhood experiences, ACES. Writing about socio-economic determinates of life, success, failure, perseverance, incarceration rates, poverty, medical health outcomes. The elites writing about high blood pressure, about African Americans’ weathering taking them out earlier than their white counterparts; about racist environmental policies. The elites and chosen ones even write the scripts for Breaking Bad shit, or all the novels and such penned in American Mainstream Literature. The elites take our pulse in the doctor’s offices, in the school offices, in the financial offices. The elites prosecute us, persecute us, penalize us, tax us, redline us, vilify us, joke about us.
So Clint is there, working hard, even offering to help me pick up cedar pickets and the supplies two hours away in Eugene, to save a buck. Clint with his eye toward fixing up the place and selling it. “I want to get out of this town. I’ve lived here my entire life.”
He’s got American Terriers, or bulldogs, what a lot of people mislabel as pit bulldogs. He had Pedro’s Landscaping build a fence, and he had it go six feet tall facing the road for the dogs. Under penalty of Waldport City ordinances, however, it has to be 42 inches, with 48 more or less allowed. The judgment was/is to cut it down to 42-48 inches. The verdict is to fine a $1000 a day for the violation. He was in rough waters in Alaska, fishing for those elites loving their fish fresh. Imagine that, the city code Nazi’s, at a $1000 a day. Similarly, the fine for some elderly disabled woman up the road, in Newport, was $1500 for front yard grass too long. This is the elites’ game. City managers with binoculars, and now drones with CCTV, looking in people’s yards, looking for weeds, or old automobiles propped up on bricks. Looking for fences too high (sic) or buildings on the property bigger than 10 x 20 feet that will need a permit pulled, a permit that, of course, costs money.
[So, this fellow in the trailer above, set up along the beach, in Waldport, and it was in daylight. I am not sure if he intended to camp there for the night, but the City Manager called the rent-a-sheriffs. They forced him off the property. I talked with the two deputies. They say more and more people are “squatting.” They talk about how it is a $3000 bill to the county and cities for removing trailers or broken down RVs. They seemed sympathetic, but at $30 an hour plus double, $60, an hour overtime, the cops are making out like bandits in a county that still pays $13 an hour at checkouts and in hotel rooms as maids.]
That’s an aside, for sure, since it was a day before I met Clint, but it is, again, emblematic of the failures of empire, and I don’t need no stinking commentary to add to the failures of Afghanistan, of the money managers, of the World Economic Forum. Failures of the Trump and Biden camps, spewing bullshit. I don’t need to add to the discourse on how bad Canada is/was with Haiti. Add to the EU’s sickening siding with USA on Venezuela. Do I need to add to the Israel question? Just wading into that muck gets one not only cancelled, but Mossad-ed out, Eighty-Sixed.
If I penned something like this, from Linh Dinh, I’d be Googled out of existence in USA:
When Ichiro played in the Major Leagues, he was always hounded by a mob of Japanese journalists and photographers, starting with the first day of Spring Training.
Sick of this, he told an interviewer he wished they would just disappear.
“From your life?”
“No, from this earth.”
The USA, though, is not being pestered but deformed, debilitated and, well, frankly destroyed by a host of people, many of whom you may not have heard of, so let’s us:
Imagine there’s no George Soros, No Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch or Klaus Schwab, too. No Jeff Zucker, Mark Zuckerberg, Arthur Sulzberger, Jonathan Greenblatt, Larry Fink, David Solomon, Robert Iger, Charles Scharf, Jamie Dimon, Steve Schwarzman, Jeremy Zimmer, Len Blavatnik, Andy Slavitt, Jeffrey Zients, Anthony Fauci, Jessica Rosenworcel, Janet Yellen, Gary Gensler, Betsy Berns Korn, Mort Fridman or, what the hell, Nancy Pelosi also, mostly because she’s so icky.
Even more than most lists, it’s highly incomplete, but you get the idea. Or maybe not. It’s too eclectic, you say, if not confusing. What do they have in common? They are all social engineers, out to remake America in ways that have nothing to do, at least initially, with the wishes of its majority, so there goes your democracy. As new norms are relentlessly propagandized, legalized then imposed, most Americans will learn to embrace their newly cowed, castrated selves.
The point is that Clint has a family, and is dealing with the Man in many forms. Fence too high. Viscous dog ordinance, even though his dogs are not vicious. He even almost got run over by some business woman, while Clint was on his Harley. He posted that fact on the local city Facebook page, and, well, it was taken down. No cussing, no threats, and respectful, but that was too much for the FB administrator.
Like many in his camp, who dropped out of High School and ended up doing something, working hard, yes, in a dangerous profession, Alaska fishing, he wants a few acres out of town, to grow food, raise a family, home school children, and maybe get a rig so he can move logs and such to keep money flowing in. We are talking about age 35 as his goal.
I taught in those schools where he and his Mexican friend, Enrique, went. The K12 system before the planned endemic was bad-bad-bad, and now, it is a complete shit show. This fellow works, his wife works and he is honest. The systems of oppression have not gotten him yet, nor have they gotten him down, and he is a success. And another load of Elites will write about that guy, the white guy, though, as I found out, he is from a Guatemalan Spaniard father.
Elites (white, many identifying as Jewish) writing about poverty, about the white protestant in the USA, about the poor, the druggies, about the criminals, about Latinos and Blacks and Asians. These Elites, the Chosen Ones, have a direct line to publishers, producers and the like. And they will write on and on about all those demographics they themselves are only witnesses to, or somehow involved in from the middle/upper middle/rich class point of view.
Millionaire union heads, like that one with the American Federation of Teachers. Look at her:
[Viewpoint: AFT’s Refusal to Challenge Democratic Establishment Leaves Every Teacher Behind — AFT President and Biden. Lovefest!]
