Howard Dean: ‘Well-Educated Suburbanites’ Are ‘Sick’ of Republicans — Dems Will Win House in 2022
Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean (D-VT) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that “well-educated suburban people were sick” of Republican’s 2020 election fraud claims.
He predicted, therefore, they would vote for Democrats to keep control of the House in the 2022 midterms.
Pollster Cornell Belcher asked, “You know, governor, I’m interested. If you look at what Republicans are doing and looking towards the mid-terms, I mean, what do you think about their positions for the mid-terms? When you think they have to win back a lot of suburban districts here in order to take the House. A lot of college-educated white voters here who reject this. We get this idea that Democrats will lose big in the coming mid-terms. What are your thoughts on that?”
Dean said, “I think the danger for Republicans are the voter suppression laws being passed in all these states. I mean, Arizona just makes the whole thing look ridiculous. Even some of the Republicans in Arizona think the Senate has become a joke out there. But their big weapon, their only weapon, is redirecting. If the election were held today, we would kick their butts because I think the public, especially well-educated suburban people are sick of this. It is not just well-educated white suburbanites. It’s well-educated suburbanites, period. They are just sick and tired of all this stuff and they actually love America, and the Republicans clearly don’t.”
He added, “So I don’t buy for a minute we will get clobbered mid-terms. The Republicans will do their damndest with redistricting to cost us some seats. But for every seat, they pick up in a place like Texas they are losing one in New York or in Michigan. So I’m not that worried about it. I think we need to be on our toes. We need to get stuff done. Biden is doing the job that needs to be done. You know that this is a referendum on Joe Biden in the mid-terms. So far, he’s going to win that referendum.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Biden: U.S. to Send 80 Million Vaccine Doses Overseas
(CNSNews.com) – President Joe Biden announced Monday that the United States will share at least 20 million vaccine doses of Pfizer, Modern, and Johnson & Johnson with the rest of the world once the U.S. has enough doses to protect everyone in the nation.
The U.S. shared over 4 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico in March. The vaccine is not yet authorized for use in the U.S. In April, it was announced that another 60 million doses will be sent overseas.
“Remember, this is a vaccine that is not authorized for use in the United States yet, so we're going to be sending it to folks once the FDA has reviewed this and said it safe. This is all the AstraZeneca vaccine produced in the United States will be sent out of the country,” the president said.
“Today I’m announcing we will also share U.S. authorized vaccine doses of Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson and Johnson as they become available with the rest of the world as well. These are vaccinations and vaccines that are authorized to be put in the arms of Americans and by the end of June, when we will have taken delivery of enough such vaccines to protect everyone in the United States, the United States will share at least 20 million of those doses, that extra supply with other countries,” he said.
“This means over the next six weeks, the United States of America will send 80 million doses overseas. That represents 13 percent of the vaccine produced by the United States by the end of June. This will be more vaccines than any country has actually shared to date, five times more than any other country, more than Russia, China, which had donated 50 million doses,” Biden said.
“There is a lot of talk about Russia and China influencing the world of vaccines. We want to lead the world with our values come out with this demonstration of our innovation and ingenuity and the fundamental decency and American people. Just as in World War II, America was the arsenal of democracy. In the battle against COVID-19 pandemic, our nation is going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world,” he said.
The president said that the U.S. will not use the vaccines to secure favors from other countries. The U.S. will work with the international organization COVAX to ensure the vaccines are delivered in an equitable way “that follows the science and the public health data,” he said.
“In the weeks ahead, working with the world democracies, we will coordinate a multilateral effort to end this pandemic. I expect to announce progress in this area at the G7 summit in the United Kingdom in June which I plan on attending. This unique moment in history requires America leadership,” Biden said.
“Beating the pandemic globally is beyond the capacity of any one nation, even the United States,” the president said.
The U.S. will continue to donate any excess supply as it is delivered, “but that won't be nearly enough,” he said. The U.S. must “lead an entirely new effort” where pharmaceutical companies and partner nations “vastly increase the supply.”
Biden also said this is the first time since the pandemic started that COVID cases are down in all 50 states. COVID deaths are also down 81 percent, he said.
The president touched on last week’s announcement by the CDC that fully vaccinated people no longer have to wear masks. He said some fully vaccinated people may still want to wear a mask, which is a personal decision.
“Some businesses may want to continue to require wearing masks. Let's all be kind and respectful of one another as we come out of this pandemic and respect those who want to continue to wear a mask even if they've been vaccinated. Above all, let's work together to meet the target I've set of 70 percent of adults, all adults with at least one shot by July 4. Seven states have already done this,” Biden said.
