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The federal government is restoring funding for Texas publicly funded womens health programs, bringing as much as $350 million into state coffers and sending a clear message to conservative states: Its OK to defund providers affiliated with abortion.

The Wednesdayannouncementfrom the Trump administration reverses an Obama-era decision to cut federal womens health funding to Texas starting in 2013. That came as punishment after the Texas Legislature excluded Planned Parenthood from the Healthy Texas Women program in 2011 because of the organizations affiliation with abortion providers, though the womens health program does not fund abortion.

"The Lone Star State is once again in partnership with the federal government to provide meaningful family planning and health services while fostering a culture of life," Gov.Greg Abbottsaid in a Wednesday statement.

The decision was long awaited; Texas first asked the federal government perceived under Trump as more sympathetic to Texas anti-abortion crusade to help pay for its womens health programs in 2017.

Healthy Texas Women offersfamily planning and health servicessuch as pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing to low- and middle-income women. In 2018, it served approximately 173,000 people, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. State officials said the restored federal funding, approved through 2024, would allow the program to reach more than 200,000 clients per year.

The federal government will pay 90% of costs for family planning services and a little more than half of the costs for other womens health services. State funds will cover the rest.

With Gov. Abbotts strong leadership, we continue making significant strides in improving access to womens health and family planning services in Texas, said Courtney Phillips, executive commissioner of Texas health and human services agency.

Womens health advocates, who have long condemned the states defunding of Planned Parenthood, criticized the decision.

"This waiver is a sham process meant to condone the targeting of Planned Parenthood and other womens health care providers without actually improving services for women, said Stacey Pogue, a womens health expert from the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities think tank.

Pogue said the federal funds will merely supplant money the state already spends and will not actually improve services for Texas women.

Roughly half of states have programs largely paid for by the federal government that offer family planning services to women who dont qualify for full health insurance benefits through Medicaid. Texas has opted for years not to expand its Medicaid coverage to poor adults; most women who are eligible for the public insurance program are pregnant or disabled.

Eligibility for Healthy Texas Women is significantly broader, covering women whose family income is at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. Texas expects to spend about $100 million in state funds on the program through 2024, in addition to the $350 million from the federal government.

Texas isnt the first state to ask for permission to continue receiving Medicaid funds despite excluding certain womens health providers. Tennessee and South Carolina have similar requests outstanding with the federal government, according to Usha Ranji, associate director for womens health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy think tank.

This is certainly a change, Ranji said. Once one has been approved, it could pave the way for other states.

Nationwide, 12% of women of reproductive age are uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In Texas, the rate is 24%.

Texas rebranded its state-funded services as the Healthy Texas Women program in 2016. Since then, the program has been no stranger to controversy. State health officials that year announced they would invest more than $1 million in an anti-abortion organization, the Heidi Group, toestablish a network of clinics, doctors and and crisis pregnancy centersto help fill the void of womens health providers left after Planned Parenthoods defunding.

But the Heidi Group managed to reach only a tiny fraction of the number of women it said it would, andTexas canceled its contractin 2018.

In its 2017 application, Texas sought permission to dramatically overhaul Healthy Texas Women. On Wednesday, the federal government announced that it did not approve many of the requested changes, such as stricter income-eligibility criteria and a requirement that legal guardians review womens health services provided to 15- to 17-year-olds. (The federal government will only fund Healthy Texas Women services to Texans age 18 or over.)

But as far as the exclusion of Planned Parenthood is concerned, federal officials made clear they were on board with Texas plan.

The federal government believes that it would promote the objectives of Medicaid to provide the coverage of family planning services at issue even with the restrictions on freedom of choice required by Texas state law in place, Seema Verma, Trumps Medicaid chief, wrote to Texas health officials.

Read the rest here:
Obama cut women's health money in Texas for the state's targeting of Planned Parenthood. Trump just restored it. - Paris News

(Pixabay)A new report reveals the unintended consequences of Obama-era reforms.

Americas mountain of student-loan debt keeps growing ever higher. But the factors driving the increase have changed, as detailed in a fascinating new report from Moodys.

