Another Republican President, Another Recession.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Dousing a social media firestorm, the Biden administration said Wednesday that a grant program to counter harm from illicit drugs will not pay for safer pipes to smoke crack or meth.

The White House was put on the defensive as outrage from the political right, some of it with racial overtones, was cresting online.

“No federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and White House drug policy adviser Rahul Gupta said in a joint statement.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said separately it was never the intention to pay for drug pipes, and complained that any such impression was created by “inaccurate reporting.”

Monday was the deadline for service organizations and local governments to apply for a share of $30 million in federal money for “harm reduction” efforts to prevent disease, injury and other collateral trauma to people addicted to illicit drugs. Harm reduction, such as providing a space where drug users can inject and be monitored for overdoses, is a controversial idea.Critics see it as enabling drug use, but public health advocates say it’s a pragmatic approach to keep bad situations from getting worse.

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The original request for funding proposals from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration had listed “safe smoking kits/supplies” among the items that could be purchased with taxpayer money. They were among a dozen categories that included overdose prevention drugs, medication lockboxes, test kits for infectious diseases, and syringe disposal containers. The grant solicitation did not specifically mention pipes, although they can be a part of safe smoking kits.

Daniel Raymond, director of policy for the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, said only a few programs in the U.S. have handed out safe smoking kits.

“None of this was being done with federal funds,” Raymond said. “I feel very confident in saying that. I would have been aware if that were true.”

Nonetheless reports that the Biden administration was using federal dollars to pay for “crack pipes” took off. Some Republican senators piled on, castigating the administration.

Misleading claims about the HHS program dominated social media early Wednesday, many of them from conservative commentators and Republican politicians sharing memes and tweets that received tens of thousands of likes.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted: “Last week, Biden talked about being tough on crime. This week, the Biden Admin announced funds for crack pipe distribution to “advance racial equity.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee chimed in on Twitter Tuesday night to say, “End government-funded crack pipes.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida called the purported pipe distribution “insanity” in a video published on Twitter, which had 245,000 views by Wednesday afternoon. “The Biden administration is going to be sending crack pipes and meth pipes targeting minority communities in this country,” he said.

Some social media users even went as far as to say that Biden and other Democrats were going to give out crack pipes during Black History Month.

“Joe Biden is handing out crack pipes to help ‘racial equity’... during Black History Month,” Errol Webber, a Black Republican candidate for California’s 47th Congressional District, said on Twitter. “No I’m not joking. No I’m not lying. This is what he thinks of our community.”

HHS spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim tweeted that such reports were “blatant misinformation,” and Wednesday at the White House briefing Psaki said paying for pipes was never part of the plan.

“They were never a part of the kit,” said Psaki. “It was inaccurate reporting and we wanted to put out information to make that clear.”

Late Wednesday, Rubio issued a press release saying, “I am glad the Biden administration acknowledges sending crack pipes to our nation’s addicts is a bad idea.”

Advocates of harm reduction feared the blow-up would hamper efforts to coax drug users out of the shadows.

Leo Beletsky, professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University School of Law, said he was disappointed by the White House response.

“This administration has said repeatedly they are making harm reduction one of their key priorities,” Beletsky said. “As soon as there’s a little right-wing echo chamber pushback against something that is quite sound and rooted in science, they backtrack. They put their tail between their legs and back pedal.”

But administration officials Becerra and Gupta said they continue to stand by “proven harm reduction strategies like providing naloxone, fentanyl test strips, and clean syringes.” HHS also pointed out that the harm reduction grants are required to conform to federal, state and local laws, and crack pipes are illegal in many jurisdictions.

Homemade pipes for smoking crack and methamphetamine may break easily or also release toxic fumes. Because of that, safer pipes may be one of the components of the kits.

But they also can and do include other supplies, such as alcohol wipes to clean hands or a pipe, or lip balm for cracked lips, Raymond said. Such give-away kits can be a way to start a conversation with drug users, perhaps pointing them toward change.

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https://www.cdc.gov/policy/hst/hi5/cleansyringes/index.html

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hanimmal said:

Well Manchin has finally drifted over into right wing troll category buddying up with the insurrectionist Republican 'little Marco' with the new propaganda narrative (pushed here a week ago by the new propaganda troll (that has been deleted) which he defended with some hate monger branding of 'CNN'. Weird coincidence. Totally not a paid troll right?) of 'crack pipes'!



