Medicaid cuts...people will die

Eight years ago, when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was up for repeal, then-Governor Jim Justice and Senator Capito helped walk the nation back from the brink.

 Justice described the consequences of undoing Medicaid expansion, which covered around 175,000 West Virginians at the time, as “beyond catastrophic.” Capito said that “I have serious concerns about how we continue to provide affordable care to those who have benefitted from West Virginia’s decision to expand Medicaid, especially in light of the growing opioid crisis.”

They were right then and still are today.

Recently, public health experts from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania calculated the butcher’s bill that would happen if the House version of the budget bill passes as is and it’s pretty awful. They estimate that proposed Medicaid cuts could cause 51,000 premature deaths per year, just to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

That’s more than the combined populations of Calhoun, Tucker, Gilmer, Pleasants, Doddridge, Pocahontas, and Clay counties. Or several thousand more than the populations of either Charleston or Huntington. 

According to the Yale School of Public Health, “The researchers estimate that 42,500 lives could be lost each year from disenrollments in Medicaid and Marketplace coverage and the rollback of nursing home staffing rules. An additional 8,811 deaths are projected from the expiration of the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) Premium Tax Credits, bringing the total to more than 51,000.

To be specific, 7.7 million people would lose Medicaid or ACA marketplace coverage, with a loss of an estimated 11,300 deaths per year. 

Eliminating the Medicare Savings Program would disenroll 1.38 million seniors, at a cost of 18,200 deaths per year. 

Ending nursing home staffing rules could cost 13,000 lives. 

Ending ACA premium tax credits is likely to push another 5 million off, at a cost of over 8,800 preventable deaths a year. 

In addition, the bill’s failure to extend the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits is expected to push another 5 million Americans into uninsurance, resulting in 8,811 more deaths each year.

This isn’t a matter of random number generation. According to Yale, researchers relied on peer-reviewed studies that “quantifying the relationship between insurance coverage, access to prescription drug subsidies, and nursing home staffing levels with all-cause mortality.” This data was then applied to projections released in May by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Recently, Iowa Representative Joni Ernst stirred up controversy by dismissing concerns like these, saying “we are all going to die.”

Maybe so. But working class people don’t have to die prematurely in the tens of thousands every year just to enrich the wealthiest. 

This is totally preventable.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Another double standard

I was disappointed to see that Gov. Jim Justice plans to cut unemployment insurance benefits on June 19 while the state and nation are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic aftershocks.

Specifically, he plans to end the federal $300 weekly supplement to benefits that were part of the American Rescue Plan, presumably because people receiving the benefit are “scamming the system.”

Under the Rescue Plan, the supplemental benefits would expire on Sept. 6 in any case.

The cuts would impact around 42,000 West Virginians, including 18,000 or so self-employed or contract workers who have lost work due to the pandemic. It would mean a loss to the state’s economy of $12.6 million per week.

When you multiply that by 12, the number of weeks between the state and federal deadlines, that means a loss of over $151 million to West Virginia’s economy. That amounts to losing the equivalent of 3,775 jobs paying $40,000 for a year.

The infusion of pandemic-related boosts to unemployment insurance and the spending they allowed have saved millions of jobs, kept businesses open, boosted GDP (gross domestic product), increased personal income, kept people in their homes and saved countless families from disaster. As of May 15, Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation has brought more that $1.2 billion to West Virginia alone.

When the cuts come, unemployment benefits will drop back to their normal level of replacing around 40% of income from the lost job. Losing that much income is tough any time, but at least a delay until September would give the economy more time to recover.

This is another example of a curious double standard in which nobody in power bats an eye over corporate giveaways or tax cuts for the rich that create no jobs or lowering severance taxes on out of state companies, but cows are had when benefits to ordinary people seem too generous.

The snarky writer H.L. Mencken once defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” What we’re dealing with here is the haunting fear that somewhere, somehow a peasant might catch a break. Otherwise, how could the merry race to the bottom for working people continue?

