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27 January 21
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RSN: Mort Rosenblum | Trump Plunder by a Thousand Cuts
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "This will be short; we've all wasted enough words on Donald Trump. But as he sulks in defeat and disgrace, awaiting a second trial for treachery far more heinous than the last, we had best take stock of an America he so badly crippled."
The pandemic will eventually subside. Shocked by a bald coup attempt that might have crowned Trump king, voters may finally unite to rid Congress and statehouses of self-serving snakes. In time, the outside world may again believe in American values.
But headlong plunder of natural resources, Native American cultures and wild splendor – heritage that belongs to future generations – has caused irreparable devastation from Florida wetlands to the northern reaches of Alaska.
The big picture is achingly clear: the plague Trump let run wild has already killed more Americans than Hitler and Hirohito did in World War II. His inaction on testing, masks and vaccinations now causes 1,000 more deaths each day than terrorists did on 9/11.
A Harvard team calculated in October that Covid-19 had stolen 2.5 million years of Americans’ lives. That has since doubled. A lucky few pile up huge profits while the rest suffer. Jeff Bezos earned an extra $68 billion; perhaps 50 million others go hungry.
Damage from the Trump virus is incalculably pervasive. Beyond the fatalities after he ordered a lynch mob to the U.S. Capitol, at least 38 police officers overrun by unmasked insurrectionists have tested positive for Covid-19.
Yet a thumping majority of Republicans, ignorant of facts, or simply ignorant, still rally behind him. He likely won’t run in 2024, but someone else will, on a similar oligarchic, authoritarian platform based on lies and distortions.
Congress is now shot full of faithless partisans fixated on their ambitions. A smattering of conspiracy-theorist newcomers with their own twisted realities stretch the limits of abnormal psychology.
The roots of this American Nightmare run deep. Ronald Reagan set in motion income inequality that is now a yawning abyss between rich and desperate. He dumbed down schools, quashed labor unions, cut taxes at the top and gave big business free rein.
Barack Obama restored prosperity after George W. Bush’s $6 trillion wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But factions hardened in Congress and statehouses. Mitch McConnell’s intransigence eroded a historic tradition of compromise.
And then Trump, the bad shepherd, flocked America, fleecing his sheep-like followers to within an inch of their lives. He used his one great talent – slinging bullshit – to create a base of zealots who politicians and tycoons exploited to their own advantage.
With repeated big lies, a mob-style crook with serial bankruptcies and dubious foreign loans claimed credit for his predecessors’ triumphs. His touted economic miracle doubled unemployment and left behind financial crises that recall the Great Depression.
Last year’s three-month growth spike was no more than clawing out of a hole he dug himself by ignoring the pandemic that, beyond the death toll, added losses and costs high in the trillions to the national economy.
Meantime, former lobbyists and industry insiders in the cabinet allowed big business to loot America for immediate profit as if there were no tomorrow.
Lasting damage is starkly evident in Arizona, from Sonoita, a crossroads near the now-fortified Mexican border, to sacred Indian sites and tourist meccas in copper country to the dwindling Colorado River through the Grand Canyon up north.
For much of a century, federal agencies have fought to protect waterways, forests and wilderness from big mining and petroleum companies while protecting tribal territory and national monuments. Rapacious “deregulation” reversed much of that.
Joe Biden’s executive orders seek to roll back environmental threats across America. But what is dead or dying, bulldozed or blasted, is gone forever. New last-minute permits will be hard to stop.
Arizona legislators and complacent governors have mostly sided with hard-rock miners since before 1912 statehood. They explore on public land, pay only token taxes, and an old federal law meant to develop the West exempts them from extraction royalties.
As a result, companies destroy priceless mountain majesty that returns substantial earnings from recreational use. And executives are generous with contributions to politicians who keep pesky conservationists and other opponents off their backs.
Resolution Copper and Rosemont Mine, projected multibillion-dollar foreign-owned copper mines, are now making the front pages when it may be too late. I profiled both in Harper’s two years ago.
The piece opened with an aerial view of the old Silver Bell Mine, just northwest of Tucson, shielded behind rocky hills and barbed wire from suburban homes nearby. Now, owned by a Mexican billionaire notorious for polluting and union busting, it is no longer pickaxes and burros:
Seen from above, it is an upside-down Machu Picchu: vast open pits terraced deep into the earth, some with bright turquoise toxic pools at the bottom. House-sized trucks haul copper ore under a ghostly dust haze to tin-sided structures for crushing. Waste rock piles high along the perimeter at a rate of 1.8 million tons a month. At 19,000 acres, the mine site is a third larger than Manhattan.
The magazine used coated paper for Samuel James’s stunning photos: panoramas of the Morenci Mine, an eight-mile gash along the Coronado Scenic Highway, and others across the state. Sam focused mainly on San Carlos Apaches at war with Resolution Copper. But the Harper’s display caused little stir over a sideshow in Trump’s circus.
