POSTMODERN BOOK BURNING

How a YA Oral-Sex Scene Touched Off Texas' Latest Culture War


Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune and Cassandra Pollock, The Texas Tribune
Sun, November 21, 2021



Kathy May was getting her four kids ready for another day at school in late October when she got an urgent voicemail from a friend.

“OMG, OMG, this book,” her friend said, alerting May to a book found by another parent in the library catalogue of Keller Independent School District, where their kids go, called “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe.

“I felt sick and disgusted,” May said, recalling text messages her friend sent her showing sexually explicit illustrations from the book. She was angry that any kid could access that kind of book in a public high school without their parents’ knowledge.

The 239-page graphic novel depicts Kobabe’s journey of gender identity and sexual orientation. Kobabe, who is nonbinary, said it was written to help others who are struggling with gender identity to feel less alone. The book also explores questions around pronouns and hormone-blocking therapies.

“I can absolutely understand the desire of a parent to protect their child from sensitive material. I’m sympathetic to people who have the best interest of young people at heart,” Kobabe, the 32-year-old author based in California, said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “I also want to have the best interest of young people at heart. There are queer youth at every high school — and those students, that’s [who] I’m thinking about, is the queer student who is getting left behind.”

May didn’t read the book, but what she saw — a few pages of explicit illustrations depicting oral sex — was disturbing to her. It took less than a day for May and other parents to get the book removed from the district. May tweeted that same day that after school officials had been notified, the book was removed from a student’s hands.

“Gender Queer” has become a lightning rod both nationwide and in Texas among some parents and Republican officials who say they’re worried public schools are trying to radicalize students with progressive teachings and literature.

Most recently, Gov. Greg Abbott and another GOP lawmaker have questioned the book’s presence in schools. Abbott has called for investigations into whether students have access to what he described as “pornographic books” in Texas public schools. And last month, state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, sent a list of some 850 books about race and sexuality — including Kobabe’s — to school districts asking for information about how many are available on their campuses.

Across the state, books that tackle racial issues such as “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez and “New Kid” by Jerry Craft have been pulled from shelves after parental complaints. Leander ISD removed six books in the spring, including “In the Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado, which depicts an abusive same-sex relationship with descriptions of sex. Groups of Texas parents, often sharing information on Facebook groups, have mobilized to find books they deem inappropriate and have them banned from the schools.

The drama has unfolded against the backdrop of a national debate over critical race theory, an academic discipline that holds that racism is embedded in the country’s legal and structural systems. However, the label has been used by some Republicans to target a broader concern that kids are being indoctrinated by progressive teachings in schools.

Texas lawmakers passed two laws this year, that they labeled anti-critical race theory, to crack down on how teachers can talk about race in the classroom. And the issue has been in play up and down the ballot — and outside of Texas, including a GOP victory for the next Virginia governor, who campaigned on a pledge to ban the teaching of critical race theory.

“We have a problem and need help. Our district has a ton of leftist teachers, librarians and counselors who push this plus SEL/CRT. It’s literally a district run wild,” May wrote in a tweet thread, where she shared the sexually explicit illustrations from Kobabe’s book. SEL is short for social and emotional learning, and CRT is short for critical race theory.

“Please help us make parents aware of the danger of the cultural changes our society is making, when people say they’re going after our kids, you need to listen, because they are,” she said in her tweet.
The book

The graphic novel “Gender Queer” traces Kobabe’s own experiences growing up, as the author, whose pronouns are e/em/eir, struggled to identify as gay, bisexual or asexual.

At one point in the book, the author compares gender identity to a scale that was tilted toward being “assigned female at birth,” despite Kobabe’s efforts to be seen as gender neutral. The opposite side of the scale had other factors illustrated with lighter weights, such as “short hair” and “baggy boy clothes.” The image included in the book showed a person trying to add heavier weights labeled “top surgery,” “hormones” and “pronoun” to try to balance the scale.

“A huge weight had been placed on one side, without my permission,” Kobabe wrote. “I was constantly trying to weigh down the other side. But the end goal wasn’t masculinity — the goal was balance.”

While there are illustrations of sexual content in the novel, Kobabe said that students need “good, accurate, safe information about these topics” instead of “wildly having to search online” and potentially stumble across misinformation.

Kobabe, who recommends the book to high school students or older, said there are other novels that have been in high school libraries for years about sexuality, relationships or identity. Kobabe also believes “Gender Queer” in particular became a flashpoint because it is an illustrated comic instead of just text, and that it would not have been singled out so quickly had it been released before the era of social media.

