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Robert Reich | The Problem Isn't "Woke" Capitalism. It's Corporate Capitalism.
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Substack
Reich writes: "For nearly two decades, major corporations have touted principles known as E.S.G. (short for environmental, social, and governance factors), ostensibly by focusing their businesses on these concerns as well as on profits."
The problem isn't “woke” capitalism. It’s corporate capitalism.
Friends,
For nearly two decades, major corporations have touted principles known as E.S.G. (short for environmental, social, and governance factors), ostensibly by focusing their businesses on these concerns as well as on profits.
But now Republicans are taking aim at this approach, calling it “woke capitalism” and using it to demonstrate that Democrats and progressives are trying to impose their views on the rest of society.
In other words, the fight over E.S.G. is extending America’s culture war into the C-suites of big American corporations.
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans, helped by two Democratic defectors, voted to block a Labor Department rule allowing retirement plan managers to include E.S.G. considerations in their investment plans. The vote is likely to draw President Biden’s first veto.
Republicans are right about E.S.G. — but for the wrong reason.
The problem with E.S.G. isn’t woke capitalism. It’s corporate capitalism. Corporate money has corrupted American politics so much that our democracy cannot effectively deal with environmental and social concerns.
CEOs and pension fund managers who tout their records on E.S.G. are engaged in a kind of social greenwashing — designed to burnish their brands and attract investors (including retirees) who want to believe they’re doing good while they’re also doing well.
But most of this is baloney. Investors don’t want to do good at the expense of doing well. They’re unwilling to sacrifice shareholder returns to advance their environmental and social values. They want high returns and they want environmental and social goals. But they can’t have both. They’d do more good by donating to nonprofits seeking to protect the environment and advance the social causes in which they believe.
Corporations and institutional investors won’t deviate from maximizing short-term profits and shareholder returns unless they are required to do so by law. And even then, only when the penalty for violating the law multiplied by the probability of getting caught is higher than the profits from continuing with the illegality.
When I was secretary of labor, big corporations would violate laws on worker safety, wages and hours, and pensions whenever doing so was cheaper than obeying the law. And they’d fight like hell against such laws to begin with, all the while telling the public what wonderful citizens they were.
The soothing corporate and Wall Street talk about E.S.G. is designed to forestall such laws by creating the false impression that corporations are already doing what needs to be done for the environment or social issues, so there’s no need for more laws or regulations.
In 2019, the Business Roundtable — one of Washington’s most prestigious corporate groups — issued a widely publicized statement expressing “a fundamental commitment” to the wellbeing of “all of our stakeholders” (emphasis in the original), including employees, communities, and the environment. The statement was widely hailed as marking a new era of E.S.G.
Since then, the Roundtable and its members have issued jejune statements about all they’ve done to reverse climate change and alleviate poverty.
Not incidentally, these were priorities in President Biden’s “American Families Plan” and “Inflation Reduction Act.” But the Business Roundtable didn’t lobby for these bills. It lobbied against them. Hypocrisy? Only if you believed the Roundtable rubbish about corporate social responsibility and E.S.G. in the first place.
The pressures on companies to maximize their profits and share values — social responsibility and E.S.G. be damned — are coming from shareholders, top executives (whose pay is linked to stock performance), and retirement plan managers, even those who tout their commitment to E.S.G.
It’s tempting to chalk this up to “greed,” but neither corporations nor retirement plans are capable of such emotions. They aren’t people, no matter what the Supreme Court says. They’re bundles of contracts. The specific people who enter those contracts on behalf of corporations, shareholders, and retirees have no interest or expertise in the environment or in any particular social issues. They’re simply doing what they understand to be their jobs — maximizing shareholder value.
If we want these transactions to be better aligned with public needs rather than private profits, laws must demand this, and penalties for violating laws must be increased. Corporate taxes must rise to fund public investments in non-fossil fuels and social safety nets. Regulations must be strengthened to protect the public.
But laws and regulations won’t do any of this if corporations continue to spend vast sums on politics.
The most telling trends over the last three decades have been the growing share of the economy going into corporate profits — generating ever-greater compensation packages for top executives and ever-higher payouts for investors — and the declining share going to most Americans as wages and salaries.
Much of the reason is the vast increases in corporate and Wall Street money flowing into the campaigns of lawmakers who cut corporate taxes, enact corporate subsidies, and block or dilute regulations.
The divisive blather over E.S.G. is simply masking these trends.
The most socially responsible action pension plans and corporations can take to allay environmental and social problems is to refrain from putting money into politics and to support campaign finance reform.
What do you think?
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Volunteers sort foods at Tri-City Baptist Food Bank in Westminster, Colorado on Tuesday, February 28, 2023. (photo: Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
SNAP Boosts Kept Millions Out of Poverty During COVID. Now They're Gone.
Ellen Ioanes, Vox
Ioanes writes: "Supplements to the program ended on March 1. Without an off-ramp, people are scrambling to fill the gap."
ALSO SEE: A Mile-Long line for
Free Food Offers a Warning as COVID Benefits End
Supplements to the program ended on March 1. Without an off-ramp, people are scrambling to fill the gap.
