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a deal between Democratic and Republican committee leaders would help school meal providers facing higher food costs as well as ease a transition from federal government policies that provided universal free meals to many children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and ranking member John Boozman, R-Ark., and House Education and Labor Chairman Robert C. Scott, D-Va., and ranking member Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., announced an agreement and legislation that would provide higher lunch and breakfast per-meal reimbursements for the 2022-23 school year.
The bill would provide 40 cents in federal reimbursement per lunch and 15 cents in reimbursement per breakfast meal above the annual adjustment for inflation. The next adjustment is July 1.
The two committees have jurisdiction over child nutrition programs, including the national school lunch and breakfast programs. To pay for the policies, more than $3 billion would be rescinded from three pandemic relief bills.
Foxx said the deal balanced costs and needs to “uphold our responsibility to taxpayers and abide by the principle that aid should be targeted and temporary while also helping students truly in need.”...
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-mitch-mcconnell-gave-a-sweet-deal-to-the-kentucky-coal-industry/
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How Mitch McConnell gave a sweet deal to the Kentucky coal industry
Written by Maureen Nevin Duffy / DC Report December 30, 2019
Kentucky coal miners—along with the rest of us—will be paying the price to keep the government running next year. And we can thank Kentucky’s senior senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for the sellout.
Buried in the giant $1.4 trillion government spending package that McConnell ushered through the Senate last week was a relatively modest $15 billion, 30-year payout to sustain the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund—a boon to the majority leader’s home state coal miners. As many as 1 in 5 of coal miners suffer from black lung.
But here’s the kicker: What McConnell had removed from the must-pass funding legislation. In order to keep the government running, McConnell threw out provisions that would have forced coal companies to commit to higher payments toward the health-care costs of their employees and retirees, nixing requirements to extend the commitment period and modestly increase the tax on coal mining companies that are supposed to support the trust fund.
In short, McConnell let the coal industry skip out and leave the $15 billion black lung tab for everyone else to pay.
The move was mind-boggling, considering McConnell is already under scrutiny and criticism for partnering with a previously sanctioned Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, who McConnell voted to de-sanction. Deripaska, who owns Rusal, a Russian-owned coal company, joined McConnell in a project that his home state of Kentucky voted in 2017 to invest $15M of taxpayer money.
‘A Handout’
“This is a handout. This is a giveaway,” Jim Waters of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, told WaPo in August. Waters reasoned that judgment might have been clouded by the possible thousands of area jobs that could be added. “I think the excitement of that overrode some of the due diligence.”
McConnell’s strange allegiances to influences domestic and foreign have clearly reached the grassroots level. As Mikaela Curry, a community organizer and member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, wrote in an op-ed in the Courier-Journal, Feb. 22, entitled, “Mitch McConnell is silent on coal while Kentucky miners suffer and die”: “When McConnell speaks up for coal, it always seems to align with the people profiting in the fossil fuel industry and not the hard-working people he is supposed to represent.”
Disabled Miners
Most poignant are the call outs to McConnell from those suffering physically as well as financially from his unwillingness to make the coal companies own up to their responsibility to their current and retired workers and their families. Patty Amburgey, now secretary of the local black lung association in Letcher County, is the widow of a coal miner who died of Black Lung Disease after leaving mining, “blind, unable to feel his legs or arms, and constantly short of breath,” according to his obit.
“I’m asking [Mr. McConnell] to please remember that East Kentucky is a mining area,” his widow wrote in Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. “And we do have a lot of miners and the election is coming up. I want him to understand that.” Obviously, Mr. McConnell is betting his Appropriations Bill will heal these sores and smooth his way to re-election.
But that may not be so easy in practice. Instead of increasing the excise tax rate in effect in 2018, which sunset on Jan. 1, 2019, Congress failed to act, which allowed the tax for coal companies to reset to 1985 rates, lowering contributions by 55% (from $1.10 per ton of coal from subsurface mines to $.50 and from $0.55 per ton for coal from surface mines to just $0.25), which many in Congress had contested.