“A person can more quickly flip it open, see one or two images that they disagree with and then decide that the book is not good without actually reading it,” Kobabe said. “To people who are challenging the book, please read the whole book and judge it based on the entire contents, not just a tiny snippet.”

But for parents like May, they say their opposition to the novel isn’t about the LGBTQ community. It’s about whether these materials and images are appropriate for children.“The only reason is because they are sexually explicit for minors,” May said.
The parents

When May, a stay-at-home parent, saw the illustrations from Kobabe’s book, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She said she and her family moved from California to the more conservative Texas about two years ago so she was shocked to see the “leftism and progressivism” in Texas schools. They landed at Keller ISD, which is a middle-class, majority white district north of Fort Worth with about 35,000 students.

That day, the images from Kobabe’s book were uploaded to a private Facebook group with thousands of Keller ISD parents by another parent, who also contacted the district about the book.

Within minutes of hearing from that parent, administrators removed it “out of an abundance of caution,” Keller ISD officials said. The district had one copy of the book in a high school library. It was removed “pending an investigation to determine how the book was selected and ultimately made available to students.” Keller ISD officials declined to name which school had the book.

But the Keller ISD parents didn’t stumble upon the book by happenstance. They were on the hunt.

The Tarrant County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit organization aiming to support parental rights in education, had shared a list of books they identified as problem literature in schools. Keller ISD parents took that list and started combing through their own school library databases to find matches.

Kobabe’s book wasn’t on the Tarrant County group’s list, but it popped up as parents searched key words for titles with words like “gender” and queer.”

The group of North Texas parents first started their efforts in September to expunge what they’ve deemed “pornographic” material in Keller ISD after they found out the district had copies of “Out of Darkness,” an interracial love story.

May said the group initially became worried about “Out of Darkness” after an article surfaced in their Facebook group about a Lake Travis Independent School District parent who furiously confronted their school board about it, saying that it promoted anal sex.

The parents have asked for the book to be removed and are awaiting Keller ISD’s response.

Pérez, 37, an East Texas native who wrote “Out of Darkness,” said there is no depiction of the sex act in her book. The passage the parent was angry about was a reference to a female character being sexually harassed verbally by another character. The book itself is a love story between a Mexican American girl from San Antonio and an African American boy against the backdrop of a deadly natural gas leak explosion in 1937 in New London, Texas.

“One of [the book’s] functions is to make us uncomfortable and I think that I’m really alarmed by the notion that discomfort is dangerous because, frankly, I think we should be uncomfortable about aspects of our history,” she said.

Pérez said the problem she has with this movement to remove books from schools is that parents already can specify to teachers and administrators that they don’t want their children to read certain books — without having to ban it for all kids.

“‘Gender Queer’ is the book that matters for some kid — and if it’s not there, it can’t give the sense of not being alone,” Pérez said.

The politics

A day before the book was discovered at Keller ISD, Krause, the Republican representative from Fort Worth, launched an inquiry into certain public school districts over the types of books they have, particularly if they pertain to race or sexuality or “make students feel discomfort.” The lawmaker has said the inquiry could help with compliance with the new anti-critical race theory laws passed this year.

Krause, a member of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus who chairs the House General Investigating Committee, sent out a list of some 850 books, asking that schools identify whether they have copies on campus. Krause has said he will not offer specifics related to how he developed or got the list of books, saying he does not want to “compromise” a pending or potential investigation by his committee.

Krause’s list includes several books on topics such as race, sexuality and puberty, including Kobabe’s memoir. He did not respond to questions about how he was made aware of Kobabe’s novel. Most of the books on the list were written by women, people of color and LGBTQ writers. Some authors whose works appear on Krause’s list say he’s targeting literature specifically created for children and young adults that helps them feel seen and broadens their worldview.

Titles range from picture books like “I Am Jazz” by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings to popular young adult novels such as “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews. Books that could show up on a college syllabus also made the list, including “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall and “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander.

The Texas Education Agency said in a statement that “TEA does not comment on investigations that it may or may not have opened that haven’t yet closed.”

In an Oct. 29 statement, four days after Krause’s letter to school districts and three days after Kobabe’s book was removed from Keller ISD, state Rep. Jeff Cason, R-Bedford, asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton “to start a statewide investigation” into the novel “and others that may violate the Penal Code in relation to pornography, child pornography and decency laws.” Cason also asked Paxton to look into “the legal ramifications” for school districts that approved such books.