While food prices remain stubbornly high due to inflation, a program expansion that has served as a life raft since the early days of the pandemic has ended, leaving millions of people scrambling to fill the gap left behind. The program, which had increased benefits offered under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), helped millions avoid serious food insecurity despite pandemic-related job cuts, school closures, and other crises ended Wednesday, returning benefits close to levels seen near the start of the pandemic.
Additional pandemic-era federal SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) ended on Wednesday as part of the government’s wind-down of Covid-19 federal assistance programs. The program, which helped millions of people avoid serious food insecurity despite pandemic-related job cuts, school closures, and other crises, ends while inflation is still high, and 6.4 percent, affecting the most basic necessities.
On a federal level, many pandemic-era emergency assistance programs have already expired, like extended unemployment benefits. But other crucial programs like the SNAP extension and a Medicaid expansion to insure vulnerable people throughout the pandemic have continued.
Some states had already closed the SNAP emergency allotment program, but until Wednesday it was still operational in 32 states, as well as Washington, DC, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands.
The Biden administration agreed give two months’ notice regarding the end of federal pandemic-related programs; Congress ended the SNAP emergency allotments at the end of February as part of the budget bill passed in December. Though other programs, including a commitment to continue a summer meal subsidy program for school children, will continue, other vulnerable people including the elderly and disabled may not have that kind of additional support.
Food prices remain high even as some costs like rent are coming down. Global inflation and other factors have pushed up the price of what were once low-cost, nutrient-dense basics like eggs. So although other budgetary pressures will ease, food prices, even for nutritious staples, will consume a large part of SNAP recipients’ income.
In recent months, the SNAP supplements provided an additional $3 billion per month in assistance for recipient households, according to a February report from the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities. But the abrupt end to the benefits program means that states didn’t have the time to help beneficiaries ensure they receive the maximum allowable benefit by properly documenting other expenses like housing and medical expenses — or to help them figure out alternatives.
“When we talk about the vulnerabilities of low-income individuals and families, everything affects them, from a high, rising cost of food to high housing costs, to utility costs — it’s all relative, and it all concentrates and impacts them,” Brittany Mangini, associate commissioner for food security and nutritional programs at the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance told Vox in an interview.
Here’s how the program worked — and who it helped
SNAP is a complex, nuanced federal program, but in essence, the pandemic extension passed under President Joe Biden in April 2021 automatically granted all recipients at least an additional $95 per month in benefits. As of March 1, SNAP benefits went back almost to pre-pandemic levels, meaning that all households are losing that additional $95 per month — and many households are losing much more than that.
A 2022 study by the Urban Institute found that Black and Latinx households benefited most significantly from the additional SNAP allotments, and that the emergency allotments kept 4.2 million people out of poverty in the fourth quarter of 2021. That study also found that the increased benefits reduced child poverty by 14 percent.
The relatively sudden policy shift “will increase food hardship for many individuals and families, given the modest amount of basic SNAP benefits and high recent inflation in food prices,” according to the CBPP.
SNAP is calculated based on a household’s income — the less a household makes, the more benefits the government provides, making up the difference between whatever the household budget is for food and the maximum benefit allowed under SNAP. The goal of SNAP is to help recipients provide nutritionally sound food for their households, particularly in times of sudden economic hardship.
SNAP is the largest federal food assistance program, but the other major federal funding program for nutrition assistance is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), but as the name implies, that program has strict guidelines about who qualifies to use it. There is also federal nutrition assistance for vulnerable populations like the elderly but SNAP is the most comprehensive program since it’s not limited to certain groups.
SNAP is not a perfect program; the welfare system can be hard to navigate, and the program does place limits around what beneficiaries can buy. But SNAP does help tens of millions of Americans feed their families each month. The government has also made improvements to the program, such as adjusting the Thrifty Food Plan — the rubric used to determine a nutritionally adequate diet for a family of four — to better meet modern costs of living and provide more appropriate benefits to SNAP recipients. Still, according to the CBPP, SNAP benefits will only equal about $6.10 per person per day in 2023.
Other nutrition assistance programs have to go through community organizations or are reimbursements for expenses already paid; SNAP allows beneficiaries a measure of control over their diets and shopping, as well as dignity and privacy. SNAP functions essentially like an electronic transfer to a bank account; the program instituted debit cards for beneficiaries in 2004, and SNAP recipients can now use their benefits to access grocery delivery.
Many SNAP recipients will have much less latitude in their shopping, not just because of the decrease in benefits, but also because inflation remains so high, even for basic products like eggs. As Vox’s Emily Stewart wrote in January, “While the bird flu is the primary cause in the current surge in egg prices, there are other factors in play, too — factors that have dogged the egg market and the broader economy for months now. Inflation appears to be cooling in some areas, but it’s still high, and a lot of things are more expensive.”
In fact, January’s inflation numbers showed that inflation for groceries actually increased, with the costs of food that people reported buying to eat at home increasing 11.3 percent over the same reported measure in January 2022.
