Private Prison Firm Pulls Funding For College Stadium Naming Rights

Florida Atlantic University’s football stadium will no longer be named after a notorious private prison corporation, after GEO Group announced Monday it would withdraw its $6 million pledge to the university, saying it has “surprisingly evolved into an ongoing distraction.”

The announcement in February that the university would rename its stadium garnered immediate outcry and protests, and the reaction should not have been so surprising. GEO Group, the second-largest operator of U.S. private prisons, has become known for reports of juvenile abuse, deaths, and riots at its facilities, and has poured money into Florida politics as the legislature considered proposals to privatize the state’s prison health care. GEO executives escalated the controversy over associating college football with prison by falsely denying reports that GEO had overseen a facility that a federal judge described as a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.” The $6 million pledge paid out over 12 years would have been the largest one-time gift in the history of FAU athletics, signaling both the monetary influence of the private prison industry, and its willingness to wield that influence to secure a better reputation. Instead, the company said it would make one $500,000 donation toward the school’s scholarship program.

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Iowa Conservatives Threaten Community College’s Funding For Hosting Bullying Conference

Iowa’s Christian conservative group The FAMiLY Leader is once again objecting to the Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth, a yearly opportunity for students, teachers, and families across the state of Iowa to learn how to better protect LGBT young people from bullying. In the past, the group’s head Bob Vander Plaats has accused the conference of discriminating against straight students, even though allies are welcome.

At a press conference Thursday, The FAMiLY Leader and representatives from other groups (including hate group Concerned Women for America) objected to the conference for compromising the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality and using taxpayer funding in the process. Here’s FL’s Chuck Hurley admonishing LGBT advocates:

HURLEY: This Papa Bear is here to say, regarding the Governor’s Conference, stop coming after my kids and other people’s kids with evil propaganda. Stop twisting the Bible and stop using our tax dollars to do it. [...]

We’re here today to warn parents and to warn lawmakers and other who are responsible for protecting those children, and to urge them to protect appropriate action to protect those children, such as not letting them go to this conference next week, such as considering home and private education if their schools are teaching the things this conference is advocating — that Iowa school districts teach — and above all, teaching our children the truth about the Bible, sexuality, and bullying.

Watch the full press conference (Part 2 here):

This year, the group is specifically targeting Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) for hosting the conference. A conservative student group, Young Americans for Freedom, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to confirm that the university was spending money to help fund the conference. Student Jake Dagel explained, “Diversity is not when you use my tuition money or our tax dollars to fund a conference that bullies people for their Christian or conservative beliefs.”

Sixteen lawmakers have threatened to cut DMACC’s funding for promoting groups “who pervert the Bible, teach our youth to engage in dangerous behavior, and target individuals like Jan Mickelson for hatred and bullying.” Mickelson is a conservative radio host in Iowa that regularly attacks LGBT equality on his show.

Unsurprisingly, none of the conservative religious leaders expressed any concern for the severe consequences LGBT youth experience when they are bullied or shamed by their community, including attempting suicide, homelessness, academic performance, and school truancy.

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Reid: More Funding Needed To Prevent ObamaCare From Becoming 'Train Wreck'

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he shares colleagues’ concerns that the Affordable Care Act could become a “train wreck” if it’s not implemented properly.

Reid warned that people will not be able to choose health insurance plans on government health exchanges if federal authorities lack the resources to set them up and educate the public.

“Max said unless we implement this properly it’s going to be a train wreck, and I agree with him,” Reid said, echoing a warning delivered last month by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.).

Reid warned the federal government is not spending enough money to implement the law because of Republican opposition to ObamaCare.

“Here’s what we have now, we have the menu but we don’t have any way to get to the menu,” Reid said.

Reid made his comments during an hour-long interview on "The Rusty Humphries Show" broadcast Wednesday afternoon from Las Vegas.

The shortage of funding to implement the law has forced President Obama to shift funds from other parts of the law.

“The president is taking money — I wish we had the money just to do this on its own, but he’s agreed, he’s determined he’s going to take money from some of the other things that he feels are less important in the healthcare bill and put it on letting you and others know what’s in the bill,” Reid told a caller to the show.

Reid defended the need for the law, which dramatically expanded federal healthcare subsidies for the uninsured.

“I believe that a country of our size, the only superpower left in the world — it’s not right that we have 50-60 million people … with no health insurance,” he said. “We have to have a program where health insurance shouldn’t go to people who are rich, people who are upper-middle class. I believe the middle class and people below the middle class deserve to go to the hospital when they’re sick.”

Reid said he was well familiar with the law, which spanned as long as 2,000 pages when it was a bill, before it passed.

“Of course I read it. I didn’t sit down on a Friday evening and read it. This legislation was drafted over a period of months and months,” he said. “I can pass a test on it. I knew the law pretty well.”

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Many lawmakers were not familiar with its details when they voted on it, and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) famously declared that Congress needed to pass the law to find out what was in it.

Baucus sounded an alarm about the implementation of the healthcare law last week.