No wonder groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pushing to end the benefits; they want to pay people as little as possible.

I don’t make a cult of our current economic system, but there is a simple market-based solution to the problem if people are concerned about a labor shortage: it’s the supply and demand thing.

In a market system, when demand for a commodity is higher than the supply the remedy is simple: increase the price. That sends a signal that prompts others to bring more of the commodity to the marketplace, ending the shortage.

Like it or not, in a capitalist economy, labor power is a commodity and a higher price for it means higher wages.

In recent decades, corporate profits as a share of GDP have dramatically increased. So has the income and wealth of the most affluent. So has productivity. The same can’t be said of workers’ wages.

As David Leonhardt recently wrote in the New York Times, “If anything, wages today are historically low. They have been growing slowly for decades for every income group other than the affluent. As a share of gross domestic product, worker compensation is lower than at any point in the second half of the 20th century.”

This is especially true of West Virginia, where median income is nearly the lowest in the nation.

The problem, Leonhardt argues, is that in recent years we’ve come to accept low wages as the norm. Maybe that’s what needs to change.

(This first appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Told ya

 Some of the hardest fights and most painful losses of the last few years were the passage of state anti-labor laws in a state with a long and proud union history. Specifically, these include passage of union busting right-to-work-for-less (RTWFL)  and the repeal of prevailing wage for public construction projects. Union members and supporters of working families fought those tooth and nail.

Supporters of these anti-worker bills promised the moon. Employers and workers were supposed to flock to West Virginia with the passage of RTWFL. The repeal of prevailing wage was supposed to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. None of those things happened. In fact, the state has lost around 60,000 people since 2015.

WV Governor Jim Justice admitted that these were epic fails yesterday. Here's a snip from MetroNews:

“Really and truly, let’s just be brutally honest,” the governor said about a half-hour into Wednesday night’s town hall. “We passed the right-to-work law in West Virginia. And we ran to the windows looking to see all the people that were going to come — and they didn’t come. We got rid of prevailing wage. We changed our corporate taxes and we’ve done a lot of different things. And we’ve run to the windows and they haven’t come.

“We’ve absolutely built the field in a lot of different places thinking build the field and they’ll come, and they didn’t come.”

 Lots of us were saying "No ****" when we heard that. Unfortunately, the governor was saying that while all those things failed, this time around repeal of the state income tax will REALLY work.

It reminds me of the cartoon Peanuts when Lucy repeatedly held the football for Charlie Brown only to yank it away at the last minute. Will we fall for that again?

Is 2020 over yet?

As the country reels from the events of the last several days, I thought I'd share a few items. First,

here's a statement from the board of the WV Center on Budget and Policy, a group AFSC helped to found more than 10 years ago and one of our closest partners. I'm proud to have been a board member off and on from the beginning:

In Solidarity for Racial Justice

Dear friends,

Like all of you, our staff and board at the WV Center on Budget and Policy have been horrified by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other Black men and women. These events, occurring against the backdrop of a pandemic that disproportionately impacts Black people and other communities of color, are not an accident. They are embedded in a system of social and economic policies designed to deny freedom and equality to all. It is up to all of us to confront these injustices and build a future where everyone can thrive.

We stand in solidarity and support of those raising their voices and protesting across the country against police and state violence.

Racism is not only individual acts of bigotry and violence. It isn’t just one bad apple here and there. It is rooted in our structures of government and society. Its effects can be seen in racial disparities in policing and incarceration rates, the racial wealth gap, and increased rates of coronavirus infection and hospitalization among communities of color. For those reasons, it won’t be enough to win hearts and minds. We need meaningful, structural policy change. As we rebuild post-COVID 19, we must do so intentionally with an equitable, anti-racist response that is proportionate to the scale of the problem.

