Dems had better come out unified for our Showdown with Evil

On Thursday night Lawrence O'Donnell exposed Chris Matthews for playing goofball, not hardball, along with all the other "pundits" across TV newsland who talk about debate winners and losers, zingers and breakout moments and all the other bullshit that passes for commentary that ought to be about the supposed opportunity to gain insight into candidates' relative presidential potential.

In his segment called "presidents don't debate" Lawrence referenced his own experience as a chief of staff for a high-ranking senator to distinguish what goes on in TV debates from what would go on if they were designed to put candidates to a valid test of skills a president needs.  

The superficiality of scoring a debate like a boxing match goes along with the exploitative, unprincipled grasping for ratings that drove news media's 2016 obsessive airing of rump's rallies like flies driven by mindless DNA to light on road kill and shit.  

The main productive outcome of these debates is to expose the candidates' views to the voters and to winnow the field to the handful of candidates viable enough to warrant a presence in the caucuses and primaries next year.  They may also serve candidates themselves in using the feedback they get to "refine" their positions -- e.g., if I were able to get a half hour with Elizabeth Warren I would spend the whole time hammering at her to refine her advocacy of eliminating private health insurance, maybe recasting it as having been a negotiating position in which private insurance would give up its opposition to a public option in exchange for surrender on banning them.    

A major risk is that these debates produce rich sources of oppo attacks using debate sound bites against the nominee -- and against the last Democratic president for that matter.  An even major-er risk is that supporters of some current candidates become hardened against the eventual nominee and/or that some on-and-off voters will switch off and not show up in 2020.  

We can't afford not to have the most massive possible tsunami of Democratic voters registered and active in 2020.  We have to overwhelm them in national, state and local races to redirect the country toward restoration of respect for democracy, the rule of law and the project of perfecting our achievement of foundational American values and principles of enfranchisement, equality and justice for all.

That's the bright light at the end of the pitch-dark tunnel.  The alternative is an unrecognizably disfigured pit of evil sucking us down to spiritual and material destruction like industrial-waste quicksand.  

This week's front in the war against Evil incarnate: The article below reports on the BPOE administration's plan to change eligibility rules from the legally defined income ceilings to a lower level that would yank food support from 3.1 million low-income Americans.  As the article notes, families losing food-stamp eligibility also means their kids losing free lunch at school.   

Now in our lives we've often seen Repubicans trying to screw poor people out of survival-enabling benefits in the pretextual name of fiscal prudence.  They are willing to make children hungry, to undermine their mental and physical fitness to learn and develop, in order to feed white grievance over economic displacement and, as the article says, to plug a piece of the deficit hole created by their tax cuts that went to the rich and thus put a fig leaf over evidence of the administration's indifference to the conned blue-collared MAGAs' lives and fortunes.  

So looking within the strict margins of this SNAP-cut move, you could chalk this week's chapter in the annals of Evil to traditionally run-of-the-mill-cruel-and-inhumane GOP racist pandering and political posturing.  

But looking at it in the broader context of all the shameless lies, deceptions, cruelties and inhumanities in every single sphere of executive action since January 20, 2017, it's not as innocent as mere old-timey GOP strategy of scapegoating and slashing aid to minorities and the poor to con votes from uneducated working-class whites in order to enrich the rich.  Looking at concentration camps for utterly vulnerable children kidnapped from their parents, looking at rescinding environmental protections so that many people will suffer and die from air, ground and water pollutants, and looking at embracing literally murderous totalitarian rulers and voicing envy for their "control of their people", I see the actions of a dark psychic force uprisen from the gutters à la Ghostbusters.  

This regime seems to be fueled by the loosing of hate-infused sadism as an end in itself.  It's no longer just a political strategy for a minority party desperate to mortgage its soul for power, it's something closer to a collective possession. (While I will be happy to see Marianne Williamson gone from the scene for the great preponderance of dangerous stupidity in her present and past statements, her warning about "dark psychic forces" does sync with my long-standing take on our present challenge.)  

Last year I wrote about a powerful documentary about the Warsaw Ghetto called Who will Write Our History?  The film visually and narratively documents how the initial indignities and constraints on the movement and rights of Polish Jews incrementally were deepened and tightened until the Nazis turned the Ghetto into a literal death camp where the ultimate choice was starvation or suicide by violent uprising.  

All remnants of that sector of Warsaw have been razed and rebuilt, but in the very center of the former Warsaw Ghetto is the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews.  I've been there, and it's as worthy as a monument of enlightenment and admonition can be to the suffering inflicted on innocent human beings by sheer inhumanity run amok, carried out by complicit moral automatons under orders from above.  