Oak Flat, as holy to San Carlos Apaches as Mount Sinai is to Christians, may be weeks away from being the private property of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, an Anglo-Australian tandem. Trump approved the title transfer in January and shortened a final review period to 60 days.
The mine would drill down from Apache Leap, possibly collapsing its dramatic cliff face, and flooding Oak Flat, where Native Americans have settled for millennia. Huge waste heaps would mar spectacular land for miles around.
Hudbay Minerals of Canada is battling tribes and environmentalists in court to exploit Rosemont Mine in the Santa Ritas near here, a mile-wide open pit, with a looming crushed-rock mountain. It would devastate rare wetlands and an aquifer that feeds Tucson’s water supply.
Both mines would ship ore concentrate to Asia for smelting, with profits going to Australia, Britain and Canada. Executives and top managers would cycle in from abroad, with a limited local labor force to operate gigantic shovels and ore haulers.
The biggest player is Freeport-McMoRan, based in Phoenix, which owns five Arizona copper mines, including Morenci. Its stock price rose last year from $4.82 to $32.49.
State governments can oppose U.S. Forest Service and Army Corps of Engineers decisions if they threaten to pollute air, rivers or groundwater. But although Arizona voted for Biden and a second blue senator, its deeply red legislature is hostile to green.
Disputes work their way through the courts, which until Trump’s massive packing mostly kept destruction at bay. Now, despite years of testimony and damning reports by the Environmental Protection Agency, new judges take a different view.
Two Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, first cleared the way for Resolution Copper in a last-minute rider in an omnibus bill that Obama was forced to sign. Oak Flat had been protected since the Eisenhower administration. Ironically, Arizona Republicans are now hellbent on censuring McCain’s widow and drumming Flake out of the party as too liberal for their pro-plunder policies.
In Sonoita, green Border Guard trucks fill a vast parking yard, a base for the fortified barrier Trump erected at breakneck speed while the nation was focused on the pandemic. Wall construction tore up Indian burial sites and blocked wildlife migration.
To the east, developers plan a huge community that would deplete groundwater, likely drying up the San Pedro River, which attracts more than 400 of the 900 bird species in North America. Each year, they find less water in the internationally treasured wetlands habitat.
The outlook is bleak. McConnell, now minority leader, lost a fight to paralyze the Senate and retain his control. But he is still there. With so many urgent priorities, the environment and land use risk slipping behind on the Democrats’ crowded agenda.
This is a sampling; the list is long. If a president who spent his time watching TV, tweeting twaddle, golfing and nursing an insatiable ego can devastate so much of America in four years, just imagine what a competent despot could do in the White House after 2024.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Voters cast their ballots in Cleveland on 3 November, 2020. (photo: David Maxwell/EPA)
Ohio Nearly Purged 10,000 Voters Who Ended Up Casting 2020 Ballots
Sam Levine, Guardian UK
Levine writes: "More than 10,000 people who Ohio believed had 'abandoned' their voter registration cast ballots in the 2020 election, raising more concern that officials are using an unreliable and inaccurate method to identify ineligible voters on the state's rolls."
List of 116,000 people set to be removed from rolls after election included thousands of eligible voters
In August, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, released a list of 115,816 people who were set to be purged after the November election because the election officials in each of Ohio’s 88 counties flagged them as inactive. Voters could remove their name from the list by taking a number of election-related actions, including voting, requesting an absentee ballot, or simply confirming their voter registration information.
Last week, LaRose’s office announced that nearly 18,000 people on the initial list did not have their voter registration canceled, including 10,000 people who voted in the November election. About 98,000 registrations were ultimately removed from the state’s rolls, LaRose’s office announced last month. There are more than 8 million registered voters in the state.
In a statement, LaRose said the fact that so many people prevented their voter registrations from being canceled is a success of the state’s unprecedented efforts to notify voters at risk of being purged. But voting rights groups say the fact that Ohio nearly purged thousands of eligible voters is deeply alarming and underscores the inaccurate and haphazard way the state goes about maintaining its voter rolls.
“If we have 10,000 people who on their own volition are voting, we know that there’s probably many more who are still living, breathing, eligible Ohioans, who also have not moved, who also have been removed from the rolls,” said Jen Miller, the executive director of the Ohio chapter of the League of Women Voters.
Federal law requires states to regularly review their voter lists for ineligible voters, but Ohio has one of the most aggressive processes for cancelling registrations in the United States. A voter can be removed from the rolls if they don’t vote or undertake any political activity for six consecutive years and fail to respond to a mailer asking to confirm their address after the first two.
Voting advocates argue Ohio’s process essentially removes people from the rolls because they don’t vote, which is prohibited under federal law, and is more likely to target minorities and the poor. The US supreme court upheld the Ohio process in a 5-4 decision in 2018.
