"Kids grow. Clothes don't."

Years ago, I interviewed over 100 low-income West Virginians about changes to safety net programs for families with kids. They had a lot to say, but one zinger from a mom sticks in my mind today: “Kids grow. Clothes don’t.”

I imagine a lot of West Virginia parents have been thinking the same thing these days, after the governor delayed opening the application period for the clothing voucher program, which helps low-income families buy shoes and clothing for the new school year. Usually it opens on July first, but this year that was delayed to July 20. Before that, there was some question of whether the program would be continued at all.

If that wasn’t enough, the state announced that it would stop accepting applications a week later, claiming that it ran out of funding. In the past, applications were accepted for around a month.

This happened shortly after the governor announced a $370 million surplus. 

Let’s just say the optics aren’t great.

By way of background, this program has been around since the 1990s, when it was enacted by then Republican Governor Cecil Underwood. According to the WV Department of Human Services, the vouchers can be used for “clothing appropriate for school such as pants, shirts, skirts, dresses, shoes, coats, underwear and other basic clothing.” Families that make their own clothing can use them for piece goods. Last year, the benefits were worth $200 per child. 

Last year, more than 57,000 received the vouchers, although the number has been higher in recent years. When this year’s program was shut down, only around 51,000 applied, although at this point it’s not clear how many will be approved.

Some members of the legislature from both parties were not amused. Republican Delegate Evan Worrell of Cabell County, who chairs the House Health Committee, was quoted as saying “We appropriated the funding requested by the governor for the school clothing allowance from TANF funds, so it is difficult to understand why families experienced weeks of delays only to see the program close after one week.”

Kanawha County Democratic Delegate Kayla Young expressed similar concerns: “The delayed voucher funds after only a week tells us that West Virginia families are struggling more than ever to make ends meet. Children deserve dignity at school, and I hope the administration will work with the Legislature to ensure all children are fed and clothed in our state.

Republican State Treasurer Larry Pack also issued a forceful statement, saying “It is outrageous and unacceptable that, as we celebrate millions of dollars in surpluses, we claim we lack the proper funding for programs that protect our most vulnerable children. Providing for these needy children is a fundamental duty of government. With rising costs, we must do more to ensure that needy families have the resources required to give their children a real chance at success.”

When the program was launched nearly 30 years ago, a spokesperson for Governor Underwood said that “Two important aims of the program are to provide adequate clothing for children and to remove the stigma that children often face because of their financial circumstances.”

The pain of stigma for kids facing poverty shaming by peers and adults is a real thing. It can cause low self-respect, anxiety, and depression. Shaming can also lead to bullying, poor academic performance, non-participation in extracurricular activities, acting out, and absenteeism. The consequences can last a lifetime. As social researcher Brene Brown observed, “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

Decades ago, the psychologist Kenneth Keniston noted that “The psychological pain--and the ethical shame--of American poverty are made greater by the fact that this country possesses the wealth and the energy to raise all children to a minimally decent standard of living.”

Public budgets aren’t just numbers on a page or screen. They’re a reflection of the values that people in power actually hold, not just the ones they profess. 

Jesus said it best: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

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

 

Thou shalt not steal (from public education)...for now anyway

I look back with fondness on 2018, for lots of reasons. One of the biggest was the unexpected (by me anyway) wave of unrest by teachers and school service workers tired of being insulted and jerked around that resulted in a successful work stoppage that in turn set off a national--and mostly successful--wave of school strikes.

And they've paid for it ever since. The following year, the legislature rammed through laws enabling charter schools, a step mostly supported by enemies of public education and those out for payback, a Venn diagram with significant overlap. In 2021, it passed a so-called "paycheck protection" act, which was more like a paycheck reduction act, that prohibited the withholding of dues from public employee paychecks. In 2022, they shot the moon with a truly horrible False Hope Scholarship Act, that would basically allow parents to take thousands of dollars from public education funding to do whatever they want.