Again, Enrique and Clint, they are the Americans, the ones working hard. Before I shift to Enrique, the final moment in Clint’s driveway was when we both heard a blood curdling scream. A 12-year-old boy was screaming across the street. “Oh, that’s Alan, and he is severely autistic. He lives with his grandmother. His mom was a meth user while she was pregnant, and his father is a piece of shit, violent, a thief.”
It turned out that Alan was messing with a T-ball bat, and hit a rock accidently up to a second story window, and broke it. “No, no, no,” he screamed and cried. “I can’t pay for that. I am in trouble. I can’t pay for that.”
His grandmother came out, and settled the boy down. I recognized Alan (pseudonym) from my substituting up the hill at the middle school, in the special education room. The grandmother was wrinkled before her time, and she had to get to a PT appointment, but had no car, no driver’s license. She told us that the apartment owners will just tell her to pay for a window installer. “The owners do nothing around here for us.”
Autism, drug abuse, all those elite doctors and psychiatrists, all those practitioners, all those TED Talk celebrities, lecturing the world on childhood diseases, all the intellectual disabilities, all the chronic illnesses, chronic depression, chronic poverty, chronic criminality, chronic failures, yep, expect another load of books coming out during this endemic, from the white elites, mostly east coast, many, the Chosen People, making their money and lecturing us, even high-horsing people like me who is just as educated in the college sense, and more traveled, and, hell, more experienced in many more fields than the elites who have podcasts or get onto Democracy Now or CBS or CNN.
Back Breaking But Honest
Enrique and his dad, Javier, came out, and we talked about the fence project. In Spanish. Javier has been in USA for 20 years. Five children, four born in Mexico. His hat was emblazoned with Hildago and the eagle and the serpent. He and I talked a lot about Mexico, since I have traveled all over, and we swapped stories about the jungle, la selva, and places like Palenque, and where his family hails from, Mexico City. He works hard, pays workers $25 an hour, under the table, and we talked about narcos and politicians and why Mexico, with 80 percent of the population good and hardworking, family oriented, how it is that the military, corrupt mayors/governors/senators/presidents and the drug kingpins and their thugs have overtaken the land. All those drugs in the noses and in the veins of North Americans, Europeans!
We talked about Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
Pancho Villa
If there is not justice for the people, let there be no peace for the government.
I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.
The land belongs to those who work it with their hands. Emiliano Zapata
[The Palenque builders used plaster to obtain a smooth finish, unlike the usual Mayan tooled-limestone construction. However, they used carving on the interior walls; the best examples are on tablets affixed to the walls with plaster. Stucco and terra-cotta images have been found. The elaborate palace complex includes three parallel walls housing two corridors covered with pointed vaults of the Palenque style.]
This is reality, and Javier states that he can’t find young guys to work as landscapers and fence builders. At $25 an hour. “They’d rather work minimum wage in a fast-food restaurant. Inside. Watching their phones. It is not how I grew up.”
Complicated, my relationship with Mexicans, people of the land, manual laborers. They to me, in most instances, are princes, when they are good and loyal and don’t end up drinking and womanizing. In any case, I have more robust conversations with guys like Javier than I do with any number of liberals or Trumpies or friends who identify as woke and hippy.
I have nothing in common with the very people I ended up in a graduate program — regional and urban planning. Code enforcers. The developers’ amigos. Cushy jobs with cities and counties. Beautiful people. Hikers and bicyclists. Professional Managerial Class who travel here and there and talk about walkability, about New Urbanism, about sustainability design. But at the end of the day, they are facilitators of the construction (building and paving) tycoons. They talk a nice game around LEAD Platinum and Climate Change mitigation, but in the end, they, for the most part, are just cogs in the system. Not squeaky wheels. Very disheartening for me.
These fellows — Clint, Enrique and Javier of Pablo’s Landscaping — they are not going to read this blog, they are not going to buy my books, they are not going to attend a literary reading planned for August 27 in Portland. That is the shame and the sham of this Capitalist society — that my bright idea on community spaces, on education, on collectivism, on intentional and shared communities isn’t scaled up — generating the various levels of strata, casts, deplorable people, disposable people, all the useless breeders/breathers/eaters, in the minds of the elites.
Imagine a world where right out the gates we have pre-school in gardens, in teepees, around fires, with others older there, to teach. Outdoor experiences. Learning to grow, fish, harvest, can food. Building tiny homes for the houseless. Doing the work of cutting wood and making woodcut art. All the hands on learning, and the play acting, the art, the music. Real teachers, and real communities, and, from cradle to cradle. No more warehousing of youth. No more jobs just for the shitty health insurance. No more school-to-complaint little or big Eichmann enforcer or follower. No more warehouses for the poor.
Yeah, this is still a land of Bubbas and Sweet Mean Charlottes. A land of ignorance and just plain mean, and racist. But look at Clint. Look at Enrique. Look deeper into the hearts of these people who are for all intents and purposes NOT mainstream subjects for the elites’ studies or projects. Do all people need to write poetry? Well, maybe. Play music? Of course. Create art and sculptures and blow glass and use a potter’s wheel and grow lettuce and learn how to guy fish and poultry, learn how to build a fire on the land, and in the belly. Yep!
Of course, a majority of the 80 percent will respond with dignity, interest and collective knowledge way beyond any cabal of elites determining the futures and histories and lives of us, the lowly Eighty Percent.
(@CJMyers1977) 
#50sWomen (@deasy_diane) 
(@ArgyleLoz) 
(@patricia_hamill) 
Hardy (@LloydHardy) 
(@buddy_hell) 
UN Human Rights expert 
Rising energy bills and food costs
/pancho-villa-large-56a61b785f9b58b7d0dff2cc.jpg)