Because who can't get behind a little hate of the 80's race baiting 'crack'. And now they are holding hostage government funding to get this done, threatening to shut down the government in 48 hours (no pay for millions of Americans is really not good for the economy or morale) if this doesn't get added to it. btw there is no plan to use government money to buy them. It is all just right wing propaganda.

https://apnews.com/article/business-health-jen-psaki-xavier-becerra-5faa62ff133830b6367f5869f644731d
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The only problem is that it is not just the nonexistent 'crack pipe' purchases that they are demanding. They are also demanding the new needle program get defunded.




This is really a shit idea for both public health and our economy. Not because people want or are pushing people to do drugs that use needles, but that without free clean needles there are far more disease outbreaks (like AIDS) that end up costing us all far more in hospital visit costs that we all end up having to pay in higher costs.

In just New York alone, it is saving thousands per person who is trading in dirty needles for clean ones.



This is bullshit that these two would play games with both our economy and public safety by threatening to shut down the economy for some political talking point to play up the race baiting and scare mongering red meat non issue.

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cannabineer said:

These people are dominionists in the wee hours of the night. Needle programs merely keep the morally broken from conveniently wiping themselves out. The right is effectively being boiled down to its twin cores of weaponized religion and white supremacy, and no longer working to conceal the fact.

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hanimmal said:

It would be one thing if they just came out and owned it. But these Republicans (+1 (or 2?) Democrats) hiding behind 'crack pipes' propaganda is just race baiting (while hurting our economy) dog whistling like cowards in order to 'own the libs' by forcing a government shutdown right as Russia is amping up a attack on a allied nation.

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cannabineer said:

These people are dominionists in the wee hours of the night. Needle programs merely keep the morally broken from conveniently wiping themselves out. The right is effectively being boiled down to its twin cores of weaponized religion and white supremacy, and no longer working to conceal the fact.

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cannabineer said:

I do not remember the GOP of my youth (pre-Reagan) being this focused on obstruction.
And Manchin puts me in mind of an old story about a wooden horse.

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Fogdog said:

their blatant, out in the open crimes concern me. It's as if they know they already won and no longer need to conceal what they are doing.

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A day before she was due to be evicted in November from her Atlanta home, Shanelle King heard that she had been awarded about $15,000 in rental assistance. She could breathe again.

But then the 43-year-old hairdresser got a letter last month from her landlord saying the company was canceling her lease in March —- seven months early — without any explanation.

“I’m really pissed about it. I thought I would be comfortable again back in my home,” said King, whose work dried up during the pandemic and who now worries about finding another apartment she can afford. “Here I am back up against the wall with no where to stay. I don’t know what I am going to do.”

Although the $46.5 billion Emergency Rental Assistance Program has paid out tens of billions of dollars to help avert an eviction crisis, some tenants, like King, who received help are finding themselves threatened with eviction again — sometimes days after getting federal help. Many are finding it nearly impossible to find another affordable place to live.

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“It is a Band-Aid. It was never envisioned as anything more than a Band-Aid,” Erin Willoughby, director of the Clayton Housing Legal Resource Center Atlanta, said of the program.

“It’s not solving the underlying problem, which is a lack of affordable housing. People are on the hook for rents they cannot afford to pay,” she said. “Simply finding something cheaper is not an option because there is not anything cheaper. People have to be housed somewhere.”

The National Housing Law Project, in a survey last fall of nearly 120 legal aid attorneys and civil rights advocates, found that 86% of respondents reported cases in which landlords either refused to take assistance or accepted the money and still moved to evict tenants. The survey also found a significant increase in cases of landlords lying in court to evict tenants and illegally locking them out.

“A number of issues could be described as issues related to landlord fraud ... and a set of problems I would describe as loopholes within the ... program that made it less effective to accomplish the goal,” said Natalie N. Maxwell, a senior attorney with the group.

National Apartment Association President and CEO Bob Pinnegar said the survey was not based on facts, adding that its members are doing everything they can to keep tenants in their homes, including lobbying to get rental assistance out faster.