It used to be that we could blame colleges for failing to control their costs. But for the past decade or so, college costs have actually grown in line with the median household income, and the origination of new student loans has slowed down a little. The reason we havent seen a similar slowdown in overall student debt is that borrowers are making less progress on their loans. And a lot of the time theyre doing it on purpose because they participate in programs that were dramatically expanded during the Obama years, and that forgive debt entirely so long as the borrower first makes small payments for a set period of time.

Among students who graduated between 2006 and 2008, 60 percent made at least some progress on reducing their loan balances during their first five years post-graduation, despite the recession precipitated by the 2008 financial crisis. Students who left school between 2010 and 2012 faced a better job market as the economy slowly began to recover, but only 51 percent of them reduced their balances. In the aggregate, borrowers today are repaying only 3 percent of their loans each year, despite the baseline student loan being one that is paid back in ten years.

When someone doesnt manage to reduce his loan balance, there can be several reasons. One is that hes not earning enough money to make significant payments. This is especially likely when a student either failed to graduate or attended a program that doesnt lead to real job opportunities both of which are especially likely at for-profit and two-year schools, enrollment in which was high in the aftermath of the recession. (It has fallen off since). Some borrowers also opt for longer repayment terms, meaning they pay off their loans more slowly than they otherwise would.

But the report also points to another factor that would seem to have a lot of explanatory power, especially when it comes to those with the highest debts: the still-growing popularity of income-based repayment (IBR) and similar programs, which were overhauled and dramatically expanded during the Obama years. Under these programs, students can make small payments for a decade or two, often not even covering the interest on their loans, and have the entire debt forgiven at the end.

This is not necessarily a bad idea in principle, but as Jason Delisle has noted previously in this space the programs were structured in a way that encouraged their abuse by people with incredibly high debt levels, especially from graduate studies rather than two- or four-year degrees. As Delisle wrote,

Under current law, anyone who takes out a federal student loan today can enroll in IBR and have his payments fixed at 10 percent of his income, less an exemption of $18,700 (which increases with household size). . . . Then, after 20 years of payments (or only ten years for those working in any government or non-profit job), all of the remaining balance is forgiven, no matter how high it is.

He further points out, that, using the Department of Educations own debt calculator, someone with $80,000 in debt and an income of $60,000 could receive $62,000 in debt forgiveness if he works for the government. Someone with $150,000 in debt and a $75,000 salary could pay for 20 years and still receive $82,000, more than half the initial balance. Meanwhile, as noted in the Moodys report, the median amount borrowed is just about $1718,000.

Income-based repayment is a giveaway to people who choose to spend abnormally large sums on higher education, often earning graduate degrees, but go on to make unremarkable middle-to-upper-middle-class salaries. Its far less generous to someone with a modest debt, even if that person also earns a modest income. Its simply not possible to wring $62,000 or $82,000 in debt forgiveness out of the system if youre a normal borrower and didnt take out anywhere near that much in loans to begin with.

The Moodys report further demonstrates that income-based programs are, indeed, highly attractive to people with big debts: Only 5% of the total balances of borrowers who owe less than $5,000 are covered by [income-driven repayment programs]. Meanwhile, 53% of the balances of borrowers who owe more than $200,000 are in IDR programs. And unsurprisingly, heavy borrowers have a disproportionate impact on student loans in general: Folks who borrow $20,000 or less represent 55 percent of borrowers but only 14 percent of the overall debt.

All of this needs to be kept in mind as we ponder proposals to shovel even more money at people who carry student debt. College really does cost too much, but the costs seem to have finally stabilized. And those with incredibly high debt already have options for getting rid of it overly generous options that many of them are enthusiastically taking advantage of, at taxpayer expense.

The concept of income-based repayment is not a bad one. Indeed, I think it would be an enormous improvement for more colleges to base the amounts they get repaid on the amounts students earn after graduating. But theres no justification for structuring such a program as a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to people with graduate degrees.

Continued here:
Why Pay Off Your Student Loans if the Government Will Do It for You? - National Review

The first statements from Donald Trumps defense team in the impeachment trial in the Senate on Tuesday included multiple big, instantly refutable lies, such as White House counsel Pat Cipollones claim that no Republicans were allowed into the secret hearings held in the House, orthat Republicans werent allowed to call witnesses. But among a laundry list of talking points disconnected from reality, there was one that stood out: the claim that Trump did nothing wrong because President Barack Obama also withheld funds, from Egypt.

