New Year (2018), Will Be ______???

Please fill in your own “best” words.

John Hanno       December 19, 2017

We’re approaching the one year mark for the trump administration. Depending on your position on the left – right political spectrum, the score board results are utterly controvertible.

Those on the Ult-Right, believe trump’s been a smashing success. They believe he’s been especially adept at seeming to overturn reams of Obama era accomplishments in the fields of healthcare, the environment, workplace protections, consumer protections and sensible regulations and legislation aimed at supporting all of the above and more.

Old School Republican’s, who use to populate the party’s middle – but have now been mostly relegated to center right history, are more than sick and tired of holding their noses, shaking their heads and making excuses for leaders who have traded principled opposition, thoughtful governance and true conservative ideals, for political “winning” at any cost. Those still in congress are retiring in unprecedented numbers before the chicken-shit comes home to roost.

Progressive and moderate democrats are atypically unanimous in expressing their shock and disgust at what this toxic administration and their spineless enablers in the Republi-con congress have substituted for constructive problem solving and effective leadership.

Trump’s best and brightest, who he touts to this day, have been found disqualified, fired, forced out, indicted, plead guilty or fled the trump train wreck; more than two dozen of these characters departed in just the first year.

Trump points to a Wall Street story praising trumps choices for the federal courts, even after his own Republi-cons in the senate judicial committee have had enough of his nominees who are beyond unqualified.

After Senate Chairman Grassley asked the White House to pull two nominees, they relented and withdrew the nominations of Brett Talley and Jeff Mateer.

Talley, who was picked to be a federal judge in Alabama, had never tried a case before in court and was rated by the American Bar Association (ABA), as unanimously unqualified.

Senators discovered after Talley was voted out of committee that he was married to White House counsel Donald McGhan’s chief of staff. Talley didn’t list his wife, on his Senate questionnaire, as a family member who might represent a potential conflict of interest.

Mateer, nominated for a seat on a federal district court in Texas gave speeches in which he compared homosexuality to bestiality and described transgender children as a part of “Satan’s plan.”

Even worse was the questioning of Matthew Petersen, nominated for the District Court for the District of Columbia, by Republican Sen. John Kennedy (La.), that went viral. It painfully revealed Petersen never conducted any type of trial, only “helped’ conduct a couple of depositions and couldn’t answer simple questions that a 2nd year law student could answer. He didn’t even know what a motion in limine’ is, a routine motion that every litigant must argue before every trial.

Polls are fairly consistent. Trump’s approval rating is a whopping 32%, lowest in U.S. history. 69% of us think Trump’s first year has been a complete bust and 52% think the country is headed in the wrong direction. 72% think trump has done something illegal or unethical concerning the “Russia / Trump thing.”

The closer special prosecutor Robert Mueller and his team get to the top of this dung heap, the more desperate Trump, the Ult-right wing-nuts and the Trump alternative reality TV and media, spew outrageous alternative fact theories. They’re now crying that America’s democratic institutions, and the liberal fake news media, are planning a coup of the Trump autocratic regime. Don’t fall for this Putinesque propaganda.

Trump and the pandering republi-con’s only accomplishment in the last year has been to make the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), more popular than ever.

And now this sham Republi-con tax bill transfers $1 trillion from America’s poor and middle class, to the wealthy and the well connected (like Trump, Corker and all of Trump’s cabinet) and stock holders, 30% of which are foreign investors.

Senator Corker, who just two weeks ago said he wouldn’t vote for this tax bill if it added one penny to the deficit, has now flip-flopped, even though the Repub’s have somehow made the bill worse by giving even more cuts to the wealthy and driving up the debt by $1.455 trillion (final CBO score).

Senator Rubio, who was holding out for a larger refundable portion of the child care credit in the bill, is now happy with the few crumbs (another $300) left over from the large swaths of chocolate cake given to the wealthy and corporations.

Trump, Mnuchin and the Republi-cons keep propagating the lies that this is tax reform that benefits primarily the middle class and will increase jobs and wages, boost the GDP and fully pay for itself.

Lets be clear; this is not legitimate tax reform. This is a whopping tax break for the wealthy and well connected, including for Trump Inc. and for all of his toxic predatory capitalist buddies. There are $1.6 trillion in tax breaks taken every year; this tax bill will only eliminate $400 billion of those tax breaks. And one of the biggest tax break scams, the carried interest exemption – granted mostly to hedge fund managers, survived this phony “Tax Reform.” Trump (dozens of times) and every Republi-con running in the campaign, repeatedly promised they would eliminate this tax dodge. A large portion of the eliminated tax breaks, fall on the 98% of voters who don’t contribute to the Republi-cons, especially in the blue states, who always contribute the most to the federal treasury.