Naila Awan, a lawyer at Demos, a civil rights thinktank that helped challenge the Ohio process at the US supreme court, said she wasn’t surprised that eligible voters were flagged on the August list of people at risk of being purged.
“Voting inactivity is a really poor proxy for identifying individuals who may have become ineligible by reason of having moved. The data across the board shows that this is fundamentally a flawed process and there has to be something better to use,” she said.
The recent purge marks the second time in recent memory that Ohio has nearly purged scores of eligible voters from its rolls. Months ahead of a scheduled purge in 2019, the state released a list of 235,000 people who were set to be removed from the rolls. Voting rights groups found more than 40,000 eligible voters included on it and were able to prevent them from being removed.
Democratic and Republican officials alike have overseen purging for years in Ohio, but a 2016 Reuters analysis illustrated the way the practice can disproportionally hurt Democrats. In the state’s three largest counties, voters in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods were struck from the rolls at twice the rate of those in GOP areas, the analysis found. In heavily Black areas of Cincinnati, more than 10% of voters were removed from the rolls between 2012 and 2016 because of inactivity, compared with just 4% in one of the city’s suburbs.
In the months before the 2020 election, Keizayla Fambro, an organizer with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a grassroots group that focuses on empowering people of color in the state, was focused on voter registration in counties that are home to some of Ohio’s biggest cities. She estimated her group encountered one to two people a week who were on the purge list and whom they urged to update their voter registration.
“We would check them on a name and we would be like, ‘Oh my God, your voter registration needs to be updated, you could have been purged,’” she said. “Honestly, it was coincidence.”
For those who move a lot, updating a voter registration was often the last thing they were thinking about, Fambro said. “You’re thinking about, ‘Oh, I have to get my kid in this school. I have to make sure we have somewhere to sleep,’” she said.
People of color, the poor, non-English speakers and minorities also tend to experience more severe barriers in getting to the polls, making them more likely to be flagged for purging under a system that relies on inactivity, Awan said.
“When you’re using something like the number of elections a person has missed, you’re going to, by necessity almost, be disproportionately targeting people who experience more barriers getting to the polling locations to begin with,” she said.
Miller and other voting advocates have praised LaRose for taking the unprecedented step of making the purge list public months ahead of the removals to give voters adequate time to check their voter registration. But simply making the list public isn’t adequate, they say, especially because the increased transparency has underscored the way Ohio’s process can flag eligible voters for potential cancellation.
“Before LaRose, we didn’t have any transparency, so we appreciate that. But what the transparency is doing is actually confirming that there are a lot of living, breathing Ohioans who are getting wrapped up in this process who shouldn’t be,” Miller said.
“It’s been frustrating because to me he’s gotten this false praise of, ‘Oh, he opened up the list for the first time,’ which is all fine and dandy. To me, opening up, being transparent, doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have accountability,” said Bride Rose Sweeney, a Democrat in the Ohio state house of representatives.
LaRose has called for more reform, focusing on centralizing and updating Ohio’s voter registration system. He has backed adopting automatic voter registration, which would help prevent wrongful purging by requiring state agencies to automatically update voter registration when they interact with eligible voters. Currently, counties are responsible for maintaining their voter rolls and compiling lists of people eligible to be purged, a system LaRose told USA Today last year was “prone to error” and “unacceptably messy”.
“The secretary believes there are improvements to be made to the process. I certainly hope you include them in your story,” Maggie Sheehan, a LaRose spokeswoman, told the Guardian.
Some changes are already in place. While the state used to only send voters one notice asking them to confirm their voter registration records, it recently started sending a second, final confirmation notice 30-45 days before the purge takes place. The state also announced in 2018 that voters at risk of being purged could confirm their addresses when they updated their driver’s licenses.
But the fact that Ohio flagged so many eligible voters for removal despite those reforms is still alarming, said Stuart Naifeh, another Demos lawyer involved in the 2018 supreme court case.
LaRose has insisted the purge process is outlined in state law, limiting any changes he can make. But advocates dispute that characterization, noting that LaRose has the authority to improve the process. State law does require officials to remove anyone who receives a confirmation mailer and doesn’t vote for four consecutive years from the rolls, but it doesn’t specify what triggers the confirmation notice. By relying on more reliable evidence that someone has moved, instead of two years of voting inactivity, LaRose could significantly improve the accuracy of the purge process, critics say.
“He is not required by law to do this ... State law allows it, it’s not barred,” said Sweeney, the Ohio state representative. “He is choosing to make this a more expansive process.”
Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio was reportedly an FBI informant. (photo: Getty)
Report: Proud Boys Leader Was a 'Prolific' FBI Informant
Robert Hart, Forbes
Hart writes: "Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys group, previously worked as an informer for local and federal law enforcement, according to court records obtained by Reuters that indicate he helped authorities prosecute 13 individuals on federal charges."
