Biden suggests GOP would sunset Medicare, Social Security in 5 years; Kamau Bell looks at what CRT, "woke" mean for blacks or other marginalized groups

Recently President Biden has been warning Americans that a GOP takeover of Congress in the 2022 elections could mean that Congress would sunset Social Security and Medicare and require it be re-authorized every five years or it would go away. Padems has a story here.

Factcheck disputes this claim, which seems to be based on proposals by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), which refer to all or many government programs, in an 11-point plan, which sunsets all legislation every five years.

Part of the debate could invoke the debt ceiling, which keeps getting repeatedly challenged by the GOP (particularly in 2011 and 2013), to burn down the systems.  Remember those meetings between Obama and the 'cigarette smoking man', Ohio senator John Boehner. 

The House Budget office says that the debt ceiling is stable until early 2023, when there could be another fight (especially if the GOP wins the races).

Seriously, since Social Security seems to become more precarious, it's pretty easy to imagine proposing means testing for existing recipients (a topic I often discussed on Blogger before I shut it down in January this year).  There is a 1960 SCOTUS ruling Flemming v Nestor (based on a very odd case) which maintains that social security benefits are a “welfare” benefit and are not considered legally earned like an annuity.  (For that matter, one of my annuities, from Nationwide, is doing very badly right now.)

 Evan Edinger (American, living now in the UK) explains how conflict of interest (a big issue in my own life) corrupts all three branches of the federal government. It's 'The major problem with the US that no one is talking about'.  He likes plurality voting, which is practices indirectly in Europe.

On CNN, W Kamau Bell, on his United Shades of America, on July 10, 2022, looks at the controversy over what “critical race theory” and “wokeness” really mean.  'Woke', he says, for black people (and sometimes expanded for other marginalized groups) means 'awake' and aware of the harm from others (whites) under ordinary circumstances (like 'driving while black').

For a subset of LGBTQ youth, (he would mean) it means awareness of the likelihood of being bullied for not being competitive according to traditional gender norms.

With education, most of all in earlier grades, the challenge is to present history accurately, as to what some of our ancestors really did, without indoctrinating students. School systems may go close to the edge with SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) curricula in lower grades. Some efforts have gone too far, dividing students into "oppressors and oppressed" and making it very personal.

CNN Pressroom announcement gives some details.

Yes, it is important to teach what really happened (as so well told by the book and movie Gone with the Wind).   It can be hard to do this in public schools. Especially lower grades, without “indoctrination”. Texas wants to use the euphemism 'involuntary relocation' for slavery (as in the 1997 movie “Amistad”). 

'Amistad' trailer

Extra pictures:

Remaining demonstrators from Women's march July 9. My videos (YouTube shorts: first, short).

(Posted: Sunday, July 10, 2022 at 10 PM EDT)