Housing is a human right. We need a national plan for affordable housing →

As Bernie Sanders says in this op-ed, “I believe that every American should have a fundamental right to safe, decent and affordable housing. Stable and affordable housing is not only essential for a person to live with dignity, but without it, economic opportunity is simply an illusion.”

… Though this is the wealthiest country in human history, wages have stagnated at the same time many locales offer almost no affordable housing. Make no mistake about it: this crisis is enriching Wall Street investors and real estate speculators -- and making it impossible for many families to survive.

Data from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies tells the story. Since the 1960s, when I lived in that rent-controlled apartment, the median renter's income has increased by just 5%, while the median rent payment has skyrocketed 61%. It is a similar story with homeowners, whose incomes rose 50% at a time when home prices increased 112%.

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In response to this crisis, President Donald Trump has channeled his own life experience as the scion of a family that gave him millions of dollars to build luxury skyscrapers, casinos and country clubs -- and whose political connections secured him special tax breaks and subsidies. As President, he has used the White House to represent the interests of his fellow real estate moguls.

He has proposed an 18% cut to federal housing programs. He has pushed to dramatically raise rents on low-income Americans who receive housing assistance. He has proposed to eliminate the National Housing Trust Fund, which funds affordable housing and was based on legislation I spearheaded in Congress. And he has signed tax legislation that enriches real estate investors and encourages gentrification, rather than needed investment in affordable housing.

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As one of the first members of Congress to introduce legislation to establish the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund, I believe we must substantially expand this program to build the7.4 million units of housing that lower-income people, senior citizens and people with disabilities desperately need. We must also invest far more resources into maintaining and expanding our public housing stock.

In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we must end homelessness in America by doubling funding for HUD's McKinney-Vento homelessness assistance grants and providing critical outreach services.

We need to substantially increase grants for cities and towns that wish to create community land trust housing. This anti-gentrification tool -- which was first pioneered in Burlington, Vermont, when I was mayor -- allows low- and middle-income buyers to purchase homes at affordable, below-market prices on community-owned land.

We should also support communities' rent control ordinances and their mandates that developers include affordable housing in their new projects. And we must aggressively defend and promote the legal protections of fair housing, so that we are making sure no one is denied housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender or disability.

"Trump Fans the Flames of a Racial Fire"

Trump is a racist (not that he cares about anyone but himself, anyway) and a white supremacist. If we’re going to push back against the fascism that threatens to tear our country apart, we have to recognize this and call him out.

From a week ago: Peter Baker, in the New York Times:

President Trump woke up on Sunday morning, gazed out at the nation he leads, saw the dry kindling of race relations and decided to throw a match on it. It was not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last. He has a pretty large carton of matches and a ready supply of kerosene.

His Twitter harangue goading Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to the country they came from, even though most of them were actually born in the United States, shocked many. But it should have surprised few who have watched the way he has governed a multicultural, multiracial country the last two and a half years.

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His attack on the Democratic congresswomen came on the same day his administration was threatening mass roundups of immigrants living in the country illegally. And it came just days after he hosted some of the most incendiary right-wing voices on the internet at the White House and vowed to find another way to count citizens separately from noncitizens despite a Supreme Court ruling that blocked him from adding a question to the once-a-decade census.

His assumption that the House Democrats must have been born in another country — or that they did not belong here if they were — fits an us-against-them political strategy that has been at the heart of Mr. Trump’s presidency from the start. Heading into next year’s election, he appears to be drawing a deep line between the white, native-born America of his memory and the ethnically diverse, increasingly foreign-born country he is presiding over, challenging voters in 2020 to declare which side of that line they are on.

“In many ways, this is the most insidious kind of racial demagoguery,” said Douglas A. Blackmon, the author of “Slavery by Another Name,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of racial servitude in America between the Civil War and World War II. “The president has moved beyond invoking the obvious racial slanders of 50 years ago — clichés like black neighborhoods ‘on fire’ — and is now invoking the white supremacist mentality of the early 1900s, when anyone who looked ‘not white’ could be labeled as unwelcome in America.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/poli...

Trump's trying to cut Food Stamps to 3 million people

Trump doesn’t care about anyone but himself, so he certainly doesn’t care about anyone who’s poor and needs help affording food. Most of these households include children, disabled people, or the elderly. The cruelty is the point.

Continued:

Trump’s new proposed rule would dramatically weaken the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), by gutting a wonky-sounding but vital provision called “broad-based categorical eligibility.”

This one’s worth dewonkifying, so here we go.

The bottom line?

According to the Trump admin’s own estimates, 3.1 million people will lose food assistance if the rule takes effect.

CBO analysis of prior similar proposals tells us hundreds of thousands of hungry kids could lose free school meals too.

Categorical eligibility (let’s call it “cat-el” for short) has, for 20 years, helped states run their SNAP programs in ways that explicitly help workers and families move up the economic ladder.

Some 43 states have taken it up over the years.

One key example? Cat-el gives states flexibility to smooth so-called “benefit cliffs” in SNAP, to prevent sudden loss of food assistance when a worker's wages go up even slightly.

