Punishing the poor to support the rich

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson onWednesday will propose to increase the amount low-income households are expected to pay for rent as well as require those receiving housing subsidies to work, according to the administration’s legislative proposal obtained by The Washington Post.

The move to overhaul how low-income rental subsidies are calculated would affect more than 4.5 million families relying on federal housing assistance. The proposal legislation would require Congressional approval.

Currently, tenants generally pay 30 percent of their adjusted income toward rent or a the public housing agency minimum rent not to exceed $50. The administration’s legislative proposal sets the family monthly rent contribution at 35 percent of their gross income or 35 percent of their earnings by working 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage — or approximately $150 a month, three times higher than the current minimum.

The Trump administration has long signaled through its budget proposals and leaked draft legislation that it sought to increase the rents low-income tenants pay to live in federally subsidized housing.

The White House budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year indicated that it would “encourage work and self-sufficiency” across its rental assistance programs. The reforms would require adults who are able to work to “shoulder more of their housing costs and provide an incentive to increase their earnings,” budget documents said.

HUD also seeks to change the deductions that could be considered when determining a tenant’s rent, eliminating deductions for medical and childcare costs.

How did Ben Carson  get through medical school?  He seems to be mindless.  Does he think people are poor because they want to be poor?   I have never seen an administration so Hell-bent on punishing the poor.

There seems to be some cognitive dissonance within  the Trump administration in regards to the poor.  Hell, there seems to be a problem understanding the middle class.  The way to help out the poor is with housing, enough food, and decent medical care. Good schools for the kids wouldn’t hurt and safe, reliable daycare  for working parents adds to breaking the cycle of poverty.

Ben Carson should know this stuff.  His mother married his 28 year old father when she was 13. Later on, after Carson was born, the mother found out that the father had another family he had deserted and never divorced.  The mother divorced the father and had to raise her kids on her own.  (or did she?)  Perhaps Ben Carson needs to just acquire some empathy.  Those without wealth should not be punished because they are poor.  A helping hand up might be what saved his hide.  I would like to ask him.

Dick Black jumps the shark

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

RICHMOND — A state legislator who once flew to Damascus for a two-hour sit-down with Bashar al-Assad took to the floor of the Virginia Senate this week to say the Syrian president might have been framed with a suspected chemical attack — if the attack happened at all.

“It is not entirely clear that there was an attack,” Sen. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun) said in a 20-minute speech on the floor of Virginia Senate on Wednesday. “There was a doctor, from the hospital — from the main hospital in Douma — who has said, ‘We haven’t received any casualties. Nobody has been sent in.’ ”

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a global watchdog, has sent inspectors to Syria to try to confirm whether it was a chemical attack that killed dozens in Damascus on Saturday.

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Cow Pasture Medicine

MoonHowler

Related image

Washingtonpost.com:

Watch this, America. A state may be about to do something sensible, bipartisan and even humanitarian to take care of its people.

It could still fall apart, as it has before. But Virginia’s lawmakers appear to be on the verge of insuring about 400,000 low-income residents by expanding Medicaid after years of refusing to do so.

Remember, Virginia is a place where thousands of people queue up before dawn on one weekend every summer to get free treatment from volunteers who turn livestock pens into medical crash units at the Wise County Fairgrounds because people are so desperate for care.

It’s a scene I visited four years ago when the Remote Area Medical clinic was the only hope for folks with bleeding gums, black lungs, oxygen tanks and broken backs to get treatment.

The rural county still hosts this clinic every year, and what unfolds looks like refugee camps in war-ravaged countries. At midnight before the clinic opened that year, 1,204 people were already in line. And it wouldn’t have been necessary if the commonwealth had expanded access to the federal health-care program for the poor.

Last year, my brother, an EMT, volunteered his time with the Remote Area Medical Clinic program.  He went down to Richmond County, to give back to the community where he grew up.   He felt a tremendous amount of empathy for those people, who lined up before daylight to get medical treatment.  Some slept overnight in their cars.  Some camped out.    I believe he was surprised to see just how much this community needed the services that were provided.

400,000 is a lot of people to be without medical plans. Nearly 8.5 million people live in Virginia.  That’s just under 5% of the people in Virginia without any medical care plan.  That’s just too damn many.

Hopefully Virginia will do the right thing and pass legislation to extend medicaid so that these 400,000 people of all ages can begin to start having decent medical treatment.  To do otherwise is simply immoral.