One in three college students is food insecure in the United States
Since the onset of the pandemic, food insecurity has skyrocketed throughout the United States. One of the hardest hit segments of the population has been students in higher education. Food insecurity now affects one-in-three college students.
According to a survey conducted during the fall 2020 semester from Chegg.org, the research and advocacy arm of the course materials and services company Chegg, nearly one third (29 percent) of students have missed a meal at least once a week since the beginning of the pandemic. In addition, more than half of all students (52 percent) sometimes use off-campus food banks, and 30 percent use them once a month or more.
According to the survey, nearly one third of students reported they had been laid off due to the pandemic, and 40 percent of those who skipped meals said they did so to pay for debt or study materials.
For working class youth, making the decision to go to college means sacrificing basic necessities such as health care, adequate housing, and food security. Under the dire conditions created by the ruling class response to the pandemic, seeking higher education comes at a staggering price for a whole generation of youth.
The cost of college alone is enough to keep working class youth chained to the banks well into old age. The average public university student now borrows $30,030 to attain a bachelor’s degree. The total student debt outstanding in the Federal Loan Portfolio is over $1.56 trillion.
Many working class youth qualify for food assistance programs throughout their tenure at K-12 schools. The USDA National School Lunch Program provides low-cost or free meals to 29.4 million K-12 students of low-income families. The fact that so many children rely on these programs in order to eat each day is a staggering indictment of the difficult conditions facing working class families in the most “advanced” capitalist country in the world.
When these students graduate high school, this meager safety net is no longer available. College students face strict eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
In a report from the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness (NSCAHH) from 2016, 46 percent of US college students reported experiencing food insecurity in the past 30 days, yet only 18 percent of college students qualified for SNAP and just 3 percent received benefits. While there is limited data out on the situation over the last year, one can assume these figures are now much starker than in 2016.
In December 2019, rule changes to the SNAP program specifically targeted “able-bodied adults without dependents.” These changes made it even more challenging for states to waive requirements that someone work at least 20 hours per week, excluding otherwise eligible students from the program.
What this means in practical terms is that many college age students are forced to work 20 hours a week on top of a full class load just to be able to afford food.
Sal, a community college student from Silicon Valley, California, spoke with the WSWS about how food insecurity has affected him.
As a full-time college student, it’s not realistic for me to work a full-time job, meaning that I have limited income. Because of this I rely on CalFresh (food stamps) benefits, which offer just over $200 a month, in order to help with grocery expenses. However, this usually does not suffice. During most months, my benefits are exhausted by around the 3rd week, forcing me to dip into my checking account in order to buy food.
This puts additional strain on my already-shoestring budget and causes needless stress over whether I’ll be able to pay important bills including those for rent and car insurance. While I’m still able to do well in my classes, this stress does have a noticeable effect on my ability to focus on my studies and is particularly bothersome during exams, writeups, and other high-pressure assignments.
Social support systems such as SNAP have been under assault for decades, by Democrats and Republicans alike. Many students are forced to rely on school food pantries to make it through the month.
Arik, a student at South Florida University told the WSWS that being food insecure has affected his academics: “Most of the time it made it harder for me to study. I’d be stressed out and focused more on how I’ll satisfy my hunger rather than passing my classes.”
Arik continued, “It’s made me less energized and lethargic. I feel really weak throughout the day at some time.”
This epidemic of food insecurity affects students from all across the country. A 2019 study published in the journal Advances in Nutrition reviewed 51 studies on food insecurity on college campuses. The review, titled Food Insecurity among College Students in the United States: A Scoping Review, estimated that food insecurity prevalence at universities was as high as 47 percent on community college campuses and 37 percent at 4-year degree universities.
The studies ranged from a low of 14 percent (University of Alabama) to a high of 75 percent (University of California - Davis), and included rural schools such as Appalachian State University (46 percent) and large urban universities like Kent State (37 percent).
The Healthy CUNY 2018 survey found that 15 percent of students at the City University of New York reported they were often or sometimes hungry in the last year—affecting about 34,000 students. Forty-eight percent reported being hungry in the last 30 days.
The rest of New York state is facing similar issues. The State University of New York (SUNY) is offering $1,000 grants for the purchase of refrigerators for on-campus food pantries.
The Hope Center for College, Community and Justice conducted a study of Denver College students in Colorado and found that 40 percent of the roughly 65,000 college students in the city suffer from food insecurity.
At the University of Colorado Denver, the university has created a food bank program for students. All students at UC Denver are provided with 10 points each week to choose non-perishable and personal hygiene items at the food pantry.
