'The Trump administration has been castigated at the United Nations in Geneva for consciously exacerbating levels of inequality in America that are already the most extreme in the western world.

The excoriating report on the state of the US nation was delivered to a packed hearing of the human rights council on Friday by the UN’s monitor on extreme poverty, Philip Alston. I... Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, complained that it was “patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America”...

Addressing delegations from 46 countries gathered in the chamber of the human rights council, Alston fired back that “when one of the world’s wealthiest countries does very little about the fact that 40 million of its citizens live in poverty, it is entirely appropriate for the reasons to be scrutinized”. He said that the “massive tax cuts” promoted by Trump would “overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy” while other policies pursued by the US government would stigmatize and punish millions of low-income Americans.

In his most caustic comment, Alston threw back at Haley a term that she herself had used to deride the UN human rights council as a “cesspool of political bias”. Alston said that same council that he had seen with his own eyes real cesspools ­– in Alabama, during his tour of poverty hotspots in America.

“I witnessed raw sewage poured into the gardens of people who could never afford to pay $30,000 for their own septic systems.” '

[theguardian.com]