I'm not meaning to suggest this current crisis is particularly about threats to Jews, I'm applying the lenses I've assimilated from these experiences to look at the threats to all of us right now.  It's a showdown with evil, and we damn well can't have effing Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, Bernie bros, or unmotivated voters this time around.  Given the tentacles of Russian cyber-criminals into our social media, our Repubican Party and our election systems, I don't know how corrupted this election will be before, during and after Election Day, but the best we can do is the best we can do. 

Renewed effort to cut food-stamp eligibility

Nearly 500,000 recipients in Pa., N.J. could lose aid.

By Alfred Lubrano STAFF WRITER

The Trump administration is proposing changes to the foodstamp program that could result in 3.1 million Americans losing their benefits — including 200,000 Pennsylvanians and 250,000 New Jerseyans.

In addition, the plan could deprive some low-income children of access to free school lunches.

The proposal is the latest of several put forward by the president to cut food stamps.

The newest changes were considered by Congress last December and rejected. But the Trump administration is advancing them anyway as part of a suggested revision to rules in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The proposal would end the practice of allowing low-income working people whose gross incomes are somewhat higher than the poverty level to receive SNAP benefits.

The administration said it is looking to save nearly $2 billion a year through the cuts, according to USDA statistics. Around 38 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, nearly 500,000 in Philadelphia, federal and state figures show.

At the same time that the USDA mentioned cost savings, the department recognized that removing people from the SNAP rolls “may also negatively impact food security.”

That statement has angered antihunger advocates.

“Wow, they don’t even care that they’ll be increasing hunger,” said Ellen Vollinger, legal director of the Food Research and Action Center in Washington, the nation’s leading antihunger lobby.

Closer to home, Gov. Tom Wolf called the Trump administration plan “ludicrous,” saying it would disproportionately affect working families, the elderly, and the disabled. He added that “depriving people of the means for adequate sustenance and a healthier life is cruel and inhumane.”

While state officials estimate that the Trump administration plan would jeopardize the SNAP benefits of about 200,000 Pennsylvanians, local advocates have not determined how many Philadelphians would be affected.

Cutting SNAP benefits could affect lunch for low-income school children because a family’s SNAP status is part of what officials use to determine student eligibility, advocates say.

‘Fair and efficient’

USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said the cuts would be necessary to maintain sound fiscal policy. He said a “loophole” in federal law allowed states to expand SNAP help “to people who don’t need it.” He added that the loophole “has been used to effectively bypass important eligibility guidelines.”

Purdue went on to say, “The American people expect their government to be fair, efficient, and to have integrity — just as they do in their own homes, businesses, and communities. That is why we are changing the rules preventing abuse of a critical safety net system.”

Vollinger said it’s misleading to call the existing provision that guides SNAP eligibility a “loophole.” “It sounds like something that snuck through,” she said. “But it’s a law that was fully vetted through the [George W.] Bush administration. And Congress supported it.”

Currently, people throughout America are eligible for SNAP benefits if their gross income is at or below 130% of the federal poverty line of around $25,000 for a family of four. This works out to a little more than $33,000 for such a family.

But a federal policy known as “broad-based categorical eligibility” allows states to raise the gross income eligibility level to as much as 200% of poverty in some cases. In Pennsylvania, the allowable gross income level for benefits is 160% of the federal poverty, or about $41,000 for a family of four. Along with Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 38 other states use categorical eligibility.

“The administration would force Pennsylvania to go down to 130% of poverty,” said Kathy Fisher, policy director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. ‘We already know from studies that just 130% of poverty isn’t a high enough limit for people to feed their families.”

Fisher added that the administration plan would also add an asset test, meaning that people’s bank accounts, car ownership, and other holdings would be considered as their SNAP levels were determined. Pennsylvania did away with its asset test in 2015.

Traditionally, many Republicans have argued against asset tests, saying they penalize low-income people for accumulating savings to help pull themselves out of poverty.

Also, it takes extra time and effort to determine a SNAP recipient’s assets, which “clogs up county assistance offices,” Fisher said, and actually costs states more money.

The Trump administration “wants to take away long-standing law to cut SNAP benefits,” said Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the nonprofit Coalition on Human Needs in Washington. “People would be facing a precipitous cutoff.”

Paying for tax cuts?

Vollinger said she believes the administration is eliminating many SNAP benefits because it has to pay for the large tax cuts it gave well-off Americans.

It’s not the first time the Trump administration has gone after food stamps.

In March, it looked to increase work requirements for SNAP recipients. In May, it proposed a new way to calculate poverty to keep many Americans from receiving aid. Last year, Trump recommended sending boxes of food instead of SNAP benefits to people, an idea decried as impractical and likely more expensive than the SNAP program itself.

The Trump administration proposal is scheduled to be debated during a two-month comment period.

Ultimately, the plan will cause too many problems, according to Kate Scully, director of government affairs for Philabundance, the region’s largest hunger-relief agency.

“We are so concerned,” Scully said. “If the rules change, the administration will increase hunger [and] hurt the community and the country.”