Senate Debates Taking Back Funding for NPR, PBS, and Foreign Food Aid

The Senate will debate taking back funding already appropriated to PBS, NPR, and foreign aid.

On the table for cuts are $1.1 billion for Corporation for Public Broadcasting which helps fun NPR and PBS as well as $7.9 billion for international aid to relieve famine and quell disease. These cuts are for the current fiscal year, not the future. The claw back would get back money already given and/or stop money already promised.

Ending aid programs could result in the in 14 million deaths, according to some estimates. UCLA researchers estimate America’s aid programs have saved 90 million lives.

PBS and NPR provide access to free educational programming and news to people without cable or internet.

NPR serves approximately 99 million people monthly.

The majority of American homes watch PBS each year – 58%. Monthly PBS KIDS streams reach 345 million people and PBS Kids about 15.5 million.

Ending funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting may impact beloved programming central to the lives of Americans for decades. Shows like Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Wild Kratts, Curious George, Masterpiece Theater, PBS News Hour, Nova, Nature, Austin City Limits, Molly of Denali, and more face severe cuts.

Games may also face cuts. Games like Amazin’ Amazon Adventure, Daniel Tiger Tea Party, Rosie Care, Vacuum Hockey could be impacted by the cuts.

Cuts may also impact NPR and PBS apps including PBS Kids Video, PBS Kids Games, and PBS for Apple, Android, fire, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast, AppleTV, AndroidTV, Amazon Fire TV, Vizio, Google TV, and Comcast Xfinity.

Podcasts like Fresh Air, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Up First, How I Built This with Guy Raz, Planet Money, It's Been a Minute, All Songs Considered, and TED Radio Hour face deep cuts.

Web series from PBS Digital Studios like Monstrum and Otherwords have uncertain futures if the Senate allows the claw back.

Nearly $1 Trillion in Medicaid Cuts Under Senate Version of Budget Bill

Medicaid faces $930 billion dollars in cuts

The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the current Senate budget bill showing $930 billion dollars in cuts to Medicaid.

The $930 billion cut number does not include cuts to Medicare, VA or other health programs which will also experience deep cuts.

“While Republican senators are securing baubles and trinkets for their political donors, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the Senate bill will cut $930 billion from Medicaid,” Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “I urge Republican senators not to travel down this dangerous path: there is no band-aid that can heal these dangerous, deadly cuts.”

Source: https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-statement-on-new-cbo-numbers-showing-more-than-930-billion-in-medicaid-cuts-in-new-senate-draft

 

Farm Workers Are Not Showing Up

Food News: MSN is reporting that Texas farms are shutting down because they cannot get any labor or have large number of workers not showing up. The reporting does not offer any number of farms closing or impacted.

This is a food supply issue.

Food is inelastic. People need to eat food. Lower food supply means higher prices. If it becomes extreme, it could mean not enough food.

Long term this could lead to farm closures. Closed farms will be bought up by large corporate farms and this consolidation lowers competition. Less competition can lead to higher prices. 

 

 Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/content/ss-AA1H5GRH 

 

 

Blood is Not the Only Thing to Spill for Reistance

 

Resistance is not just physically getting in the way. It is making calls, it is volunteering, it is making food, it is talking to neighbors, it is showing up to give emotional support, it is refusing to do business to fund corruption, it is fundraising, it is art, it is songs, it is driving, it is giving money, it is jail support, it is staying informed even though it hurts.

Most of all, it is not soothing yourself by turning away and letting the balm of success be what makes you comfortable.

Pregnant Migration - What Could States Face

Is it time for protected states to start planning to receive people whose babies may be seen as non-citizens in other states?

The court has allowed Trump to start deportations to third countries (not the US or where the person is from) and allowed birthright citizenship protections to be limited to some states.

This could create people with no citizenship. People who had birthright citizenship but born out of the country on bases are already being stripped of their citizenship and exiled.

Moving to protected states will be essential for the safety of those people and their babies. It may be the only way to secure birth right citizenship for those people.

Protected states could see an influx of people needing maternity and natal services.

Is it time to prepare?

Did Trump Just Erase Citizenship for Native Americans?

 Are Native people citizens under Trump's 13th Amendment interpretation that the 13th Amendment is only for the children of slaves?

Native people did not get citizenship until 1924. #trump #deportations #birthrightcitizenship #wheredowego

ICE - Peonage's Son

Understanding Old Fashioned Neoslavery So We Can See Its Offspring -ICE

Slavery did not on Juneteenth, it morphed. The courts said the mutant enslavement was slavery and they said they could do nothing to stop it.

It was neo-slavery. It was not one thing. It was a patchwork of slavery. Share cropping and peonage were two kinds.

People, mostly black men, were snatched off the streets for vagrancy (not having a job) or traffic tickets.

Different places had different systems but generally unless they could afford to pay a huge fine at the time of arrest, they had to stay in jail.

Private companies would pay the fine and bond the worker to the company until the fine was paid off. They also had to pay for room and board.

If they left, they would be taken to jail, and the jail would return them to the “employer.”

This was called peonage.

Share cropping offered black folks land to grow on for a percentage of the crop but they had to buy products at the company store - on credit. They could not get out from under the debts and could not escape the contracts.

The 13th Amendment did not criminalize slavery, nor did it give a process to protect citizens from slavery by governments.

The practice of enslaving people for things like not having a job continued in mass until the 1940s when they needed black men for the war effort and the US government finally stepped in to change it.

It continued in other similar forms in the 1960s.

There are people alive who suffered under these slavery models.

The system morphed and developed mass incarceration model. That uses crime to force workers into involuntary work.

Now we have new people being ripped off the street. Almost none are not charged with a crime, instead jailed for a civil offense. Some are working in Kern County, CA for $1 a day and phone calls costing $5. Prisons out of the country are forcing migrants we sent to them to work without pay. Prisons are being built in the US. To house more captives.

But you can buy your way out if you can buy the $5 million dollar citizenship offered by Trump.

These videos are really worth the investment to understand neoslavery.

Please.

American Slavery Did Not End in 1865 with Antoinette Harrell

Black codes: 5 min

Long but Easy To Understand Explanation By a White Guy (School History Teacher): 1 hour +

Peonage

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/peonage-and-supreme-court

Current ICE Forced Labor

Work for $1 a day

https://calmatters.org/newsletter/ice-detention-where-a-days-work-might-buy-you-one-14-minute-phone-call/

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-human-trafficking-el-salvador/

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