We stand in solidarity with Black-led organizations across our state including Our Future WV, CARE, NAACP, Black Lives Matter WV, and the Partnership for African American Churches. We will continue to follow the leadership of these groups to guide our research and policy agenda in this space and reaffirm our commitment to serve as allies in the fight for racial equity and justice alongside them.

Black lives matter.

Signed,

The Board of Directors and Staff of the WV Center on Budget and Policy

I thought this was a particularly good time to share it in light of the idiotic and racist remarks made today by WV Governor Jim Justice, who said today that any president would be welcome in West Virginia but "maybe not Barack Obama." The governor attempted to hide his racism by referring to the myth of "Obama's war on coal," which was in fact mostly driven by market forces.

I find it interesting that he didn't call out other presidents whose administration witnessed a decline of coal jobs. That list would include Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Trump.

Finally, in case you missed it, here's a link to an op-ed of mine on white supremacy by way of Moby-Dick.

They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good...

WV Governor Jim Justice's COVID-19 press conferences can be pretty unpredictable, but it was truly weird yesterday to see him basically lose his temper when asked by a reporter about a sign-on letter that several groups (including AFSC) sent about unemployment insurance for vulnerable workers and/or family members. You can view his rant here. And here's the news article written by the reporter.

(Short version: he pretty much says the groups want everyone to be on unemployment forever--not true--and that the same people wanted to let dangerous murderers and such out of prison--also not true.)

Here's the response of those who sent the letter:

As Governor Justice often reminds us, West Virginia has the largest share of its population in the country who is at risk of serious illness if they contract COVID-19. The governor has been a leader in protecting vulnerable populations throughout this crisis, and it’s disappointing to hear him dismiss the concerns around continuing to protect these populations as the state begins to reopen. Among the groups that signed onto this letter are frontline service and health workers, communities of color, and disability rights groups, all of whom represent populations that are themselves at elevated risk or who have family members at risk of serious illness due to underlying medical conditions. 

The governor has the authority and the obligation to protect at-risk workers from being forced into work situations which put them at significant risk of coming into contact with COVID-19. West Virginia code states that a person is not disqualified for unemployment insurance benefits if they leave their employment for health reasons, including a condition that could be worsened or aggravated by work. We’re also asking for more transparency out of WorkForce WV, including that the agency publicly release the conditions their office is using to determine suitable work during the COVID-19 crisis.

Our intention is to work with the Justice Administration and WorkForce WV to ensure that at-risk workers are not forced to choose between their health and their finances. Public health is not a political issue.  

 A weird thing about all this is that nobody was looking to pick a fight with the Justice administration. In fact, most of those who signed on have been generally supportive of his approach..

The fact remains that reopening will expose vulnerable people to infection and possible death. Then there's this: as Sean O'Leary with the WV Center on Budget and Policy points out, federal guidelines explicitly allow for these factors to be taken into consideration as state's consider reopening and unemployment insurance options. None of which involves what Justice referred to as "playing politics."

At least we know now that someone reads these things...

Back to work?

Like most people I know, I'd like things to get back to normal...preferably a better normal than the one we had before the outbreak. However, the rush to reopen could mean a spike in infections and even fatalities.

AFSC in WV was proud to sign on to this letter to Governor Jim Justice and key members of his administration. There's a lot to it, but the main point is that when businesses reopen, many people with compromised immune systems--or who live with those who do--will have to choose between losing unemployment insurance or risking life and health. Those workers most at risk of this are disproportionately low wage earners, women and African Americans.

The letter makes several recommendations, the most important of which are that the administration:

*Confirm that individuals with health conditions that put them at risk for complications due to COVID-19 are entitled to unemployment benefits if they leave or turn down work that risks exposure.

*Allow individuals who live with at-risk individuals to continue to collect unemployment if they turn down or leave work that risks exposure.

It's a pretty radical idea: just this once, let's pretend that human life is more important than squeezing every drop of profit out of the labor of low wage workers.

Organizing in place?

