Welfare

Sunday

Roger Kimball

America’s Somalis and the ‘learing’ explosion

I suspect that Somalis around the country – especially, but not exclusively, in Minneapolis – wish about now that they had spent more time studying the wit and wisdom of Gertrude Stein. Stein, had she lived in our own day, might well have become commissioner of New York City’s Fire Department. She had the one qualification that Zohran Mamdani seems to deem essential to the post. A modicum of fraud among friends often gets a pass. Overdo it, however, and the authorities get waspish Sadly, that was not to be. But there is no denying that, on certain matters, Stein was a font of practical wisdom that remains as pertinent today as it was when she was pontificating in Paris a century ago.

learing somalis

Wednesday

Cockburn

Is Britain’s Rachel Reeves the new Hillary Clinton?

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, the second most powerful politician in the country, shed a few tears from the front row of the government benches in the House of Commons during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions session. Her boss Prime Minister Keir Starmer – to her mounting horror – pointedly refused to confirm whether she'd be staying in her current post. "We’ve got free school meals, breakfast clubs, we’ve got £15 billion invested in transport funds in the North and the Midlands. We’re cutting regulation, planning and infrastructure is pounding forward," Starmer said with affected bolshiness.

Reeves

Wednesday

Batya Ungar-Sargon

Where to find self-esteem

It’s a month before publication day for my second book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. I start an Instagram account in the hopes of drumming up interest in the book on a new platform. I post a few clips of TV hits from recent weeks and follow a few friends. Instagram immediately recommends an article about how to grow your Instagram following, and I click on it and learn that consistency is key on Instagram. Roger that. Later that day, I find myself arranging my overachiever elder millennial self into an artfully nonchalant pose while stirring a lamb curry I’m whipping up for my regular Shabbat dinner salon. “There once was a Batya,” my husband mutters on his way to the fridge. “Now there’s a content creator.

class

Thursday

Teresa Mull

How Fetterman appealed to a suffering Pennsylvania

Dr. Mehmet Oz has conceded to John Fetterman but has yet to say anything publicly, probably because, like many Republicans — myself included — he’s just not sure what to say. How could Fetterman, a tattooed, scowling, sloppily dressed goon with a concerning and unsightly neck lump (when I Googled his name, “Fetterman neck” was the third suggested search term), whose debate performance a mere two weeks ago was nothing short of pathetic, possibly have defeated a polished, successful, well-spoken heart surgeon for US Senate? Fetterman’s victory is almost unbelievable, until you zoom out and look at the state of Pennsylvania and most of the country.

fetterman

Thursday

Teresa Mull

Poverty is a major issue in the midterms

My friend here in rural Pennsylvania is the director of our local anti-hunger program. It’s orchestrated through the YMCA and has been ongoing for years, mostly providing supplemental food for rural children. But the program started running at full throttle when Covid hit in March 2020, and now, more than two years later, my friend tells me they’re doing about 25 food distributions a month — more than they were doing at the height of Covid. What’s more, he’s seeing twice the number of people lining up for free food, and 85 percent of those people have jobs. “When people think of hunger, they think of poverty,” my friend says.

Monday

Teresa Mull

Inflation destroys the small town soul of America

My friend Dave Sr. owns the diner up the road and runs it with his son, Dave Jr. The family business is coming up on its fortieth anniversary, and Dave Sr., who’s eighty now — though you’d never guess it — reflected to me recently on the mom ‘n pop shops that have disappeared over the last fifty years or so. He and another local old-timer counted dozens that used to dot the two-lane road between our town and the next town over. “Now, I don’t think you can count more than five or six [small businesses]!” Dave Sr. said. “And they all made a living out of these places. Between government intervention and red tape and so forth, people are afraid to get into small business.” Running a small business is the epitome of the American Dream.