Austerity's other failure—babies abandoned in a box

The rallying cry of government budget cutters in the austerity vs. stimulus debate is that they don’t want to burden our children and grandchildren with the country’s debt. 

That certainly is a more appealing argument than the “austerity leads to a healthier economy” baloney.  The evidence is all too clear that while the U.S. economy is only slowly improving thanks to our mediocre stimulus efforts, Europe’s austerity experiment has countries still in a deep recession or worse. 

But what about those children the “shrink the government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” crowd is so concerned about?

According to a CNBC report entitled "Austerity's Cost: Abandoned Children in Europe", the number of abandoned babies and young children across Europe is increasing.  In the last year in Italy child abandonment has gone up over 87% from a year ago and Greece has seen a tenfold rise in abandoned children since 2003.  Many of the babies are left anonymously in a monitored box where it is legal to do so in many European countries.

The National Director of SOS Villages said that because parents are struggling to even feed and clothe their children and the number of these economic orphans is expected to grow.  Data shows that 27.7 percent in Greece are facing extreme poverty. 

Stergios Sifnios of SOS villages told CNBC, “We are really afraid that in the future we will have a big number of families that cannot manage to keep their own children because of these problems. We are trying to be ready for this.”

The other price of the failed economic austerity model—abandoned children. 

Looking for an "oops"

July was officially the hottest month for the United State’s 48 contiguous states—3.3 degrees above the average.  Those high temperatures also contributed to the country’s warmest 12-month period every recorded.

Jake Crouch of the National Climatic Data Center says that it’s more than just daytime highs that scientists are looking at.  He says that “we have also seen very warm nighttime temperatures, and that is part of a long-term trend we’ve seen across the contiguous U.S. over the past several decades.  The hotter days increase the amount of moisture the lower atmosphere can hold, and this means it doesn’t cool off as much at night anymore.”

Republican U.S. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri wrote in the Springfield News-Leader:

At the end of July, all of Missouri’s counties were designated a state of “severe” to “exceptional” drought — representing the worst level of drought possible. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently added 218 counties from 12 drought-stricken states to its list of natural disaster areas, bringing the overall total to 1,584 counties in 32 states — more than half of all the counties nationwide.   

According to the USDA’s crop report, half of the nation’s corn crop is now in rated in the worst condition, of “poor” to “very poor,” with Missouri topping the list as one of the hardest hit states.  Meanwhile, approximately 73 percent of the domestic cattle inventory nationwide is located in an area that has been impacted by this drought, and 59 percent of America’s and 99 percent of Missouri’s pasture and rangeland is in “poor” to “very poor” condition, compared to 38 percent a year ago.



We all know what’s going on.  Scientists like James Hansen of NASA have been warning us about extreme weather events as a result of the increased levels of carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the atmosphere.  Climate change has been going on for some time and it is getting worse. 

South Carolina U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, infamous for his resistance to Congress taking measures to address climate change, is notorious for his 2010 tweet that ridiculed the notion of a warming planet.  When Washington was hit with a severe snowstorm that February causing the House to cancel all votes for a week, Mr. DeMint tweeted:

 “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle’.”

Mr. DeMint was seen earlier today with his cell phone in hand asking a page how to spell “oops”.  (Just wishful thinking.)

Tidal wave of lies

There are three main things holding the small businesses back in North Carolina, says Gregg Thompson the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) in that state.  “One is regulations, one is health care and one is taxes.”

Mr. Thompson’s comments were part of a nine-state “Stop the Tidal Wave” anti-regulations campaign recently launched by the NFIB and its new national project, Small Businesses for Sensible Regulations (created one year ago and now with an unimpressive 1,333 members).  The effort will include paid advertising and, of course, a lot of fear mongering about how we’re all going to be washed away in a tsunami of federal regulations.  Not present regulations mind you.  But future, mostly unspecified regulations.  Are you scared yet?

To buttress their argument that regulations are the number one problem for small businesses the NFIB cites a February Gallup poll as one demonstrating that “regulatory burdens are a top reason why small businesses are not hiring at pace with previous years.”