In an ordinary year, a lot of AFSC’s work in West Virginia revolves around the state’s legislative session, when we advocate with partners and community members on issues affecting low-income and working families. The session lasts 60 days from early January to early March. After that, we usually catch our breath a bit before gearing up for the next round.

This isn’t an ordinary year.

It now seems like an eon since the legislative session ended at midnight on March 7. And, while we made a lot of progress in working for economic justice, those wins have since been eclipsed in our memories as we face the COVID-19 pandemic. And there hasn’t been a lot of breath catching.

So how do you respond to a pandemic in a poor and rural state when you’re sheltering in place? We’re still trying to figure that out, but here’s what we’ve come up with so far. In the past few weeks, AFSC has worked with partners and community members to:

Call for immediate action to strengthen safety net programs. Along with allies, we reached out to government officials to streamline and remove barriers to accessing benefits such as SNAP food assistance, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance. Several of the recommendations have already been implemented, including ending waiting periods, work requirements, time limits, and eligibility redeterminations for these critical assistance programs during the outbreak. Earlier on, AFSC joined several other groups in a joint letter to Gov. Jim Justice making several immediate and longer term policy recommendations.

Reduce crowding in correctional institutions as a humanitarian and public health measure. In the legislative session, we joined with community members and partners in winning passage of several bills to reduce mass incarceration in our state. We built on this success to advocate for the early release of incarcerated people who did not pose a serious threat to public safety (see this press release and joint letter from a wide range of organizations, including some unusual allies, such as Americans for Prosperity).

As of a week ago at least 616 people have been released from jails, in addition to 70 held on technical violations and around 70 furloughed to their homes from work release centers. Those numbers have doubtless gone up in the meantime. The West Virginia Supreme Court has also issued guidelines to judges and magistrates to release people in jail who are awaiting trial.

Feed people—especially kids! Child nutrition has been an AFSC priority in West Virginia as far back as 1922. Our programs have worked to expand free school breakfasts and lunches statewide, but what happens when school is cancelled indefinitely? Ironically, a bill we supported to address this issue didn’t pass during the session.

With schools closed and stay-at-home orders in place, many children and seniors were at risk of going hungry. When the crisis hit, Liz Brunello of AFSC’s Appalachian Center for Equality (ACE) program teamed up with ally Jenny Anderson of Our Future WV to create a Facebook group called WV Food ER to provide information and identify needs, volunteers, and resources. The group now has over 3,100 members.

This quickly led to the creation of Rapid Response WV, made of several organizations and individuals around the state. The website allows people to donate, request assistance, or learn about volunteer opportunities and is organizing both the purchase and delivery of food products and hygienic necessities.

Thanks to the generosity of donors, this effort had helped more than 200 families and had over 260 volunteers by the end of last week. Demand for this kind of assistance is only going to increase. The One Foundation, a key funder of AFSC's WV programs, has recently dedicated $20,000 to this effort.

Call for accountability. Along with direct food assistance, AFSC and allies in the WV Food for All coalition have called on the governor to issue another executive order requiring county boards of education to come up with comprehensive food delivery systems for the duration of the crisis.

Unfortunately, it seems that we’re still in the early phase of this crisis. While we don’t know what the future will require of us, we know it will involve a combination of direct assistance and advocacy, organizing, and agitation at multiple levels.

In any unjust system, there will always be a need for direct assistance and acts of compassion. However, these are no substitutes for justice, for the right of all people to a decent standard of living.

Thoughts on getting through these days

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Stephen King…what can I say? I grew up reading his books and watching the movies.

I sometimes go years without going there. Other times, I binge on book after book. By King’s own admission, some are more gripping and substantial than others.

One that stuck with me over the years is The Stand. In case you missed it, the book starts with a super flu epidemic nicknamed Captain Trips that wipes out most of the human race.

Then things really get bad.