But if Trump’s new rule gutting cat-el takes effect, it would create a sharp cliff, effectively penalizing workers for getting even a small raise.

Let’s look at a hypo to make this concrete (h/t @centeronbudget).

Take a worker earning $12.50/hr, with 2 kids.

They’re at 125% of the federal poverty level, receiving about $161 in SNAP.

Thanks to cat-el, if the worker gets a 50-cent raise (+$86/mo), the family’s SNAP benefits go down by just $31, a net gain to the household of $55.

But under Trump’s rule, if the same worker gets a 50-cent raise, the whole family loses SNAP overnight, because it puts them >130% FPL.

They face a net *loss* of $75 per month.

They’re *worse off* after getting a raise.

More than 30 states currently take advantage of the option in cat-el to smooth benefit cliffs like this.

It helps roughly 1 million people get needed food assistance in any given month.

Another key example of how cat-el helps families get ahead?

It allows states to lift harsh (and, frankly, pretty economically boneheaded) savings penalties in SNAP.

But if Trump’s new rule takes effect, states would be forced to take food assistance away from families with even modest precautionary savings.

A couple thousand dollars in the bank for that rainy day we're all told to save for? Bye-bye food assistance.

Already, 4 in 10 Americans report they would have to borrow in the event of a $400 unexpected expense.

Meanwhile, research from the @UrbanInstitute shows families in the ~40 states that have lifted or eliminated asset penalties are more likely to have a bank account—and to have at least $500 in it.

urban.org/sites/default/…

Note to reader: If you’re reading this and thinking -- Wow! This rule seems like a blueprint for trapping people in poverty! – then, bingo, you’re catching my drift.

Sidebar: One of the richer moments on the admin's press call on the rule was that Brendan Lipps of USDA (accidentally??) said, to a Q about whether the rule would trap people in poverty:

“we’re gonna continue to issue policies that move people back into dependency.”

Yep.

But wait, there’s more…

The rule is also a backdoor attack on the school lunch program.

This is b/c, thanks to cat-el, kids in SNAP families automatically get free school meals—an important red-tape cutter that helps kids get the nutrition they need to thrive at school.

For many low-income kids, school lunch may be their only opportunity for a nutritious meal all day.

Studies have shown time and again how vital adequate nutrition is for kids’ brain function, school performance, educational outcomes, and more.

A quick reminder of the political context here.

Congress—on👏 a 👏bipartisan👏basis—has repeatedly rejected the very change Trump’s proposing in this rule.

Most recently, in the Farm Bill enacted back in December.

But, as we know (too well at this point), Trump doesn’t give up when he can’t get his cruel agenda through Congress.

Case in point: health care.

After Congress failed to repeal the ACA & gut Medicaid, Trump's done everything he can to sabotage both via executive action.

Now Trump is using the same playbook to dismantle the nation’s largest food assistance program, brick by brick.

Reminder, this attack comes on the heels of a proposed rule that would take food away from unemployed & underemployed workers 👇

https://twitter.com/rebeccavallas/status/1075748746292576256?s=20

Let's not forget, we’re talking about a program that provides $1.40 per person, per meal on average in food assistance.

This is what Trump is so hell-bent on taking away from struggling workers and families.

Meanwhile, let's also not forget that just over a year ago...

Trump’s tax law gave more in tax breaks to the richest 1% -- THAN THE COST OF THE ENTIRE SNAP PROGRAM.

So what comes next?

Once again, this is a PROPOSED rule, which means we have the opportunity to tell Trump what we think about it (and hopefully stop it from taking effect).

The Trump admin is legally required to read every comment it receives in the next 60 days.

@amprog will have its handy #HandsOffSNAP comment tool up at handsoffSNAP.org shortly.

I’ll reup this thread once the page is live.

Can’t wait?

Follow #HandsOffSNAP for lots more from @amprog & our partners @centeronbudget @fractweets @feedingamerica on what the rule would do, who’d be hurt, and how we fight back.

#TheCrueltyIsThePoint

"My fourth open letter to Jared Kushner" →

Dan Drezner, in the Washington Post:

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I used to write these letters to you out of sorrow at your own willful ignorance. This year, my letter comes out of anger, the anger I feel when I see that my synagogue has had to hire armed security because of the surge in anti-Semitism. I am sure you would attribute none of this to your father-in-law. We will have to agree to disagree there, because to me he is entirely responsible. Putting that to one side, however, here’s the thing: As president, Trump has done nothing to combat the racial strife and religious bigotry that has surged during his presidency. That seems like a failure of leadership.

The president is a bigot. You, by denying that fact, are a coward. You have left this country worse for wear, and I look forward to the day when you stop sullying the public office you hold.

Our country's corrupt political system in miniature

If you want to understand how big money has corrupted our political system, check out what Alaska’s elected officials are doing right now.

