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Trump Demands Poem on Statue of Liberty Be Revised to Exclude Shithole Countries |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Friday, 12 January 2018 14:47 |
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Borowitz writes: "Donald J. Trump demanded on Thursday that the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty be revised immediately to exclude nations he considered 'shithole countries.'"
Statue of Liberty. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Trump Demands Poem on Statue of Liberty Be Revised to Exclude Shithole Countries
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
12 January 18
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 onald J. Trump demanded on Thursday that the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty be revised immediately to exclude nations he considered “shithole countries.”
Speaking to reporters, Trump said that the poem as it currently stands “is basically an open invitation that says, like, if you come from a shithole country, welcome aboard.”
“I don’t know the entire poem, but it’s something like ‘Give us your tired, your poor, your yadda yadda yadda,’ ” he said. “We could keep all that but then put in, right at the end, in big letters, maybe, ‘except if you’re from a shithole country.’ ”
“I think if a boat from a shithole country came and saw that poem with those words at the end, they would turn around and go right back to wherever they came from,” he said.
Shortly after Trump made his remarks about “shithole” countries, representatives of the countries he designated as such released a joint response.
“We do not understand President Trump’s aversion to so-called ‘shithole countries,’ since he is doing his best to turn the United States into one,” the statement read.
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Trump's New Medicaid Work Requirements Punish Disabled People Like Me |
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Friday, 12 January 2018 14:41 |
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Tastrom writes: "As a disability lawyer and disabled person myself, I know how this policy change will impact my community."
The addition of a work requirement moves us further away from the idea of health care as a right. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Getty)
Trump's New Medicaid Work Requirements Punish Disabled People Like Me
By Katie Tastrom, NBC News
12 January 18
As a disability lawyer and disabled person myself, I know how this policy change will impact my community.
 n a letter to state Medicaid directors Thursday morning, the Trump administration announced that it would allow states to require Medicaid recipients to participate in a work program or other form of approved “community engagement” in order to retain their health benefits. While there will supposedly be exceptions for disabled people, allowing states to implement the work requirement is a terrible idea. As a disability lawyer and disabled person myself, I know this policy change will be disastrous for my community in a number of important ways.
My first concern involves the eligibility process. According to the Washington Post, states will be able to decide for themselves who qualifies as “disabled” for the purpose of being exempt from the work requirement. No matter how broad they define the category, there will be disabled people who do not qualify for the exemption even though they should.
I know this from experience. Indeed, in my role as an appeals lawyer for people applying for social security disability, I often deal with similar problems. The Social Security Administration acknowledges that its standard for social security disability eligibility is “very strict.” Many people who eventually do qualify for benefits have to go through several appeals that can take years. And even if the standard for Medicaid work-requirement exemption is much more lenient than the standard for social security, it still grants the state a mechanism requiring people to fight for coverage they should be entitled to.
While this appeals process plays out, people are likely to get sicker and more disabled as they await a final decision. In the end, many people could become stuck in a grey area: too sick or disabled to work, but not sick or disabled enough to be exempt from the work requirement. Barring the possibility that they find an employer sympathetic to his or her special needs, the only way to get out of this in-between space is to eventually become sick or disabled enough that they are eligible for Medicaid. By that time their health care will be much more expensive to the state (if they survive that long).
Such an inherent Catch-22 is remarkably cruel. Getting exempted from the work requirement due to disability will almost certainly require some kind of doctor’s note or documentation. However, if you don’t have insurance, going to the right doctor (or any doctor at all) can be difficult. And as a result, you won’t be able to get the documentation needed to become exempt.
This will be compounded if you don’t have the type of disability that can be easily and quickly diagnosed, such as mental health disabilities or other invisible illnesses. For example, my autoimmune illnesses took years of testing and specialist visits to be diagnosed. If I were reliant on Medicaid in a state with a work requirement, I would have had to pay for years of testing and doctor appointments myself before I finding a doctor willing to sign off on a work exemption. People whose income allows them to be eligible for Medicaid almost certainly cannot afford these upfront costs.
The change in policy will also exacerbate health inequalities that are already a massive national problem. Medicaid is a means-based program, meaning that only low-income people (the income cut-off varies by state) will be affected by these changes. An increase in the access requirements, no matter what those requirements entail, will necessarily reduce the number of people who are able to access Medicaid. Any additional requirements will serve to make people who are currently eligible for Medicaid ineligible. In other words, less low-income people will have access to healthcare so more low-income people will have even worse health outcomes.