Key Facts
Tarrio repeatedly worked undercover with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on cases involving drugs, human smuggling and gambling, his own lawyer, a federal prosecutor and an FBI agent all said during a 2014 court hearing, Reuters report.
The right-wing leader allegedly turned informant after he was arrested in 2012 for fraud.
Tarrio’s sentence — he pled guilty — was reduced from 30 months to 16, something he attributed to helping investigators resolve his own case, not others.
In an interview with Reuters, Tarrio denied helping authorities investigate anyone and said he did not recall the contents of the court transcript.
“I don’t recall any of this,” he said, flatly contradicting a statement from former federal prosecutor Vanessa Singh Johannes, who worked on Tarrio’s case, who confirmed Tarrio’s cooperation to Reuters.
“He cooperated with local and federal law enforcement, to aid in the prosecution of those running other, separate criminal enterprises, ranging from running marijuana grow houses in Miami to operating pharmaceutical fraud schemes,” Johannes said.
Forbes could not reach Tarrio for comment.
Crucial Quote
Tarrio’s then lawyer Jeffrey Feiler told the 2014 court that his client was a “prolific” cooperator who helped in numerous investigations. At the same hearing, an FBI agent said Tarrio was a “key component” in local police investigations.
Key Background
The right-wing Proud Boys, which were recently designated a “terrorist entity” in Canada, have clashed with racial justice protesters, and attended demonstrations seeking to overturn the election. In a presidential debate, then President Trump famously refused to condemn white supremacists and instead told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Officials are investigating the role groups like the Proud Boys played in the Capitol riot and at least six members have been charged in connection with it. Tarrio was not present for the Capitol riot as he had been arrested in D.C. two days before and subsequently banned from attending protests in the area.
What To Watch For
With the group under investigation over allegations it orchestrated violence at the Capitol riot, Tarrio’s previous involvement with police will likely come under scrutiny. Reuters reports that in multiple interviews, Tarrio said that he would let police know of the Proud Boys’ plans before rallying in a number of different cities. This stopped in December when the police cracked down on the group and there is no evidence of Tarrio having collaborated with authorities since the 2014 case mentioned in court records.
COVID-19 relief may cause problems for small, rural hospitals that struggled to stay open before 2020. (photo: Daniel Acker/Getty)
How the CARES Act Forgot America's Most Vulnerable Hospitals
Brianna Bailey, The Frontier
Bailey writes: "Over the past 10 months, the distribution of more than $100 billion in CARES Act funding for health care providers has been plagued by a dizzying rollout and, at times, contradictory guidelines for how to use the funding."
COVID-19 relief was meant to give a lifeline to hospitals, especially the small, rural facilities that struggled to stay open before 2020. But in states like Oklahoma, problems created by confusing guidelines could cause harm long after the pandemic.
federal economic relief package passed by Congress in March promised to provide a lifeline for hospitals, particularly those in rural communities where many facilities struggled to survive even before the coronavirus pandemic.
But over the past 10 months, the distribution of more than $100 billion in CARES Act funding for health care providers has been plagued by a dizzying rollout and, at times, contradictory guidelines for how to use the funding.The result has been a patchwork of problems for rural hospitals, which were already at far greater risk of closure than other health care facilities and in dire need of help, The Frontier and ProPublica found. The scope of those problems is clearly visible in Oklahoma, which tied for the third-highest number of hospital closures in the country in the nine years before the pandemic.
One hospital used more than $1 million in federal aid to pay off its years-old debt to a management company that left before Oklahoma’s first coronavirus case was diagnosed, a potential violation of federal guidelines that could require the hospital to return the money, according to experts.
Three Oklahoma hospitals that were purchased last year after filing for bankruptcy were unable to access more than $6 million in funds deposited by the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency in charge of the rollout for health care providers. The money was instead deposited into accounts tied to the previous owners, leaving the new owners with few options as they tried to keep the facilities from becoming insolvent.
And administrators at yet other hospitals have left millions in relief aid untouched, spiraling deeper into debt for fear that the wrong decision could force them to return money.
“Every day we have new rules, new guidelines, and it’s a struggle,” said Shelly Dunham, CEO of Okeene Municipal Hospital in western Oklahoma. Dunham said she used only $50,000 of the $3 million the hospital received in April and May because of concerns that the facility would have to return the money. “I can't say we need more money right now. We just need to be able to keep what they've given us.”
Under the CARES Act, funding can be used to prevent, prepare for and respond to the coronavirus or to help with expenses or losses caused by COVID-19. The problem is in the details, which Congress left to HHS.
HHS has primarily managed concerns by publicly releasing responses to more than 100 frequently asked questions. Those responses have sometimes contradicted previous guidance from the agency, leaving health care providers confused about how money can be used and what the agency would seek to claw back. The whipsawing guidance has covered a range of topics, including how health care providers could calculate losses from the pandemic and whether they could use the money to pay for long-term capital improvement projects such as new heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems.