This tax bill will clearly have winners and losers, something true thoughtful tax reform is designed to eliminate. No doubt we needed true tax reform. This was a perfect opportunity to level the fiscal “paying” field, to correct the inequities in the tax system built in over the last 3 decades, a chance to balance the burden between businesses and folks who faithfully pay their fair share, and predatory slugs like Trump and some corporations who enjoy all the benefits of America’s commons but refuse to pay even a small portion of their share to pay for them.

This tax hustle was rushed through in only 6 weeks, with no public hearings, no expert testimony from tax experts and without input from the Democrats, who represent a large majority of Americans. Is it any surprise that only 26% of Americans approve of this flim-flam and 50% believe their tax bills will actually go up. Experts say 83% of the tax cuts will go to the top 1% by 2027 and 60% go to the top 1/10 of 1%. But most of the Republi-cons in the house and every single Republi-con in the senate are all in. After the Obamacare fiasco, these incompetents need some kind of legislative win, even if it’s the worst tax bill in history. And many in congress, like Sen. Corker, have LLC’s that will benefit from this bill.

But where are all the conservative deficit hawks, who railed daily during the Obama administration when President Obama was forced to run up the debt, after the Republi-cons crashed the economy. All the experts told the President that if he didn’t bail out the banks, the deep Republi-cession would morph into a full blown depression. He also bailed out the auto industry, saving more than 200,000 good paying jobs. The auto companies paid back all of that money with interest. But those were mostly union jobs, so the predatory capitalist Republi-cons in congress opposed both bail-outs and to this day, demonize saving the auto industry and their unions.

It appears they have enough votes to pass the bill with just Republi-con votes, unless a few republicans find the courage to honor their oath of office and vote for what’s best for America instead of what’s best for themselves and their failed party. Will Sen. Corker vote for the Corkerkickback and against the people of Tennessee and against what he’s believed in about deficit spending during his entire senate career? Will Susan Collins renege on her promises to the middle-class folks back in Maine to protect their healthcare and tax benefits? Will Sen. Jeff Flake do the right thing for the folks back in Arizona, who depend on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security?

The best thing John McCain could do to burnish his legacy is to stay in the hospital and take care of his treatments. Just on principle, after he made a point while addressing the senate during the ACA debate, about the Senate getting back to regular order and the necessity for bipartisanship, he should send a letter that could be read to the senate before they vote, asking them to vote their conscience, instead of their own best interests.

We know that before the ink is dry on this bill, the “starve the beast” Republi-cons and the deficit hawks just waking up after the holidays, will be back at work lickety-split, proposing cuts to middle-class American entitlements and safety net programs for the poor. But don’t be fooled. They will claim we need the savings for our crumbling infrastructure. But these sharks don’t want to contribute to those programs that could make America more competitive.

America is waking up to this shell game. And progressives should take a few 2017 bows. Victories in Virginia and New Jersey are good signs; and the remarkable victory in Alabama portend great things for the 2018 elections. Democratic Senator Doug Jones, from the deep red state of Alabama, is the real deal. Maybe with his help, we can slow down the damage this toxic administration is inflicting on our environment, our healthcare system, our economy, American labor, our public schools, the separation of church and state and our democratic institutions.

Mr. Jones and his energized supporters, especially African-American women and the 25,000 moderates and old school Republicans who refused to vote for Moore and wrote in someone else, overcame Bannon’s Trump miracle, who the white evangelical christian right still believes, is a gift from God; and who believe if “their God” can forgive all of trump’s transgressions and flaws, then who are they to question such a divine anointing. That is not true Christianity.

By 2027, 107% of the tax benefits in this bill will go to the top 20% of Americans. How can that be you ask? Because the bottom 80% will eventually get tax increases. This is a Republican donor payback tax gift to those who need it the least. The generous gifts to pass through real-estate businesses (many of which are owned by those in congress voting on the bill) will have unintended consequences and create an entire new tax avoidance industry. And more importantly, this will only worsen the growing income inequality for our middle-class and the poor. Hopefully those beguiled by the flim-flam will show their anger in November 2018.

If this tax bill is passed, those responsible for the provisions that enrich themselves and their benefactors and for the unrealistic promises, bold-faced lies, and unintended consequences, will be rewarded with losing control of congress in 2018.