Obama did withhold funds. He did so when, between the time Congress allocated funds and the time the Pentagon approved their release, military forces in Egypt mounted a coup. Not only were those funds not approved to be sent, not only did Obama notify Congress that they were being withheld, but members of Congress insisted that the funds not be turned over. That included pleas from Sen. Lindsey Graham to hold the funds. But as the House team continues to lay out its case, and Republicans wait for their chance, it appears that Obama did it too is going to be the go-to argument from Team Trump.

Overnight, Sen. Marsha Blackburntweeted out a listof supposed holds placed by Obama (not all of which appear to be real). Then Sen. John Cornyn joined in, bothon Twitterand in an interview, to expand the claimnot just to Obama, but to administrations going back to Nixon. Neither Cornyn nor Blackburn claimed that Obama withheld funds so that he could twist the armof a foreign leader so hed give him a personal political advantage. So far.But it seems likely that they will, as the Obama-did-it-too meme becomes the latest attempt from the Republican side to distract from Trumps crimes.

Of course, theres more that Blackburn and Cornyn are ignoring than just the lack of a quid pro quo in any of Obamas foreign assistance delays. Every aid package has qualifications that have to be met in order for the aid to be approved. Legislation authorizing foreign assistance routinely includes review by agencies that have to sign off that goals have been achieved in advance of the release. In the case of 2019 assistance to Ukraine, that responsibility was assigned to the Department of Defense, which completed its review on May 23 with a conclusion that Ukraine had met required goals on both fighting corruption and promoting democracy.

What happened in past delays was often simply that the certifying agencies found issues, or that, as in the case of Egypt, conditions on the ground had changed significantly between the time the legislation was passed and the time the funds were slated to go out. In some cases, the result was further review before funds were eventually released. In some cases, the result was a more prolonged delay: Egypt didnt get any funds from the U.S. for almost two years, until the State Department was satisfied that the new president wasnt just a puppet of the military. In every case, both Congress and the public were aware not just that there was a delay, but of the reasons for the delay.

In the case of Trump and Ukraine, the assistance was approved by the Department of Defense just two months after the election of a new Ukrainian president who ran on an anticorruption platform. Then Trump placed a hold on the fundsin secret. He provided no reason for the delay. The DOD was instructed not to talk about the delay. Congress was not informed of the delay. No reason was ever given for the delay. And the delay remained in place until 1) the delay wasnt just obvious, but also the subject of public articles, 2) multiple senators contacted the White House expressing concern, 3) three separate House investigations were opened, 4) the White House counsel informed Trump that the whistleblower report was circulating, and 5) the intelligence community inspector general determined that the whistleblower report was urgent. Then Trump released the funds, and Republicans began to make up explanationsfor the holdexplanations that shifted on a nearly daily basis during the House impeachment hearings.

Other foreign assistance packages have been delayed. For good reasons. With notification of and cooperation from Congress.

Try again, Republicans. Try again.

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Republicans play the Obama did it too card on military assistance and of course theyre lying - AlterNet

Its been said that behind every great man is a great woman. In Prince Harrys case, its three wealthy and media-savvy women.

On Saturday, Buckingham Palace announced a deal had been reached for Harry and Meghan Markle to relinquish their official duties as members of the British royal family. They have agreed not to use His/Her Royal Highness, and will repay the state the costs of renovating their U.K. base, Frogmore Cottage. But theyre now free to pursue their own business opportunities overseas.

In a statement, Queen Elizabeth said she was proud of how quickly Meghan had become one of the family, adding: Following many months of conversations and more recent discussions, I am pleased that together we have found a constructive and supportive way forward for my grandson and his family. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved members of my family.

Last week, the couple announced they work to become financially independent and live between U.K. and North America. Free from the ribbon-cutting duties of royal life, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are on the brink of becoming a global-media power couple, with or without their royal titles. Their Instagram FB, +0.69% account has 10.9 million followers, adding 700,000 in one week.