"I just see a huge train wreck coming down," he told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a hearing. "You and I have discussed this many times, and I don't see any results yet."

Many conservatives have criticized the law as a government takeover of the healthcare industry.

Reid disagrees with this view but he conceded Wednesday that the executive branch has grabbed too much power in Washington and suggested a requirement that all laws be allowed to expire after 10 years to give Congress an opportunity to reevaluate them.

“One of the things I pushed for many years is laws should sunset after ten years. That the only way  — that in fact I introduced legislation, after ten years you would have to reauthorize the legislation — we haven’t done that and think that’s something we should consider,” he said.

Reid noted that he and former Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) worked together on the Congressional Review Act, which empowers Congress to disapprove new federal regulations.

“The White House over the last 30 years, maybe more, has been taking away too much power from the legislative branch,” he said. “I’d be happy to talk about earmarks, which is one example — this is only a power-grab by the White House.”

Reid pledged to live under the rules of the Affordable Care Act that apply to ordinary citizens.

Reid acknowledged, however, that he is negotiating with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to alter the law’s treatment of congressional staff.

“Right now there’s a conflict, and we’re trying to work that out,” he said.

Updated at 6:41 p.m.

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Scott Walker Proposes Budget That Cuts Taxes While Reducing Funding For Public Schools

Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) is proposing a budget that would fund a variety of right-wing priorities by slashing support for public services and local communities, according to an outline of the plan given in Walker’s “State of the State” address Wednesday night. Walker, who had already cut taxes significantly in his first term, proposed an additional $630 million in cuts (about half of which come from income taxes):

With this in mind, I am pleased to announce an income tax cut of $343 million. You, the hardworking taxpayers of this state helped to create the budget surplus, so it is only right that we put more money back into your hands. Over the next decade, this will lower income taxes $1.7 billion…Overall, our budget includes more than $630 million in tax cuts.

Walker touted the tax cuts as a way to boost Wisconsin’s economy, but they give relatively little money back to middle-class families, limiting their stimulative effect. A four-person family with a total yearly income of $80,000 would only see an extra $8 per month under Walker’s plans. But even tax cuts with limited effects cost the government money — $1.7 billion over the next decade, according to Walker. And while he says it will be paid for a projected surplus, that’s the same thing former President George W. Bush said about his budget busting tax cuts.

Moreover, Walker’s budget proposes several dangerous changes and cuts to critical public services that could hurt the economy. Despite the fact that “a decade of research has shown no academic benefit from sending students to voucher schools,” Walker proposes a significant expansion of voucher funding, which will come at the expense of public schools. He also plans to freeze state financial support for municipal and city level programs. A similar move in Ohio caused problems for localities when it came to funding fire and police departments.

Walker also doubled down on his refusal to accept Obamacare Medicaid support, a move too irresponsible even for Florida’s hard-right Governor Rick Scott. Walker’s proposed budget also contains provisions requiring “non-elderly, able-bodied adults” on food stamps to attend job training programs in order to get food support.

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Court Holds Low Kansas School Funding Unconstitutional, Lawmakers Respond By Attacking Constitution

Just weeks after a three judge panel unanimously ruled the Kansas legislature was failing to meet its constitutionally defined responsibility to suitably fund the state’s education needs, conservative Kansas legislators responded with a proposal to limit judicial oversight of education funding. The January ruling ordered the legislature to raise education funding around $400 million to return the state’s schools to reasonable standards and called out the hypocrisy of cuts given other “priorities” pursued by the legislature at the same time:

The court said it was “illogical” for the state to argue that it could not adequately fund schools at the same time it slashed income taxes.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court victories for a group of public school districts, parents and students in Kansas who have demanded for years that the state provide more money for education.

A funding plan was devised for Kansas in 2006 through a settlement of a prior lawsuit but the groups filed suit again in 2010 when the state made an estimated $300 million in funding cuts. The state made even more cuts in 2011. There have been $511 million in cuts to the base funding between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal 2012.”

Rather than accept the decision and provide Kansan students with adequate funding, last week conservative legislators introduced a constitutional amendments intended to reduce judicial influence and Attorney General Derek Schmidt (R) appealed the ruling.

The large conservative majorities in both chambers of the Kansas legislature, have pursued an aggressive agenda under Governor Sam Brownback, including gutting arts funding, and attempting to end income taxes.

Kansas is not alone in constitutionally requiring education funding standards, with many other states including New Jersey and Washington fighting similar battles over education funding in recent years. Just yesterday, a District Judge ruled Texas’s school-finance system unconstitutional due to funding disparities between richer and poorer districts.

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GOP Rep. Wants To Slash Flood Preparedness Funding In Hurricane Sandy Aid Package

Georgia Rep. Paul Broun (R) has proposed amendments cutting $300 million from the $17 billion House relief package for states affected by Hurricane Sandy. Among those cuts are nearly $20 million meant for studying future flood risks.