The states that will end up implementing these work requirements are also the states that tend to be the poorest to begin with, such as Kentucky (the fourth poorest in the country) and Arkansas (the sixth-poorest), furthering the unconscionable poverty and negative health outcomes associated with it.
If this seems like déjà vu, that’s because it is. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The law overhauled America's so-called welfare program and included a new work requirement similar to the one being discussed here. This had devastating consequences for the most vulnerable because as access to benefits decreased, extreme poverty increased. These negative outcomes will happen again with the Medicaid work requirement, except on top of poverty, untreated health conditions will also likely drive worsening health outcomes — up to and including death.
It doesn’t take a political scholar to understand that this is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to eliminate the modest gains in health insurance coverage made by the Affordable Care Act. Around 60 percent of working age non-disabled recipients of Medicaid are employed. The addition of a work requirement moves us further away from the idea of health care as a right and towards an America that does not provide a safety net for the most vulnerable, including people with disabilities.
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ICE Is Throwing Undocumented Immigrants in Solitary Confinement for Refusing to Do 'Voluntary' Labor |
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Friday, 12 January 2018 14:38 |
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Chang writes: "In the latest installment of Our Hellish Country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are reportedly putting undocumented immigrant detainees in solitary confinement for refusing to take on work duties deemed 'voluntary.'"
A prison guard escorts an inmate. (photo: Getty)
ICE Is Throwing Undocumented Immigrants in Solitary Confinement for Refusing to Do 'Voluntary' Labor
By Clio Chang, Splinter
12 January 18
n the latest installment of Our Hellish Country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are reportedly putting undocumented immigrant detainees in solitary confinement for refusing to take on work duties deemed “voluntary.”
Shoaib Ahmed, a Bangladeshi immigrant, told The Intercept that last November, ICE officials at a detention center run by the private, for-profit prison company CoreCivic locked him in solitary for 10 days because an officer overheard him saying “no work tomorrow,” which he says was out of frustration that his weekly $20 paycheck for kitchen work had been delayed. ICE’s labor program is supposedly “strictly voluntary.”
Solitary confinement is torture. If you have any doubts on this front, read how Ahmed, who remains in ICE custody, described his experience to The Intercept:
Ahmed said that because no one outside his room could hear him talk at a regular volume, his only opportunity for human interaction would often be to shout out, though he was prohibited from raising his voice—an infraction that would only cause his sentence in isolation to be extended. “Sometimes I think my head is not working, and I think I want to loudly call them: ‘Release me. Please, take me to some open site,’” Ahmed recalled. “Sometimes I think the segregation will kill me.”
ICE provided little specific comment on Ahmed’s case to the site, but claimed the “use of restrictive housing in ICE detention facilities is exceedingly rare, but at times necessary, to ensure the safety of staff and individuals in a facility.” (Splinter reached out to ICE for further comment and will update this post if and when they respond.)
Ahmed’s story is unfortunately far from an isolated incident. In December, immigrants at a detention center in San Diego—also run by CoreCivic—filed a class action lawsuit against the company alleging they were subjected to forced labor. According to the Los Angeles Times, the lawsuit “contends that facility staff have threatened to put detainees in solitary confinement or take away visitation rights if they said they didn’t want to work.” Just how lucrative were the jobs detainees were passing up? At most, they were paid $1.50 per day.
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Jared Kushner's Connection to Israeli Business Goes Without Scrutiny |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=31019"><span class="small">Robert Fisk, The Independent</span></a>
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Friday, 12 January 2018 14:34 |
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Fisk writes: "Shortly before Kushner accompanied Trump on his first diplomatic trip to Israel in May, his family real estate company received about $30m in investments from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel's largest insurers and financial institutions."
Kushner remains a beneficiary of trusts that have stakes in Kushner Companies, even though he resigned as chief executive in January of last year. (photo: AP)
Jared Kushner's Connection to Israeli Business Goes Without Scrutiny
By Robert Fisk, The Independent
12 January 18
Shortly before Kushner accompanied Trump on his first diplomatic trip to Israel in May, his family real estate company received about $30m in investments from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel’s largest insurers and financial institutions
 here was a time when we all went along with the myth that American peacemaking in the Middle East was even-handed, neutral, uninfluenced by the religion or political background or business activities of the peacemakers. Even when, during the Clinton administration, the four principle US “peacemakers” were all Jewish Americans – their lead negotiator, Dennis Ross, a former prominent staff member of the most powerful Israeli lobby group, Aipac (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) – the Western press scarcely mentioned this. Only in Israel was it news, where the Maariv newspaper called them “the mission of four Jews”.