“Hospitals’ challenge right now is keeping their doors open and paying their debts,” said Carrie Cochran-McClain, vice president of government affairs and policy for the National Rural Health Association. “There is not enough flexibility to help providers really use the funds as Congress intended for the kinds of things that they need to address for COVID.”
Rural hospitals across Oklahoma and the country are disappearing at an alarming pace that could hasten without help from the federal government, Cochran-McClain said. In 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic, rural hospital closures reached a record high, with 18 nationwide. Texas led the country with three closures. Tennessee, Kansas and Oklahoma followed with two each.
Last year, despite the infusion of federal funding, another 17 rural hospitals shuttered, bringing the total number of closures since 2005 to 176.
Unlike larger, wealthier facilities, rural hospitals often have only a few weeks’ worth of cash on hand to operate with. Experts have warned that even with the federal relief aid, many hospitals would struggle. But without it, they would surely fail.
“There was a tussle between the desire early on to get funds out quickly into the hands of people and providers who need it first, and also a compelling need to have oversight of where the money is going,” said James Cosgrove, health care director for the Government Accountability Office. After the first distribution of $50 billion in April, the GAO found that the federal government had sent $558,000 to four closed hospitals that either declined or returned the money.
The Frontier and ProPublica found six other hospitals that closed in 2019 but received more than $3.2 million combined in federal relief payments. More than half of the money went to a hospital in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, that closed in December 2019 after state inspectors found unsafe conditions for patients.
The relief money was being used for security and to respond to medical records requests until Ellwood City Medical Center could be sold, a bankruptcy trustee said in a December 2020 court filing. The trustee did not respond to requests for comment.
An HHS official said the agency is “in the process of recovering payments'' from hospitals that permanently closed before Jan. 31, 2020, but would not say how much it was pursuing or identify any closed facilities that had received aid. Officials said they could not comment specifically on the six hospitals identified by The Frontier and ProPublica because the agency does not release information on individual facilities.
The distribution of funding for health care providers is just one example of complications with the sweeping $2 trillion CARES Act. More than $174 billion in temporary tax breaks benefited mostly wealthy people and large companies. The Paycheck Protection Program, another effort aimed at helping small businesses stay afloat, drew widespread criticism after large companies, including the restaurant chains Ruth’s Chris and Shake Shack, qualified for loans, while smaller struggling businesses were shut out. Ruth’s Chris and Shake Shack later agreed to return the money.
The hospital rescue program similarly helped wealthier facilities pad their bottom lines, while poorer hospitals struggled. In the first round of funding, wealthier hospitals received a larger share of the $50 billion than poor and rural hospitals, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research organization. The report found that those hospitals with a larger share of revenue coming from private insurers received about $44,000 per bed, while poor, rural hospitals got about half that amount.
Subsequently, HHS set aside billions more for rural health care providers and for hospitals with a higher percentage of COVID-19 patients. But that wasn’t enough to make up for the inequities, said Karyn Schwartz, a senior fellow for Kaiser.
“I think they (HHS) were under a lot of pressure to do it quickly, and so they prioritized a quick and simple formula over really targeting the money towards the providers who might be most vulnerable,” Schwartz said.
HHS officials said they have repeatedly made improvements to the system in response to feedback from Congress and health care providers. The agency has changed the way it distributes money, seeking a formal application instead of releasing funding to all hospitals. A new $900 billion pandemic relief package passed in December also gave hospitals more flexibility in calculating revenue losses from the pandemic.
“HHS has balanced the need for flexibility in use of funds to stabilize the health care system with program integrity requirements and the responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” the agency said in a statement released before President Joe Biden took office.
“We’re Doomed”
As rural communities across Oklahoma began experiencing an uptick in COVID-19 cases, the new owner of the only hospital in the small Oklahoma town of Prague fought for access to part of $3.2 million in federal relief aid.
The Prague Community Hospital was one of three that in June asked U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Joseph Callaway to help them solve what appeared to be an intractable problem.
The facilities, which included the Fairfax Community Hospital and the Haskell County Community Hospital, were among 11 that entered bankruptcy in 2019 amid accusations that the company that owned them, EmpowerHMS, had engaged in fraud. In a federal indictment unsealed in June, prosecutors accused the company’s owner, Jorge Perez, and nine others of a scheme that allowed rural hospitals to bill at higher rates for blood and urine tests performed elsewhere. The case is set to go to trial in September 2021. Perez and eight other defendants have pleaded not guilty. A tenth defendant has not yet appeared in court.
Each Oklahoma hospital owned by the company was auctioned off by a bankruptcy trustee in charge of settling financial debts incurred under EmpowerHMS.
