ANS -- China Fixed It

Here is a short article about how we have become China, in one aspect anyway: hunger.   China fixed it, we are just hiding it.

Mariana Hernandez

 

Suggested for you ·9 hours ago ·

For generations, American parents told their kids "eat all your food, there are starving children in China." Later it became Africa.

Nobody says China anymore. China fixed it.

And this week the man who runs China got a red carpet and a plate of sea bass at the White House, served by the same administration whose vice president, JD Vance, called the Chinese people "peasants."

Well, the peasants came to dinner, and they didn't leave hungry.

Now let's talk about who does.

Three days ago Fox 5 Atlanta ran a story. Not CNN, not the "liberal media." Fox.

C.J. Hicks Elementary in Conyers, Georgia, a MAGA state, opened a free grocery store inside the school so families could take food home. Fruit, 

vegetables, milk, pancakes on a stick. Unexcused absences dropped 42%.

The richest country in the world, and a school had to open a grocery store so the kids would show up. And they showed up.

And don't tell me it's one school. In 2024, 14 million children in this country were food insecure. The states with the highest rates are Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi.

Deep red, every one of them.

In Mississippi it's one in four kids. In Lee County, Arkansas, 45%. Almost half the kids in that county aren't sure there's enough food at home, and the county keeps voting for the people who cut it.

I know what some of you are already typing. "2024? That was Biden."

Ok. Show me 2025. Show me 2026. Go ahead, I'll wait.

You can't.

In September 2025 this administration canceled the report.

The USDA had measured hunger in this country every single year since 1995. Thirty years. Republican president, Democrat president, didn't matter, they counted.

And this administration shut it down, saying it did "nothing more than fear monger." Right after cutting $186 billion from SNAP.

They cut the food, then they stopped counting the hungry.

And you don't need a USDA report anyway. You need a receipt. You were at the register this week. You saw the total. You know.

So let me ask you something, and be honest. When was the last time you ate sea bass?

Because they had it Thursday night. On your dime.

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ANS -- Adam Kinzinger on Mamdani and Progressive Politics

This was posted by Marlene McCall, and it's by Adam Kinzinger.  It's a very interesting analysis of Zohran Mamdani.  

--Kim

a day ago ·

Remember Adam Kinzinger? He was one of only two Republicans who joined all Democrats in voting to create a January 6 House select committee, along with Liz Cheney. And he subsequently was appointed to serve on that committee.

Here he writes about mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani. Not just an opinion piece about the man or his role, but placing those things in the context of progressive politics. A pretty interesting read. He addresses points I haven't seen made elsewhere.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger

 

a day ago ·

You might be surprised to hear me say this, but I think Zohran Mamdani is the future of the Democratic Party. Just not for the reasons you probably think.

Right now, the most-watched politician in America is a 34-year-old democratic socialist who serves as New York City’s mayor. His enemies think he’s a Manchurian candidate. His fans think he’s a revolution.

And I think Zohran Mamdani is going to shape the Democratic Party for the next decade for reasons beyond the social media videos that vaulted him to stardom or the controversies that come with governing.

Let me start with what you already know. He set the political world on fire seemingly overnight. He is telegenic, quick, disarmingly funny, and he runs one of the most relentless media operations in American politics. He understands the media ecosystem we all live in now better than anyone. In an environment that rewards speed, personality, and a camera you’re not afraid of, he is close to a perfect specimen.

But that’s what we all see on social media. The interesting part is what happens when you slow down and let him actually think out loud.

Because when Mamdani gets a longer format , he shows a deeply strategic mind that rarely makes it into the viral, short-form videos. And more surprising, he demonstrates a streak of pragmatism that is at odds with the cartoon version of him that both his fans and his enemies have drawn.

At a recent summit of mayors, he was asked about the state of the left, and he said something fascinating. He argued that progressives have essentially surrendered enormous political territory without a fight.

“Quality of life has come to be seen as somehow a right-wing concern. Efficiency…has been taken on as a right-wing concern. Rooting out fraud and waste, a right-wing concern.”

- Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Not what you’d expect to hear from the poster boy for the DSA, is it?

But he’s right. Somewhere along the way, the left decided that ordinary human concerns, like whether the streets feel safe and clean, whether government actually works, whether taxpayer money is spent without waste, meant you were hiding Ayn Rand novels in your attic.

Instead of owning the very issues they were trying to solve with an involved government, they ceded the ground. And Mamdani’s point is that ceding the ground just hands the issue to the right, gift-wrapped and ready to be turned into attack ads.

Here’s how he put the consequence:

“If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’”

- Mayor Zohran Mamdani

I’ve read plenty of Democrats lamenting that the party still fails to connect with voters, even when Donald Trump’s approval ratings have collapsed. Mamdani gives them a clear answer why.