As Tim Higginbotham writes in the People’s Policy Project, Alaskan Republicans and Democrats are fighting over which public department or service should be gutted the most in order to balance the state’s budget. Current targets are the state’s healthcare program, education system, senior/child/disabled services, and the enormously popular Permanent Fund Dividend which provides every person with a few thousand dollars a year because of (mostly oil) investments. But in the short term, the entire deficit could be plugged simply by ending sweetheart—and market-distorting! (for those who consider themselves market fundamentalists)—tax breaks to the oil companies, which would still be profitable without them. A single Democratic legislator proposed a bill to end the tax credits, and only one other legislator has co-sponsored it.

Instead of doing the most sensible (and easily defensible, from a capitalist standpoint!) measure, elected officials are falling over themselves to cut services that their constituents rely on, instead of ending an unnecessary tax credit to some of the most profitable companies on our planet. Money corrupts. And it has too much influence in our political system.

The Problem of Private Ambulance Services →

David Anderson, writing about his experience in Current Affairs:

The private ownership model for ambulances is fundamentally at odds with its own purpose. In the beginning they were useful insofar as they were an ad-hoc option in a society that gave no thought to whether or not speed was important in treating an illness or injury. However, this jumble of organizations across the nation creates big problems beyond figuring out billing logs. A key problem is the cost of doing business. A single ambulance can cost somewhere in the $500,000 to $1 million range, so any ambulance company’s first priority is to reduce overhead as much as possible... They want to get the cheapest gear, the cheapest ambulances, and the cheapest workers. You will see EMS personnel make fast-food level wages, for what is ostensibly an extremely important job. Paying people by the hour in addition to having prohibitively expensive equipment means EMS corporations need to maximize the workload for a workforce that they keep as small as is feasible.

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The irregularity is just one reason that health problems are rampant in EMS. Overworked EMTs have random meal schedules, eat unhealthy food often, and are too tired to exercise.About 1/3 of EMTs work more than 40 hours a week, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms that they have “one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations.” … No wonder, then, that your average EMT lasts about two years before experiencing “burnout,” the psychological exhaustion that irreversibly damages your performance.

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The usual justifications for free markets fail completely when it comes to ambulances, since there’s no practical way for “consumer choice” to improve services. When you’re bleeding to death, it’s hard to comparison shop—not that you’re even offered a choice. As Harvard Law School’s Shailin Thomas wrote, ambulances function as monopolies, because “the patient faces a market with exactly one option.” Thus even though the ambulance industry itself is actually “quite diverse,” consumers have approximately zero power in the market. Moreover, the company that transports you is usually determined by the contract they strike with the town/city government, not you. You take whatever ambulance the dispatcher sends, and they already got the council to agree to what constituted an “acceptable” transportation fee.

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If we were to design a good EMS system, it would be fully tax-funded, and each town EMS department would be run by the EMTs themselves. They would either act collectively to optimize the place or elect officers to dictate orders. Ideally, to combat fatigue, they would only ever work 4-6 hours a day, 5 days a week. That would require a lot of manpower for 24/7 coverage, but better pay and reasonable hours would lure many highly capable people to the job. Of course, it would cost far more than the current system. But the current system is disastrous, and getting profit out of emergency services means no more thousand-dollar one-mile rides.

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Good emergency medical services are going to be expensive and unprofitable. The sheer cost of operating an emergency response service is why firefighting was ultimately turned into a public utility. In the beginning week of firefighter training, students learn that the Great Chicago Fire was the turning point that led to the extinction of private fire companies and the beginning of fire services as a widespread public utility. Chicago’s fire businesses found it far too expensive to keep and maintain the equipment and people necessary for a massive disaster, which they saw as too rare an occurrence to justify budgeting for it. The same could be said for ambulances…

"50 Million Adults Are Uninsured Every Single Year" →

Matt Bruenig, of People’s Policy Project:

Everyone knows the American health care system is a disaster, but surprisingly few realize just how much of a disaster it really is. One reason for this is that the statistics we use to measure it completely miss how much anguish is caused by people constantly cycling in and out of insurance plans. In prior posts, I have tried to produce some figures that help illuminate the immense degree of “churn” in our system (I, II). In this post, I do the same thing, but with a new data source. What this source reveals is that, in a given 12 month period, 1 in 4 adults between the ages of 18 and 64 — 50 million people — face a spell of uninsurance.

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That’s right: one in four adults between the ages of 18 and 64 faced a spell of uninsurance in the prior 12 months, meaning that they were either uninsured for the entire 12 months or for some period of time during those 12 months. Based on current population estimates, this is just under 50 million people and that’s not even counting children and elderly people.

And a (ahem) vital point, to understand how inhumane our system is:

What’s important to understand about this figure is that it is a direct result of the way in which our health insurance system constantly causes people to lose their insurance at nearly every critical life moment: loss of job, loss of spouse, loss of parent, loss of Medicaid upon income increase, turning 26, moving states, and so on. Indeed, even those who manage to stay continuously insured are nonetheless forced to switch plans all the time, often losing their doctors and preferred providers in the process.

Only a seamless national health plan that keeps you insured no matter what happens to you, like that envisioned by the Medicare for All proposal, can finally rescue Americans from this nightmare system.