(It was so bad that I even heard Senator Joe Manchin talk about how crazy it was to pay people to take kids out of school at a recent event in McDowell County.)

The case went to court and fortunately today Judge Joanna Tabit overturned the law. The judge was quoted in WV MetroNews as saying 

“The Hope Scholarship Program in my view undermines the free education system by requiring the Department of Education to take funds appropriated by the Legislature and transferring them to the Hope Scholarship Fund, which is then tasked for dispersing funds for private education.

“And in my view, the Legislature has violated its constitutional level obligations regarding public education and funding by enacting House Bill 2013 for the Hope scholarship fund.”

Supporters of the bill plan to appeal the decision, including the state's attorney general, whose greatest recent achievement is blocking federal action on climate change. Nuff said on that.

Still, it's a win for public education today and I'm going to savor it for as long as it lasts. Good court decisions are rare these days.

 

Counting the cost of health care repeal

 It’s too soon to say, but the people who want to overturn the Affordable Care Act, a group that includes West Virginia’s attorney general, are closer than before to getting what they want, even in the midst of a pandemic that has already killed over 200,000 Americans.

Opponents of the ACA, often referred to as Obamacare, give many reasons for wanting to kill it, although I suspect that, for many, the main reason is that it can be associated with a Black man.

But what would it mean for ordinary Americans if the ACA haters get what they want? The answer is pretty grim, if you do the math.

One feature of the ACA is protection of people with preexisting conditions in qualifying for health insurance. According to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, as many as 133 million Americans, over half of the non-elderly adult population, have some such condition.

Given the frailties of the human body, it has been argued that “life is a preexisting condition,” or at least one waiting to happen. This was especially true for women before the ACA passed, for reasons of medical costs associated with pregnancy, breast cancer and conditions unique to them. The National Women’s Law Center said that before the ACA “just being a woman could be considered a preexisting condition.”

Then there’s Medicaid expansion, a part of the ACA that became a state option after a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 39 states and the District of Columbia, have adopted this measure, which covers about 12 million Americans, most of whom are low-income working people and many of whom are the “essential workers” that everyone else depends on these days.

The ACA guarantees that states that adopt the expansion will never have to pay more than 10 percent of the costs. Without it, states would be unable to sustain coverage.

About 160,000 West Virginians are covered by the expansion at any given time and probably 200,000 or so are covered during a year. Aside from improving and saving lives, federal expansion funding also helps keep rural hospitals and health care facilities open and supports thousands of jobs.

Medicaid expansion has been a huge help in confronting the opioid epidemic. According to the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, “Medicaid expansion was associated with a substantial increase in opioid addiction therapies, particularly in states with high opioid overdose rates.”

Nationwide, about 800,000 Medicaid expansion recipients are dealing with opioid addiction.

A 2020 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that states that adopted Medicaid expansion had a decrease in opioid deaths, compared to states that hadn’t expanded Medicaid.

I’ve interviewed people in recovery about the role Medicaid expansion has played in their access to treatment. One woman summed it up neatly: “Without it, I’d be either dead or in jail.”

Then there are those who buy health care on the marketplaces. Kaiser reports that, in 2020, this amounts to 11.4 million Americans and over 20,000 West Virginians. Of these, an investigative article in The New York Times said that, “If the marketplaces and subsidies go away, a comprehensive health plan would become unaffordable for most of those people and many of them would become uninsured.”

The Times also reports that ACA repeal would hit Medicare recipients as well, affecting around 60 million Americans and over 440,000 West Virginians. Among other effects, if the law were struck down, “Medicare beneficiaries would have to pay more for preventive care, like a wellness visit or diabetes check, which are now free. They would also have to pay more toward their prescription drugs.”

Young Americans also would take a hit. The ACA allows about 2 million young adults to keep their parents’ health insurance up to age 26. The last numbers I could find suggest that about 20,000 young West Virginians are covered in this way. Without it, companies could withdraw coverage.