“Skewed surveys aren’t reflective of the entire situation. By and large the rental housing industry has gone to great lengths to support residents, including when it comes to rental assistance and adherence to laws and regulations,” Pinnegar said in a statement.

Legal aid attorneys interviewed across the country confirmed they are seeing a steady increase in cases where tenants were approved for rental help and still faced eviction.

These include the mother of a newborn and two other children in Florida who received rental assistance but was ordered evicted after the landlord refused to take the money. Another Florida landlord lied in court that she hadn’t received the money in a bid to push through an eviction.

There have also been cases in Georgia and Texas where landlords who received assistance moved to end leases early, increased rents to unaffordable levels or found other reasons than nonpayment to evict someone, lawyers said.

“As it is right now, it doesn’t seem to be working as intended,” said Tori Tavormina, an eviction prevention specialist with Texas Housers. “It feels much more like it’s a program that is alleviating the pressure of the eviction crisis but not solving the underlying problems.”

District Court Judge Shera Grant, who handles housing cases in Birmingham, Alabama, said she and her fellow judges have seen an uptick in cases of landlords getting assistance and returning to court a few weeks later after a tenant has fallen behind on rent to seek an eviction. So far they have prevented them — though she expects a spike in these kinds of cases going forward.

“It’s incumbent on the judges to make sure we are paying close attention to our eviction cases and making sure that the landlord is not having their cake and eating it too,” she said. “By the same token, we are not forcing landlords to take the money. There are some unfortunate circumstances where the tenant has to be evicted.”

In the case of King, she believes her landlord was retaliating for earlier complaints about mold and water leaks in her three-bedroom house. The company King was dealing with, NDI Maxim, which manages property for owners, said it “was not at liberty to share details of tenants’ status nor their payment records.”

Other cases are complicated by the length of the pandemic and conflicting accounts of landlord and tenant. And they often leave both parties feeling shortchanged.

Despite his landlord getting more than $20,000 in rental assistance, Prince Beatty is facing imminent eviction from his three-bedroom house in East Point, Georgia.

After the money was approved, Beatty signed an agreement in court late last year to pay several thousand dollars more that he owed as a condition to remain housed. He went back to the county for additional assistance to cover the balance but says he was denied. Unable to find warehouse work during the pandemic, the 47-year-old Navy veteran still can’t pay rent and is now $12,000 behind, in part due to his rent increasing from $1,250-a-month to $2,000.

Beatty, who was told he would be evicted this month, said he wakes most mornings in a panic, wondering if this will be the day when marshals “come and disrespect my stuff and throw it in the street.”

His landlord, Monique Jones, said she tried to work with Beatty. But she said he violated the lease by subletting rooms to several other people and that the amount of rental assistance has not covered losses from months of unpaid rent that started before the pandemic.

“It was helpful but it did not address the underlying issue which is his nonpayment of rent,” she said of the rental assistance. “That still remains and that is rightfully why I am proceeding. If I have a tenant who will pay rent and abides by the lease, I would not attempt to evict.”

Limits with rental assistance often come down to some states and localities failing to follow Treasury Department guidance calling for policies requiring landlords delay evictions after getting money. Although the program prevents landlords from evicting during the period covered by rental assistance, the Treasury Department can only encourage states to adopt policies that ban evictions up to three months afterward.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition found only 29 states and localities in 2021 had adopted policies that prohibit landlords who participate in the rental assistance program from evicting tenants for a period ranging from 30 days to 12 months. Six states — Arizona, Kentucky, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina and West Virginia — passed regulations while several cities or counties in Texas and Maryland did.

Gene Sperling, who is charged with overseeing implementation of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package, said there was no data to suggest landlords evicting tenants after getting assistance is a “pervasive issue” but that it was “completely unacceptable.”

While it’s “not against the letter of the act, it’s against the spirit of it,” he said.

The Coalition also said the program’s issues illustrate a larger problem.

“We are in the middle of a severe affordable housing crisis with gaping holes in our social safety net,” CEO Diane Yentel said. “We have a systemic power imbalance that favors landlords at the expense of low-income tenants. Emergency rental assistance and eviction moratoriums were a temporary patch to those holes.”

