FiveThirtyEight: Most Welfare Dollars Don’t Go Directly To Poor People Anymore

The 1996 reform didn’t result in a reduction in total spending on welfare, now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Since 1998, the first year for which we have complete data, total TANF spending — both from federal block grants as well as required state matching funds — has remained essentially flat, after adjusting for inflation,1according to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that is critical of welfare reform. Per-person spending has fallen, however: In 2014 there were about 12 million more people below the poverty level than in 1998, according to the Census Bureau. The U.S. population has grown nearly 20 percent during that time.

Perhaps the more significant change, though, is in how that money is being spent. Welfare reform replaced the old, federally run cash assistance program with a system of state-administered block grants. Under TANF, states can spend welfare money on virtually any program aimed at one of four broad purposes: (1) assistance to needy families with children; (2) promoting job preparation and work; (3) preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and (4) encouraging the formation of two-parent families.

Some states have interpreted those purposes — especially the last two categories — “very, very loosely,” said LaDonna Pavetti, a researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. After-school programs to reduce teen pregnancy, for example, can be funded through TANF block grants.

The result has been a dramatic shift of resources away from cash assistance and toward spending on other programs. In 1998, nearly 60 percent of welfare spending was on cash benefits, categorized as “basic assistance.” By 2014, it was only about one-quarter of TANF spending. That shift has happened despite a burgeoning economics literature suggesting that direct cash transfers are in many cases the most efficient tool to fight poverty.

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The New York Times: Saudis and Extremism: ‘Both the Arsonists and the Firefighters’

The first American diplomat to serve as envoy to Muslim communities around the world visited 80 countries and concluded that the Saudi influence was destroying tolerant Islamic traditions. “If the Saudis do not cease what they are doing,” the official, Farah Pandith, wrote last year, “there must be diplomatic, cultural and economic consequences.” [...]

Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian terrorism expert who has advised the United States government, said the most important effect of Saudi proselytizing might have been to slow the evolution of Islam, blocking its natural accommodation to a diverse and globalized world. “If there was going to be an Islamic reformation in the 20th century, the Saudis probably prevented it by pumping out literalism,” he said. [...]

He argued that Wahhabi teaching was undermining the pluralism, tolerance and openness to science and learning that had long characterized Islam. “Sadly,” he said, the changes have taken place “in almost all of the Islamic world.”

In a huge embarrassment to the Saudi authorities, the Islamic State adopted official Saudi textbooks for its schools until the extremist group could publish its own books in 2014. Out of 12 works by Muslim scholars republished by the Islamic State, seven are by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century founder of the Saudi school of Islam, said Jacob Olidort, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Adil al-Kalbani declared with regret in a television interview in January that the Islamic State leaders “draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, our own principles.” [...]

Yet some scholars on Islam and extremism, including experts on radicalization in many countries, push back against the notion that Saudi Arabia bears predominant responsibility for the current wave of extremism and jihadist violence. They point to multiple sources for the rise and spread of Islamist terrorism, including repressive secular governments in the Middle East, local injustices and divisions, the hijacking of the internet for terrorist propaganda, and American interventions in the Muslim world from the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq. The 20th-century ideologues most influential with modern jihadists, like Sayyid Qutb of Egypt and Abul Ala Maududi of Pakistan, reached their extreme, anti-Western views without much Saudi input. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State despise Saudi rulers, whom they consider the worst of hypocrites.

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The Huffington Post: Vatican’s new sex education guidelines sell women short

But at the very least, I would like the Vatican to give up this “girls are pink” and “boys are blue” mindset that is generations out of date.

The Vatican continues to sing the same old song of “complementarity” - that old saw that claims women and men may be equal but in a way that says they’re really not. Complementarity holds that women and men are very, very different - in ways that restrict the women to more submissive and passive roles, primarily nurturing mothers and helpmates. Pope Francis himself has stated that he approves of feminism, but only if it does not “negate motherhood.” [...]

Oh, they don’t call us wimps. They use far loftier terms. “Man is more analytical and has a greater capacity for analysis.” While, “the affective response of the woman is global, and feelings and their manifestation play an important role. They give value to what is spoken. ... Men compartmentalize and internalize affections to a greater extent.”

Worse, this sex education lesson for teens describe women’s bodies like all-night diners: “Inscribed in the woman’s body is the call to WELCOME both man and baby” [emphasis in original]. All we lack is a neon sign. [...]

What’s really sad is that if the Vatican wanted to seriously explore sexual morality in the 21st century, it could take advantage of the groundbreaking, respectful and brilliant work of Catholic theologian Margaret Farley. Her book, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, carefully frames the challenge of living a moral sexual life in the context of emerging science on sexual preference and gender identity. Church officials might have learned something from Farley’s thoughtful and scholarly work. Farley’s insights could have informed a much richer approach to sex education.

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The Guardian: British wildlife needs new laws to protect it post-Brexit, poll shows

Overall, 83% of people said Britain should pass new laws providing better (46%) or the same (37%) protection for wild areas and wildlife as current EU laws, with only 4% wanting lower protection. Of those who voted to leave, 46% wanted better protection, 39% the same and 6% less protection.

The poll found 88% of people wanted the neonicotinoid ban to stay in place after the UK leaves the EU, with just 5% wanting the ban to be scrapped. The National Farmers Union (NFU) opposes the ban, arguing that it blocks useful protection of oil seed rape crops, but the ministers recently rejected an NFU application for an “emergency” lifting of the ban.

EU farming subsidies are currently worth £3bn a year to UK farmers and include some schemes for improving the environment. The poll showed 57% of the public want more emphasis (25%) or the same emphasis (32%) on environmental protection. Only 7% of people wanted less emphasis on environmental protection, while 11% said there should be no subsidies at all.

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Time: Re-Discovering the Italian Kingdom of Two Sicilies

This myth is particularly important to the Independent Neapolitan Nation and a wider group of southern Italians called Neo-Bourbons. Part cultural heritage organization, part secessionist movement, the devout members believe the 1860 unification of Italy was wrong and wish to restore the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies and crown the rightful heir of the House of Bourbons. [...]

The north-led unification left some feeling liberated, especially the wealthy landowning elite while others felt conquered and excluded. Ninety percent of the south didn’t even speak Italian at the time when Turin was named the new nation’s capital city. “Naples had been a capital of a kingdom for hundreds of years,” says Dr. Enrico Dal Lago, a National University of Ireland lecturer who researches links between American and Italian history. “That was a strong regional culture that simply vanished into thin air and became incorporated into this Kingdom of Italy overnight.”

Coincidently, America’s Civil War raged at the same time, and to some, distinctly mirrored the Italian conflict: an unjust northern power smothering an independent southern nation and its way of life. Some southern Italians looked to the American Confederates as brothers in arms, feeling slighted by the north for various reasons. In 2015, the south was half as wealthy in terms of GDP with twice as high unemployment according to The Economist. Only 65% of households have access to broadband internet, 10% less than in the north. But nowhere has the symbolic disconnect between north and south been so visible as the Salerno Reggio Calabria Highway. The highway has been under construction since the 1960s and should connect the southwestern coast of the Italian peninsula with the rest of Italy and Europe. North Italy’s section of this highway was completed half a century ago.

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