Neither a spokesperson for Cason nor the lawmaker’s office responded to a question regarding how Cason became aware of the book. And the attorney general’s office has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Abbott has asked state education officials to develop statewide standards for blocking books with “overtly sexual” content in schools, specifically citing books by Kobabe and Machado. The governor most recently asked the TEA to investigate criminal activity related to “the availability of pornography” in schools — though it’s unclear why Abbott asked the agency instead of the state’s policing arm.

Heads of the TEA and State Board of Education, in response to Abbott’s request to develop statewide standards, said in statements that they planned to comply.

Christine Malloy, the Keller ISD parent who first alerted the district about her concerns with the book, said they’re happy their work on the issue has apparently grabbed the attention of state leaders.

“The fact that the state governor got involved should show people that it’s an alarming issue,” she said.

But Democrats have criticized the movement as attempted censorship and the latest attack by conservatives on the LGBTQ community and communities of color.

“We should be working to build the most inclusive Texas — not targeting our diverse populations,” said state Rep. Mary González, a Clint Democrat who chairs the LGBTQ Caucus. “It is also highly concerning that these attacks are now being aimed at our education system, which for a long time has been a sacred space for nonpartisan politics.”

Houston Democratic state Rep. Harold Dutton, chair of the House Public Education Committee, said in a Nov. 1 letter that Krause’s book inquiry was “at worst … a bald political stunt that callously blurs the distinction between governing and campaigning.” Krause is running for attorney general.
The backlash

But the scrutiny over school library books, which is largely being driven by white parents, is already a nationwide political phenomenon.

Emboldened by the debate around “critical race theory,” while piggybacking off of a furor by many conservative parents over school mask mandates, Moms for Liberty, was founded in Florida in January 2020. It has grown rapidly with about 60,000 members across the country, aiming to “stand up for parental rights at all levels of government.”

Malloy said the pandemic sending kids home for virtual learning gave many parents a better look at what they were being taught.

“2020 is behind it. I think it was a gift,” Malloy said. “It gave us all time to pay attention to what’s going on, what our kids are being taught — what they were seeing.”

Mary Lowe, chair of the Moms for Liberty Tarrant County chapter, said the main focus of her chapter right now is to get rid of sexually explicit books in schools regardless of whether “the content aligns with one sexual preference over the other.”

If parents want to “expose” their children to those kinds of books, they can go to a public library, she said.

The Tarrant County chapter launched around July and has amassed about 1,700 members since, Lowe said.

Lowe said she has meetings with different superintendents in Tarrant County to talk about what they can do to remove these books.

“Moms for Liberty has a strong stance that there are an enormous amount of literary books that are more aligned with academics and expanding the mind without such a heavy focus on sexual content,” she said.

The broader issue, including what’s to come of those statewide standards in the coming weeks, is a concern for some LGBTQ advocacy groups that argue this is just the latest example in a pattern of Republican officials attempting to single out LGBTQ kids in the state — and how that may impact families and workers.

“If you have a kid who’s part of the LGBTQ community, you could have them asking: Is this a safe place for my kid?” said Jessica Shortall, managing director of Texas Competes, a coalition of more than 1,200 Texas employers, chambers of commerce, tourism bureaus and industry association that advocates for equality. “And then you have people who know and love LGBTQ people but maybe aren’t in that community asking themselves: Does this place represent my values?”

Brian Lopez is an education reporter and Cassandra Pollock is a politics reporter at The Texas Tribune, the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Disclosure: Facebook has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Related: Sign up for The 74’s newsletter

Tutoring kids who don't need it is a booming business in affluent areas where parents want to stack the deck


Pawan Dhingra, Professor of Sociology and American Studies; Faculty Equity and Inclusion Officer, Amherst College
Sun, November 21, 2021

Many families shell out 0 monthly on private 'learning centers.' 

Beanosity, CC BY-SA

Many relatively well-off parents drive their kids to special activities after school. On top of trips to soccer practices and games or piano lessons and recitals, they increasingly make one more stop: a trip to their local after-school tutoring center.

In most cases these children don’t attend underfunded schools or need help competing with those in affluent districts. Nor are they high school students looking to boost their SAT or ACT scores before applying to college. They are typically doing just fine at their schools or are ahead of their classmates. And yet they get private, long-term tutoring on a regular basis.

I’ve been researching this intensive after-school tutoring, which I call “hyper education,” for eight years. It’s becoming a more common extracurricular activity for children of all ages.

Even if public schools provided the same quality of education for all, which is demonstrably not the case, I fear that this trend is increasing the advantages that the children of affluent families already have over their peers.