Yes, I believe…This New Year (2018), Will Be a much better year for America! As long as we continue to Resist!

 

HuffPost

63 Percent Of Americans Believe Donald Trump Tried To Obstruct Russia Probe

Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost     December 17, 2017

A new poll has found that 63 percent of Americans believe President Donald Trump has tried to “impede or obstruct” the investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. election and possible links between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin.

A new poll has found that 63 percent of Americans believe President Donald Trump has tried to “impede or obstruct” the investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. election and possible links between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin.

Additionally, 40 percent are convinced Trump did something “illegal” with Russia, according to the Associated Press-NORC poll, while 32 percent believe he has done something “unethical” concerning Russia.

Among those polled, 38 percent believe the Russia investigation is very or extremely important. Yet 54 percent are not confident that congressional investigations into the Russia issue will be fair and impartial. Forty-two percent aren’t confident that the Justice Department’s investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller will be fair and impartial.

The poll found the president had only a 32 percent approval rating, with 67 percent disapproving of the way Trump is handling his job as president. Those numbers mimic the findings of an earlier Pew Research poll.

That makes Trump the most unpopular first-year president on record.

The Russian results were based on surveys conducted Nov. 30 through Dec. 4 among 1,444 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

 

Bloomberg

This Tax Bill Is a Trillion-Dollar Blunder

Congress and President Trump put politics ahead of smart reform.

By Michael Bloomberg       December 15, 2017

The hour is late, but the fight is not over.  Photographer: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg

Last month a Wall Street Journal editor asked a room full of CEOs to raise their hands if the corporate tax cut being considered in Congress would lead them to invest more. Very few hands went up. Attending was Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser and a friend of mine. He asked: “Why aren’t the other hands up?”

Allow me to answer that: We don’t need the money.

Corporations are sitting on a record amount of cash reserves: nearly $2.3 trillion. That figure has been climbing steadily since the recession ended in 2009, and it’s now double what it was in 2001. The reason CEOs aren’t investing more of their liquid assets has little to do with the tax rate.

CEOs aren’t waiting on a tax cut to “jump-start the economy” — a favorite phrase of politicians who have never run a company — or to hand out raises. It’s pure fantasy to think that the tax bill will lead to significantly higher wages and growth, as Republicans have promised. Had Congress actually listened to executives, or economists who study these issues carefully, it might have realized that.

Instead, Congress did what it always does: It put politics first. After spending the first nine months of the year trying to jam through a repeal of Obamacare without holding hearings, heeding independent analysis or seeking Democratic input, Republicans took the same approach to tax “reform” — and it shows.

The Treasury Department claimed to have more than 100 professional staffers “working around the clock” to analyze the tax cut. If true, their hard work must have been suppressed. The flimsy one-page analysis Treasury released — which accepts the White House’s reality-defying economic projections in order to claim that the tax cuts will pay for themselves and then some — is a politically driven document that amounts to economic malpractice. So does the bill itself.

The largest economic challenges we face include a skills crisis that our public schools are not addressing, crumbling infrastructure that imperils our global competitiveness, wage stagnation coupled with growing wealth inequality, and rising deficits that will worsen as more baby boomers retire.

The tax bill does nothing to address these challenges. In fact, it makes each of them worse.

EDUCATION: The bill, by limiting the deduction for state and local taxes, will make it harder for the localities to raise money for education. The burden will fall heaviest on cities with poor students, making it harder for millions of children to escape from poverty — and leaving more and more businesses with fewer qualified job applicants.

INFRASTRUCTURE: Restricting state and local tax deductions will also mean less local investment for infrastructure, and by raising deficits, the bill will constrain federal infrastructure spending. Our airports, railways and roads are in desperate need of modernization, and our energy grids are vulnerable and inefficient. Yet spending on those and other needs, which acts as a catalyst for private investment, will become more difficult.

INEQUALITY: If Congress wanted to raise real wages and reward work, there is a simple and proven way to do it: expand the earned income tax credit. Instead, it seems to believe that lower corporate tax rates will magically lead to higher wages, which fundamentally misunderstands how labor markets work.

In addition, by eliminating the requirement that individuals buy health insurance, many young and healthy people will drop out of the marketplace, causing health insurance premiums to rise for everyone else. This is nothing more than a backdoor tax increase on health care for millions of middle-class families that will leave them with less disposable income for savings, investment and spending.