“Just like with all the other items in the grocery store, there’s all this inflationary pressure, with interest rates, with oil, with feed prices, with raw materials, with packaging, cartoning, transportation. You have labor issues and costs associated with labor,” Brian Moscogiuri, a global trade strategist at Eggs Unlimited, told Stewart in January. Everything in the supply chain, from fuel to labor costs, affects the price of the food people pick up in the grocery store.
Creating an “off-ramp” for additional SNAP benefits
Though the Biden administration did give the requisite 60 days’ notice before the end of the SNAP extension program, it will still be an abrupt end to a very useful — even critical— cushion for millions of households.
The end of the SNAP supplemental assistance came as part of a negotiation over December’s federal budget bill; in order to pay for a Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) program to provide meals for children when they’re out of school for the summer, a bipartisan committee agreed to shut down the SNAP supplement at the beginning of March.
It’s too soon to tell how severe the impact of this policy change will be, but all SNAP recipients in the states and territories ending the policy will be affected — around 30 million people.
In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration has proposed a supplemental budget to fund the supplemental SNAP benefits at 40 percent — an “off-ramp” to the pandemic policy, Mangini said.
“What’s difficult for these families and individuals is they started getting this benefit back in March 2020, so we’re talking about three years that they’ve had this extra money coming in and people adjust their household budgets accordingly,” she told Vox. “So when you have an abrupt end to an extra income source at a time when we’re looking at incredibly high costs of food, for all the myriad reasons that are informing inflation, it’s just really impactful and stressful on households.”
The program, should the governor’s budget pass the Massachusetts legislature, will continue the structure of the federal supplemental assistance program at the reduced 40 percent level. “As far as I know, no other state is taking this step,” Mangini said.
Erin McAleer, the head of Massachusetts nonprofit Project Bread, told Boston’s WBUR that her group could only serve about 10 percent of the people benefiting from the extra SNAP funds. Project Bread works with Mangini’s office on food security issues and is pushing the Massachusetts legislature to pass the governor’s supplemental budget.
Given that troubling estimate, it’s not difficult to imagine that, as Ellen Vollinger, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, told CBS News, “a hunger cliff is coming to the vast majority of states.”
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is determined to remake education in his state from kindergarten to college. (photo: Giorgio Viera/AFP)
Florida Bills Would Ban Gender Studies, Transgender Pronouns, Tenure Perks
Hannah Natanson and Lori Rozsa, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "A raft of laws proposed by the legislature’s GOP majority would transform how Florida educates children."
A raft of laws proposed by the legislature’s GOP majority would transform how Florida educates children
Florida legislators have proposed a spate of new laws that would reshape K-12 and higher education in the state, from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children’s sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school choice voucher program.
The half-dozen bills, filed by a cast of GOP state representatives and senators, come shortly before the launch of Florida’s legislative session Tuesday. Other proposals in the mix include eliminating college majors in gender studies, nixing diversity efforts at universities and job protections for tenured faculty, strengthening parents’ ability to veto K-12 class materials and extending a ban on teaching about gender and sexuality — from third grade up to eighth grade.
The legislation has already drawn protest from Democratic politicians, education associations, free speech groups and LGBTQ advocates, who say the bills will restrict educators’ ability to instruct children honestly, harm transgender and nonbinary students and strip funding from public schools.
“It really is further and further isolating LGBTQ students,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. “It’s making it hard for them to receive the full support that schools should be giving every child.”
Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, warned that the legislation — especially the bill that would prevent students from majoring in certain topics — threatens to undermine academic freedom.
“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy,” Mulvey said. “It silences debate, stifles ideas and limits the autonomy of educational institutions which … made American higher education the envy of the world.”
Sen. Clay Yarborough (R), who introduced one of the 2023 education bills — Senate Bill 1320, which forbids requiring school staff and students to use “pronouns that do not correspond with [a] person’s sex” and delays education on sexual orientation and gender identity until after eighth grade — said in a statement that his law would enshrine the “God-given” responsibility of parents to raise their children.
“The decision about when and if certain topics should be introduced to young children belongs to parents,” Yarborough said in the statement. “The bill also protects students and teachers from being forced to use language that would violate their personal convictions.”
The proposed laws have a high likelihood of passing in the State House, where GOP legislators make up a supermajority. Even before Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) landslide victory in November, very few Republicans pushed back against his policy proposals, instead crafting and passing bills that align with the governor’s mission to remake education in Florida from kindergarten through college.
This year’s crop of proposed education bills accelerates those efforts, expanding on controversial ideas from the past two years and adding a few more. Tina Descovich, co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty and a Florida resident, said her group backs the DeSantis education agenda “100 percent” — and that she thinks his policies are catching on outside the state.
“You see governors picking up education as a top issue, and you even see presidential candidates now putting education as a top issue,” she said. “I think Gov. DeSantis has set the path for that.”
Rick Hess, director of education policy studies for the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, predicted the education laws will play well with voters both in Florida and nationwide, boosting DeSantis’s chances at the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“The direction of this policy is sensible policy,” Hess said, referring especially to laws limiting young children’s learning on sex and gender. “It is both attractive to the DeSantis base but also has been shown to poll quite well with the center right, the center and even with parts of the center left.”