Killing the ACA also would dramatically increase the cost of health care, including uncompensated care, raising copays and premiums as these costs are passed on to individuals and families. The Urban Institute reports that “Demand for uncompensated care would increase by $50.2 billion, an increase of 82% compared with ACA levels.”

Oh yeah, and then there’s the prospect of millions of Americans losing health coverage while COVID-19 is still ravaging the country and the world.

To sum it all up about ACA opponents, and to paraphrase Winston Churchill, seldom have so few tried to do so much harm to so many. God help the country if they get what they want.

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

One to watch

If you care about the future of health care, pay attention to tomorrow's election in Oklahoma, where Medicaid expansion is on the ballot. This would be the first state to consider expansion since the COVID-19 pandemic took off. If it passes, it could bring health care to around 200,000 adults.
Needless to say, there's a lot of dark money opposing the measure.

According to the Kaiser Family Fund, 37 states (including DC) have adopted the expansion. In general, I think every state that expands the program makes it a little bit harder to undo the whole thing.

Medicaid expansion has been a huge benefit to West Virginia, bringing in billions of dollars, supporting thousands of jobs and providing coverage to around 200,000 low income adults in any given year. At any given point lately around 160,000 are covered by it.

This vote takes place in the shadow of an impending US Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Overturning it and taking away health care from millions of Americans seems to be a priority of both the Trump administration and WV Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, (which makes me want to reread the first volume of Dante's Divine Comedy to see which circle that would qualify one for).

Just thinking

There's nothing like a good outbreak of some kind to make you think about things. Here are some things I'm thinking about these days:

*WV attorney general Patrick Morrisey joined the lawsuit to repeal the Affordable Care Act. How's that going down with the coronavirus outbreak?

*The US Supreme Court has taken up the case to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It would be...interesting if they did that with all this going on.

*Whatever happens, this highlights the importance of things like paid sick days for all workers, universal health care, investing in public health (and science education), and things like plans for feeding kids when they're out of school for whatever reason. We've got a lot of unfinished business.

A meme is born

For someone who has been blogging for several years, I'm pretty behind on social media. One thing I have recently resolved to do is to learn to make memes for Facebook and such. I mean hard hitting social justice memes. But today, just to see if I could make one at all, I resorted to a gratuitous animal picture of Edith and her toys. Hard hitting social meme content to come. Just probably not today.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM. Here's more on possible conflicts of interest involving drug companies and WV's attorney general.

ANNALS OF URBAN AGRICULTURE. A while back the city of Charleston WV passed an ordnance allowing city residents to own chickens and such. Here's one nice success story. Meanwhile, the hens at Goat Rope Farm have either permanently retired from egg production or have gone on strike.

Poverty: it's not as much fun as some think

El Cabrero spent a few years in (involuntary) poverty and one thing about that I'd like the world to know is that it's not nearly as much fun as people who have never been there seem to think. Back in the 1990s the writer Earl Shorris described it well in his book New American Blues. 

To use Shorris' term, living in poverty is like living in a "surround of force." It means always being on the defensive and feeling like a hunted animal. One damn thing after another, nearly all of which are bad. Today a friend emailed a post by someone living through that now and it rings true to my experience. You can find it here.

WHO'S WINNING? Here's an interesting look at two midwestern states that have taken different political paths and what the early results seem to be.

PRISON OVERCROWDING is an issue I've been concerned about in WV for the last few years. Here's a summary of where things are with that now.

UTERUS POLICE TAKE NOTE. According to a recent poll, West Virginian's have little enthusiasm for an abortion inquisition such as that advocated by the state's attorney general (and friend to drug companies, but that's another story).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One liner of the day

Whenever I hear politicians talk about the need to make tough choices, what I hear is this: "It's time to really stick it to poor people." Which come to think of it isn't a tough choice at all but rather a cowardly one. Paul Krugman struck at that theme today in his op-ed about the need for demand-side economics. Here's his version:

"Economics is supposed to be about making hard choices (at other people's expense, naturally)."