Companies Protected
After congressional wrangling, the 2020 tax rate will revert to 2018 rates of $1.10 and $0.55 per ton, respectively. But those prices will sunset again on Dec. 31, 2020, and if not renewed will revert to the 1978 rate of $0.50 and $0.25 per ton. The companies also are protected from market price rises by a ceiling cap on the tax of 4.4% of its coal selling price.
In June, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a 10-year extension as part of a broader package. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) proposed the rate be renewed at a higher rate through 2029. He and co-sponsors want to see the Trust Fund fully funded with no sunsets.
While Moscow Mitch steers millions toward business ventures with oligarchs, many in Appalachia want lawmakers to realize that a hike in the excise tax of $0.14 per ton for surface-mined coal and $0.28 per ton for underground-mined coal would eliminate the debt in the Fund completely by 2050, according to the General Accounting Office.
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https://bobbyscott.house.gov/
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/betsy-devos-is-at-it-again-the-education-secretarys-new-rule-is-a-win-win-for-everyone-but-defrauded-students
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Betsy DeVos is at it again: The education secretary’s new rule is a win-win for everyone but defrauded students
Written by Christopher Brauchli / Common Dreams September 8, 2019
They’re back — the folks in the Education Department.
Remember Betsy DeVos? Trump made her Secretary of Education. She had no experience in education but was a big fan and supporter of charter schools in Michigan. Those schools were, by most measures, less successful than their public school counterparts and scored much lower on various comparative measures than schools in other states. Nonetheless, she was very wealthy and that, as we have learned over the years, is all that is required for someone to be invited to play in the Trump playground.
Remember Diane Auer Jones? She is a senior adviser to the Department of Education on post-secondary education. She was an early hire by Betsy. Before starting work there she spent five years as a senior vice-president at Career Education Corporation.
Career Education Corporation was a company in the for-profit education world that in early 2019 agreed to forgive $494 million in student debt as a result of an investigation into its practices by 49 State Attorneys General. The Attorneys General concluded that Ms. Jones’ employer had engaged in deceptive tactics in order to recruit students. Among other things, the students were charged for vocational programs that did not have the proper accreditation for students to obtain licenses to work in their fields of study. The forgiven loans were for money owed to the institution. The practices in question had all occurred during the time Ms. Jones was a senior vice president at the company.
Now, Mesdames Jones and DeVos are at it again. On August 30, 2019 , the Education Department announced that it was making it more difficult for students who had been defrauded by for-profit institutions to receive relief from their debts. They were reforming rules known as the “borrower defense to repayment” rules. Those rules had enabled recipients of educational loans to avoid repayment under certain circumstances.
The new rules apply to loans made after July 2020. The loans significantly tighten up the ability of a student to get a loan discharged when, for example, the for-profit institution closes its doors before the student has graduated. Under the Obama era rule there was something called the “automatic closed school discharge.” That rule provided that, if a for-profit school, such as Ms. Auer’s, closed its doors before a student had gotten a degree, the student could apply to have the loan discharged. Under the Obama era rules, there was no time limit on when the student had to apply for debt relief.
Under the DeVos rule the student must apply for relief within three years after the school closing. As Ms. Auer explained: “We believe that within three years, the borrower will know whether or not there has been misrepresentation.” In masking that assertion she is probably drawing on her own experience while working at Career Education Corporation.
Under the Obama rules, the student debt was automatically discharged if the student did not enroll elsewhere within three years. Approximately 20,000 borrowers availed themselves of that provision resulting in the discharge of close to $222 million in student loans. That will no longer be permitted.
The burden of proof on the student seeking loan forgiveness has been increased. A student seeking relief will have to prove that the college made a deceptive statement “with knowledge of its false, misleading or deceptive nature or with reckless disregard for the truth” and that the student relied on the statement in deciding to enroll or stay in the school.