A May 2022 Fox News poll found that 55 percent of parents favor state laws that bar teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with students before fourth grade. An October 2022 University of Southern California survey, meanwhile, found a partisan split: More than 80 percent of Democrats said high school students should learn about sexual orientation and gender identity, compared to roughly a third of Republicans. Just 7 percent of adults in both political camps supported assigning reading that depicts sex between people of the same sex to elementary-schoolers, per the survey.
The bills in Florida come as at least 25 states have passed 64 laws in the last three academic years reshaping what children can learn and do at school, according to a Washington Post tally. Many of these laws circumscribe education on race, gender and sexual identity, boost parental oversight of school libraries and curriculums or restrict the rights of transgender children in classrooms and on the playing field.
Florida already passed several such laws, including the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which prohibits certain ways of teaching about race. (A judge blocked some aspects of the law in November.) Another is the “Parental Rights in Education” law, dubbed “don’t say gay” by critics, which forbids teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation during grades K-3 and requires that education on those subjects be age-appropriate in older grades.
One of the bills put forward in the 2023 legislative session builds directly on the parental rights law: House Bill 1223 would expand the ban on gender and sexuality education to extend through eighth grade. That bill also says school staffers, contractors and students cannot be required to use pronouns that do not match the sex a person was assigned at birth.
“It shall be the policy of every public K-12 educational institution,” the bill states, “that a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex.”
Jon Harris Maurer, public policy director for LGBTQ rights group Equality Florida, said the bill will compound damage already wrought by the “Parental Rights in Education” act.
“That resulted in book banning, eroding supportive guidelines and led teachers to leave the profession,” Maurer said. “This doubles down.”
House Rep. Adam Anderson (R-District 57), who sponsored the bill, did not respond to a request for comment.
Florida legislators have introduced two other pieces of similar legislation: the near-identical Senate bill filed by Yarborough and House Bill 1069, brought by Rep. Stan McClain (R-District 27). The latter bill requires that students in grades 6-12 be taught that “sex is determined by biology and reproductive function at birth.” It also grants parents greater power to read over and object to school instructional materials, as well as limit their child’s ability to explore the school library.
McClain did respond to a request for comment.
Another bill on the table is House Bill 999, targeted to higher education and introduced by Rep. Alex Andrade (R-District 2), who did not respond to a request for comment. The bill outlaws spending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, says a professor’s tenure can come under review at any time and gives boards of trustees — typically appointed by the governor or Board of Governors — control of faculty hiring and curriculum review.
It also eliminates college majors and minors in “Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, or Intersectionality.” It says colleges should offer general education courses that “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization and include studies of this nation’s historical documents” including the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.
The bill has a companion in the Senate, proposed by Sen. Erin Grall (R), who did not respond to a request for comment. Andrade previously told the Tampa Bay Times that his bill would ensure that institutions of higher education remain focused on legitimate fields of inquiry rather than disciplines “not based in fact.”
“It’s a complete takeover of higher education,” said Kenneth Nunn, who stepped down earlier this year from his role as professor of law at the University of Florida — in part because of the politics in the state. The “attacks” on higher education “reduce the reputation and perhaps the accreditation of the state institutions,” Nunn said.
Organizations focused on civil liberties are also objecting. PEN America, which advocates for free speech, said the bill would impose “perhaps the most draconian and censorious restrictions on public colleges and universities in the country.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said the bill is “laden with unconstitutional provisions hostile to freedom of expression and academic freedom.”
Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow for higher education reform at the Heritage Foundation, said there are a few easily fixed constitutional problems with the wording but praised the bill for holding “universities accountable in a few ways to the will of the people.” He added that post-tenure review is important because someone who earns that laurel at 28 may “become a dead weight” 30 years later. He said an ideological review would be inappropriate, but that if a professor has turned from intellectual pursuits to activism and is no longer producing scholarship, then that faculty member — regardless of viewpoint — merits scrutiny.
Andrade’s bill mirrors steps already taken by the DeSantis administration. In early January, the governor’s budget office mandated that all universities report the amount of money they are expending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Later that month, DeSantis announced a slate of reforms to higher education, including prohibitions on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
A sixth education-related bill, House Bill 1, introduced by Reps. Kaylee Tuck (R-District 83) and Susan Plasencia (R-District 37), renders all parents eligible to receive state funds to send their children to private school, stripping away a previous low-income requirement, although low-income families would still be prioritized. It comes as the school choice movement is surging nationally, with Republican-led states passing laws that grant state funds to parents who can spend the money on religious and private schools. Tuck and Plasencia did not respond to requests for comment.
Pat Barber, president of the Manatee Education Association, said this bill is the one that hurts most.
“We’re not very well funded in public education in Florida to start with,” she said. “And their answer to that is to funnel money away from public education?”
The laws are moving through committee as DeSantis continues an ongoing feud with the College Board over a new AP African American studies course, which Florida has rejected as being too “woke.” DeSantis recently said the legislature “is going to look to reevaluate” whether the state should offer any AP courses at all, or the SAT exam.
Battles over state education have also spilled into other arenas. A dispute over the Parental Rights bill lasts year ended with DeSantis pushing for a state takeover of a half-century-old special taxing district for Walt Disney World. DeSantis began excoriating Disney after the company’s former CEO criticized the “Parental Rights in Education” law.