But as most polls have shown, regulations are not the reason small businesses are not hiring.  It’s the lack of demand. 

Even the Gallup poll the NFIB references says that. 76% of the small-business owners Gallop polled who were not hiring said that they do not need any additional employees and 71% said they were worried that sales won’t justify adding employees.  “Companies typically hold back on hiring when the economy is weak and when their operating environment is not providing sufficient revenues or cash flows.  This appears to be the case right now,” said Dennis Jacobe, chief economist for Gallup.

However, 48% of the business owners not hiring did say they were worried about the potential cost of healthcare and 46% were worried about new government regulations.  But these were concerns about something potentially happening in the future, worries ginned up by the NFIB’s relentless politically motivated PR campaign against the Obama Administration.  Mr. Jacobe refers to these concerns as “exacerbating an already uncertain and difficult situation.”

In other words, lack of demand is the driver of lack of new jobs, not concern about regulations and healthcare.  If it were the latter, no small businesses would be hiring but the truth is that small businesses are leading the new job creation in this country. 

When Gallup asked small-business owners why they were hiring new employees, 64% cited increased consumer or business demand and 55% said that sales and revenues justify adding more employees. 7% even cited government tax incentives as the reason (you won’t hear the NFIB talking about that). 

So while the NFIB misrepresents the Gallup poll findings, Mr. Jacobe throws cold water on the NFIB bogus claim that small-businesses owners are shaking in their boots over future new regulations.  “Right now,” he says, “economic confidence is approaching its highest levels in the last four years.  U.S. small-business owners are also about as optimistic about their business and their future hiring as they’ve been at any point during that time.” 

This is exactly what the NFIB political machine is afraid of—small business optimism.  It must be stopped.  Thus their 9-state anti-regulation campaign built on distortion and lies.

The upcoming crisis in non-defense spending cuts

On CNN’s “State of the Nation” yesterday, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham set aside his self-preservation tack to the political right to encourage bi-partisan cooperation.  The issue was sequestration that will result in $600 billion in automatic cuts to the defense budget over the next 10 years because the Congressional supercommittee failed to reach an agreement on a deficit reduction plan. 

“Congress does dumb things.  This sequestering idea was the dumbest thing,” said Graham. 

Not only did he not try to blame the President for Congress’s failure to act, he also talked about something that is getting very little attention if the sequester budget cuts start on January 1, 2013—$500 billion in automatic budget cuts to non-defense federal spending.

Senator Graham mentioned special education and the National Cancer Institute as programs that will be negatively impacted by sequestration.  But what should really get Congress and the public’s attention is all the federal, non-defense jobs that will be impacted.

Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, analyzed the non-defense sequester cuts and came to some very dire conclusions about just one federal agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

According to Mr. Lilly, the FAA would lose nearly 10% of its budget.  As a result, he predicted that the agency would have to furlough up to 2,000 air traffic controllers at the nation’s smaller regional airports in order to maintain regular operations at less than 100 of the airports that account for 95% of all boarding passengers. The result would be the closing of the smaller airports that have fewer than 600,000 enplanements a year.  South Carolina’s busiest airport in Columbia would be one of those. 

If this should happen, in my opinion, the impact on the nation’s economy would dwarf the economic impact of the predicted defense spending cuts getting all the attention. 

Mr. Lilly, who supports Senator Graham’s concerns about defense budget cut, told me Friday on my radio show that the public needs to be more aware of the impact of non-defense cuts.  In addition to the FAA, the public should also worry about food safety and drug approvals among other things.

“There’s a lot more to the government, just every day stuff that you count on and take for granted and don’t really think of as being the government.  But you stop the flow of federal dollars you’ll see a lot of changes in what you can do and can’t do,” said Mr. Lilly.

USA winning the economic Olympics

Small businesses again led the way with 44.8% of the 163,000 new jobs creating in July according to the ADP National Employment Report.  Compared to the sluggish new job growth of 75,000 average per month from April to June, the new data is a welcome sign of a still growing economy.  The European “austerity” countries still mired with failing economies must be envious.

