For most of the last one hundred and fifty years, anti-communism has been a defining aspect of American political culture, both domestic and foreign. As historian Nick Fischer has argued, after the Civil War, anti-communism was deployed to suppress an unruly underclass of people, including the working poor, women, and Black Americans, and prevent any real attention on their working and living conditions. This anti-communism was deployed by an “elitist” class who sought to divide working people among themselves, and prescribe acceptable behaviors, including patriarchal heteronormative familial relationships. When those same people made demands for equal treatment, or even just decent treatment, the epithet “communist” or “socialist” has been deployed to delegitimize their claims to rights.
The “Mock Revolution” at Mosinee: On The Racism of Anti-Communism in the US
Tag: New Deal
Biden’s ally in Guatemala?
CHIUL, Guatemala − Life in Bartolo Báten’s village has been defined by corruption: A teacher who can’t get a job at the school until she pays a bribe. A water project that runs out of money before the pipes reached town. Sick residents who can’t afford the medicine that’s available elsewhere.
Insurgent candidate tells Guatemalans: Stay, don’t go to the U.S. This time, they’re listening. (archived)
Related:
Seven Decades After Guatemala Coup, Bernardo Arévalo Sees a Dramatic Rise (Will Freeman, CFR)
Arévalo and Semilla are centrists—but in a country where politics habitually skews right, they are often described as center-left. “Semilla has a social democratic element, but its program is centrist, and it also has some center-right followers,” said Lucas Perelló, a political scientist who has spent time studying the party’s formation. Arévalo says he wants to gradually universalize existing social assistance programs to include a greater share of poor Guatemalans, reduce the cost of medicines and healthcare, and link isolated parts of the country through new infrastructure—doable tasks, given Guatemala’s exceptionally low share of debt as GDP, and necessary ones, given the country’s soaring poverty and malnutrition rates.
On security issues, another major concern for Guatemalans, Arévalo promises to increase state presence in crime hotspots, reclaim jails from gangs, and use intelligence-gathering to dismantle mafias. He says Bukele’s anti-gang strategy is not applicable to Guatemala. He is also critical of human rights abuses in Venezuela and Nicaragua and Putin’s war on Ukraine and has no stated plans to recognize China over Taiwan. Asked for a leader he admires, he named the ex-president, José Pepe Mujica, of Uruguay, where he was born during his father’s exile.
Welfare Queens and Welfare Fraud
The Rise and Reign of the Welfare Queen
Researcher links government assistance program to much earlier origins of welfare stereotypes
How Bill Clinton’s Welfare Reform Changed America
But based on several studies of TANF and its beneficiaries, “it barely reaches even the poorest Americans, and has all but ceased doing the work of lifting people out of poverty,” according to the Atlantic. “‘Welfare reform’ didn’t fix welfare so much as destroy it, and if similar changes were applied to Medicaid and food stamps, they would likely do the same.”
Americans believe benefits fraud is common for SNAP
Experts say that deliberate SNAP fraud is uncommon because of the rigorous application process and multi-step eligibility review. In 2016, the Congressional Research Service determined that for every 10,000 households participating in SNAP, about 14 contained a recipient who was investigated and determined to have committed fraud.
Who Is Really Responsible for Welfare Fraud?
In other words, don’t take a single example or casual observation of welfare fraud and claim it represents the tens of millions of poor who receive welfare benefits.
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While welfare fraud committed by the poor appears to be low, the federal government has long recognized businesses being the true criminals.
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While these are some of the better known examples of large scale welfare fraud, they are not the only ones. The above cases alone represent over $25 Billion in welfare fraud recovery. The criminals having the greatest impact committing welfare fraud against the government are not the poor, but the privately owned businesses that take advantage of them.
Brett Favre Is The Welfare Queen Republicans Warned Us About
Updates:
Biggest Perpetrators of Welfare Fraud Are Private Companies, Not ‘Welfare Queens’
Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul are salivating over the Wagner Group mutiny!
Francis Fukuyama, who hasn’t seen a regime change op that he hasn’t liked, and Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, are salivating over the Wagner Group mutiny!
Did Wagner Group Take Over Military Headquarters? What We Know
Interesting that McFaul mentioned Tilley and Trotsky.
Related:
The Neocons are not new. They have tried to influence U.S. foreign policy since the 1930’s. They are not conservative. If conservatism means maintaining the status quo, then the Neocons, who advocate broad changes, are just the opposite. Furthermore, if the early pioneers of neoconservatism are those who eventually sought global stability through use of American power and promotion of its values, then the pioneers of neoconservatiam were radical leftists The more prominent devotees were followers of Leon Trotsky:
Prigozhin a Tool of the CIA/SBU or Too Big for his Britches?!
US government bailout of Silicon Valley and banks is $300B gift to rich oligarchs
The US Federal Reserve printed $300 billion in a week to save collapsing banks and bail out Silicon Valley oligarchs. 93% of Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits were uninsured, over the FDIC limit of $250,000, but the government still paid them. 56% of SVB’s loans went to venture capitalist and private equity firms.
US government bailout of Silicon Valley and banks is $300B gift to rich oligarchs
It’s Worse Than I Thought: The Myth of Jeffrey Zients
There is no reason to trust a longtime corporate stooge to serve as President Biden’s chief of staff.
The Myth of Jeffrey Zients
Related (Archived Links):
Read More »Manchin Wants Deal on Debt, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin [Democrat] said Thursday that Congress needs to deal with the nation’s “crippling debt” by making changes to shore up Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs he said are “going bankrupt.”
Manchin Wants Deal on Debt, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
Joe Manchin, speaking at a conference for CEOs, blames the stimulus checks us plebs received for causing inflation! It couldn’t have been the PPP loans, that were forgiven, or the handouts for the Military Industrial Complex every year! 🙄
FYI, Biden didn’t say anything about protecting Social Security from his own party:
“I will not cut Social Security,” the president said. “I will not cut Medicare, no matter how hard they work at it.”
‘I Will Not Yield’: Biden Vows to Fight Any GOP Attack on Social Security, Medicare
NPR is Not Your Friend
NPR is a problem. Good and proper leftists who read Current Affairs may already realize this. “Of course. NPR (Neoliberal Propaganda Radio) is a bastion of establishment groupthink and orthodoxy that gives cover to imperialism and corporate capitalism.” By contrast, readers on the Right who find themselves consuming Current Affairs may have an equally disdainful but entirely different critique. “Of course. NPR is an elitist liberal propaganda cult that serves as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, is openly hostile to any conservative voices, and ought to be defunded!”
NPR is Not Your Friend
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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