SAD NEWS. Here's an op-ed by a friend of mine on sad days for public libraries.

KINDER, GENTLER? On the bright side, E.J. Dionne argues that Americans seem to be getting less punitive, partially because of dropping crime rates.

HEALTH CARE. Here's a reminder of why we needed reform to start with.

MORE FUN AND GAMES with West Virginia's drug lobbyist in chief attorney general here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What they're thinking

At this writing, there's talk of an approaching debt ceiling/shutdown deal emerging from the Senate. That kind of news makes me wonder what they caved in on this time. I guess we'll know soon. At any rate, here's an interesting look at the folks who gave us the shutdown and how they look at the world. It's worth a look.

WEIRTON STEEL TO WAL-MART. Here's an op-ed by yours truly about how WV's economy has changed over the years. Mostly not in a good way. But there is some good news in there too.

FUN AND GAMES WITH THE AG. Here's an item by a friend of mine across the state about how WV's attorney general is working hard to keep people from getting health care.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. German scientists are trying to raise drought resistant barley so we can still drink beer in a climate changed world.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ABOUT TO HIT THE CEILING

Who wins? WV for a change

It looks like West Virginia will be among the states that will most benefit from the Affordable Care Act, thanks in no small part to Gov. Tomblin's decision to expand Medicaid to low wage working people. You can compare it with other states here.

As for the states that aren't expanding Medicaid, and for the politicians who want to beat down the poor some more, an explanation might be found here.

PILLS ARE OUR FRIENDS, RIGHT? When he's not policing uteri or witch-hunting for midwives or trying to keep people from getting health care, WV's Attorney General is pretty cozy with a certain pharmaceutical company.

WHAT TO GET THE PERSON WITH EVERYTHING? Try a six foot salamander.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A champion for children (and someone else completely different)

Last Friday I  had the opportunity to attend an event celebrating the Children's Health Insurance Program which featured on of the key architects of that law, to wit WV's senior senator Jay Rockefeller. During the program, several medical and mental health professionals spoke about the benefits of the program, which also covers dental and mental health.

CHIP, enacted in 1997 in Congress and expanded repeatedly in WV since then, now covers children in families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. It has made a huge impact in health coverage. One number I've heard thrown around is that since the program began, around 40 million children have benefited from the program.

In WV, CHIP outreach, which also enrolls eligible children in Medicaid, has reduced the number of uninsured children to practically zero. As one dentist said at the event, "you just don't see uninsured children anymore."

That is quite a legacy and may be the greatest of Rockefeller's many contributions.

MEANWHILE, ON THE DARK SIDE, WV Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and his rich friends don't have to worry about affording health care. So instead they worry about how to keep others from getting it. Nice.

Lean, mean, green

I have mentioned before that a major hazard at this time of year for people living near gardens is an attack of summer squash, an aggressively imperialist species.

The above picture is living proof if more was needed of the dangers of these pernicious plants. Not content to lie there like most vegetables, these green miscreants are about to slither out of the basket and rampage over an unsuspecting world.

DEAL WITH IT. Here's Krugman on the Affordable Care Act and the right wing's state of denial.

THE LATEST JIHAD. It looks like it's true love between WV's anti-gay uterus-police and its attorney general. I figured the latter would be busy recusing himself from cases started by his predecessor which challenge abuses of sleazy corporations.

WOULD THIS BE IRONY OR HYPOCRISY? Although the same WV AG mentioned above seems to be deeply concerned with the personal decisions of women, he pretends to believe that some parts of the Affordable Care Act threaten  privacy. Judges? Personally, I'm leaning towards hypocrisy.