While our friends across the Atlantic bought into the “slash government spending” approach to climbing out of the Great Recession, the U.S. took the government stimulus approach (even though a weak one) to save and create jobs.  Our plan is working and theirs is not.

“This increase marks two-and-half years of positive job growth. According to our data, businesses across the country have restored nearly 4 million jobs during this period with an average of 131,000 new positions a month,” said Carlos A. Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of ADP.

Our government stimulus plan is working.  Europe’s austerity plan is not.  Why are we still even having this discussion?

Obesity, regulations and donuts

Last month the new director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) stirred up the debate on healthcare in the Palmetto State.  Catherine Templeton said that she had a “hallelujah moment” in talking with health experts when she realized that obesity was an important contributor to numerous health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

If we could prevent obesity, she reasoned, we could make South Carolinians healthier and reduce the state’s spending on Medicaid. 

No one disputes her conclusion and the healthcare professionals, who have worked on the obesity problem for decades, appreciate the attention Ms. Templeton has given the issue.  The business community also appreciates efforts to make our workforce healthier and more productive.

There aren’t too many states (actually only 3—“thank God for” Mississippi, West Virginia and Alabama) that have a higher adult obesity rate than South Carolina’s 31.5 percent. 

But Ms. Templeton’s characterization of how she thinks the state should attack obesity caused some concern.  “If we could paratrooper in—sort of the obesity SWAT team—just focus on those areas with a surgical approach…And if you knock out the most critical areas, you’ve made a difference for the whole state.” 

The “SWAT team” analogy gives the impression that the obesity problem can be quickly corrected with a concentrated effort in a specific geographic area in a relatively short period of time.  No one in the healthcare community believes that.  Obesity is a systemic problem with numerous determinants not likely to be corrected with some one-time surgery.

Many of us are also concerned that fighting obesity will take the place of improving the health of all low income South Carolinians.  In his opposition to our state expanding Medicaid under Obamacare, the director of our Department of Health and Human Services Tony Keck has said that South Carolina could better spend the relatively small state match for a Medicaid expansion on focusing on “hot spots” where “there are profound health problems.”

With Ms. Templeton’s newly found interest in obesity within hot spots around the state, I can see Governor Nikki Haley’s administration coalescing around obesity SWAT teams as a more effective and less costly approach to improving health than expanding Medicaid to make healthcare available to 500,000 working poor throughout our state.

However, there is no disagreement that obesity is a driving force in rising healthcare costs.  And one component of the remedy is to encourage personal responsibility.  To the degree that it is possibly, people who need or want to lose weight should make better choices in their diet.  Both Governor Haley and Mr. Keck have pointed out the need for personal responsibility in one’s health.   DHEC board member Kenyon Wells is quoted as saying in regard to obesity, “It is hard to get people to change.  We can throw as much as we can at it, but it stills gets down to personal values and personal responsibilities.” 

But for people to take more responsibility for their weight, the public needs more information about the food from which they are making eating decisions.  If you can’t compare the nutritional values, especially calories, of your choices, how can you make better decisions? 

One of the provisions of Obamacare addresses this issue.

Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act amends Section 403 of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. This amendment requires restaurants and similar retail food establishments with 20 or more locations nationwide to provide calorie information for menu items, food on display and self-service food and additional written nutritional information for menu items. Additionally vending machine operators that own 20 or more machines are to disclose calories for foods.

Governor Haley, Ms. Templeton and Mr. Keck should welcome this new nutritional transparency to encourage more personal responsibility in fighting obesity.  But they apparently will need to work on at least one member of our Congressional delegation.

In May Representative Tim Scott formed a bipartisan Congressional Regulatory Review Caucus along with Representative Loretta Sanchez of California.  Yesterday was the first briefing for this caucus and the topic was the nutritional labeling requirements in Obamacare. 

Naturally since this calorie transparency was associated with the President, Mr. Scott was against it.  Freedom to eat what you want without concern for nutrition appeared to be Mr. Scott’s philosophy. 