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hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-eviction-rental-assistance-539e1e1155d0e51eced4ae96e6e8cd14View attachment 5089773

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WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than a year, the Food and Drug Administration lacked a permanent head when the agency was central in the battle against COVID-19. Once President Joe Biden nominated Dr. Robert Califf to head the agency, it took the Senate three months to confirm him.

The political battles over Califf’s nomination highlight the difficulties that Biden faces in filling key positions throughout his administration.

The vacancies in high-ranking positions across the executive branch could put a drag on Biden’s ability to fight the pandemic, implement the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law and boost the economy with inflation levels at a 40-year high.

“Without leadership and experts, we’ve seen departments increasingly stressed,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “There is a struggle to get appropriations done, there is talk about defaulting on the debt ceiling,” she said, adding that unfilled jobs affect the government’s fiscal position and the president’s overall agenda.

The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which works to make government more effective, points to 70 high-ranking positions across the government without a confirmed nominee, including at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department and the Transportation Department.

The White House blames gridlock from Republicans in a sharply divided Senate, but it also has not submitted nominations for many of the open positions.

The White House says the Biden administration has nominated 569 people, of whom 302 have been confirmed and 247 are waiting to go through the confirmation process. That’s out of 1,200 civilian positions requiring Senate confirmation.

In Biden’s first year, the Senate confirmed 41% of his nominations, according to the Partnership for Public Service. In comparison, 75% of George W. Bush’s nominees were confirmed in his first year, compared with 69% for Barack Obama and 57% for Donald Trump.

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The group is calling for a reduction in the number of Senate-confirmed nominees, stating that vetting and disclosure requirements are increasingly complex, and delays in the Senate confirmation process grow with each transition.

“Would it be better if it could happen faster? Yes,” said former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. “Ideally the confirmation process would be streamlined.” But he added that there needs to be accountability for these important positions and a process for questioning nominees about how they would do the job.

Lew was confirmed by the Senate less than two months after he was nominated by Obama.

What the vacancies mean for some of Biden’s policy priorities:

CREATING FISCAL POLICY

At the Treasury Department, at least five Senate-confirmed positions are unfilled, including the undersecretary for international affairs and treasurer of the U.S.

A Treasury Department without an international affairs head will make Secretary Janet Yellen’s hope to lead the implementation of a global corporate taxation agreement increasingly difficult.

Lew told The Associated Press that having Senate-confirmed people with prior policymaking and government experience on staff will at least fill in the gaps where vacancies exist.

“If you look at the Treasury team, starting at the very top, you have the secretary and and deputy secretary with deep experience in policymaking,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of career talent, which makes transitions go more smoothly.”

The key to filling empty seats, he said, “is getting the congressional process to work better.”

FIGHTING THE PANDEMIC

At the Department of Health and Human Services, two major science agencies remain without permanent Senate-confirmed leadership at a time as the administration struggles with its communications on the pandemic and the country might be reopening.

One of the agencies is the FDA. Califf’s nomination had stalled for months in the Senate in part due to his consulting work for pharmaceutical companies and allegations that he had failed to effectively regulate addictive opioids. He was narrowly confirmed last week to the post, which he had held briefly under Obama.

The National Institutes of Health is also missing a director, although budget uncertainty is currently a bigger concern, said Ellie Dehoney a top policy expert with Research!America, a nonprofit that advocates for national spending on health and medical research.

“They are constrained because they are under an old budget and they can’t launch new programs very easily,” she said.

Staff morale remains steady nonetheless. “What we have heard around NIH is a desire to stay and particularly to see through this pandemic,” Dehoney said.

IMPLEMENTING INFRASTRUCTURE PLANS

At the Transportation Department, acting heads are in place at the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, two of the three agencies at the forefront of promoting roadway safety, even as the department launches a new national strategy to stave off record increases in traffic fatalities. The third agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is awaiting full Senate confirmation of Steven Cliff, Biden’s pick to head the agency, after a committee approved the nomination Feb. 2.

The department also lacks a nominee for head of the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and will soon have a vacancy as well for head of the Federal Aviation Administration after Stephen Dickson steps down on March 31.

At the highway agency, deputy administrator Stephanie Pollack, a former state transportation secretary in Massachusetts, is key in implementing provisions of Biden’s new infrastructure law, such as helping to issue guidance to states on use of billions in highway money and distribute competitive grants to promote traffic safety.