Food pantry systems are in dire need of additional funding, but in December 2020 the University of Colorado system provided just an additional $50,000 towards student hunger in Denver, just a few dollars per food insecure student.
Such conditions are a glowing indictment of the crisis facing students across the country. Research by Feeding America has found that upwards of three-quarters of university students are financially independent. That is, they do not have family members to support them financially through their education and must provide almost entirely for themselves.
Students are finding themselves in an increasingly precarious situation as wages continue to stagnate, and as the cost of living and tuition skyrocket. From 1987 to 2017, the cost of tuition at public four-year institutions rose 213 percent (seven percent per year), more than three times the average annual rate of inflation and nominal wage growth since 2007.
The pandemic has greatly exacerbated this crisis. Workers aged 18-24 were the most likely to be unemployed during the pandemic, and disruptions to campus services reduced student access to food pantries and nutritional food. The true impact of the pandemic on student hunger is still to be determined.
Students all over the country are drawing far reaching conclusions from the conditions they face.
Sal explained what he thinks student hunger says about the state of society:
It highlights the stark inequality and unfairness of the status quo. .. expressed by the aphorism ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.’ Basically, our society deems it acceptable that certain people born to unfortunate circumstances must struggle throughout their entire youth just to acquire a reasonable chance at economic security, whereas those raised by more well-to-do parents and who’ve enjoyed a relatively painless life exert much less effort not only to secure basic economic needs, but also to excel and pursue their dreams. Society turns a blind eye and has a dismissive, cavalier, almost nihilistic attitude to what, upon a close and objective assessment, is evidently a harsh injustice.
When Arik was asked what he thought the conditions facing students showed about society he replied that it means “we live in a failed state.”
Report highlights shocking growth of poverty among US infants during the pandemic
Childhood advocacy organization Zero to Three recently released its annual State of Babies Yearbook: 2021. The report paints a grim picture of how most of America’s infants fared in 2020, both prior to and during the pandemic.
State of Babies Yearbook: 2021 opens with a clear and vitally important statement: “Telling the story of America’s babies is more important than ever… even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the littlest among us did not have the supports they need to thrive.”
The statistics are jarring. Twenty-one percent of babies now live in households where there is no working parent. More than 40 percent of babies in the US now live in households near or below the federal poverty line (FPL). The report notes, “Infants and toddlers represent only 3.5 percent of the nation’s population […] but 6 percent of those in poverty.”
The precarious welfare of American babies begins before birth; nationwide, 6.2 percent of mothers either receive no prenatal care or receive it late in their pregnancy. In some states, that rate nearly doubles. In New Mexico, for example, the rate is 11.3 percent.
During the time examined by Zero to Three, the United States continued to lead the industrialized world in maternal mortality rates, with 17.4 deaths per 100,000 mothers. Given that many US states do not provide extensive maternal mortality data, this rate could be much higher. Infant mortality has remained unchanged in the US with 5.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. Like the prenatal care rates, the infant mortality rate varies widely between states; in Mississippi, it rises to a shocking 8.3 deaths per 1,000 live births.
The vast wealth of the American ruling class has not produced better living conditions for the country’s smallest and most vulnerable residents. According to the report, the US ranked 33rd for childhood poverty among 37 wealthy countries between 2018-19.
While Zero to Three clarifies that households with infants struggled prior to the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, its 2021 yearbook shows a precipitous drop in most measures of infant health and well-being, with the sharpest losses experienced by low-income families.
The pandemic interrupted the availability of food and caused the rate of food insecurity to spike. Fifteen percent of US families reported high food insecurity prior to the pandemic, increasing to 26.8 percent in the past year. Food insecurity for low income families rose from 29.2 percent pre-pandemic to a staggering 45.4 percent today.
Widespread unemployment increased the numbers of families eligible for programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) programs. At the same time, WIC participation by eligible families fell from 85.9 percent to 79.3 percent during the pandemic.
The pandemic has also disrupted health care for low-income families, with the percentage that missed well-baby or well-child visits more than tripling to 37.8 percent during the pandemic. This has resulted in 18.1 percent of families reporting missed vaccines for their children.
Before the pandemic, access to affordable, quality child care eluded most American families, particularly low-income families. Since the pandemic, closure of child care facilities has made access even more scarce. This has, in turn, affected employment. Fifty percent of parents who had not returned to the workforce by October cited lack of child care. According to Zero to Three’s data, 82.6 percent of such families were denied unemployment benefits.
Parents who work from home often care for an infant or toddler while working. In many cases, they also oversee older children’s online schooling. As a result, the report claims, “parents are forced to prioritize financial responsibilities and basic needs over engaging their young child in activities that boost early childhood learning and cognitive development.”