Pearson said that the couple stripped of their ability to use HRH on their website and products will do their best to leverage their fame and royal connections in the U.S. to build a personal brand much like Gwyneth Paltrows Goop, and as Markle previously did with TIG. (Forbes recently named reality TV star Kylie Jenner, 22, the youngest self-made billionaire ever.)

Harry receives an income from his father Prince Charles. Harry, who is already worth several million dollars, owes his fortune to three famous women: his mother, the late Princess Diana, who became a global superstar; his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who steered the royals into the 20th and 21s Centuries, and his wife, Meghan Markle, an American-born self-made former actress.

Also see: Queen Elizabeths statement on Harry and Meghan: We would have preferred them to remain full-time working members of the royal family

Multiple newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph in the U.K., have reported that the queen was disappointed with the surprise announcement, and had asked the Sussexes to hold off on issuing a statement. When The Sun newspaper published a front-page story that the couple was contemplating a move to Canada, the Sussexes pushed the button on their statement.

Questions now linger over whether they will qualify for armed security if they live in Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth, or the U.S. Markle previously lived in Toronto, where she still has a home, and Los Angeles. Their HRH titles would certainly have burnished their personal brands and commercial appeal, but they will remain the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Ted Sarandos, Netflixs chief content officer, said he would be interested in speaking to the Sussexes about working together. Speaking at an event in Los Angeles over the weekend, he told the Press Association: Who wouldnt be interested? Yes, sure. Harry and Meghan will no longer be working members of the royal family after April, and will split their time between the U.K. and North America.

Harry is friends with former U.S. president Barack Obama, and will consider adopting the Obamas post-White House career model, some royal observers say. Barack and Michelle Obama reportedly signed an eight-figure deal with Netflix NFLX, +0.97% to produce high-brow historical, biographical and social-justice programming with their company, Higher Ground Productions.

Netflix would give the Sussexes a platform of 158 million paid subscribers and be a coup for the streaming service, which won critical praise for, The Crown, chronicling the life of Queen Elizabeth. (Netflix did not respond to request for comment.) Harry has already participated in a documentary on mental health with Oprah Winfrey, a friend of the couple, for Apple TV AAPL, +0.68%.

The media mogul responded to reports that she had helped the Sussexes navigate and negotiate their #Megxit as the royal scandal has been described in the U.K. press, a riff on #Brexit, the U.K.s protracted exit from the European Union. Meg and Harry do not need my help figuring out what is best for them, Oprah said in a statement, according to The New York Post.

Ashley Pearson, an American-born writer based in London who has been a royal commentator for two decades, said their powerful political and media connections will serve them well. She sees them leveraging their circle of boldfaced names: Their kind of lifestyle costs a fortune. However, one of the reasons they broke off from the royals is, in part, because they want to build their own brand.

Pearson believes Markle is the driving force to break free from the House of Windsor, suggesting that despite the privileges of royal life the negative press coverage was too much to bear. She had no idea how un-glamorous it really is to be a royal and, when she found out she would be a civil servant in a tiara she was, like, No way. The couples website is similar in tone to Obama.org.

The Sussexes have already cut their teeth in broadcast media. In 2017, Harry interviewed Barack Obama when he was the guest editor of BBC Radio 4s Today program and, last year, ITV in the U.K. broadcast Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, which aired in the U.S. on ABC DIS, -0.46% Another route: The Obamas reportedly inked a book deal for more than $65 million.

In a recently resurfaced video, as Meghan greeted Beyonce and Jay Z in a line at the opening of the movie The Lion King in London last July, Prince Harry told Disney chairman and chief executive Bob Iger, You know she does voiceovers? Iger responded, Oh, really? Ah, I did not know that, and laughed. Harry responded, You seem surprised. But, yeah, shes really interested.

Netflix is broadly unchanged at $339.7 over the last 12 months. However, Disney rose by 30% to $144.5 and Apple is up 103% at $318.5 over the same period, both outperforming the overall market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.38% is up 18.8% at 29,348.10 over the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX, +0.14% increased 24.7% at 3,329.62.