Tutoring franchises

Tutoring, of course, has long been commonplace within and outside of American schools to help kids who are struggling to keep up in class. While for-profit tutoring businesses have been in the United States for decades, they have grown over the past two decades in urban and suburban communities alike.

Franchised chains of after-school learning centers, such as Kumon, Sylvan, Kaplan and Mathnasium, operate in over 50 countries. Parents pay these multinational corporations around US0 per month for each child to get math, reading and other kinds of lessons once or twice a week with their own curriculum and homework assignments intended to be more challenging than what is offered by the schools.

While researching for my book “Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough,” I interviewed more than 100 Asian American and white families with children in elementary or middle school whose kids go to after-school tutoring centers or participate in academic competitions, or do both.

Most live in Boston suburbs, but some reside elsewhere in the United States. Nearly all of these children attend high-performing public schools. I also spent time in after-school learning franchises and interviewed around 30 educators inside and outside the public school system.

Traffic patterns

No longer reserved for Manhattan families angling to get their toddlers and preschoolers into elite kindergartens, more and more families from a wide array of backgrounds enroll their kids in tutoring centers. While there is no hard data yet available regarding exactly how many children are getting this type of instruction, I believe it is safe to say the number is growing as parents with disposable income spend increasing amounts of money on their children to give them ever more advantages.

These educational franchises advertise as serving students not only struggling in academics but also those who are “already ahead in math.”

Business is booming for Kumon, which has seen its revenue grow 60% in the past decade. Mathnasium, one of its top competitors, is one of North America’s fastest-growing franchises.

A mother of children attending public schools in the Boston suburbs observed that one tutoring center is so popular that the town “had to change traffic patterns” to accommodate during drop-off and pickup times.

One center director told me that her growth plan was to open in areas that already have highly ranked school districts, since those families have shown a commitment to education and have the means to pay for more. Another director targeted his advertising efforts to families making at least 5,000 a year in his affluent Boston suburb.

No child is too young to start, it seems. Junior Kumon targets children starting at age three. They teach these little kids how to recognize letters, numbers, patterns and shapes. I even saw a child in diapers who was enrolled at a Kumon center.

Getting further ahead

Parents are keeping their kids enrolled in nonremedial tutoring for years if they feel like it’s getting results.

“We just kind of kept her in the program, because it was working,” the mother of a fifth grader told me. “It seemed like the public school math program just wasn’t anywhere near stretching her capability to do math. So, it felt, like let’s keep doing this.”

Children enrolled in after-school academics can get confused about which kind of learning matters more. For instance, a fourth-grade student mentioned that her regular teacher counted her private math center assignments as satisfying her school homework. That raises good questions about which curriculum was more relevant and conducive to her learning.

Despite this industry’s growth and what parents may believe, the effects of tutoring generally are mixed.

Troublingly, educators believe that the growth of private tutoring is contributing to a sense of academic pressure that can contribute to emotional problems, even for kids who aren’t getting this extra instruction. The students who take classes outside of school “make other kids feel bad, because they’re brighter, more capable, and they do more, and they can do it faster,” a Boston-area elementary school principal told me.

As a result, I’m seeing a growing education arms race, of families feeling pressured to ensure their kids learn enough to be above their grade level and ranked at or near the top of their classes. This is starting at younger and younger ages. Many parents told me they enroll their elementary school children in hyper education simply to “keep up” with those who do.

In 2016, Mathnasium teamed up with the National Parent Teachers Association to help boost student performance in mathematics by hosting math games inside and outside of schools – a step that further embeds for-profit businesses into the public schools. Hyper education is growing. And as it does, it’s seriously changing what it means to go to school and be a child.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Pawan Dhingra, Amherst College.

Read more:

Elite public schools that rely on entry exams fail the diversity test


Eliminating inequalities needs affirmative action


Resistance to school integration in the name of ‘local control’: 5 questions answered

Pawan Dhingra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Old Dominion University professor on leave amid protests over research on pedophilia



Erin Doherty
Sat, November 20, 2021

Old Dominion University put a professor on administrative leave following an uproar over their research into people who are sexually attracted to children.

Driving the news: "Reactions to Dr. Walker's research and book have led to concerns for their safety and that of the campus," the public university wrote in a statement on Nov. 16, adding that Professor Allyn Walker's leave is "effective immediately."

Walker, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, sparked controversy over the use of the term "minor-attracted people" in their academic research.

Walker in their book, "A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity," challenges "assumptions that persons who are ... attracted to minors — often referred to as 'pedophiles' — are necessarily also predators and sex offenders," the University of California Press writes of the book.

