US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7767

On June 06 2017 14:34 ChristianS wrote:
Representative Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote the following on Facebook:



source

He hasn't apologized, he insists that the post is about terrorists, but I've never seen a clearer dogwhistle in my life.

How much cash welfare assistance families in poverty receive largely depends on where they live, with welfare eroding in every state except Oregon over the last 20 years, according to a new study by the Urban Institute.

The study, released on Tuesday, unveils wide racial and geographic disparities in how states distribute cash welfare, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Two decades after President Bill Clinton carried out the welfare reforms that created TANF, states with a larger share of African Americans tend to have less generous welfare benefits and more restrictive policies, the study found.

These states also have shorter periods of eligibility for assistance, stricter requirements to maintain benefits, and more severe sanctions for people who don’t abide by state welfare rules.

The findings should serve as a cautionary flag as Congressional Republicans propose overhauling other federal poverty programs, said Heather Hahn, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and one of the study’s authors. She warns that such changes are likely to exacerbate existing racial disparities.

“I would predict, based on TANF’s history, that if we were to block grant other programs, we would see similar results, with racial differences and fewer families receiving assistance,” Hahn said in an interview with The Washington Post.

TANF is funded by the federal government in the form of state “block grants,” enabling states to establish their own eligibility rules and giving them flexibility to determine how the federal money is used.

President Trump, in his budget released last month, and Republicans in Congress want to turn other federal assistance to the poor into state block grants, ending the federal guarantee of assistance.

The proposals echo the Clinton-era 1996 welfare reforms which required those receiving cash welfare to work or look for work, and imposed the first federal government caps on how long families could receive the benefit.

It capped benefits at 60 months in one's adult lifetime, but some states instituted shorter limits while other states continue to provide cash assistance for children even after adults household members are cut off.

The Urban Institute researchers argue that many poor families are worse off under this system than they were 20 years ago. The amount states receive in TANF block grants has not changed during that time -- not even to account for inflation.

Today, for every 100 poor families in America, just 24 families receive cash assistance, compared to 64 in 1996. And only a quarter of TANF money now goes towards cash payments, down from 71 percent in 1997. Instead, states increased their TANF spending on promoting work activities, providing child care and preschool education, and offering other services not limited to low-income families.

On June 06 2017 21:31 ChristianS wrote:

Notice the explicit framing of Christendom vs. Islam, and that terrorism isn't actually mentioned at any point. If someone believed that all Muslims should be killed, they could easily look at a post like this and think this guy agrees. Also notice that he says we should do all this to radicalized Muslim suspects, meaning we don't need to know that someone's a terrorist to hunt them down and kill them in the name of Christendom. We just need to suspect them.