DEFICITS: The bill’s cost — $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion — makes it more difficult for taxpayers to afford Medicare and Social Security for the baby boom generation, which is now hitting retirement. Republicans didn’t grapple with those costs. Instead, they kicked the can down the road. Ignoring the bill’s price tag, or pretending we needn’t worry about deficits, is like ignoring climate change or pretending we needn’t worry about its effects. I’ll say one thing for Republicans in Congress: They’re consistent.

In effect, the tax bill achieves four main things:

• It takes money away from schools and students.
• It restricts our ability to invest in infrastructure.
• It does nothing to boost real wages while making health insurance more expensive.
• It makes it harder to control the costs of Medicare and Social Security without cutting defense and other spending — or further exploding the deficit.

To what end? To hand corporations big tax cuts they don’t need, while lowering the tax rate paid by those of us in the top bracket, and allowing the wealthy to shelter more of their estates.

To be clear: I’m in favor of reducing the 35 percent corporate tax rate as part of a revenue-neutral tax reform effort. Right now, the corporate code is so convoluted, and rates so high relative to other nations (thereby creating an incentive to keep profits offshore), that the real rates companies pay can be wildly divergent. This is neither fair nor efficient. Eliminating loopholes and reining in the off-shoring of profits can and should be done in a revenue-neutral overhaul of the tax code.

Republicans in Congress will have to take responsibility for the bill’s harmful effects, but blame also falls on its cheerleader-in-chief, President Trump. A president’s job is to get the two parties in Congress to work together. Yet Trump is making the same mistake that Barack Obama made in his first two years in office — believing that his party’s congressional majority gives him license to govern without the other side.

The tax bill is an economically indefensible blunder that will harm our future. The Republicans in Congress who must surely know it — and who have bucked party leaders before — should vote no.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net

Resilience

Kenya‘s Sarafu-Credit: Alternative Economies and Community Currencies Part 2.

By Niko Georgiades, originally published by P2P Foundation      December 7, 2017

Second of a three part series, Niko Georgiades takes on a journey through Greece’s post-capitalist alt. economy, this time by way of Kenya. Originally published in Unicorn Riot Ninja.

Athens, Greece – Experimenting with alternatives to capitalism has continued to become more popular as huge wealth divides devour chances of relieving poverty across the world. During the summer of 2017, a speaking engagement at the self-organized squat of Embros Theater in Athens, Greece, showcased alternatives to capitalism. In the second of our three part series on alternative economies and community currencies, we spotlight Kenya’s Sarafu-Credit.

Community currencies are types of complimentary currencies shared within a community that are utilized as a means of countering inequality, class, debt, accumulation, and exclusion.

With community currencies, lower-income communities are given the ability to improve living standards by building infrastructure sustainability through networks of sharing, providing access to interest-free loans, and increasing the economic viability of the community.

This is a major departure from conventional national currencies. Most are generated today through fractional reserve banking, wherein units (“broad money” or M3) are created at the bank when loans are instantiated and destroyed upon repayment.

Caroline Dama, Board member of Grassroots Economics

During economic slowdowns including the US Great Depression, the “velocity of money” drops as fractional currency is unavailable. Locally issued “Depression Scrip” substituted for fractional money in the 1930s. Today alternative currencies that improve velocity of money by distributing credit creation power to the whole population are taking root in many countries.

The first speaker of the discussion at Embros Theater was Caroline Dama, a Board member of Grassroots Economics (GE). GE is a “non-profit foundation that seeks to empower marginalized communities to take charge of their own livelihoods and economic future” in Kenya.

Will Ruddick, who started the Eco-Pesa (no longer in circulation), a complementary and community currency, founded Grassroots Economics in 2010, which has created six networks of community currencies that now works with over twenty schools and twelve hundred businesses in Kenya.

In 2013, 200 businesses, 75% of which were owned by women, became part of the new self-organized and self-determined community currency, Bangla-Pesa, in Mombasa’s largest slum, Bangladesh.

Kenya’s government quickly saw the formation of these community currencies as a threat. Five individuals involved with Bangla-Pesa, including Will Ruddick and Caroline Dama, were implicated on charges of undermining the national currency, the shilling. They were all eventually cleared of all charges and the Sarafu-Credit system continues to break new boundaries and change the narrative of alternative economic systems.

Sarafu Credit – Bengla-Pesa

Drastic economic and social inequalities run rampant throughout Kenya as at least 46 percent of its population is living in poverty. With basic needs like clean water and healthcare becoming hard to attain, the Sarafu-Credit community currency system was created as a safety net for citizens to improve living conditions.