At the motor carrier agency, which regulates the trucking industry, Biden lost his pick for administrator after Meera Joshi left to take a post in New York Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. The department recently shifted its deputy assistant secretary for safety policy, Robin Hutcheson, to serve as the agency’s acting administrator.

Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state safety offices, expressed concern about the ability of the acting heads to effectively get work done.

Acting leaders typically have fewer staff around them and tend to be less publicly visible, he said. Currently the motor carrier agency has a number of proposed truck safety regulations yet to complete and is also working on changes to ease congestion in the U.S. supply chain. The highway agency, meanwhile, stands at the forefront of prodding states and localities to embrace changes to road design and speed limits to help curtail deaths.

EXPLORING GUN CONTROL

Early in his presidency, Biden nominated David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but the former ATF agent and gun control advocate faced opposition in the Senate and was seen as one of the administration’s most contentious nominees. The nomination was withdrawn.

The withdrawal continued a pattern for both Republican and Democratic administrations with the politically fraught position since it was made confirmable in 2006. Since then, only one nominee, former U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones, has been confirmed. Jones made it through the Senate in 2013 but only after a six-month struggle. Jones was acting director when Obama nominated him in January 2013.

Trump’s nomination of Chuck Canterbury, a former president of the Fraternal Order of Police, was withdrawn in 2020 over Republican concerns about his gun rights stance.

“Our collective view here is that the blocking of a fully qualified, experienced former ATF agent from serving in that role certainly is something Republicans didn’t have to take the step to do, but here we are,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. She did not blame Democrats, who also said they would not vote for him. “So, we have to nominate a new person. And when the president finds the right person, I’m sure he’ll be prepared to do that.”

MacGuineas, of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said a “failure to govern” is to blame for the slowed nomination process.

“People have been nominated who are too controversial to be nominated, or the White House knows they’re going to be held up,” she said. “The way we are organized right now is highly inefficient with Congress highly polarized.”

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hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-coronavirus-pandemic-health-business-executive-branch-473c0e65d77d558e0b30b0c035a487e7
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Clogged U.S. ports are being given access to nearly $450 million in federal money from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law as part of the administration’s recent stepped-up efforts aiming to ease supply chain congestionand lower prices for American consumers.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday announced the availability of a first batch of competitive grants for ports that will be double last year’s amount annually for five years. The grants are aimed specifically at reducing bottlenecks that have slowed the flow of goods to store shelves and pushed up costs.

The grants are among several pots of money under the $1 trillion law that the department intends to steer toward providing mid-term and long-term relief to the nation’s supply chain, which administration officials described as somewhat outdated and broken. Still, acknowledging that the upgrades will take time, Biden officials have largely shied away from any assurances that Americans could see clear and demonstrable changes to their lives before the 2022 midterm elections.

JOE BIDENhttps://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-europe-prices-pete-buttigieg-c6cfdfdcb12d30d0473443e7b5d05781

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U.S. ports will have until May to apply for the grants, which will be awarded by fall.

“We’re proud to announce this funding to help ports improve their infrastructure — to get goods moving more efficiently and help keep costs under control for American families,” Buttigieg said.

The Transportation Department was releasing this week a one-year report that assesses the supply chain and how best to fix gaps. Administration officials said the report urges better government cooperation and data-sharing with the private sector and pledges up to billions of dollars more from federal grant programs later this year to promote smoother rail, water and truck transportation and build out warehouse capacity.

Last year, the department took interim steps to unclog the supply chain and limit inflation pressures, awarding $241 million in grants including $52.3 million to help boost rail capacity at the port in Long Beach, California. It has strived to move major ports to longer work days and improve recruitment and retention in the trucking industry.

Biden has acknowledged potential added pain to consumers if U.S. sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine end up limiting Russia’s exports of oil and natural gas and causing global energy prices to soar. Separately, Biden on Tuesday announced new U.S. investments to boost domestic production of minerals used for electronics including electric vehicles, smartphones and appliances, part of a bid to reduce U.S. reliance on China.