If you genuinely believe that the government can do good in people’s lives, then you should be obsessed with making it run well. You should want to be the party that hunts down waste, fraud, and abuse and fixes the broken agency, because a government that works is the best argument your side has.

Instead, by treating efficiency and quality of life as conservative traps, Democrats too often ended up as the defenders of a status quo that hardly any American actually likes.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Most Democrats who said something like Mamdani would get skewered. Called a squish or neoliberal or worse.

The reason Mamdani can say these things is the same reason certain other politicians have been able to move their parties.

Richard Nixon could go to China because no one on earth could credibly call Nixon soft on communism. His hawkish bona fides were so airtight that he had the freedom to do the once-unthinkable thing, and his base followed him rather than revolting.

More recently, Donald Trump could drag the Republican Party into unthinkable positions because the base had already decided he was one of them. His loyalty, (unlike his presidency) was unimpeachable, so he got latitude nobody else received.

To be clear, I am not comparing Mamdani to Nixon and Trump on substance or character. But what they share is the latitude to take positions nobody else in their parties can and change opinions in the process. This is perhaps the most valuable currency in politics.

Mamdani is, to his base, one of them. He ran as a democratic socialist and won, and no one is going to accuse him of being a closet centrist or a sellout to capitalism. Which means he has room to say the hard things without being branded as a traitor.

Now imagine a moderate Democrat delivering those exact same lines about efficiency and waste and quality of life. They’d be accused of parroting Republican talking points before they finished the sentence.

To his credit Mamdani has already walked the efficiency walk. In his first Mayor’s Management Report, an audit showed measurable gains in government performance on things citizens actually care about: pothole repairs up 27%, composting up 25% to a record, speed bump installations up 25%.

And in May, Mamdani launched COGE (the Commission on Government Efficiency) to find even more ways to make city government work better. In doing so, he went straight at Elon Musk’s pet agency DOGE in an attempt to wrest back the mantle of good governance from the chainsaw-wielding billionaire.

That’s why I keep my eye on him. Not because I agree with him on every policy. But because he has a sharp strategic mind and the credibility to say uncomfortable truths to his own people and be heard rather than exiled.

Mamdani is a serious politician who is playing a longer game than his critics realize.

Underestimate him at your own peril.

— Adam

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ANS -- Inequality is a failure of capitalism; Poverty is a failure of capitalism

This is a fairly short essay on how capitalism is failing and  -- well, as they say, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable".  It is a warning that our economics has gone too far.

A quote that I often post is this: 

“Capitalism is like fire — it can produce great good or great harm, but to be good it must be carefully, scrupulously, and completely controlled.”  and also: "Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich."

--Kim

[It wouldn't select the author along with the text, and when I went back to get the author's name to put at the top, the facebook page renewed itself so I can't find it.  I think his name was Steven Jellon.]

go ·

Our nation is getting richer and poorer at the same time. Total wealth is increasing (at least for the time being) but it is concentrating so intensely that many Americans are getting poorer even as wealth increases overall. A few Americans garner an ever-larger share of total wealth, leaving many with an ever-smaller share.

This is not just the few capturing the lion's share of new wealth. The top is actively taking wealth from the bottom. The bottom half of Americans are depleting their savings and going into debt paying the top for the necessities of life. What little wealth they have is flowing away, heading for the top. 40 million Americans have zero net worth, 14 million have negative net worth. Almost half of Americans have no reserve whatsoever. As the old working man's song put it, "Everyday older and deeper in debt."

The bottom half increasingly rely on the government's assistance to live. Some of those who don't (yet) need help see that as taking from the productive to support the unproductive. It is exactly that. Those who deride government assurances as "socialism" want to curtail it as though that were possible..

Inequality is a failure of capitalism. If capitalism cannot provide at least minimally to everyone, then it is not a successful system. Consider what happens to the bottom if government assistance is curtailed? And importantly, think about what folks deprived in the midst of plenty might do to the top? People will not sit and starve just because well-provided folks don't want to share the bounty of their capitalism. Poverty is a failure of capitalism.

Egalitarian capitalism is a necessity, not an option to be foregone at will. Passing laws codifying inequality will be no protection. Providing for those whom capitalism overlooks is paying to protect oneself as from any natural disaster. Pass laws against earthquakes and see what it gets you. Humanity has "earthquakes" too. They will not be stopped by statutes.

Buy the insurance that social government provides. Give the poor what your capitalism does not provide them or face the consequences. Capitalism's failure remains uncorrected and you could get real socialism. That has happened disastrously in large swaths of the world. It is exactly how we got that 300-pound walking, stinking disaster that is Donald Trump.

It is your capitalism; you are responsible for it. It is not for the poor to bear the entire cost of its failures. Make it work at least minimally for all; or share its fruits. Or continue the self-righteous financial moralization and take what happens.

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