The word sarafu means currency in the Kiswahilli language. Sarafu-Credit is a system of community currencies used as a “regional means of exchange supplementing the national currency system.”

The community in Bangladesh, the biggest slum in Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa, is very poor and has little access to the shilling, the national currency. Caroline Dama, from GE, stated that the community is “able to come together and come up with a system to exchange our goods and services” using “community dollars.”

These community currencies are complimentary with the national currency and Caroline stated that not all of them work towards abolishing the current currency or system, but that they are “trying to make sure that the community banks have a way to survive in times that they wouldn’t otherwise survive.”

“it’s a form of community governance and self-taxation … the community has been able to come up with its own rules to solve its own problems.” – Caroline

How the Sarafu-Credit system works

GE explains Sarafu-Credit as: “A network of businesses, schools, self-employed and informal sector workers form a cooperative whose profits and inventory are issued as vouchers for social and environmental services as well as an interest-free credit to community members. These vouchers circulate in the community and can be used at any shop, school, clinic or cooperative businesses and form a stable medium of exchange when the Kenyan Shilling is lacking. This injection of money into the community in the form of a community currency, based on local assets, increases local sales and helps directly develop the local economy. Sarafu-Credit, Grassroots Economics’ Kenyan Community Currency program, creates stable markets based on local development and trust.”

Caroline stated that only with a bottom-up approach can the community create economic equality. “Communities thrive when they are able to make their own decisions.”

“Community currency gives that power to the people because they are talking to each other, they are able to exchange, and now they are meeting their basic needs, they have enough to sell and when they sell they can pool their resources together to build that better school.” – Caroline

Graph of how the Community Currency Vouchers operates

“If we have problems in the society we want to deal with … what we do, is we can come together as businesses instead of waiting for the government to do it for us”, said Caroline, who stressed the importance of self-determination and community empowerment.

The community currency vouchers are issued for social services and mutual credit for all sustainable needs of the community.  According to the Grassroots Economics website, “The community currency circulates around the community helping to connect local supply and demand for people who lack regular access to national currency.”

Furthermore, Caroline gave an example of women in a village collectively working on projects together, like helping each other build new houses. They would make each person in their network a new house and they would gather the material needed to build the house from other cooperative businesses.

There was a lively discussion with plenty of questions after the presentation on Sarafu-Credit’s Bangla-Pesa. One of the many questions focused on hatching new ideas around sharing-based communities, instead of exchange based communities that could present inequalities based on the ability of services to exchange. Caroline said,

“We are trying to move into a community whereby we are recognizing individual talents … that there is diversity in the community and that we should move away from the idea that we should monetize that. We try to live in a community that recognizes peoples needs, not monetizing them.” – Caroline

Grassroots Economics have created a .pdf with their user guide and have plenty of resources on their website. The video below shows how the Bangla-Pesa works.

To hear the full speech and question session of Sarafu-Credit click here.
For further reading on the Bangla-Pesa, here are a few attention-worthy papers:

• Complementary Currencies for Sustainable Development in Kenya: The Case of the Bangla-Pesa(PDF)
• Re-imagining Money to Broaden the Future of Development Finance – What Kenyan Community Currencies Reveal is Possible for Financing Development(PDF)
• Trust and Spending of Community Currencies in Kenya(PDF)

Daily Kos

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) Begins To Realize The Terrible Mistake She Made

By Dartagnan       December 08, 2017

No wonder she doesn’t look happy. She screwed Mainers and herself.

You may recall Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) basking in the limelight last week during the run-up to the GOP’s vote to ram through its catastrophic tax giveaway to corporations and other Billionaires at the expense of the rest of the American public.

As one of the so-called “moderate” Republicans, her vote was solicited with tender care by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, who apparently promised her that the American middle class might, just might still retain some meager crumbs left over from his Party’s loot-fest of the public treasury in the form of keeping their property tax and medical expense deductions. She also obtained an “assurance” from McConnell that a 4% cut to Medicare would certainly never be included in the final Bill, once it was reconciled with the version devised by the good, caring Republicans in the House. Hey, she had it in writing!

“There’s a real fear that the tax bill is going to trigger a 4% cut in Medicare,” Collins added. “I am absolutely certain that 4% cut in Medicare that I mentioned will not occur. I have it in writing from both the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and also Senator Mitch McConnell.”

But even these tiny, miserable morsels casually tossed to ordinary Americans were coldly eliminated and deemed too much of a sacrifice to the Super-yacht class and their proxies in the Republican Congress:

News reports this week revealed that House Speaker Paul Ryan told congressional staff after the Senate vote that he was not a party to McConnell’s promise to pass the provisions that Collins demanded.