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hanimmal said:

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

the economy of this country and several others have been artificially manipulated for decades now, by "experts" who had never attempted to manipulate economies this large for anywhere near this long...so in reality the "experts" were guessing out of their asses...and now reality is crashing their artificial bubble.
global recession is here...i would strongly suggest we quit trying to "make it better" and allow it to self correct before we fuck it up worse...no more propping up weak industries, no more subsidies for unworkable models in any industry, no more tax breaks for bad businesses in cities that just want the jobs to put on their financial reports, and don't care that they're shitty jobs that no one actually wants, and they're only filled by desperate people with little alternatives. this is where the insanely inflated stock market has taken us...to the brink of world disaster

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captainmorgan said:

It's a bandage on a traumatic amputation. The global trading economy is changing drastically and financial crises are happening in all the players home countries. I don't see a great crash coming like 1929, with everything inter connected across the globe it may be more of a great unwinding. Not sure the result will be any different, it may just take longer. I thought the pandemic would speed things up but governments threw a lot of money at the situation and slowed it down for now. I'm not optimistic about how people will handle the changes because I think the changes will be drastic, everyone but the rich will be adjusting to a much lower standard of living, the party is over for mass consumption. The wild card in all this is how the masses will react to it, it usually ends in wars.

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hanimmal said:

I don't think that this is right though. Generally the 'experts' might get a couple weeks worth of what it is that they are saying needs to be done before the Republicans start crying and stop the Democrats ability to deliver what the 'experts' are saying is needed, just like what you are suggesting in this post.

There is no reason to let everything melt, other than laziness and lack of fortitude.

The global recession has been here since spring of 2020, and actually in industries like manufacturing since 2019. Trump funneled hundreds of billions into his buddies pockets and Biden had to come back and actually stabilize the states/cities.


We need to restructure anyways, we have been doing things really wastefully for hundreds of years now. Luckily the technology is here to actually help provide far better solutions, so I am not so sure about a much lower standard of living being necessary.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

this is a prime opportunity to restructure not just the countries failing infrastructure, but it's failing business practices. Big agriculture continues unsustainable practices, dooming future generations to a dustbowl that will make 1930 look like a gentle spring rain. the use of pesticides continues to kill insects vital to the pollination of a lot of crops. gmo crops and selectively bred crops leave whole sectors open to disaster when a blight or other problem hits those crops, which will have NO defense against them.
the government needs to get with big ag and make the deserts bloom, miles of irrigation ditches in the deserts, covered with solar panels to cut down on evaporation, and provide clean power. "free range" farms, with minimal use of drugs, and maximum use of natural feeds, where animals aren't crammed together in unsanitary conditions that themselves require the use of antibiotics to stop the spread of infections that wouldn't be a problem if the animals weren't in the shitty conditions they're in...
and that's just one industry out of thousands.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

this is a prime opportunity to restructure not just the countries failing infrastructure, but it's failing business practices. Big agriculture continues unsustainable practices, dooming future generations to a dustbowl that will make 1930 look like a gentle spring rain. the use of pesticides continues to kill insects vital to the pollination of a lot of crops. gmo crops and selectively bred crops leave whole sectors open to disaster when a blight or other problem hits those crops, which will have NO defense against them.
the government needs to get with big ag and make the deserts bloom, miles of irrigation ditches in the deserts, covered with solar panels to cut down on evaporation, and provide clean power. "free range" farms, with minimal use of drugs, and maximum use of natural feeds, where animals aren't crammed together in unsanitary conditions that themselves require the use of antibiotics to stop the spread of infections that wouldn't be a problem if the animals weren't in the shitty conditions they're in...
and that's just one industry out of thousands.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of children in America living in poverty jumped dramatically after just one month without the expanded child tax credit payments, according to a new study. Advocates fear the lapse in payments could unravel what they say were landmark achievements in poverty reduction.

Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy estimates 3.7 million more children were living in poverty by January — a 41% increase from December, when families received their last check. The federal aid started last July but ended after President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill stalled in the sharply divided Congress. Payments of up to $300 per child were delivered directly to bank accounts on the 15th of each month, and last week marked the second missed deposit of the year.

The Columbia study, which combines annual U.S. Census data with information from the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey bulletins, found that the monthly child poverty rate increased from 12.1% in December to 17% in January. That’s the highest level since December 2020, when the U.S. was grappling with high unemployment and a resurgence of COVID-19. Black and Latino children experienced the highest percentage point increases in poverty — 5.9% and 7.1% respectively.