On a more literary level, one of my favorite novels is The Plague by Albert Camus, which I’ve often mentioned. It’s about an epidemic in Oran, Algeria around 1940, when the country was still under French control. And the disease is a metaphor for life in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The plague takes over the lives of everyone. People are separated from loved ones and feel totally confined and cut off from the rest of the world. Everything changes, including the sense of time.

In both books, the epidemic requires people to make moral decisions. In The Stand, it’s a pretty stark choice between good and evil. In The Plague, it’s interesting to see the different ways people respond to the situation. Some respond with quiet heroism, while others seem to profit or thrive from the epidemic.

For obvious reasons, those books have been on my mind lately. First though, let me say that the current situation is nowhere near these literary extremes and I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere close to them.

But I think the situation does require a response from us. Probably the worst things we can do now are either to politicize the Coronavirus outbreak (as in “Fake news. SAD”) or spread hysteria…which may entail taking a deep breath or two and stepping away from the TV every now and then.

So how should individuals and communities respond to the latest developments? And what can we learn from it? I have a few ideas:

*take reasonable, evidence-based steps to protect ourselves and pay attention to the latest recommendations and cooperate with the reasonable directions of health authorities, even if it can be a pain in the rear;

*if necessary, do what you can to nudge public officials to step up and do all they can to respond and prepare for the future if the virus spreads. Also, encourage them to take steps to ease the economic impact. We've already had some success with this in WV;

*take Mr. Rogers advice and “look for the helpers.”

*put things in perspective: it’s not like we were immortal before Coronavirus came around. We don’t know how bad the hit is going to be, but it’s not the only threat out there. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between Oct. 1 2019 and Feb. 29 2020, there have been an estimated 20,000 to 52,000 deaths from “regular” flu in the US. Worldwide, somewhere between 291,000 and 646,000 die annually from seasonal flu.

In a normal year, 40,000 Americans die from auto accidents. It’s been estimated that sugary drinks kill over 180,000 people per year in the US. According to the DHHR website, 300,000 deaths per year are related to obesity. The CDC reports that 480,000 Americans die each year due to cigarette smoking. Worldwide, tobacco kills around seven million people per year.

We don’t notice what we get used to.

*let’s not recreate past mistakes. Sometimes events like this make people search for someone to blame or some vulnerable group to target. During the Black Death of the mid 1300s, Christians blamed the plague on Jews, who were accused of poisoning wells. This unleashed horrific persecution throughout Europe. The “enemy” is a virus, not other people.

*this could be a reminder of how interconnected people are all over the world. Sometimes I think that very wealthy people, for example, think they can insulate themselves and their children from the effects of their actions on others, whether it’s the damage done by extreme inequality or climate change.

Sticking with the literature of epidemics, that was a theme of Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which Prince Prospero and his aristocratic friends party in apparent safety while an epidemic raged outside their walls. It didn’t work out very well for them. 

There may be a lesson in that. As Bob Marley sang, “When the rain falls, it don’t fall on one man’s house.”

*this could also be a reminder of how important things like paid sick days, universal health care, universal basic income and out of school food programs for children are. We have a lot of unfinished business.

*but the main one is, after taking all reasonable precautions, not to stop living or being human or showing compassion to others out of fear. Shakespeare’s Henry V observed that “we owe God a death,” but let’s not die while we’re still breathing.

That’s the message of a Buddhist parable about a man chased by a tiger. When he comes to the edge of a cliff, he climbs down a vine. The tiger is waiting. At the bottom of the cliff, there’s another tiger. Meanwhile, two mice just out of reach start gnawing at the vine. Then he notices a ripe strawberry. He plucked it and took a bite. It tasted great. The end.

That’s pretty much the human condition.

I’m not suggesting that people should crank up the song “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

But if you do, enjoy the cowbell.

(This is an updated version of an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail last week.)

Unforced error or deliberate double cross?