After unexpected revenue losses from the pandemic, the new owners banked on federal funding from the hospital relief package. But when the money was dispersed, they got nothing.
HHS had instead deposited a total of $6.4 million into accounts connected to the hospitals’ previous owners and managed by bankruptcy trustee Thomas Waldrep.
Since federal rules prevented the money from being transferred, it had to be returned to HHS, Department of Justice attorney Michael Quinn said during a June bankruptcy court hearing.
The new owners would have to wait for another round of relief, Quinn said. Even then, they may not qualify because the money was distributed using the hospitals’ 2019 tax identification numbers and none of the current owners controlled the facilities at the time.
“This is not specific to this case, this is a response to an enormous program of unprecedented size that rolled out billions of dollars on an emergency basis to provide relief and used estimated data to get the money out the door as fast as possible,” Quinn said during the court hearing. “As soon as that happens though, that creates an expectation that, in some cases, the money will not go and land in the correct place. And here, it happened to land in the middle of a corporate sale of an asset.”
Waldrep, the bankruptcy trustee, later said in an interview that he believed the new owners should get a portion of the relief aid but he was hamstrung by the federal rules. The trustee also wanted to use a portion of the money to pay some of the hospitals’ debts from before the sale, including his fee and charges from the management company that operated the facilities during the transition.
“This puts our clients in a very bad position in terms of the continued delivery of care in these very critical needed areas,” Hugh Robert, an attorney for Transcendental Union with Love and Spiritual Advancement, said during the hearing. The Tulsa-based nonprofit that purchased the Prague Community Hospital in May.
Attorneys for the new owners of the three hospitals and for Waldrep asked the judge to allow them to use the money despite objections from the federal government. During the hearing, Callaway grew increasingly irritated at what he viewed as the federal government’s failure to help the clearly struggling hospitals.
The lack of guidance and flexibility from the federal government endangered hospitals instead of helping communities keep them open, Callaway said.
“We don’t do things like this around here,” he said. “All I hear are reasons from the government of why it can't be done, instead of reasons why it can be done.”
The judge eventually allowed Waldrep to reach agreements with the hospitals. As part of the final plan, Waldrep could use about $750,000 to pay his fees and expenses for overseeing the bankruptcy cases. He would use another $1.4 million to pay Cohesive Healthcare Management and Consulting, which operated the hospitals in bankruptcy.
Some of the money would also go to expenses that were incurred before the sale but were directly related to COVID-19.
The Fairfax and Prague hospitals would each then receive a portion of the remaining $4 million. But because the federal government threatened to later take back money it determined was misused, the hospitals would have to obtain a line of credit that would protect the previous owner from any collection attempts.
Dr. Vishal Aggarwal, who founded the nonprofit that purchased the Prague hospital, said he was never able to secure the financing that would serve as collateral because of the facility’s poor financial state.
“If a second wave hits us, we are doomed,” Aggarwal said in an interview.
Coming to Collect
During the pandemic, hospitals were forced to forgo elective surgeries and other nonessential services that help drive the minimal revenue that rural facilities bring in annually. The losses, coupled with the added costs of preparing hospitals for the pandemic, heightened the urgency of obtaining federal relief.
Some Oklahoma rural hospitals received federal relief aid before the coronavirus pandemic spread to their small towns and immediately began using the money without considering how expenses could later be justified.
In May, Cimarron Memorial Hospital, in the Oklahoma Panhandle, was two weeks away from closing. It had fallen behind on state taxes and was working to settle a lawsuit filed months earlier by the electric company after the hospital failed to pay its several bills. It also owed $1.2 million in past-due fees to NewLight Healthcare, a management company that ran the hospital for nearly a decade before abruptly departing in January 2020.
The hospital received $3.5 million in federal relief payments and loans.
Tim Beard, Cimarron’s chief executive officer, used nearly a third of the relief aid to pay off NewLight Healthcare, a decision that experts say could force the hospital to repay the federal government. HHS has called it “highly unusual” that the relief aid could be used for expenses incurred before Jan. 1, 2020.
For nearly a decade, NewLight provided loans to the Cimarron hospital and deferred management fees, under a contract that allowed it to charge interest on the past-due amounts. The company then placed a lien on the hospital’s incoming payments. If NewLight chose to enforce the lien, as it had already done in another Oklahoma town, the hospital would be required to pay the company before it paid employees or covered bills for medical supplies.
Lee Hughes, an executive vice president for NewLight, declined an interview and did not respond to detailed written questions. In a statement, Hughes said that the company acted in good faith by settling for less than what it was owed.
“NewLight did this both to resolve all past indebtedness owed by the hospital, but also as a gesture of good will,” Hughes said.
The hospital had run out of options to settle its debts, said Beard, adding that he believed there were no restrictions on the coronavirus relief money.
“If I didn’t do things as I should have then we will pay the price for that but we got the community taken care of for eight months longer than we were looking at,” Beard said in an email.