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When Victoria Ferrell Ortiz had her daughter in 2017, she was covered by a limited form of Medicaid in Texas — which ended just two months after she gave birth. Losing insurance so soon was stressful. She supports a push for Texas to extend Medicaid coverage for a full year after childbirth. (photo: Yfat Yossifor/KERA)
In Texas, Medicaid Ends Soon After Childbirth. Will Lawmakers Allow More Time?
Elena Rivera, NPR
Rivera writes: "More than 471,000 pregnant Texans are currently navigating that fragmented, bureaucratic system to find care. Medicaid provides coverage for about half of all births in the state — but the coverage is so paltry that many people lose eligibility not long after giving birth."
Victoria Ferrell Ortiz found out she was pregnant during the summer of 2017. The Dallas resident was finishing up an AmeriCorps job with a local nonprofit, which offered her a small living stipend but no health coverage. She applied for Medicaid so she could be insured during the pregnancy.
"It was a time of a lot of learning, turnaround and pivoting for me, because we weren't necessarily expecting that kind of life change," she says.
But applying for Medicaid didn't come with an instruction manual. She was inundated with forms. She spent days on end on the phone trying to figure out what was covered, and where she could actually go to get care.
"That was a really huge privilege because it took so much time, and then sometimes the representative that I would speak to wouldn't know the answer," she says. "I would have to wait for a follow up and hope that they actually did follow up with me."
More than 471,000 pregnant Texans are currently navigating that fragmented, bureaucratic system to find care. Medicaid provides coverage for about half of all births in the state — but the coverage is so paltry that many people lose eligibility not long after giving birth.
Medicaid covers about half of all births in Texas. During pregnancy, many rely on that Medicaid coverage to get access to everything they need — from doctor's appointments to prenatal vitamins.
But pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage ends just two months after childbirth — and advocates and researchers say that strict cutoff contributes to high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity in the state. They support a bill moving through the current legislative session that would extend pregnancy Medicaid coverage for a full 12 months, postpartum.
What happened when Texas didn't expand Medicaid
Texas is one of 11 states that has chosen not to expand Medicaid to its population of uninsured adults — that's a benefit offered under the Affordable Care Act, with 90% of the cost paid for by the federal government. That leaves more than 770,000 Texans in a coverage gap — they don't have any job-based insurance, nor do they qualify for subsidized coverage on HealthCare.gov, the federal insurance marketplace. In 2022, 23% of women between the ages of 19-64 were uninsured in Texas.
Pregnancy Medicaid helps fill the gap, temporarily. Close to half a million Texans are currently enrolled in the program. The majority are Hispanic and Latinx women between the ages of 19 and 29.
Undocumented Texans and lawfully present immigrants are not eligible, though they can get different coverage which ends immediately when the baby is born.
In states where the Medicaid expansion has been adopted, coverage is available to all adults with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty level. For a family of three, that means an income of $34,307 a year.
But in Texas, childless adults don't qualify for Medicaid at all. Parents can be eligible for Medicaid if they're taking care of a child who receives Medicaid, but the income limits are low. For a three-person household with two parents, they can't make more than $251 a month.
The pregnancy-related Medicaid in Texas is available to individuals who make under $2,243 a month. It lasts through pregnancy and two months after giving birth, covering everything from prenatal visits to postpartum check-ups.
For Ferrell Ortiz, the hospitals and clinics that accepted Medicaid near her in her Dallas neighborhood felt "uncomfortable, uninviting...and a space that wasn't meant for me," she says. But she did find out that Medicaid would pay for her to give birth at an enrolled birthing center.
"I went to Lovers Lane Birth Center in Richardson," she says. And I'm so grateful that I found them because they were able to connect me to other resources that the Medicaid office wasn't."
Ferrell Ortiz was glad she had found a welcoming and supportive birth team. But the Medicaid coverage ended not long after her daughter arrived — just two months after giving birth. She says losing insurance when her baby was so young was stressful.
"The two months' window just puts more pressure on women to wrap up things in a messy and not necessarily beneficial way."
In the 2021 legislative session, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill extending pregnancy Medicaid coverage from two months to six months postpartum.
That extension was denied by the federal government in the fall of 2022; The Texas Tribune reported some legislators believed the application was rejected "because of language that could be construed to exclude pregnant women who have abortions, including medically necessary abortions."
The state's Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee is tasked with producing statewide data reports on causes of maternal death and intervention strategies. Members of that committee, along with advocates and legislators, are hoping this year's legislative session extends pregnancy Medicaid to 12 months postpartum.
Lack of health care coverage led to worse outcomes for pregnant people in Texas
Kari White, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, says the bureaucratic challenges Ferrell Ortiz experienced are common for pregnant Texans on Medicaid.
In Texas, maternal health care and Pregnancy Medicaid coverage "is a big patchwork with some big missing holes in the quilt," says White, who is also the lead investigator with the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP).
TxPEP studies the various impacts that state policy has on people's reproductive health. A March 2022 TxPEP study surveyed close to 1,500 pregnant Texans on public insurance. It found that "insurance churn" — when people lose health insurance in the months after giving birth — led to worse health outcomes and problems accessing postpartum care.