Students launched an online petition and protested on campus calling for Walker's removal upon learning of their research. The petition as of Friday afternoon has received more than 12,000 signatures.

The controversy "disrupted the campus and community environment and is interfering with the institution's mission of teaching and learning," the university said in a statement.

"I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society," said the university’s president, Brian O. Hemphill.

Walker told the Washington Post that their research was misunderstood, saying: "The idea that I’m somehow condoning child sexual abuse is absolutely outrageous. I really think it’s a coordinated effort about attacking the LGBTQ community," said Walker, who is transgender.

Walker's research, they told the Post, talks to people "who have unwanted attractions and never want to harm a child, but they’re unable to get the help that they want because they’re scared" of the response.


Walker did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Axios.

Go deeper:


U.S. universities face an existential challenge


"Understanding Resilience Strategies Among Minor-Attracted Individuals"

Opinion: The chilling effect on campuses isn't because of left-wing ideology

Jena Heath
Sun, November 21, 2021

When news broke that a group of academic heavyweights and conservative firebrands plans to launch a new university in Austin dedicated to “the fearless pursuit of truth,” by which the founders mean combatting what they see as left-wing ideology flooding college campuses, the Twitter bomb-throwing made for amusing reading.

Critics pointed out that the University of Austin isn’t conferring degrees, isn’t accredited, doesn’t have a location for its campus, and wasn’t shy about fundraising. The word “grifter” appeared frequently, along with comparisons to scandal-ridden Trump University. Just this week, two prominent advisory board members announced they were stepping down.

The founders, among them a former Harvard University president and one-time New York Times Opinion editor turned right-wing darling, say they are defending free speech by creating a place where no idea is off limits. Their announcement paints a picture of left-wing terrorism silencing students and ousting academics, “for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as gender differences or immigration,” and other cancel culture concerns. “The reality is that many universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized,” the announcement proclaimed.

As a professor at a private liberal arts university, I am well aware of the challenges facing higher education. I don’t disagree with the group’s critique of low graduation rates, opaque financing formulas, and top-heavy administrative structures, and I’m glad to see students and families asking questions. It also seems to me that real dissent and disagreement has been less evident on campus.

But here’s a thought: The reason for the silence isn’t left-wing bullying, it’s money. Nothing puts a pall over the workplace like financial fear.

For too many colleges and universities, the COVID pandemic is exacerbating what birthrate demographics had already made clear: Fewer babies are in the pipeline and that means fewer college students to recruit. In a recent article headlined “Are Liberal Arts Colleges Doomed?” the Washington Post cites an economist’s prediction that, starting in 2026, the four-year-college applicant pool may shrink by almost 280,000 per class, over four years — impending doom known to admissions officials as “the Apocalypse.” While the loosely regulated for-profits have been most susceptible to financial peril, small, private colleges have also been shutting their doors or pursuing reorganization plans.

Stir into this stew the isolation and passivity the pandemic has imposed on us all, pepper with recent news reports questioning whether college is even necessary and what you get is deep insecurity — a state of mind my colleagues in administration quietly refer to as an existential crisis. This isn’t the sort of atmosphere that yields discussion of tough issues. As the gloom has descended, I’ve lost count of the number of meetings I’ve attended where hard questions about how we can best recruit and retain students in this climate get asked, much less answered. I hear the same from colleagues around the country, all of whom are committed, across disciplines, departments and ideologies, to helping their students learn to think independently and make their way in the world.

The University of Austin founders start their announcement by quoting the Yale and Harvard mottos, both in Latin and both proclaiming lofty thoughts about truth and freedom. The founders profess to close the “gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education” with their old-school approach to the culture wars.

Down here on earth, the campus where I teach just held a week-long first-generation celebration to honor students for whom legacy admissions is as distant a concept as taking a gap year in Europe. We could use some smart higher ed experts to join us as we work across our differences for meaningful solutions to what ails higher education.

Heath is an associate dean at the School of Arts and Humanities at St. Edward's University, an associate professor of journalism and digital media, and coordinator of the Journalism and Digital Media program.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: The chilling effect on campuses isn't because of left-wing ideology

Move to hinterland triggers brain drain at Korea's mega pension fund


FILE PHOTO: The logo of National Pension Service (NPS) is seen at its branch office in Seoul


Sun, November 21, 2021, 3:03 PM·4 min read
By Cynthia Kim, Jihoon Lee and Yena Park

SEOUL (Reuters) - Earlier this year, Lee left her fund management job at South Korea's national pension fund, the world's third-largest, fed up with long commutes between her home in Seoul and her office in Jeonju, 200 kilometers away.