The Israeli writer and activist, Meron Benvenisti, wrote in Ha’aretz newspaper that while the ethnic origin of the four US diplomats may be irrelevant, “it is hard to ignore the fact that manipulation of the peace process was entrusted by the US in the first place to American Jews, and that at least one member of the State Department team was selected for the task because he represented the view of the American Jewish establishment. The tremendous influence of the Jewish establishment on the Clinton administration found its clearest manifestation in redefining the ‘occupied territories’ as ‘territories in dispute’.
But lest they be accused of antisemitism, said Benvenisti, the Palestinians “cannot, God forbid, talk about Clinton’s ‘Jewish connection’...” Still slandered as “antisemitic” for merely condemning Israel’s brutality and occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the same fear still eats away at the courage of the Palestinian Authority. When Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner became the disgraceful President’s peace “envoy”, the Palestinians, well aware that he supported the continued – and internationally illegal – colonisation of Arab land, even politely welcomed his sudden exaltation as peacemaker. It was the Israeli media that first pointed out how little he knew – and how few people he knew – in the real Middle East.
But Dennis Ross, the ex-Aipac man whose bias towards Israel was criticised by Jewish colleagues as well as Arabs, hugely supported Kushner when he was appointed Trump’s special envoy. As for Trump, here is the official record of his thoughts on the prowess of Jared Kushner: “Ya know what, Jared is such a good kid, and he’ll make a deal with Israel [sic] that no one else can. He’s a natural, he’s a great deal, he’s a natural – ya know what I was talking about, natural – he’s a natural dealmaker. Everyone likes him.”
As a real estate investor, Kushner may indeed be a “natural dealmaker”. But no one expected to discover – as they did in the New York Times a few days ago – that shortly before Kushner accompanied Trump on his first diplomatic trip to Israel in May, his family real estate company received about $30m (£22m) in investments from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel’s largest insurers and financial institutions. The agreement was – surprise, surprise – not publicised. There’s no evidence that Kushner was directly involved in the deal and it doesn’t seem to have violated federal ethics laws, according to the New York Times.
But as the paper said, quite apart from Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Kushner arrangement “could undermine the ability of the United States to be seen as an independent broker in the region”. Tut tut. How could this be? Doesn’t the New York Times accept that Kushner “takes the ethics rules very seriously” (this from a White House press secretary) and that while Kushner Companies cannot be stopped from doing business with a foreign company just because Kushner works for the US administration; it “does no business with foreign sovereigns or governments”.
Kushner remains a beneficiary of trusts that have stakes in Kushner Companies, even though he resigned as chief executive in January of last year. My favourite quotation came from one of Kushner’s lawyers, Abbe D Lowell, who said that “connecting any of his well-publicised trips to the Middle East to anything to do with Kushner Companies or its businesses is nonsensical and is a stretch to write a story where none actually exists”.
So that’s OK, then. And if a future member of a principal US Middle East peace-negotiating team happened – just by chance, mind you – to be a Muslim (his ethnic origins as irrelevant as we must regard Kushner’s) and, while working for the US President, was a beneficiary of trusts in a company that was doing business with, let us say, companies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or – even, heaven spare us – in Ramallah in the Palestinian West Bank, that would be above board, hunky-dory and acceptable practice for a chap whose only desire in life was to bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians. And if those Arab companies were investing in that particular peace-negotiator’s real estate company, no one would turn a hair or suggest that anything was just a bit remiss or – let us not use the word “unethical” for a moment – not really quite the appropriate thing to do.
After all, elected American officials have always been a bit sceptical about Arab financial “help” to the US, even when the aid has come free of charge and with no interest attached. Take Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal – one of the world’s richest men, currently residing on a mattress in the Riyadh Ritz Hotel as an unwilling guest of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman – who in 2001 offered a $10m donation to the Twin Towers Fund, for the families and victims of the 9/11 attack. He also mentioned the Palestinian cause because, he said, “reporters have since the attack repeatedly asked how to eradicate terrorism”. America had to understand, he said, that “if it wants to extract the roots of this ridiculous and terrible act, this issue has to be solved”.
Whoops! This self-evident truth was far too much for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, who promptly told Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to keep his cheque. You can’t offer cash and talk politics at the same time. But it did show how sensitive can be the connection between money – even donations from an Arab – and politics in the Middle East-US axis. No such problems, however, seem to attend Jared Kushner – who obviously approved of his father-in-law’s grotesque decision to accept Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, thus cutting the Palestinians out of the “natural deal” which Trump claimed he could secure. And most surely, Kushner’s real estate company’s relationship with Israeli financial institutions have nothing to do with that.
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