"People are either having to wait until their condition gets worse, they forgo care, or they may have to pay out of pocket," White says. "There are people who are dying following their pregnancy for reasons that are related to having been pregnant, and almost all of them are preventable."
For example, chronic disease accounted for almost 20% of pregnancy-related deaths in Texas in 2019, according to the latest report from the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee (MMMRC). Chronic disease includes conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
The report determined at least 52 deaths were related to pregnancy in Texas during 2019. Serious bleeding (obstetric hemorrhage) and mental health issues were among the top causes of death.
"This is one of the more extreme consequences of the lack of health care," White says.
Black Texans, who make up close to 20% of pregnancy Medicaid recipients, are also more than twice as likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than their white counterparts, which is a statistic in Texas that has held true for close to ten years with little change, according to the MMMRC report.
Stark disparities such as that can be traced to systemic issues, including the lack of diversity in medical providers; socioeconomic barriers for Black women such as cost, transportation, lack of childcare and poor communication with providers; and even shortcomings in medical education and providers' own implicit biases — which can "impact clinicians' ability to listen to Black people's experiences and treat them as equal partners in decision-making about their own care and treatment options," according to a recent survey.
Maternal health bills moving in the 2023 Texas legislature
Diana Forester, the director of health policy for the statewide organization Texans Care for Children, says Medicaid coverage for pregnant people is a "golden window" to get care.
"It's the chance to have access to healthcare to address issues that maybe have been building for a while, those kinds of things that left unaddressed build into something that would need surgery or more intensive intervention later on," she says. "It just feels like that should be something that's accessible to everyone when they need it."
Extending health coverage for pregnant people, she says, is "the difference between having a chance at a healthy pregnancy versus not."
As of February, 29 states have adopted a 12-month postpartum coverage extension so far, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report, with 7 states planning on implementing this extension in the future.
"We're behind," Forester says of Texas. "We're so behind at this point."
"I feel like the momentum is there"
Many versions of bills that would extend pregnancy Medicaid coverage to 12 months have been filed in the legislature this year, including House Bill 56 and Senate Bill 73. Forester says she feels "cautiously optimistic."
"I think there's still going to be a few little legislative issues or landmines that we have to navigate," she says. "But I feel like the momentum is there."
Ferrell Ortiz's daughter is turning 5 this year. Amelie is artistic, bright, and vocal in her beliefs. When Ortiz thinks back on being pregnant, she remembers how hard a year it was, but also how much she learned about herself.
"Giving birth was the hardest experience that my body has physically ever been through," she says. "It was a really profound moment in my health history — just knowing that I was able to make it through that time, and that it could even be enjoyable — and so special, obviously, because look what the world has for it."
She just wishes people, especially people of color giving birth, could get the health support they need during a vulnerable time.
"If I was able to talk to people in the legislature about extending Medicaid coverage, I would say to do that," she says. "It's an investment in the people who are raising our future and completely worth it."
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Sugary cereals could lose their 'healthy' designation under a proposed change in Food and Drug Administration guidelines. (photo: Mikhaila Friel/Insider)
Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms Threaten to Block "Healthy" Food Labeling Guidelines in Court
Lee Fang, The Intercept
Fang writes: "The FDA's proposed labeling requirement is facing backlash from processed food companies claiming the rule limits their free speech."
The FDA’s proposed labeling requirement is facing backlash from processed food companies claiming the rule limits their free speech.
The makers of Fruity Pebbles, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, and other popular cereal brands are bitterly lobbying against a new Food and Drug Administration proposal that would prevent them from labeling their products as “healthy.”
The proposed FDA rule mandates that foods labeled as healthy must contain a major food group — such as dairy, fruits, or whole grains — and must fit certain limits on saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
The rule limits cereals, for example, to no more than 2.5 grams of sugar per serving in order to be labeled as healthy — a restriction food manufacturers claim would exclude over 95 percent of ready-to-eat cereals on the market.
In response, processed food companies that produce a variety of snacks, baked goods, pastas, and frozen pizzas are challenging the rules before they are finalized by the agency. Among the most vocal food companies are producers of high-sugar cereals, which are largely marketed to children and have been criticized as a driver of the obesity epidemic in America.
In a joint filing made last month, the largest cereal producers in the country — General Mills, Kellogg’s, and Post Consumer Brands — decried the proposed nutritional criteria and threatened to file a lawsuit, challenging the guidelines as a violation of corporate free speech rights.
The rule, “if finalized in its present form,” the companies wrote, “would be open to legal challenge in that it violates the First Amendment by prohibiting truthful, non-misleading claims in an unjustified manner and also exceeds FDA’s statutory authority in several ways.”
The idea of a legal challenge may not be an idle threat.
The public comment docket includes a filing from the Washington Legal Foundation, a shadowy nonprofit that litigates esoteric and often controversial business interests. The group filed a letter in opposition in the form of a legal brief, laying out a broad case for a future court challenge against the FDA guidelines.