“She made a political error that’s going to cost Mainers and cost people across the country basic lifelines while [helping] the wealthy,” said [Marie Follaytar] Smith,” [an activist and co-founder of Mainers for Accountable Leadership].

In fact it’s absolutely clear that Medicare is next on the chopping block for Ryan’s willing executioners, precisely as a result of the tax scheme Collins voted for:

As the tax cut legislation passed by the Senate early Saturday hurtles toward final approval, Republicans are preparing to use the swelling deficits made worse by the package as a rationale to pursue their long-held vision: undoing the entitlements of the New Deal and Great Society, leaving government leaner and the safety net skimpier for millions of Americans.

Now faced with a severe backlash back home, the former It-girl with well-known aspirations for the Maine Governorship is feverishly backtracking on her blunder:

Republican Sen. Susan Collins said she may change her vote on the Senate tax bill if amendments she added are not included in the final bill.

Collins believes the amendments she added in the Senate version on property tax and medical expense deduction for retirement funding improved the bill and that in time, it will lower the debt.

But as she told WMTW’s media partner, WABI, if those changes are not included in the final package, she will consider changing her vote.

That’s what tends to happen when you have nine religious leader activists getting themselves arrested occupying your office back home to protest what can most charitably be described as your utter naiveté if not outright stupidity:

It was the second group of protesters this week to be arrested in the offices of Maine’s senior senator while urging her to reject the sweeping changes to the federal tax code that are presently being negotiated in Washington, D.C. On Monday, police arrested five protesters, who had staged a sit-in at Collins’ Bangor office.

But the problem for Collins is that the GOP doesn’t need her anymore. With Mike Pence available to break any ties, and Bob Corker (R-TN) the only recorded Republican “no” vote in the Senate, they already have the votes to pass this monstrosity without her, in whatever mutated form the House disgorges back.

Instead, when Collins comes home and settles down in front of the TV with a nice cup of cocoa this holiday season, she’ll be treated to this ad sponsored by a group called Save My Care:

“Senator Collins said Republican leaders promised her they would fix things,” the narrator intones, while headlines about resistance in the House to her bills flash on the screen. “Now we know they lied to her and Mainers will suffer the consequences.”

But had she done the right thing by her constituents to begin with instead of trusting in a Party that actively recruits child molesters into its ranks, she wouldn’t be in the position she finds herself now, when it’s too late.

UPI

U.N. official: Alabama’s poverty, sewage crisis ‘very uncommon in First World’

By Ray Downs        December 10, 2017

Open sewage in rural Alabama has been blamed for spreading diseases like hookworm and E. Coli. Photo by Philip Alston/UN/Twitter

December 10, 2017 (UPI) — A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States visited Alabama last week and said the poverty and sewage system problems there are some of the worst he has seen in the developed world.

“I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees,” said Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human right, AL.com reported. “I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this.”

Alston is on a 15-day trip of the United States to investigate poverty and visited several counties in Alabama’s “Black Belt” region, a mostly black region that hag long experienced poverty and racial segregation.

One of the issues Alston focused on was the longstanding sewage crisis there.

“Lowndes County in rural Alabama, I saw homes that are not connected to public sewage systems, whose owners can’t afford to install septic tanks,” Alston tweeted Friday. “Many resort to digging ditches & straight piping waste water to within meters of homes, posing serious health risks.”

Local resident and activist Aaron Thigpen has lived in the Black Belt region his entire life, according to AL.com. He showed Alston where he lives — an area where diseases like E. Coli and hookworm, which are both eradicated in most of the country, thrive because there is scarce access to clean drinking water due to the sewage problem.

“These two pipes are the raw sewage pipes coming from the house. And you’ve got your main water line here, and it may have a hole in it, so everyone gets sick all at once,” Thigpen said. “It’s really bad when you’ve got a lot of kids around like there are here. They’re playing ball and the ball goes into the raw sewage, and they don’t know the importance of not handling sewage.”

According to the 2017 Alabama Poverty Data Sheet, nearly 20 percent of Alabamians live below the federal poverty line; nine counties have a poverty rate higher than 30 percent; and the child food insecurity rate is 24 percent (the national average is 18 percent).

Alston said he wants his visit to increase awareness of poverty in the United States, including rural Alabama.

“The hope is that we’ll bring attention to [these problems], just like we bring attention to people who are being tortured,” he said.

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