“I don’t want to know how many calories are on my pizza,” Scott is reported to have said.  Addressing the Dunkin’ Donuts representative at the briefing Scott said, “I had five of your powdered donuts the other day, and I did not look at the calorie count.”

But Mr. Scott is doing himself (and his body) a disservice by not checking out the calories.  Instead of the five powdered donuts at 1700 calories, he could have had 5 glazed donuts at only 1300 calories or 6 ½ glazed for the same 1700 calories.  And we all know that glazed taste better than powdered.

But my suggestion is that Mr. Scott should have gone with my favorite, chocolate kreme filled.  Yum!  Four of these (if a person can actually eat four at one sitting) would be only 1480 calories. 

If Mr. Scott would look at nutritional information as the way to make better tasty calorie choices instead of a tool to fight obesity, maybe we can win his stomach if not his brain.

Connecting the dots on climate change

The Hill’s Congress Blog
July 31, 2012

By Frances Beinecke, president, Natural Resources Defense Council

On Wednesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee takes up the important issue of climate change science and adaptation.

Hopefully, it's a first step toward some real solutions to address record heat, drought, storms and other effects of climate change that we're now all experiencing first-hand.

When it comes to connecting the dots between climate change and extreme weather, the lines are now clear.

What’s also clear is that we can do something – a lot of things, actually – to prevent more of the climate-change related weather disasters we’re experiencing.

First, we can reduce carbon dioxide and other polluting emissions that are heating our planet, intensifying our weather disasters and harming our health.

Stronger national and international emissions standards could cut billions of tons of heat-trapping, storm-intensifying carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. Two solutions championed by the Obama administration exemplify what we can do. Raising automobile mileage standards to 54.5 MPG will reduce carbon emissions from new vehicles by half by 2025. Limiting harmful emissions from new power plants will cut carbon pollution even more, helping calm our climate.

But we can do much more. Cleaning up emissions from existing, outdated dirty power plants, ending counterproductive policies like subsidies for oil, gas and coal companies, and stopping climate-altering undertakings like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which will only increase our carbon-intensive use of tar sands and court more weather disasters, are important next steps.

State and local governments, meanwhile, can better prepare for the effects of climate change – whether it’s sea level rise or drought or heat-related health problems. Washington, D.C., for instance, is implementing environmentally friendly stormwater control systems that will help reduce flooding and protect water quality in a changing climate - an example that other cities can follow.

And as individuals, we cannot sit on the sidelines while our planet and our neighbors suffer through climate change and extreme weather. Making the right choices in our homes and in our communities when it comes to where we get our energy will not only help heal our planet, it also will help improve our finances.

We must also hold our lawmakers accountable. Countless surveys show that Americans want and expect Congress to address climate change, to increase clean energy and to protect our health and environment.

Yet our current Congress so far has done the exact opposite, taking an unprecedented number of votes against environmental protections while simultaneously launching politically motivated witch hunts every time a clean energy company stumbles. Our lawmakers should protect our health and welfare, not follow the dictates of lobbyists for big polluters.

Most importantly, we must stop ignoring the problem - and start ignoring those who
deny the truth.

We now know what climate change looks like, and what it causes.

If we couldn’t figure it out ourselves from the freak derecho storm that crippled the Washington area; from the devastating wildfires in Colorado; from the hottest January-June in U.S. history or one of the worst U.S. droughts ever, science once again has shown us the connections.

In the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “State of the Climate in 2011” report, 378 scientists from 48 countries concluded that extreme weather events are connected to human-induced climate change. This human-induced climate change, the NOAA report found, dramatically increased the odds of heat waves in Texas, wide temperature fluctuations in the United Kingdom and devastating storms in Australia and elsewhere around the globe last year.

Only those with ulterior motives and those they can persuade will continue denying that human-caused climate change is beginning to wreak havoc on our planet and on our lives.

We should not allow this minority to prevent us from taking the steps we can and must take to help heal our climate.

And we would be wise to act now - before the next weather disaster strikes.

Beinecke is president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-a-environment/241337-connecting-the-dots-on-climate-change