The most infuriating thing about the 2019 special session of the WV legislature, which rammed through charter schools and other unwanted education policies, was that it only happened due to the random antics of WV Governor Jim Justice.

On several occasions over the last year, Justice voiced his opposition to charter schools and other nasty aspects of the ominous omnibus bills that were proposed. All he had to do to keep those things from happening was, literally,  nothing.

Had he done literally nothing, the proposals that were defeated in the regular session would go back to wherever bad ideas live until the 2020 regular session. Then there would be time for bills to work their way through the normal legislative process, with plenty of time for committee meetings, debate and amendments.  During an election year.

But noooooo.

Instead, he called for a special session on "education betterment." This allowed foes of public education to short circuit the process and ram bad ideas through. It's a terrible way to make public policy and a betray of the best principles of old-school conservatism, which are all about cautious approaches to change.

Anyone could have seen that coming.

It didn't have to be that way.

The next best thing to do is organize and educate to make sure that the people who made this happen own it. All of it.

Hungry days ahead

Gov. Justice declared in his State of the State back in January, "We don't need to quit until every single person is not standing on the side of the bridge saying, 'Mister, you have no idea how bad I'm hurting.'"

Actions speak louder than words. A case in point is that despite our governor's noble pronouncement, he recently signed House Bill 4001, a law that once enacted will do more to increase hunger than increase full-time employment.

HB 4001 mandates that the state no longer apply for a waiver from the federal government to exempt able-bodied adults without dependents from a 20-hour-a-week work requirement to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (known as SNAP or food stamps, but more importantly should be understood as food).

The law will add at least eight additional counties to the nine-county pilot that began in early 2016 when our Department of Health and Human Resources removed roughly 5,417 so-called "able-bodied adults without dependents" from the SNAP rolls.

Work requirements sound good, and they especially sound good when applied to "able-bodied adults without dependents," but be careful not to generalize who these thousands of individuals might be.

Perhaps it is a person on the difficult journey toward recovery from opioid addiction, and the food security that SNAP provides is the linchpin.

Perhaps it is one of the thousands of grandparents raising grandkids due to the ongoing opioid crisis. Make no mistake then, more children will go hungry, too.

Is taking food away from a person the answer to helping them find a job that offers enough hours to satisfy the work requirement, and (gasp) a job that offers a decent wage and health benefits?

Because in reality a lot of these individuals are working but they are in extremely low-paying, part-time jobs that are volatile and do not always provide enough hours to meet the 20-hour-a-week minimum.

While people often say that any good policy should be evidence-based, too often we instead hear anecdotes and sweeping charges of "laziness" used to justify policy.

Sociologist Herbert Gans said of this trend in his essay "The War Against the Poor" that "judgments are based on imagined knowledge, which may come from stories and preconceived ideas."

When looking at the evidence of the nine-county pilot where stricter work requirements were enacted and 5,417 individuals lost their food stamps, "imagined knowledge" is about all we have.

Did we succeed in the professed goal of getting people into more full-time employment, paying taxes and therefore no longer needing $118 a month to help pay for the bare necessity of food?

According to the Department of Health and Human Resources' own report, the answer is no. Of the 13,984 referrals to the SNAP Employment and Training (E&T) program, 259 gained employment - a less than 2 per cent success rate.

By contrast to HB 4001, the bill number alone indicating it was their top priority, the same legislative body could not find the political will to pass a bill that would have had a real impact on workforce participation.

HB 2727 sought to address the fact that people leave prison every day without any form of state-issued identification card, which means they face difficulty obtaining a job, much less keeping one if they don't have a driver's license. This bill, which would have helped thousands of West Virginians become gainfully employed taxpayers, died in House Finance.

Illustrating how HB 2727 would have boosted employment, a 2015 study conducted in Franklin County, Ohio, of "able-bodied adults without dependents" found that a whopping 60 percent of the 5,000 individuals surveyed said that not having a driver's license was a significant barrier to employment. Other major barriers cited were felony convictions, lack of transportation and being non-custodial parents.

