If you care about kids, get ready for another school food fight

It's on again. I've written before about threats to food security from the Trump administration, most recently here. It turns out that things are worse than I thought.

For review, Prince Joffrey's President Trump's administration proposed changes in eligibility for the SNAP program that could take away food assistance from over 3 million Americans and eligibility for free school meals to 500,000 kids. Turns out the latter figure is more like a million.

So they'll be hungry at home AND at school. Nice...

In fact, the USDA is soon going to reopen a public comment period on this for a two week period. Details to come.

Here's the latest word from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC):

WASHINGTON, October 17, 2019 — A surprise release of data that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) should have disclosed earlier underscores the deep harm of its proposed rule to limit access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): eliminating food assistance for 3.1 million people and jeopardizing free school meals for nearly 1 million children.

Children who live in households that receive SNAP benefits are directly certified (automatically eligible) to receive free school breakfast and lunch. While the initial estimate showed that the rule could jeopardize more than 500,000 children’s access to free school meals, the new USDA analysis states that as many as 982,000 children could be impacted, with 497,000 children moving from free to reduced-price meals, and 40,000 completely losing eligibility for both free and reduced-price school meals. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) noted in a statement, “Even for those who remain eligible, forcing low-income families to navigate the burdensome paperwork will inevitably lead to eligible children losing access to a critical source of daily nutrition.”

If this rule is enacted, children will be hungry at home and school. Since childhood hunger is linked to academic struggles, difficulties focusing and concentrating, mental health disorders, and increased behavioral referrals, many schools would struggle to meet the educational, health, and mental health needs of the students who lose SNAP benefits and as a result, access to free school meals.

The administration will reopen the public comment period for 14 days. Once it is reopened, FRAC will have a comment platform on its website where people can submit comments opposing this deeply flawed proposal. 

I'll send word out when we know more, but here's some ammo for your comments: there's a new scientific study that shows free school meals (surprise) improve academic performance. Interestingly, this is true of both non-poor and poor kids.

Gird up thy loins for battle once again...

What's at stake for WV in the health care fight

If you want to know what's at stake for West Virginians in the fight to preserve the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is once again under attack by Prince Joffrey President Trump, consider this info by Gazette-Mail reporter Lori Kersey:

Low-income West Virginians received $90 million worth of mental health and substance abuse treatment last year, and nearly $300 million over the last four years, under a law the Trump administration is trying to repeal, according to West Virginia health officials.

Under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, West Virginia expanded its Medicaid program to those who make up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.

According to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, the state’s expanded Medicaid program spent about $58 million on mental health and substance abuse in fiscal year 2015, $61 million in 2016, $79 million in 2017 and $90 million in 2018.

Then there's this: according to the WV Department of Health and Human Resources, as of April 1, 160,356 West Virginians were covered by Medicaid expansion, a state option under the ACA. Another 22,600 state residents got coverage under the ACA exchange. Then there are around 12,000 young people who are able to stay on their parent's insurance until age 26, another ACA provision.

Then there's the fact that the ACA brings hundreds of millions of dollars to our economy, creating thousands of jobs and helping to keep rural hospitals and health care providers going.

Those are just numbers, but behind each number is a story. Here's a link to some collected from people who gained coverage thanks to Medicaid expansion.

This is our concern, Dude.

Speaking of the Grinch...

The big news lately is Prince Joffrey's President Trump's government shutdown temper tantrum. But that's not the worst thing he's done this week. That honor would have to go to his decision to bypass congress and impose restrictions on basic SNAP food assistance to low income Americans.

Congress debated such measures for a good part of this year and wound up doing the right thing. Apparently, the president and his cronies couldn't let that good deed go unspoiled. You can read more about what that means here and here.

It's not over by any means. There are likely to be political as well as legal challenges. It's a good idea now to prepare to flood USDA inboxes when the proposed changes are up for public comment. Things might have to get a bit more interesting down the road.

IN A RELATED STORY...spiders could at least theoretically eat all humans on earth in one year.

Switcheroo

I just finished listening to the ancient Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which all kinds of things change form. Little did I know that he could have written a post script on WV's governor Jim Justice, who switched parties publicly during a certain visit to WV earlier this week. We talked about it on a special edition the Front Porch, but I can't remember what I said or if I even agree with myself.

What's next for health care?

Efforts to unravel the Affordable Care Act are in the works both from congress and the Dark Tower White House. There are a lot of known and unknown unknowns, as former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who actually looks better and better these days, might say. Here's a good summary.

As this op-ed by a fellow tai chi student points out, the folks in charge have had plenty of time to come up with a real alternative if they really wanted to. The (real) fact is that ACA repeal without a comparable replacement would weaken the state's economy, not to mention threaten the health care of 225,000 residents.

As this Washington Post article points out, unless something gives I'm afraid the above picture might be the shape of things to come. Literally.

Bigly sad

According to Prussian Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, the human mind naturally perceives the world through the lens of innate mental categories such as space, time and causality. One of these innate categories is quantity...

...which may explain why some people like Prince Joffrey President Trump are kind of sensitive about size.

One sore spot seems to be the relative size of certain public gatherings this weekend. I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the Women's March at the WV state capitol, many of the attendees of which were male. Numbers kicked around were in the 2800 to 3000 range. For sure, it was enough to go all the way around the capitol grounds as the march took place.

I'm pretty sure that the last time that many people gathered there was during the teacher's strike of 1990, of which my memories are fond.

There were many witty signs there, but the winner to my mind is featured above. My own, which just said "Bigly sad" was pretty popular with those taking pictures, especially when accompanied by a pouting expression that appeared to remind people of someone.

Of course, we all know that a billion zillion gazillion googal-plex more went to the Baratheon coronation inauguration.