ONE MORE WV AG RANT. As I've pointed out before, this was the same "pro-life" person who expressed regret at Governor Tomblin's decision to expand Medicaid, despite the fact that around 223 West Virginians die prematurely every year because they don't have health coverage. I think that would be another one for the hypocrisy column.

PATRIOT. Union miners overwhelmingly approved an agreement with Patriot Coal. I think it's a pretty big win for the UMWA and would like to congratulate union members and allies who made a bad situation better.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The wonders of the market

El Cabrero has from time to time been a critic of so-called free market ideologies. Now, thanks to a recent email from a reader, I take it all back. Well, some of it anyway.

The reason for my conversion is that, through the market's invisible hand, you, Gentle Reader, as well as I, can be the proud owner of a Zombie Outbreak Response Team license tag holder for your vehicle.

There are no guarantees, but it just might get you behind the security lines at a zombie apocalypse outbreak.

Maybe I'll go read some more Ayn Rand now.

YOU WOULDN'T KNOW THIS FROM LISTENING TO SOME PEOPLE, but the federal deficit is actually shrinking.

IMAGES OF WAR by way of NPR here.

HOLY PILL MILL, BATMAN! Read about the latest fun and games from the WV attorney general here. No wonder consumer protection is on the back burner these days.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Three for the road

My word-horde, to use the language of Beowulf, is running a little low at the moment. Fortunately, that is not the case with everyone.

THE ZIMMERMAN VERDICT. Here's a response from the New Yorker.

GROWING FROM THE MIDDLE. President Obama made the case this week for growing the middle class-and thereby growing the economy. Aristotle would probably agree. So would several economists discussed here.

MORE FUN AND GAMES WITH THE WV AG discussed here.

Good weekend wishes to one and all (mostly).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

O what a falling off was there

Once upon a time, the office of West Virginia's Attorney General was one devoted to things like consumer protection. When, for example, my elderly mother was preyed upon by predatory marketers, they tended to crawl back under their rocks when I mentioned the name of Darrell McGraw.

Those days are gone since the current occupant of that office, Patrick Morrisey, was elected mostly due to money from West Virginia's colonial masters out of state. As the Charleston Gazette noted in a recent editorial, the consumer protection division of that office has pretty much been gutted.

Gazette political columnist Phil Kabler summed it up nicely:

Should anyone be surprised that Pactrick Morrisey is pursuing a right-wing agenda, including investigation abortion clinics, and dismantling his office's consumer protection division? Not if they were paying attention.

Many voters were so focused on retiring longtime Attorney General Darrell McGraw that they didn't think through the consequences of electing Morrissey.

A quick glance of campaign contributors makes clear those donors weren't banking on Morrisey to continue McGraw's legacy of strong consumer protection and willingness to take on big pharmaceutical companies for price-fixing.

Gazette investigative reporter Eric Eyre noted today that

A special fund established to pay for Attorney General Patrick Morrisey's inaugural party received a $2,500 contribution from Cardinal Health in late February, the same company Morrisey's office has a pending lawsuit against for allegedly fueling West Virginia's problem with prescription drug abuse. 

Morrisey's wife, Denise Henry, is a lobbyist for Cardinal Health in Washington D.C. 

Cardinal Health, the nations second largest drug distributor, paid her lobbying firm $100,000 last year, according to Henry's lobbying disclosure form.

I wouldn't hold out much hope on that lawsuit. Follow the money.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with money at all (he wrote with irony). Maybe there are more important things for Morrisey to do...Like holding abortion witch hunts. Or opposing Medicaid expansion for hard working West Virginians when around 4 state residents die prematurely every week because they lack health insurance (uhhh...what happened to the whole pro-life thing?) Or holding forums on how we could make the state more business friendly?

Recently, Delegate Don Perdue, chair of the House Health Committee suggested Morrisey actually do something useful, like investigating WV's meth problems. I'm not holding my breath on that one either.

Servicing the ruling class is a full time job.