For four years, Lee lived in a studio apartment in Jeonju, a city of 658,000, on weekdays, and traveled back to Seoul for the weekend. She feared her family would break up if she didn't make the hard decision to quit.

Lee is one of some 140 money managers who has left the 930.5 trillion won ($788 billion) National Pension Service since 2016, shortly before it moved to Jeonju, a sleepy provincial capital, as part of the government's relocation of major agencies away from the capital Seoul.

That is almost half the 320 currently working at the fund's investment arm, an alarming brain drain for the main public retirement plan of Asia's fourth-largest economy and a major investor in Korean blue-chips such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Co..

"Staying in Jeonju for the weekdays, I felt I was missing out on so much of my life, I couldn't stand it anymore and decided to head up to Seoul," said Lee, who now works for an asset manager based in Seoul's financial district and agreed to be identified only by her surname.

With assets valued at nearly half the nation's gross domestic product, the NPS manages pensions for private sector workers and self-employed South Koreans.

A massive wave of retirements due in coming years in the world's fastest aging society has raised the stakes for management at the fund.

Over the past five years, however, the NPS has only filled 57% of jobs it opened.

An NPS official said that partly reflects the greater number of openings as the fund grows investments but acknowledged the issues around the relocation.

"Although it has stabilised a lot compared to before our relocation to Jeonju, the issue regarding manpower seems to have re-emerged because we recently increased job openings in a large scale which seemingly pushed up the relative vacancy rate," the official told Reuters in response to queries.

"As our overseas investment expands, so are opportunities to work abroad, and efforts are being made to motivate talent to stay in service by improving working conditions, and we also have talent development programmes."

To plug staff shortages, it removed the mandatory one-year work experience requirement for the first time from its job postings in September and began offering opportunities to work abroad, even to domestic equity fund managers.

The NPS's annualised investment return for 2020 was 9.7%, below 25.15% for Japan's GPIF in fiscal 2020 and 20.4% at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

That partly reflects the more conservative nature of its investments, fund managers say, which also means it is less exposed during downturns.

However, the NPS now plans to expand its overseas investment allocations to 50% by 2024 from 34% in 2019.

It has 30 staff across branches in New York, London and Singapore as of 2020, far fewer than the 351 staff at Canada's CPPIB and 252 at Norway's NBIM in their various overseas offices, 2020 data from the NPS shows.

More ambitious returns would demand a deeper pool of investment talent, which has become harder to attract and retain since the relocation in 2017.

"When I was a manager there about eight to 10 applicants used to compete for one fund manager position, after we screened out inexperienced ones, and that's when the fund's pay level was even lower," said Hong Chun-uk, who resigned from a senior fund manager position at the NPS in 2015.

He left the fund after it announced its relocation and has since become an economist at Seoul-based brokerage.

BIG MONEY, SMALL TOWN

The NPS is one of about 150 state agencies and public corporations that have moved out of Seoul since 2005, with another batch of about 100 institutions, including part of the National Assembly, also planned for relocation.

The major shift was part of a government plan to decentralise economic and political power away from Seoul, ease congestion in the capital and develop regional cities.

The struggle to fill roles at the fund has fueled debate over the merits of relocating crucial public institutions.

Two fund managers who left the NPS said the brain drain issue hasn't adversely affected the fund's performance yet but pension experts say it will.

"In Korea, there's strong preference to live in the capital Seoul, among families, for schools and lifestyle," Yun Suk-myung, head of the Korean Pension Association said. "Obviously the political push ignored that and having inexperienced, incompetent fundies will eventually hurt its investment returns."

For many fund managers used to a certain standard of urban living, Jeonju has its limitations.

"There is one popular restaurant I went to often and I used to meet my boss and folks from other teams all there," Lee said. "Everyone at the NPS kind of expects colleagues to be around the town."

(Reporting by Cynthia Kim; Editing by Sam Holmes)

After eviction moratoriums, prices soaring at 'almost shocking' speed


Andy Knight, The Herald Bulletin, Anderson, Ind.
Fri, November 19, 2021

Nov. 19—ANDERSON — A federal eviction moratorium — one of the more controversial measures taken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic — may be indirectly and partially responsible for a nearly unprecedented surge in apartment rental rates.

Driven in part by an influx of prospective tenants, those rates have soared by 16.4% since January 2021, according to a report by Apartment List, a national online marketplace for apartment listings. For perspective, the report noted that rent rate growth from January through October averaged 3.2% from 2017-2019.