The organization contended that the healthy labeling requirements are an unconstitutional overreach of government power. Food companies, the Washington Legal Foundation argued, have “constitutionally protected commercial speech” rights covering their ability to use the term “healthy” to describe their added sugar products.
The FDA, the Washington Legal Foundation wrote in its brief, “cannot explain why consumers cannot make their own healthy decisions based on [nutrition labeling] data. Rather, it seeks to limit the food companies’ speech.”
The group does not disclose its donors and did not respond to a request for comment. In previous years, the Corn Refiners Association, a lobby group that represents the high fructose corn syrup industry, has disclosed financial ties to the Washington Legal Foundation.
Drug companies, including Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, have also used the Washington Legal Foundation to challenge government rules and establish legal precedent to reduce the ability for prosecutors to seek criminal charges for drug company executives.
Conagra, Ocean Spray, the American Frozen Food Institute, and the American Bakers Association similarly hinted at a legal threat to the FDA healthy food labeling rule. All four organizations cited constitutional issues with the proposed labeling requirements in letters to the agency.
The joint filing from cereal manufacturers not only scorns the labeling rules, but also argues that sugary cereals pose no health risks and are, in fact, beneficial to society and childhood health.
The companies stated that they view the “extremely strict” guidelines as “alarming” because “cereal is one of the most affordable, nutrient dense breakfast choices a person — adult or child — can make … with a wide range of options to suit different cultures, preferences, and taste.” Cereals, the companies claimed, are already recognized for “nutritional benefits,” given their inclusion in a range of federal programs that “serve the nation’s vulnerable populations,” such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children and the National School Lunch Program.
The companies charged that cereal “delivers on nutrition when eaten alone, but when consumed as part of breakfast, it elevates the nutrition further,” with cereal eaters exhibiting an “overall higher diet quality.” As evidence, the filing cites a 2019 study conducted by in-house researchers employed by General Mills, the maker of Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Trix, among other brands.
Lucky Charms and Trix contain approximately 12 grams of sugar per serving, nearly five times the limit proposed by the FDA’s healthy labeling guidelines. What’s more, researchers have found that children typically eat more than twice the recommended serving size of cereal for breakfast, meaning that a typical sugary breakfast cereal portion contains 24 grams of sugar, close to the sugar content of a Snickers chocolate bar.
The food manufacturers also stressed that the FDA should consider that cereals represent an affordable and accessible option for “families who are experiencing food insecurity.” As evidence, the companies reference another General Mills-funded study to show that low-income cereal consumers had higher daily calcium intake and across all income levels, cereal eaters were associated with better diet quality.
The agency, they wrote, should recognize the beneficial role of sugar. “Sugar plays a role in foods beyond palatability; it controls water activity, creates texture, adds bulk, and also contributes to flavor complexity,” the filing states.
General Mills, Kellogg’s, and the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group for cereal manufacturers, similarly filed a protest against the FDA proposal, citing its impact on sugary cereal brands. Cereal makers produced half a dozen separate filings, counting various trade groups and individual protest letters from manufacturers.
Independent researchers, however, have found that diets high in processed foods and sugar are linked to obesity, diabetes, high risks of stroke, obesity-related cancers, hypertension, and dental diseases.
Children’s eating habits of high-sugar cereals and snacks, multiple studies have shown, are the driving factor for high levels of childhood obesity. Children are also bombarded with advertising for ultrasweet cereals, a dynamic that has been found to increase the subsequent intake of advertised cereals.
The FDA’s move to discourage sugary diets to children and curtail advertising of such foods to children echoes the Obama administration, when a variety of voluntary guidelines were proposed in 2011.
At the time, lobbyists for the food industry mobilized a broad counterassault in Congress, with allied lawmakers inserting provisions into the authorizing legislation to delay the voluntary guidelines. During this fight, the food industries hired SKDK, a consulting firm co-founded by Anita Dunn, who went on to help manage President Joe Biden’s recent campaign and currently serves as his close adviser in the White House.
The new proposed rules also expand the categories of foods that may be labeled as healthy, including nuts, higher-fat fish such as salmon, avocados, and water.
The open comment period for the FDA guidelines closed on February 16. The agency, which has offered companies three years to comply with the rule once it is finalized, is still reviewing the feedback.
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Waiting outside an authorized currency dealer in Baghdad to exchange Iraqi dinars for U.S. dollars. (photo: Joao Silva/NYT)
Rules to Curb Illicit Dollar Flows Create Unintended Hardships for Some Iraqis
Alissa J. Rubin, The New York Times
Rubin writes: "The regulations were meant to prevent dollar transfers to corrupt actors. But they have ended up harming ordinary Iraqis who need U.S. currency for legitimate purposes."
The regulations were meant to prevent dollar transfers to corrupt actors. But they have ended up harming ordinary Iraqis who need U.S. currency for legitimate purposes.
When the United States and Iraq recently put tough new international banking rules into effect, the intent was to stem the illicit flow of dollars to criminal actors and money launderers, including those helping groups in Iran and Syria.
But in a country with a primarily cash economy, the changes created unintended hardships for ordinary Iraqis who need dollars for travel abroad. Demand for dollars has increased and the cost in Iraqi dinars at some local currency traders has surged.