Megan Curran, policy director for the Center on Poverty and Social Policy, said the sudden spike shows how quickly the payments became core to household financial stability for millions of families after only six months.

“It really had a huge impact right off the bat,” Curran said. “We saw food insecurity drop almost immediately as soon as the payments started ... all of that progress that we made could now be lost.”

Curran said the increase in children living in poverty could also partially reflect rising prices.

The new numbers represent a serious setback from the original goals of the child tax credit program, which ambitiously sought to cut nationwide child poverty in half. As part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package last year, the existing child tax credit program was massively reshaped, boosting the amount of the payments, greatly expanding the pool of eligible families and delivering the money in monthly installments designed to be incorporated into day-to-day household budgets.

The program extended payments of $250-per-month for children ages 6 through 17 and $300-per-month for those under 6 to most families in the country, at an annual cost of about $120 billion. The goal was to put discretionary cash in the hands of parents along with the freedom to spend it as they saw fit month-to-month.

Republican lawmakers are generally unified in opposition to the expanded tax credit — describing it as excessive, inflationary and a disincentive to work. But when it was originally passed, many Democrats openly declared their intention to make the payments a permanent anchor of the American social safety net.

The goal for the Democratic-held Congress was to keep the program running, and fight about its future months from now, armed with data and millions of anecdotes about the tax credit’s benefits.

Instead the 50-member Democratic bloc in the Senate collapsed from within, with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin holding out on his vote for weeks before finally refusing to endorse Biden’s social spending package. Manchin cited his opposition to the child tax credit’s massive price tag among his reservations with the bill.

Earlier this month, Manchin called negotiations on Biden’s Build Back Better bill “ dead.”

Democratic New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, one of the expanded child tax credit’s strongest advocates, said Wednesday in a statement to The Associated Press that nearly all the children in his state benefited from the credit and that letting it expire was “a moral failure.”

An informal survey conducted of families by the nonprofit advocacy group ParentsTogether Action found a similarly immediate impact to the lapsed child tax credit payments for respondents, with roughly 1 in 5 families surveyed reporting they could no longer afford housing or enough food for their kids.

Allison Johnson, the organization’s campaign director, said the child tax credit payments were designed so parents would “not have to make these really hard choices,” she said.

The end to the deposits makes it nearly impossible for needy families, who may be struggling to pay down debt or cope with major expenses, to develop financial stability or momentum, Johnson said.

“This lack of clarity is super difficult for people. It makes them unable to plan for things,” she said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy ended 2021 by expanding at a brisk 7% annual pace from October through December, the government reported Thursday in a slight upgrade from its earlier estimate as businesses stepped up their restocking of supplies.

For all of 2021, the nation’s gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — jumped by 5.7%, the fastest calendar-year growth since a 7.2% surge in 1984 in the aftermath of a brutal recession.

So far this year, though, the outlook for the economy has dimmed considerably in the face of accelerating inflation, higher borrowing rates, anxious financial markets and the likelihood of a serious military conflict caused by Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine.

Snarled supply chains, with resulting shortages of parts and goods, are also disrupting businesses. And American households this year won’t be receiving the government stimulus aid that they did last year — money that helped drive brisk consumer spending in 2021.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that the U.S. economy will slow to growth of 4% this year. But the economy could weaken further if the Federal Reserve’s forthcoming interest rate hikes end up significantly slowing Americans’ borrowing and spending.

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The Fed’s ultra-low rates had nurtured the rapid expansion that quickly followed the pandemic recession of 2020. But high inflation has forced the Fed to reverse course, with a succession of rates hikes expected to begin next month.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and its likely fallout on world energy markets — also adds to the uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook.

The economy’s growth in the final quarter of 2021 was driven by a 33.5% jump in business investment as companies worked to replenish their inventories. In fact, inventory restocking accounted for 70% of the fourth-quarter growth.

Also contributing to the upgraded estimate of growth in the October-December quarter were stronger business investment and state and local government spending, offset slightly by modestly weaker consumer spending.

For all of 2021, consumer spending surged 7.9%, the fastest such growth since 1946. But it slowed to an annual pace of 3.1% in the October-December quarter as an uptick in coronavirus cases, which has now faded, kept more Americans at home and away from restaurants, travel destinations and entertainment venues.

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