While the couples break for the border releases them from the drab ribbon-cutting, handshaking daily duties of royal life in the U.K., and should better shield themselves from the jaundiced coverage they have received at the hands of the British tabloids, their bid for financial independence is somewhat more complicated and will not require them to take up full-time jobs.

For a start, they will keep their U.K. base, Frogmore Cottage, their historic Grade II-listed house in Windsor, which was renovated for 2.4 British pounds ($3 million) by the British taxpayer. They have already built a strong royal/celebrity personal brand, breaking the traditional mold of the royal family. Their 2018 wedding was an unusual mixture of Hollywood and English aristocracy.

Harry, 35, on the other hand, inherited a sizable fortune after the death of his mother. He inherited approximately 7 million British pounds ($9.2 million) from his mothers estate, the BBC estimated. His father's side of the family is far richer worth more than $88 billion, according to Forbes including investments, properties, castles and land.

Harry, 35, on the other hand, inherited a sizable fortune after the death of his mother. He inherited approximately 7 million British pounds ($9.2 million) from his mothers estate, the BBC estimated. His father's side of the family is far richer worth more than $88 billion, according to Forbes including investments, properties, castles and land.

To be fair, Harry also reportedly earned an annual salary of $45,000 when he served as an officer in the Army Air Corps and approximately $52,000 a year while working as a helicopter pilot for the Army Air Corps, according to separate estimates by Forbes and Fortune magazines based on publicly available figures for salaries in the U.K. army.

Harry also has had a military career on the front lines. Prince Harry served in the Army for ten years, rising to the rank of Captain and undertaking two tours of Afghanistan, according to Buckingham Palace. He continues to work in support of his fellow servicemen, promoting support for wounded men and women as they adapt to life post-injury.

Also see: This entrepreneur landed funding from a male venture capitalist but she told him to take a hike after he texted her nude selfies

The Sussexes rely on Prince Charles first in line to the British throne for approximately 95% of their income. Prince Charles earns $23 million a year from the Duchy of Cornwall, a private estate with more than $1.3 billion in assets. The Duchys financial accounts reveal a total income for fiscal 2017 of 37.2 million British pounds ($48.7 million), up 2.5% on the previous year.

Choosing Toronto or Vancouver as their overseas residence may make more financial sense than, say, L.A. or New York. In Canada, they are close enough to the U.S. without becoming embroiled in complex web of American tax law. Canada, for instance, does not impose a capital gains tax for homes that increase in value.

Markle lived there while filming Suits, and the couple spent the holidays in Canada, reportedly at a waterfront mansion on Vancouver Island. As Canada is part of the U.K. Commonwealth, it may be required to pay for security for the couple and their son, Archie. (Of possible interest for other couples moving there: Canadian divorce law generally splits all new marital wealth equally.)

Harrys late mother, Princess Diana who died at 36 in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by photographers had long battled the relentless, prying eyes of the British red tops, which dissected her every move in the years following her 1981 marriage to Prince Charles, and 1996 divorce. She had reportedly long dreamed of starting a new life in the U.S.

In a widely circulated article, Ellie Hall, a Buzzfeed reporter, compared Kates morning sickness cure? Prince William gifted with an avocado for pregnant Duchess with Meghan Markles beloved avocado linked to human rights abuse and drought, millennial shame, in the Express. The contrasting headlines appeared in the same papers and, sometimes, with the same bylines.

Two more appearing in the Daily Mail went thus, Hall reported. Kate and Wills Inc: Duke and Duchess secretly set up companies to protect their brand just like the Beckhams and, A right royal cash in! How Prince Harry and Meghan Markle trademarked over 100 items from hoodies to socks SIX MONTHS before split with monarchy with new empire worth up to 400m.

Markle flew back to Canada earlier this month amid reports she was driven out by, among other things, press coverage regarded as both overtly and covertly racist. Highlighting 20 headlines, Buzzfeed pointed to the different standards used to report on Kate Middleton wife of Prince William, second in line to the British throne and Markle, from child-rearing to eating avocado.

Markle acknowledged that she had a difficult time adapting to life with the often critical media attention in the U.K. Ive really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip. Ive tried, Ive really tried, I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging, she said. The biggest thing that I know is that I never thought this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair.

