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WASHINGTONDenouncing his predecessors water regulations as overly restrictive, President Donald Trump announced Thursday he was lifting protections enacted by the Obama administration to permanently entomb Gangthor the Malevolent in a murky trench deep below the Pacific Ocean. These horrible rules created by Barack Obama are one of the worst examples of government overreach in our nations history, and they are totally unfair to the deadly leviathan known as Gangthor, said Trump, who was later overheard muttering ancient incantations reportedly intended to loosen the cursd chains that shackle the nefarious shadow-behemoth to the ocean floor. I will personally swim to the bottom of the Pacific and use a golden key inscribed with mysterious runes to unlock Gangthors lair, where he has slumbered since the destructive Clean Water Rule of 2015 was issued. This shape-shifting, multi-tentacled monster will then once more be unleashed upon the waters of the United States, restoring the property rights of American farmers, fossil fuel companies, and real estate developers. The president went on to criticize prophets of doom who have predicted Gangthor the Malevolent will rise in a column of smoke and fire upon his release, blocking out the sun and blighting the earth with a thousand years of darkness.

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Trump Lifts Obama-Era Protections Trapping Gangthor The Malevolent In Tomb Deep Within Murky Depths Of Pacific Ocean - The Onion

Friday marked the Trump administrations second attempt at loosening regulations governing school meals that were implemented under former President Barack Obama. The administrations latest target: fresh vegetables and fruit.

The current meal regulations were established under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 spearheaded by former first lady Michelle Obama. That law set new standards for school meals for students in grades K-12 to ensure children were receiving more vegetables, fruits, whole-grain rich foods, and fat-free milk. For example, the law required students to have fruit with every school breakfast, and mandated schools serve a set amount of a variety of vegetables that include both leafy greens and starchy plants.

But the Department of Agriculture argues the Obama-era rules are leading to high costs and rampant food waste. On Friday Michelle Obamas birthday the department announced its proposal to change those rules.

Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetizing meals, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement to the New York Times. We listened and now were getting to work.

The Department of Agricultures own research on the effects of the Obama-era rules undercuts this claim, however. In its 2019 School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study, the department found no dramatic changes in the amount of food waste, and also found compliance with the rules led to better participation rates in school meal programs.

Experts fear that if the rules are changed, schools will try to substitute fresh fruit and vegetables with more cost-efficient foods that lack nutrition. They worry that baked sweets like muffins could be substituted for servings of fruit, and that potato products such as french fries could replace green vegetables.

The department has admitted new foods might be introduced, but has framed that as a good thing. It wants to lower financial barriers for schools serving la carte items like hamburgers in the hopes that expanding access to these items will limit waste. Perdue has argued that the most important thing is making sure students eat in 2017 he said he believes healthy meals are ending up in the trash because they simply arent appetizing to students.

If kids arent eating the food, and its ending up in the trash, they arent getting any nutrition thus undermining the intent of the program, he said.

But advocacy groups object to this sort of thinking. The National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity argues the new rules could create a giant junk food loophole because side dishes like cookies and fries, which could be offered once in a while as part of a balanced lunch, could be offered a la carte every day.

This isnt the first time the administration has rolled back parts of the Obama-era rules. In 2018, the Department of Agriculture finalized a rule that allowed schools to abandon their commitment to lowering sodium and increasing whole-grain foods.

That decision is now being challenged in court by a coalition of six states and Washington, DC, which claims the changes present health risks to children.

As with the 2018 rule, dissent around the newest regulation change is beginning to surface, primarily among Democrats. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) tweeted Friday, The Occupant is trying to play petty with the food our babies eat. Add it to the list affirming that the cruelty is the point with this White House.

With lawsuits against the first set of rollbacks to the lunch restrictions already in motion, if the new rules are successfully implemented, it may be merely a matter of time before they, too, are challenged in court.

For many low-income children, school is the only opportunity to access a nutritious meal. As Voxs Gaby Del Valle wrote when the Department of Agriculture first began relaxing the Obama-era rules:

For the 30 million students who depend on free and low-cost school lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, the relaxed nutrition standards could be hugely detrimental.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was a game-changing way of providing low-income students with healthy meals by relaxing these rules, the Trump administration is exacerbating a system where only those who can afford to eat healthy will be able to do so.

One of the consequences of the changes could be an increase in obesity rates, according to research from the Food Research and Action Center. And as Dr. Rachel Borton, the director of the Family Nurse Practitioner online program at Bradley University, argued in an op-ed for the Hill, poor eating in childhood can have lasting effects particularly if habits are formed, or if students remain on a nutrition-poor diet over the course of a number of years.

If those students dont have access to the nutritious options provided by the school, they may turn to low cost, processed foods that are high in calories but sparse in nutrients. Immediate effects of this type of diet include weight gain and poor physical health, Borton wrote. Long-term impacts range from increased risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and a slew of other unfortunate health outcomes.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was created to combat these health concerns and theres proof that it worked, according to the Department of Agricultures 2019 review of the program. That study found scores for the Healthy Eating Index (which measures the quality of the diet) shot up drastically, from 49.6 in 2009-2010 to 71.3 in 2014-2015.

These scores, however, are likely to decrease following the Trump administrations new rollbacks. And if schools fail to properly serve their students, it is students whose only meals come during the school day who will be hit the hardest.

Excerpt from:
The Trump administration wants to weaken Obamas school lunch rules. Again. - Vox.com

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