Such studies would lead to investments that would help reduce the risks of major flooding and to better infrastructure projects. But Broun, a stalwart conservative, believes that represents wasteful spending, The Hill reports:

Two of Broun’s amendments would affect the main bill, by removing $19.5 million to study future flood risks and removing $3 million for oil spill research.

Hurricane Sandy left large swaths of New York and New Jersey underwater. The Senate’s aid package included a total of $5.3 billion for future flood prevention, and experts have begun exploring various ways to protect New York City and New Jersey from the possibility of major flooding in the future. As the Sacramento Bee editorialized, “by failing to finance flood control projects and programs to protect communities against other natural disasters, Congress is adding to the potential liabilities of the federal government.”

House Republicans initially decided not to take up the Sandy relief package before passing a smaller bill as the last Congress ended. Some Republicans have renewed their calls that the relief funding be offset by spending cuts elsewhere, including cuts to every discretionary spending program in the federal budget.

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Fiscal Deal Kills New Funding For Health Law’s Co-Ops

Going, going, gone.

The fiscal cliff deal, approved by Congress on New Year’s Day, eliminates most of the more than $1.4 billion in remaining funding from the federal health law for new nonprofit, customer-owned health plans designed to compete against the major for-profit insurers.

Photo by Aaron Sumner via Flickr

That means the Obama administration won’t be able to approve loans to any additional co-ops. In the past two years, the Department of Health and Human Services has awarded nearly $2 billion in loans to 24 proposed state co-ops. Those loans won’t be affected by the cut.

“We were  blindsided by the elimination of funds,” said John Morrison, president of the National Alliance of State Health Cooperatives. “The health insurance industry is getting its way here by torpedoing  co-ops in the 26 remaining states. This is not about budgets; it is about those health insurance giants killing competition at the expense of millions of Americans who will pay higher premiums because of it.”

But some House Republicans have said the co-ops were a way for the administration to reward its political friends. Sponsors of the co-op plans already underway include the Freelancers Union in New York, a farmers’ union in Colorado and the Connecticut State Medical Society.

Critics also have been skeptical the co-ops could compete with more established insurers, such as Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.

“Starting a new health plan is a risky proposition,” said Peter Kongstvedt, a McLean, Va.- based health care consultant. He said consumers already have sufficient choice of plans in most markets and won’t miss having the additional co-ops.

Proponents of the co-ops say such plans could offer lower premiums because they don’t have to generate profits for shareholders. Under the law, co-op plans must apply any surpluses to lowering rates or improving benefits or quality for their members. The co-ops are scheduled to open by next year.

In testimony before Congress last year,  Morrison called skepticism about co-ops’ ability to compete ”naive,” noting, “The large carriers are saddled with stockholder demands for profit, large overheads, antiquated legacy processing systems and other inefficiencies.”

Initially, the health law allocated $6 billion to help co-ops start up and meet state  insurance solvency requirements. In 2011, Congress reduced that funding to $3.4 billion as part of broader budget cuts.

More than two dozen applicants were applying for co-op funding when the money was eliminated, Morrison said. HHS officials did not return calls for comment.

The deal approved Tuesday leaves 10 percent of the remaining co-op funds to cover the administrative costs connected with the 24 plans already launched.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 at 4:37 pm.

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Drug-Resistant Malaria Flares As Funding For Research Tapers

Global health experts worry that a new breed of malaria that has arisen in South Asia could reverse trends in the fight against the disease, since it has proven resistant to the drugs usually used to treat malaria infections.

Cases of malaria are currently treated with a drug called artemisinin, which typically clears the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria’s symptoms from humans within about 24 hours. However, a new strain of the disease has sprung up on the Thailand-Myannmar border that has shown the ability to cling to its host for three days or more after the administration of treatment. Should this form of malaria spread, the results could be catastrophic:

“We know what will happen in Africa when resistance is bad because we’ve been there before in the 1990s with chloroquine (another anti-malarial drug) … millions of deaths,” [malaria researcher Dr Francois Nosten] warned.

“We must prevent artemisinin resistance reaching Africa, but we also need to control it for the people in Asia – for their future.”

Twenty years passed between the evolution of a strain of malaria resistant to the then-prevelant treatment of choloroquine in the same South Asian region before it migrated to Africa. While the disease does eventually fall to arteminsin treatment still, the inability of the patient to find relief from malaria’s high fevers is likely to raise the mortality rate among those infected with the new strain. In 2010, malaria caused the deaths of an estimated 660,000 people, with Africa having the highest infection rate of any continent.

That number has fallen in recent years, thanks to a concerted effort to halt the spread of malaria and other diseases by programs such as the Global Fund and the United States’ PEPFAR. However, the gains that have been made since a funding surge from 2004-2009 are proving fragile as budgets have leveled off. The World Health Organization’s World Malaria Report 2012 warned of the potential for backsliding as funding for anti-malarial bed nets, the best prevention for infection, has frozen.

Researchers in the region continue to strive towards new and improved drugs to treat malaria amid the uptick in new cases. Whether the research will yield results in time to halt the progress of new malarial strains is yet to be seen.

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