State of Babies Yearbook’s admirable work is weakened by its insistence upon a racialist analysis and conclusions. “Simply stated,” they write, “race matters.” According to them, maternal and infant mortality and morbidity variations can “only” be understood through the lens of race. In fact, the disparities cited correlate more strongly with wealth, with poor states and rural populations over-represented in maternal and infant mortality.
The alarming statistics facing American infants can only be understood properly as the product of the accelerated decay of capitalism. Racism certainly exists in the United States, but it exists in service to capitalism, not vice-versa.
The bourgeoisie inevitably use such racialist formulations to triage social spending under a pretense of progressivism. Instead of policies that further social equality, the bourgeoisie instead creates an equity of poverty among American workers.
The Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan (ARP), signed into law on March 11, is one such feint. In a statement on the White House’s website, the Biden administration shamelessly panders to identity politics, claiming that the exodus of women from the labor force due to child care deficiencies is “undoing decades of progress improving women’s labor force participation rate.”
These “decades of progress” benefited the upper layers of the middle class and the bourgeoisie at the expense of workers. In 1996, Biden voted for the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which forced hundreds of thousands of poor women to either stop working or to work for poverty wages without child care.
The ARP has been hailed by the pseudo-left and liberal press because it contains $39 billion in one-time funding for child care supports, in addition to other short-term stimulus programs. This funding, totally inadequate to address the immense crisis detailed in the State of Babies report, is itself a theatrical flourish. These funds will be pared down to laughable amounts, which Biden knows and counts upon. The proposed credits for child care will primarily benefit the more well-off layers of the middle class, who can afford to pay for child care up front, instead of the many poorly-paid “essential workers” who were forced out of the labor pool by lack of child care.
As the State of Babies report demonstrates, America’s smallest and most helpless are in increasingly precarious straits. This will not be remedied by social programs that prioritize race in the name of equity, and it will not be remedied by Biden’s grandstanding. The lives and well-being of children worldwide depend upon the unified intervention of the only revolutionary force in society—the international working class—fighting for the socialist overturn of society and the achievement of genuine social equality on a world scale.
NE IN SEVEN ILLEGALS IN MEXIFORNIA RECEIVE WELFARE
THE STAGGERING COST OF THE
WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND
THE LA RAZA SUPREMACY
DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE BUILT
BORDER to OPEN BORDER’
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/10/spencer-p-morrison-devastating-cost-of.html
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not an outlier: a recent study by the Heritage Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here illegally) cost Americans trillions over the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on American taxpayers.
California Democrats Lobby to Give Health Insurance to All Illegal Aliens
Democrats in California are lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to expand the state’s health insurance program to all illegal alien residents.
Newsom introduced as part of his budget plan an expansion of the state’s health insurance program that would allow elderly illegal aliens 60 or older to become eligible for coverage. The cost to taxpayers is estimated at nearly $860 million.
Democrats, though, said Newsom’s plan does not go far enough and that the state should make all illegal alien residents eligible for coverage. California is home to at least three million illegal aliens.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
“Our ultimate goal is everyone,” state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) said of pushing for more coverage. “I think we are in the best position than we have ever been to make more significant process than we ever have. We are going to keep on pushing to include more uninsured.” [Emphasis added]
California’s Medi-Cal system already covers young immigrants until they turn 26. The state first offered Medi-Cal coverage to children living in the country illegally through the age of 18 in 2016. Last year, young adults were eligible for coverage after California expanded the age cut-off so that it mirrored that of the Affordable Care Act, which allows a person to remain on a parent’s health insurance plan until turning 26. At the time, Newsom called the expanded eligibility the “right thing to do.” [Emphasis added]
…
“Everyone has been talking for the past year or more about how certain communities were disproportionally impacted by the pandemic, such as undocumented and low-income Californians,” said Sarah Dar, the director of health and public benefits policy at the California Immigrant Policy Center. “Now, with the $75 billion, we have to fix those structural issues and ensure the safety net programs help all communities. Now is the time to do as much as we can.” [Emphasis added]
Earlier this month, State Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D) introduced legislation to effectively drive healthcare migration to the state of California with a plan that would allow adults to add their elderly illegal alien parents as dependents to their health insurance coverage.
The California Health Benefits Review Program admitted that the plan would likely ensure that foreign nationals in Mexico and Central America with health problems would migrate to California to secure coverage.
“Although there are administrative hurdles relating to receiving care in the United States for a dependent parent residing in Mexico or Canada, the opportunity to receive care in the United States would be very attractive, especially for those with high-risk conditions,” the analysis notes.
Today, Americans are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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