The Queen acknowledged the difficulties in her statement Saturday: I recognize the challenges they have experienced as a result of intense scrutiny over the last two years and support their wish for a more independent life, her statement read, adding, It is my whole familys hope that todays agreement allows them to start building a happy and peaceful new life.

There appears to push back from Harrys circle to the avalanche of press in the U.K. criticizing the couples decision. Writing in The Sunday Times, Tom Bradby, a friend of Harrys who directed a documentary about the couple in Africa last year, said Buckingham Palace claimed to be blindsided by the couples announcement, but Bradby threw doubt on the palace line.

Bradby wrote that Harry was asked by senior members of the royal family to write a plan to move away. He was reluctant, on the grounds that such documents normally leak, Bradby wrote in a 1,600-word essay, Escape from the poisonous palace. He was persuaded and did as he was asked. (Buckingham Palace did not respond to a request for comment from MarketWatch.)

The document, or its details, was shortly afterwards leaked to The Sun, Bradby added. He said the Sussexes had long faced unpleasantness from the family, saying some members were jealous and, at times, unfriendly, although excluded Queen Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh from that assessment. The fallout began at the time of the wedding in 2018.

Speaking to Bradby for his documentary last year, she thanked him for asking how she was, and said not many people had asked if she were OK. In his essay Sunday, Bradby wrote that some members of the family (with the exception of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh) were jealous and, at times, unfriendly: Really damaging things were said and done. The atmosphere soured hard and early.

(This story was originally published on Jan. 8 and was updated on Jan. 19.)

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She found out she would be a civil servant in a tiara. Even without HRH titles, Meghan and Harrys #Megxit will make them rich beyond their wildest...

The Barack Obama year-end list extravaganza continued (ended?) on Monday, as the former president tweeted his favourite songs of the year. In the previous two days, hed posted his favourite books and movies, and were probably not getting a standalone TV list, since he already added a few shows to his movie list that he said he considered as powerful as movies. By now the annual tradition is expected, and in the replies to Obamas tweets any number of expressions of longing for the return of his cool-guy tastes to the White House can be found. Last week the New York Times published an op-ed titled In Praise of Barack Obama, Music Critic.

This year Obama seemed to signal his attunement to the diffuse state of popular music, where genre-agnosticism is often a virtue, by noting that his picks ranged from hip-hop to country to The Boss. He included American breakouts Lizzo and DaBaby, Nigerian artists Burna Boy and Rema, and Rosala and J Balvins 'Con Altura', although he omitted Balvins credit on the song. He said he was listening to this years folk rock darling Big Thief, and Indian artist Prateek Kuhad made it to his list with his popular heartbreak ditty, 'cold/mess'. He was well aware of 'Old Town Road', a song at the centre of all sorts of playlists, streaming records, and conversations this year but not quite as ubiquitous in the flurry of year-end lists. And he even waited until Kaytranada released a new album on December 13 to solidify his choices.

As ever, theres the sourcing question. What Spotify playlists, and which music advisers are involved here? Obamas book list raised some eyebrows, with its inclusion of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff, which, as the reporter and researcher Avi Ascher-Schapiro pointed out on Twitter, argues that the revolving door of personnel who migrated between Google & the Obama admin...helped fortify the surveillance capitalism business model.

Or is it more of a family matter? Back in Obamas second term, it didnt escape notice that his daughter Malia wore a Pro Era T-shirt.

Whatever the case, there are some relatively under-the-radar picks and opportunities for discovery here. Angelica Garcia put on a quiet, wonderful show in New York a few months ago in a 250-capacity room. On Monday she tweeted, I am tearing up right now. My grandma has kept your picture on her piano for 5 years. Thank you for listening @BarackObama.

Prateek Kuhad wrote on Instagram, "This just happened and I dont think Ill sleep tonight. Totally flipping out. I have no idea how cold/mess even reached him but thank you @barackobama, thank you universe I didnt think 2019 couldve gotten better, but damn was I wrong. What an honour."

Heres his full list:

A version of this article originally appeared on Vanityfair.com

Excerpt from:
Barack Obama Likes All Kinds of Music Too - VOGUE India