Long lines are forming early in the day outside money changers’ shops, where Iraqis planning to travel outside the country often turn up grasping plastic bags stuffed with dinars, which banks outside the country do not accept. These days, it’s not easy to find a money changer who still has dollars. And those who do run out early.
“I don’t have any dollars left,” one currency trader, Abu Ali, said last week at his shop in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood.
The new rules, worked out in an agreement between the United States and Iraq, require greater transparency surrounding the wire transfers of dollars held as foreign currency reserves for Iraq in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They went into effect late last year.
The agreement was part of a long-delayed modernization of Iraq’s financial system as it begins to conform to the rules that most countries follow and adapts to requirements for more transparency in international financial transactions.
But some Iraqi merchants and others who used to be able to make payments in dollars by international wire transfers have been unable or unwilling to satisfy the tighter transparency requirements. So they are turning to money changers, creating the greater demand for dollars on the Iraqi street that is driving up the price in dinars.
Every day, the Central Bank of Iraq facilitates wire transfers from its account at the New York Fed on behalf of Iraqi businesses and individuals to pay for goods from outside Iraq. The transfers are critical because few businesses have international bank accounts.
Separately, a sum in cash is sent to the Iraqi central bank, intended for currency exchanges and banks to distribute largely to Iraqis traveling abroad.
Until the new rules were put in place, there had been little in the way of electronic footprints to help U.S. officials trace whether some of the transfers were ending up in the hands of criminal actors.
For example, an Iraqi party might request that a wire in dollars be sent to a bank in another country, such as the United Arab Emirates, in payment for goods that are being imported into Iraq. But, the account in the U.A.E. could also be used to move dollars outside Iraq to launder money or supply a party under sanctions. So more information was needed to be sure that such transactions are legitimate.
The concerns about dollars ending up in the wrong hands date back to soon after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. At that time, American authorities were concerned primarily about cash transfers but the U.S. Treasury later turned its attention increasingly to wire transfers.
The Treasury wanted to ensure that dollars sent by wire were not being sent in violation of U.S. law to fronts or agents for parties under sanctions or criminal entities. In congressional testimony in 2016, for example, a top Treasury official noted three groups targeted by sanctions that were known to be active in Iraq: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
With the Islamic State’s takeover of northern Iraq in 2014, it seized a branch of Iraq’s central bank and those concerns became more urgent. The situation underscored the need for more transparency in the dollar wire transfers.
After the Iraqis finally defeated the Islamic State in 2018, Iraqi and U.S. bankers and the Treasury began to discuss a new system for wire transfers.
Under the new regulations, both individuals and companies requesting wire transfers of dollars must disclose their own identity, and the identity of whoever is ultimately getting the money. That information is then reviewed by an electronic system as well as by experts at Iraq’s central bank and the New York Fed before payment is made.
The new system allows banks around the world to conduct automatic checks on transfers of money from Iraq to other countries, said Ahmed Tabaqchali, the chief strategist for Asia Frontier Capital’s Iraq fund.
“In short, the system heightens the visibility of red flags,” he said.
Now, many requests are being rejected, said Mudher Salih, a former deputy head of Iraq’s central bank and now a financial policy adviser to Iraq’s new prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. Sometimes, he said, that is because of suspect identities but other times it is because many Iraqi businesses do not have the requisite licenses to import goods or are not properly registered as commercial entities and therefore are in violation of Iraqi law.
The rejections have created a greater demand for dollars at Iraqi money changers, which has sharply increased their cost for Iraqis with legitimate needs, he added.
Since 2003, there have been two Iraqi dinar rates for buying dollars; an official rate established by Iraq’s central bank and an unofficial street rate, which is higher. And when dollars are scarce, the street price goes up.
The difference between the two is creating hardships for Iraqis like Janna, a mother of four. She said she had been saving up to buy a refrigerator and had her eye on a German model that cost about $250. In October, that was the equivalent of 320,000 dinars. Today, because of the scarcity of dollars, the refrigerator would cost 375,000 dinars.
“It’s more than I can afford,” she said.
After the new wire transfer rules took effect, the quantity of dollars flowing daily into Iraq by wire fell sharply — on some days down by nearly 65 percent from $180 million to $67 million — compared with the period before the rules were implemented, according to the daily wire transfer numbers released by Iraq’s central bank.
The transfers have since picked up, but they are still often less than half of what they were before the new system was put in place.
It is not clear exactly how much of the drop in transfers reflects illicit recipients.
“I would not put down to fraud the almost 90 percent drop,” said Douglas Silliman, president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. “Maybe it’s 45 percent fraud and 45 percent incompetence or just not knowing how to deal with the new regulations.”
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Fish swim near some bleached coral at Kisite Mpunguti Marine park, Kenya, June 11, 2022. For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty on Saturday, March 4, 2023, to protect biodiversity in the high seas — nearly half the planet's surface. (photo: Brian Inganga/AP)
A Treaty to Protect the World's Oceans Has Been Agreed After a Decade of Talks
Associated Press
Excerpt: "For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas — nearly half the planet's surface — concluding two weeks of talks in New York."
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