The burden the new rules place on students seeking relief from for-profit schools that scammed them, is offset by the benefit received by the taxpayer. As Ms. Devos said when announcing the new rules, fraud in higher education “will not be tolerated.” But, she went on to explain, the rules include “carefully crafted reforms that hold colleges and universities accountable and treat students and taxpayers fairly.” The “fairness” means that the amount of student debt being forgiven will be reduced by more than $500 million annually. Over the next ten years it is estimated that the taxpayers will save more than $11 billion. The savings to the taxpayers will, of course, rest on the backs of the defrauded students.
Commenting on the new rules, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said: “This rule is another Trump-DeVos giveaway to their for-profit college cronies at the expense of defrauded student borrowers.” Rep. Bobby Scott (D.Va.) said that “the Trump administration is sending an alarming message: Schools can cheat [their] student borrowers and still reap the rewards of federal student aid.”
Betsy DeVos is pleased with the new rule. So is Diane Auer Jones. So is Ms. Jones’ former employer. It is pleased because the new rule makes it less likely that it will be on the hook for paying back students it scammed. Ms. Jones is pleased because her new position enabled her to do a favor for her former employer and other companies in the student loan business she got to know when working in the business. Ms. DeVos is pleased because she could do a favor for taxpayers like herself. It’s a win-win for everyone but the defrauded students.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/christian-nationalists-have-a-plan/
Christian nationalists have a plan
written by Paul Rosenberg / Salon July 7, 2019
There is a difference between exercising religious beliefs and imposing them on others. Our Constitution fiercely protects the former and expressly prohibits the latter.
— Rep. Joseph Kennedy III
It’s easy for significant stories to get lost in the sound and fury of Donald Trump’s frontal assault on American democracy, epitomized by his militarized co-opting of Washington’s Fourth of July celebration. As my interview with Angie Maxwell, co-author of “The Long Southern Strategy,” shows, Trump’s presidency was decades in the making, with racism, sexism. and fundamentalism all playing crucial roles. The forces that brought him to power are ultimately far more consequential than he is.
That’s why a cluster of recent developments involving questions of religious privilege deserve far more attention from the public and the media than they have received. These events reflect both the advancement of a theocratic, “dominionist” worldviewthat elevates the state-sanctified religious liberty of some at the obvious expense of others — and a rising tide of liberal, secular resistance.
On July 2, federal prosecutors announced they would retry humanitarian aid volunteer Scott Warren on two charges related to aiding migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Warren, whom Amnesty International has previously said “would be a prisoner of conscience” if convicted, was “detained for his volunteer activities motivated by humanitarian principles and his religious beliefs.”
Warren regards himself as a devout Christian, driven to follow the words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew: “For I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me to drink, an alien and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you ministered to me.” Warren’s religious freedom clearly plays no role in the Trump administration’s thinking. It’s the negative space that throws everything else into sharp relief.
The very next day,religious freedom was suddenly center stage again, as the VA announced new policies “to protect religious liberty” by trampling on the rights of religious minorities, in particular allowing religious displays in public lobbies, an issue I’ve written about before which is the subject of a recently-filed lawsuit by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. MRFF president Mikey Weinstein denounced the policy move as “both tragic and predictable in this hyper-dangerous era.”
To add another layer of confusion, the VA justified itself, in part, by referencing a recent Supreme Court decision on the Bladensburg Peace Cross, a century-old monument whose destruction would be “quite different from erecting or adopting new ones,” according to Justice Samuel Alito’s decision. New displays, of course, are precisely what the VA is addressing. Details, details.
Throughout such disputes, there’s a profound asymmetry: conservatives retell a few simple mythic just-so storiesabout an ideal cherished past moment, and how we’ve lost our way. America’s purported founding as a “Christian nation” is the most striking example of this, but far from the only one. Progressives counter with a bewildering multitude of contradictory facts, ultimately amounting to a complex story of protracted struggles stretching far beyond the limits of the simplistic narratives conservatives tell.