HB 4001 becoming law will not create a single good-paying job. But it will for certain take food away from people, and federal dollars away from local economies.

The people who support legislation like this believe that food is a privilege, not a basic human right. It is probably safe to say then that our billionaire governor, and both the Republicans and Democrats who voted for this bill, are not worried about how they will pay for their next meal.

I am left to conclude that the governor's avowal in his State of the State was not true aspiration, but that really he has no idea how bad people are hurting.

(This op-ed by Lida Shepherd of the American Friends Service Committee appeared in the Huntington WV Herald-Dispatch this week.)

Loaves and fishes

Welch, WV in the days when mines were booming. Or is that Manhattan?

McDowell County is one of the poorest in West Virginia--and the nation. Before the coming of the coal industry, the population was tiny, with around 1500 people in 1860. When the mines were cranking, the population ballooned, growing to nearly 100,000 by 1950. As mining employment declined, it contracted hugely. I'd guess it's now below 20,000. High poverty rates also mean high un- and under-employment. It's also a food desert.

This Charleston Gazette-Mail article by Caity Coyne is a great summary of the struggles of people there to meet their basic food needs and of local charities like Five Loaves and Two Fishes to help that happen.  Those struggles are likely to get harder in the wake of HB 4001, in which Gov. Jim Justice and the Republican legislative majority restricted SNAP benefits, throwing thousands of low income West Virginians under the metaphorical bus.  Possible federal changes to food assistance under the Farm Bill could make things even worse.

Looks like food justice fighters are going to be busy.

The article also shows the importance of good local newspapers that do in-depth investigative reporting. We're going to need a lot of that.

More snark on SNAP

Thanks to a good friend and reader of this blog, it has come to my attention that I left out something important in yesterday's post, which is copied below in italics.

In it, I contrasted the cost of a good meal for one at the Greenbrier resort, owned by WV's governor and wealthiest person, with the average amount daily SNAP benefits.

The occasion for the post came after the governor failed to veto a mean-spirited SNAP bill that will result in thousands of low income West Virginians losing food assistance, take millions of dollars out of the state's economy and stress already stretched charities. During Holy Week, which is kind of tacky.

Anyhow, in the post I did the math--always a dangerous thing--and found out that the cost of a big meal for one person would cover SNAP benefits for an adult for 39 days.

My friend pointed out that I neglected the tip, a major faux pas on my part since I'm all about not stiffing working people. At 20 percent, that would come to $31.40. When you add that to the total, it comes to $188.40, which adds another eight days to the total.

It may or may not be a coincidence that the number of 47 days is exactly one day longer than the penitential season of Lent (if you count the Sundays), which ends on Easter Sunday. Traditionally, Lent was observed with fasting.

Living on $4 in food assistance a day, those lucky ducks on SNAP get to observe Lent every day.

No, I'm not over it.

Here's yesterday's post minus the links:

Contrasting SNAP benefits with a meal at the Greenbrier

I'm wondering whether anyone else sees the irony or something when the richest person in the state, who also happens to be governor, refuses to veto a bill that will take away food assistance from thousands of West Virginians with very low incomes during Holy Week?

The governor, by the way, owns the Greenbrier resort, at which many of you may not have stayed or eaten (I know I haven't). I poked around the interwebs and found the following menu options for dinner for one there:

Red wine, mid-range,           $48
First Course bisque                 $9
Second course risotto             $15
Entree lamb shank                 $49
Chocolate souffle dessert       $14
Dessert wine                           $17
Cappuchino                              $5


That comes to $157.

 Hmmm....SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits for low income people amount to around $4 per day.

That means that for the cost of one big feed for one person at the Greenbrier is equivalent to what someone on SNAP gets to live on for slightly over 39 days. 

I don't want to sound like a hatchet man, but put that in your tackle box and smoke it.