Hospitals will be required to start reporting how they spent the federal relief aid, but HHS officials said no deadline has been set. Those that received at least $750,000 must undergo audits that HHS will use to determine whether money must be returned.
“I think there's probably many in the industry optimistic that the government doesn't want to recoup this money, and they're going to come up with a way to allow the hospitals to keep it,” said Eric Shell, a rural hospital finance expert with the health care consulting firm Stroudwater Associates.
By the time COVID-19 arrived in Cimarron County, the hospital had already used $2 million in federal funds. Aside from the payment to NewLight, Beard said he used $250,000 to replace the hospital’s broken CT scanner, $81,000 to settle its debt to the electric company and another $750,000 to cover payroll and other bills.
The hospital still has $1 million in provider relief funds, according to Beard, who did not provide detailed financial records requested by The Frontier and ProPublica. Beard said he hadn’t compiled the information because it doesn’t have to be reported to the federal government until this year.
“If they take back the money or what we have in savings, we won’t survive,” Beard said in an email to The Frontier and ProPublica.
Another Shot at Relief Funding
Despite vastly different problems with the rollout of the federal program, hospital administrators share a fear that money they thought would save them could now accelerate their closure.
This month, Dunham started using more of the $3 million she had been holding on to. The hospital, she said, needs the money. But Dunham said she hasn’t stopped worrying about the crushing financial situation the hospital will face if the federal government disagrees with how the money is spent and asks for it to be returned.
The Prague hospital has now changed hands. City officials who purchased the hospital this month for $1.3 million say they are not concerned about whether the government will claw back federal funds. Instead, they’re worried about getting access to the money in the first place.
The 25-bed hospital has been operating at or near capacity since Thanksgiving, when Oklahoma experienced a spike in COVID-19 cases that continues to grow. The city loaned the hospital $236,000 from its emergency reserves to pay employee salaries in November and December, according to city officials. And the hospital still needs to make various improvements, including replacing an antiquated system that supplies oxygen to patients.
Prague’s mayor, Cliff Bryant, acknowledged the risk the city took in buying the hospital, given the facility’s history of financial problems and the additional pressures from the ongoing pandemic. But, he said, the move was necessary to ensure residents had access to quality health care.
“It’s either that or shut it down, so it’s not a real good choice,” Bryant said.
Bryant said the city plans to apply for another round of relief money, probably early this year, but he worries about another denial. HHS has an estimated $24 billion left to allocate. The agency has not released details about which providers will qualify and how much they will receive.
Meanwhile, the $1.7 million in relief money intended to help the Prague hospital weather the pandemic is still sitting in a bank account controlled by the bankruptcy trustee. He’s unsure what will happen to the money.
“I think one possibility is that it would just get sent back to the government,” Waldrep said.
Biden signed an executive order mandating the Federal Government not renew Department of Justice contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities. (photo: WikiCommons
Biden Orders DOJ to End Private Prison Contracts as Part of Racial Equity Push
Kevin Breuninger, CNBC News
Breuninger writes: "President Joe Biden ordered his Department of Justice on Tuesday to phase out its contracts with private prisons, one of multiple new planks of Biden's broad-focused racial justice agenda." Biden signed four additional executive actions after laying out his racial equity plan at the White House. The actions are aimed at combating discriminatory housing practices, reforming the prison system, respecting sovereignty of Tribal governments and fighting xenophobia against Asian Americans, especially in light of the Covid pandemic.
“I ran for president because I believe we’re in a battle for the soul of this nation,” Biden said before signing the actions. “And the simple truth is, our soul will be troubled as long as systemic racism is allowed to persist.”
“I firmly believe the nation is ready to change, but government has to change as well,” he said.
The actions are the latest in a sweeping first-week flex of presidential powers. Here’s what Biden signed Tuesday afternoon, according to a preview provided by senior administration officials:
- An executive order directing Biden’s attorney general to not renew DOJ contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities;
- A presidential memorandum directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to examine the effects of the Trump administration’s regulatory actions that “undermined fair housing policies and laws.” Based on that analysis, the memo also directs HUD to take steps to fully implement the requirements of the Fair Housing Act.
- An executive order pushing federal agencies to regularly and meaningfully engage with Tribal governments;
- And an executive memorandum directing the Health and Human Services Department and Biden’s Covid health equity task force to consider issuing best practices for advancing “cultural competency” and sensitivity toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as part of its Covid response efforts. The memo also directs the DOJ to partner with those communities to prevent hate crimes and harassment against them.
“For too many American families, systemic racism and inequality in our economy, laws and institutions, still put the American dream far out of reach,” domestic policy advisor Susan Rice said at a press briefing preceding Biden’s speech and signings.
“These are desperate times for so many Americans, and all Americans need urgent federal action to meet this moment,” Rice said.