This happened again at the June 25 congressional hearing on the “Do No Harm” Act to remedy abuses of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, abuses that have ramped up significantly under the Trump administration. It happened earlier this year in Minnesota, with threatened drastic cuts to the State Historical Society budget, as reported by Frederick Clarkson at Religion Dispatches the same day as the “Do No Harm” hearing. And it’s happening again with the VA’s decision.
Clarkson’s reporting was his latest on Project Blitz — a Christian right stealth state legislative campaign first exposed by him early last year, and reported here at Salon. As I wrote then, its guiding vision is heavily influenced by pseudo-historian David Barton, who “has been discredited by every American historian I know,” according to evangelical historian John Fea. (See Fea’s latest on Barton here.) The myth of America’s founding as a Christian nation, and our supposed need to restore what’s been lost, are its guiding lights, with three proposed tiers of legislation.
First comes “Legislation Regarding Our Country’s Religious Heritage.” Second come “Resolutions and Proclamations Recognizing the Importance of Religious History and Freedom.” And the third and final chapter is, “Religious Liberty Protection Legislation.” That last has “two main underlying intentions,” according to Clarkson. “First to denigrate the LGBTQ community, and second to defend and advance the right to discriminate…. As the late theocratic theologian R.J. Rushdoony said, ‘Only the right have rights.'”
The “Do No Harm Act” hearing focused directly on the underlying intentions of the third tier, although at the federal level. (A recent USA Today joint investigation highlighted the state-level side.) We focus on it first because it reveals early signs of the bitter fruit Project Blitz holds in store for America. But Clarkson’s latest reporting shines a sharp light on how vigorously and deceptively — and even unconstitutionally — the first two tiers are being advanced at state level, in pursuit of the long campaign to remake American culture in a theocratic mold.
This “slippery slope of religious exemptions has gotten us into explicit religious discrimination in adoption and foster care,” Clarkson told me, pointing to two key areas highlighted in the congressional hearing. “Part of this is Project Blitz, part of it is Trump administration policy.”
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But the idea that these “religious freedom” exemptions are “being used to justify discrimination” is, Clarkson says, far too limited. “This is about profound religious supremacism and religious bigotry that undergirds long-term theocratic political agendas.” The discrimination is vitally important, of course. But unless we respond much more vigorously, far worse could lie ahead.
The “Do No Harm” hearing took place before theHouse Committee on Education and Labor, whose Chair, Rep. Robert Scott, D-Va.,is the bill’s coauthor, along with Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, D-Mass. (quoted above). Republicans began their issue-clouding efforts by questioning why the hearing was before them, a point that Scott made perfectly clear from the outset, noting that it was 78 years to the day since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802, banning employment discrimination by private defense-related contractors. Religiously-justified discrimination by government contractors was the overwhelming focus of the testimony and questioning that followed — at least on the Democratic side. Scott then turned to religion.
“Religion has played a vital role in our nation’s history. It has furthered social justice causes, such as the abolitionist movement, civil rights movement and movement to end child labor,” Scott said, “However, some have used religion as a pawn to justify slavery, Jim Crow, the slaughter of our native populations, and other horrific acts.” In fact, he noted that the landmark case striking down bans on interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, had reversed a lower court that had upheld the ban, explicitly relying on the circuit court judge’s religious views.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 “was meant to be a shield to protect,” Kennedy said in his statement. “However, over the years, RFRA has morphed from a shield of protection to a sword of infringement, allowing employers to undermine basic workplace protections, organizations to stonewall child labor investigations, and health providers to deny needed care for victims of sexual abuse.”
Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State,made a similar point in her testimony. “The Trump administration is ignoring the intent and constitutional limitations on RFRA,” she said. Rather, it is weaponizing the law “to undermine civil rights protections, deny people access to health care and government services, and even deny children loving homes.”