Contrasting SNAP benefits with a meal at the Greenbrier

I'm wondering whether anyone else sees the irony or something when the richest person in the state, who also happens to be governor, refuses to veto a bill that will take away food assistance from thousands of West Virginians with very low incomes during Holy Week?

The governor, by the way, owns the Greenbrier resort, at which many of you may not have stayed or eaten (I know I haven't). I poked around the interwebs and found the following menu options for dinner for one there:

Red wine, mid-range,           $48
First Course bisque                 $9
Second course risotto             $15
Entree lamb shank                 $49
Chocolate souffle dessert       $14
Dessert wine                           $17
Cappuchino                              $5


That comes to $157.

 Hmmm....SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits for low income people amount to around $4 per day.

That means that for the cost of one big feed for one person at the Greenbrier is equivalent to what someone on SNAP gets to live on for slightly over 39 days. 

I don't want to sound like a hatchet man, but put that in your tackle box and smoke it.

Three for the road

If you're trying to make sense of WV Governor Jim Justice's high profile party switch and what that means for WV, good luck--and you're in good company. Here's some basic reporting by Brad McEllhenny of WV MetroNews. And I think the Gazette-Mail's Phil Kabler hit most of the right notes with his column.

If you are up for some more amusing WV related news, check out this item from Vanity Fair that talks about the WV ACLU's hilarious brief about coal baron Bob Murray,  who made good on his threat to sue Comedy Central's John Oliver after somewhat less than reverent treatment on the tube. Giant Squirrel fans, you're going to love it.

Finally, it looks like Christianity minus the whole Jesus thing is alive and well in the USA. Sad.

A step in the right direction

I don't know about you, but I listened to newly elected WV Governor Jim Justice give his first state of the state address last night.

I tried to watch it on television, but public TV hasn't come in very well ever since we had a dozen or so of our free range turkeys roost on the antenna. But that's kind of off topic.

WV is no doubt in a budget crisis and nobody that I know had any idea which way Justice would go. I'm glad to say that he recognizes we can't just keep cutting but need to raise revenue. I didn't agree with all the specifics of his plan, which, for example included zeroing out WV Public Broadcasting, which is not cool.

(Obviously, if he was a Front Porch listener, the thought would have never crossed his mind.)

Of course, Republican leaders, who control both legislative houses, don't want any kind of revenue increases, so we're in for a game of chicken. More cuts now would be terrible and would likely include shutting down colleges, selling state parks, gutting libraries, ditching seniors, etc.

It's going to be interesting. And I'm getting tired of interesting...

On the porch

The latest Front Porch discusses the recent election and whether the president elect, whose name escapes me at the moment, and the governor elect Jim Justice will be able to keep their promises. Or should.

Buzz kill

So earlier this week the Spousal Unit and I went to our favorite Italian restaurant. We had a good meal and a good time but it kinda got spoiled. In order to prepare for the next Front Porch podcast, I promised to listen to the debate between WV's two main candidates for governor. It was a buzz kill.

I should have stuck to my usual practice of talking about stuff I know nothing about, like I do here.

Anyhow, here's a link to the podcast. I think it's better than the debate anyway.

Politics and roosters

The latest Front Porch program/podcast discusses issues in the WV governor's race, Trumpiana, and the passing of my favorite rooster. There is considerable overlap between political behavior and that of roosters. In fact, living around roosters has greatly deepened my understanding of politics.

Better a greyhound than a kid in WV

West Virginia governor Earl Ray Tomblin exercised his line item veto powers today to override the legislature and slash funding for domestic violence programs, child abuse prevention, family resource centers and networks, and early childhood education programs. Oh yeah, and for programs that would help low income people who are elderly and/or disabled remain in their homes rather than nursing homes.

Meanwhile, state subsidies for greyhound dog breeding and horse racing continue. And rich guy from the Greenbrier got his tax credits. I guess that's all that matters.