“Building a more equitable economy is essential if Americans are going to compete and thrive in the 21st century.”
Rice noted in the briefing that Biden’s order to the DOJ does not apply to private-prison contracts with other agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That order is “silent on what may or may not transpire with ICE facilities,” she said, while stressing that the latest actions are “just the beginning” of the administration’s racial equity push.
Biden put racial justice issues at the center of his winning campaign against former President Donald Trump. Shortly after being sworn into office, Biden signed an executive order that established his administration’s social-justice focus and revoked some of his predecessor’s policies.
Specifically, the Jan. 20 action canceled Trump’s order limiting federal contractors’ ability to hold workplace diversity and inclusion trainings, which was signed in September.
Biden also ended the Trump administration’s “1776 Commission,” which produced a report highly critical of progressive ideologies in the final days of Trump’s term.
Biden’s order put the Domestic Policy Council, led by Rice, in charge of coordinating “efforts to embed equity principles, policies, and approaches across the Federal Government.”
“This will include efforts to remove systemic barriers to and provide equal access to opportunities and benefits, identify communities the Federal Government has underserved, and develop policies designed to advance equity for those communities,” that order said.
Biden is scheduled to return to the State Dining Room at 4:45 p.m., when he will speak about his administration’s efforts to contain the Covid pandemic.
Representatives of religious organizations file request for impeachment, Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 27, 2021. (photo: Jornalistas Livres)
Hundreds of Brazilian Religious Leaders Across Denominations Call for Bolsonaro's Impeachment
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Catholic and Evangelical religious leaders on Tuesday filed a petition for Congress to open an impeachment trial against Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro due to his mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic."
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Drilling rigs on public land near Douglas, Wyoming. (photo: Leah Millis/AP)
Joe Biden's 'Climate Day' of Executive Actions Signals Clean Break With Trump
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "Joe Biden is to instruct the US government to pause and review all oil and gas drilling on federal land, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and transform the government's vast fleet of cars and trucks into electric vehicles, in a sweeping new set of climate executive orders."
The battery of executive actions, to be signed by the US president on Wednesday, will direct the Department of the Interior to pause new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters and launch a “rigorous review of all existing leasing”, according to a White House planning document.
The directive opens up a path to the banning of all new drilling on federal land, a campaign promise made by Biden that has been widely praised by climate groups and caused outrage within the fossil fuel industry. Biden has called the climate crisis the “existential threat of our time” and the White House has said the new executive orders will help push the US towards a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
“President Biden and his administration are taking an important step in the right direction by limiting oil and gas development on federal lands,” said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology at Cornell University, who added that the world “must rapidly transition away from fossil fuels” to avoid disastrous climate change.
Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, added that “Hitting pause on oil and gas leasing is a crucial first step toward reforming a rigged and broken system that for too long has put oil and gas lobbyists ahead of the American people.”
Around a quarter of the US’s planet-heating emissions comes from fossil fuel production on public lands and it is estimated a national ban on leasing would reduce carbon emissions by 280m tons a year. Donald Trump’s administration opened up almost all federally owned land to drilling, a move cheered as a job creator by industry but decried by environmentalists and Native American tribes.
“There has to be a balance point: people over money,” said Daniel Tso, a member of the Navajo Nation.”I welcome an end to federal fossil fuel leasing and the necessary transitions to more sustainable economies for the Navajo Nation.”
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas drillers in western states, has said her group will challenge the moratorium in court. “The environmental left is leading the agenda at the White House when it comes to energy and environment issues,” she said.
Biden’s new set of executive orders, dubbed “climate day” by environmental campaigners, adds up to one of the most wide-ranging efforts ever taken by a US president to tackle the climate crisis, building upon his decision last week to re-enter the Paris climate agreement.
Alongside the review of public lands, the Biden administration will install climate as an “essential element” of US foreign policy and national security, craft a strengthened national emissions reduction target and will set a new goal of conserving 30% of American land and oceans by 2030. The new emissions goal may well be presented at an international climate summit that Biden is planning for Earth Day, on 22 April.
The White House, for the first time, will have an office of domestic climate policy to coordinate Biden’s climate agenda alongside a national climate taskforce that will comprise of 21 government agency leaders to adopt a “whole of government” approach to reducing emissions. A review of scientific integrity practices will roll out.
The orders also establish an environmental justice interagency council to address the racial and economic inequities exacerbated by climate change and air and water pollution. Biden hopes to pass a $2tn clean energy package through Congress and he will direct that 40% of investments will be aimed at disadvantaged communities.
In all, the climate package is a strong repudiation of the Trump administration, which consistently sidelined or derided climate science, dismantled policies designed to lower emissions and withdrew from the Paris climate deal.
“This is the single biggest day for climate action in more than a decade, and what makes it all the better is that President Biden and Vice-President Harris are just getting started,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters.
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