Local property managers find those statistics easy to believe. Gold Key Properties, Madison County's largest property management company, has seen demand for its listings skyrocket, and prices in some cases have gone up by more than 80%.


"(The market is) considerably higher, to the point that it's almost shocking, but supply and demand is pushing that market," said Kevin Holladay, an administrator and property inspector for Gold Key. "It is sustaining itself because inventory is also low, and people are willing to do what they need to do to move forward."

The federal moratorium on evictions took effect in September 2020 and was extended four times by Congress before a Supreme Court ruling let it lapse at the end of August. During that time, Kim Townsend, executive director of Anderson Housing Authority, estimates at least 85 local families were able to remain in their apartments.

"I have heard that there were a lot of (eviction) filings once the moratoriums were lifted," she said. "There were evictions during the moratoriums, but they were for nonrental issues."

The demand for housing has long been seen by many economists as a barometer of economic optimism. But for the last few months, many of them have taken those numbers with a grain of salt. Costs of raw construction materials, more rigorous tenant screening and higher deposits are also seen as factors that have made some rental properties unfeasible for many would-be renters.

"If landlords were losing out on money because they weren't able to collect rent (during the moratoriums), they are looking for ways to recoup that lost income," said Brian Carberry, senior managing editor of content marketing for Rent.com, a leading apartment search engine and online marketplace. "In many places across the country, rents are up year over year, so landlords might have the ability to ask for more for their properties now, especially if there is competition and low supply in their area."

Those circumstances exist in Madison County and elsewhere in Central Indiana, where the housing market rebounded strongly from the early days of the pandemic. The phenomenon, Carberry believes, is driven in part by people who moved in with friends or family to consolidate household expenses are now beginning to look around again.

"As people are looking for places to live, they are more likely to snatch up the more affordable options on the market," he said. "This leaves more higher priced available units, which will skew that average (rental cost) higher."

Bringing those costs down, Holladay said, will require a complex chain of events, and the individual links haven't begun to show themselves yet — and may not do so for a while.

"I don't know that (the rental market) is going to be able to stay where it is forever, but I don't know what's going to turn it back around, if I'm just being real honest," he said. "Some people are locking down and they're staying in because they're struggling to find that extra money, and some people are trying to get out there because they have gotten back to work, but once all the moving parts are back in place, I think it will evolve toward a more sustainable market for everybody."

DINOS

GOP Donors Back Manchin and Sinema as They Reshape Biden's Agenda

Kenneth P. Vogel and Kate Kelly
Sun, November 21, 2021,

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., right, holds the door open for Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., left, after they attended a Democratic policy luncheon, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON — Over the summer, as he was working to scale back President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia traveled to an $18 million mansion in Dallas for a fundraiser that attracted Republican and corporate donors who have cheered on his efforts.

In September, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who along with Manchin has been a major impediment to the White House’s efforts to pass its package of social and climate policy, stopped by the same home to raise money from a similar cast of donors for her campaign coffers.

Even as Sinema and Manchin, both Democrats, have drawn fire from the left for their efforts to shrink and reshape Biden’s proposals, they have won growing financial support from conservative-leaning donors and business executives in a striking display of how party affiliation can prove secondary to special interests and ideological motivations when the stakes are high enough.

Sinema is winning more financial backing from Wall Street and constituencies on the right in large part for her opposition to raising personal and corporate income tax rates. Manchin has attracted new Republican-leaning donors as he has fought against much of his own party to scale back the size of Biden’s legislation and limit new social welfare components.

It is not unusual for well-heeled political activists and business interests to spread a smattering of cash across party lines. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., collected a handful of checks from major Democratic donors this year as she bucked her party leadership’s defense of former President Donald Trump.

But the stream of cash to the campaigns of Sinema and Manchin from outside normal Democratic channels stands out because many of the donors have little history with them. The financial support is also notable for how closely tied it has been to their power over a single piece of legislation, the fate of which continues to rest largely with the two senators because their party cannot afford to lose either of their votes in the evenly divided Senate.

Their influence has been profound. The domestic policy bill, which would expand the social safety net and efforts to fight climate change, started out at $3.5 trillion and has been shrunk — mainly at the insistence of Manchin — to around $2 trillion; it could get smaller as the Senate takes up the version passed Friday by the House. New spending measures were originally to have been paid for mostly through tax-rate increases on the wealthy and corporations — a component of the plan that had to be substantially rewritten because of Sinema’s opposition.

