Scientists give $7,500 to homeless folks, and find that they don’t blow it on alcohol, drugs, or other “temptation goods,” but do a lot more long-term planning, and not only hold onto jobs and housing better, but actually cost the taxpayer less. Caveats: the study didn’t hand money out to folks with substance abuse or mental health issues or to folks who’ve been homeless more than two years. Still, it suggests that a lot of notions we cling to – that folks just blow the money you hand out to them, that homeless folks can’t plan, that dealing with homelessness like it’s a constant emergency saves us money -- are really dumb. I presume I'll be making this point again, though, since I've made it before.
In a peripherally-related note, let us remember, as we contemplate the child poverty rate more than doubling in the year after the Child Tax Credit expansion expired, that this wasn’t just Joe Manchin’s doing, even though his utterance that those people are just using those $250 and $300 checks every month per child to buy drugs will justifiably live in infamy. No, we must remember, also, that 50 Republican Senators didn't lift a finger to prevent it from happening. Our “liberal” media always forgets the cruelty of Republicans, but we don’t.
These are the days we confront a headline like “School District Asks to Stop Being ‘Robbed’” and we leap to ask how exactly was this school district robbed this time. It’s the Riverhead Central School District in Long Island, NY, and the local Industrial Development Agency – which some center-right state legislature long ago gave the right to divert property tax money away from schools, how democratic of them! – has “robbed” the district of some $15 million over the last decade. On behalf of rich developers, I should add. So, you know, corporate welfare.
In a peripherally-related note, right-wingers in Florida get a book called Christian, the Hugging Lion banned because of the two male characters in it. First right-wingers said gay relationships were always entirely about sex even when the gay couple in question didn’t get sexual in front of anyone, and now they think any same-sex relationship, even a friendship, must be sexual. It’s like you can’t win with them! So don’t play their stupid games. Book banners are always losers! Even if they’re also the neighbors who lent you their leaf blower last year!
No a Republican House Rep is not “calling out” Sen. Tuberville for his several hundred holds on military promotions. I mean, if “I really wish he would reconsider this” is “calling out,” then the phrase “calling out” is virtually meaningless. But then I never liked that phrase anyway, so maybe Rep. McCaul is actually doing us a favor by hastening its journey to the dungheap of history! That’s a small favor, to be sure, and slamming Tommy Tuberville for being a bastard/moron would be a much bigger one.
Finally, Republican Presidential nominee-in-waiting Vivek Ramaswamy wants to “diversify” colleges by adding a physical fitness component to SAT tests, saying “it’s a fact” that people who do well on math/science tests can hardly run a mile, when it is actually not a fact. I guess he was trying to say Black and Brown people can all run faster without actually coming out and saying it! But remember: if someone says “it’s a fact,” they’ve already given you good reason to believe it’s not a fact. Facts speak for themselves, but lies all too frequently announce themselves as “facts.”
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