This month, billionaire Wall Street investor Kenneth G. Langone, a longtime Republican megadonor who has not previously contributed to Manchin, effusively praised him for showing “guts and courage” and vowed to throw “one of the biggest fundraisers I’ve ever had for him.”

In a statement to The New York Times, Langone, who has given an overwhelming majority of his millions of dollars in federal political donations to Republicans, said, “My political contributions have always been in support of candidates who are willing to stand tall on principle, even when that means defying their own party or the press.”

Stanley S. Hubbard, a billionaire Republican donor, wrote his first check to Sinema in September and said that he was considering doing the same for Manchin because of their efforts to trim the sails of the Democrats’ agenda. “Those are two good people — Manchin and Sinema — and I think we need more of those in the Democratic Party,” he said.

Cash has also poured in for Manchin and Sinema from political action committees and donors linked to the finance and pharmaceutical industries, which opposed proposals initially included in the domestic policy bill that the lawmakers helped scale back, including changes to Medicare and the tax-rate increases.

John LaBombard, a spokesman for Sinema, rejected any suggestion that campaign cash factored into her approach to policymaking. She was a lead negotiator on the bipartisan infrastructure deal that Biden signed last week, and during her time in the Senate, she has positioned herself as an ideologically flexible centrist willing to buck her party in representing a purple state.

“Sen. Sinema makes decisions based on one consideration: what’s best for Arizona,” LaBombard said.

Manchin’s office did not respond to requests for comment. But he has long expressed concern that the legislation, if not pared back to the level he is seeking, would add to the budget deficit and could fuel inflation.

The lawmakers share a campaign finance consultant, who helped organize fundraising swings through Texas for both lawmakers that yielded cash from Republican donors, as well as a fundraiser for Sinema in Washington in late September with business lobbying groups that oppose the domestic policy bill.

Nelson Peltz, a billionaire investor who brought a Republican-heavy group of CEOs to have lunch with Manchin in Washington a few months ago, said the senator “understands that you can’t spend, spend, spend and feel there’s no recourse for it.”

Peltz, who donated to Manchin in 2017, has not given to Sinema, but he said that she had requested a meeting, which will take place in a few weeks.

Individual donors like Peltz, who over the years has donated nearly three times as much to Republicans as he has to Democrats at the federal level, offer the two Democratic senators a way to restock their campaign coffers — both are up for reelection in 2024 — at a time when they are unlikely to get an enthusiastic reception from some more traditional Democratic donors.

Manchin has long been to the right of his party on litmus-test issues like abortion rights and fossil fuels, while Sinema started her political career as a liberal activist before shifting to the center. One Wall Street executive joked that in his industry, Sinema — who as a young politician once likened political donations to “bribery” — was now referred to as “Saint Sinema” for opposing most of Biden’s proposed taxes on the wealthy. (She has, however, supported a 15% corporate minimum tax and other revenue-raising measures that will help pay for Biden’s legislative spending.)

Progressives are less amused and have accused both senators of undermining their party’s agenda at the behest of special interests.

Wealthy liberals recently began an effort to lay the groundwork for a primary challenge to Sinema in 2024, and liberal group Demand Progress wrote in a petition that “a small group of right-wing Democrats backed by corporate cash, including Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are trying to destroy” Biden’s legislative agenda.

This year, Manchin and Sinema have received donations from major Republican donors who had never before given to them, including James A. Haslam III, who owns the Cleveland Browns football team, and Dallas real estate developer Harlan Crow, who is close to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Several other prominent Republican donors who supported Trump also wrote their first checks to Manchin in the last few months. They include Oklahoma oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm, who pushed the former president to deregulate the energy industry; Dallas-based lobbyist and investor Roy W. Bailey, who helped lead fundraising for Trump’s inauguration and a pro-Trump nonprofit group; and banker Andrew Beal, who donated a total of $3 million to a super PAC supporting Trump from 2018 through last year.

Executives at Goldman Sachs, including the firm’s president, John Waldron, combined to donate tens of thousands of dollars to Sinema in the spring and summer. In July, she attended a meet-and-greet at the offices of the Blackstone Group, which is headed by a major Republican donor; some Blackstone employees made donations around the same time. A handful of employees from investment firm Apollo Global Management, including Marc J. Rowan, the CEO and a major donor to predominantly Republican candidates and causes, donated to Sinema in late September after the firm sent a plea to industry contacts seeking donations for her.

G. Brint Ryan, the Republican donor who hosted the fundraisers in Dallas for Manchin and Sinema, said the senators were “out of step with their party, but I tend to believe that they’re in the right.”

Ryan had not previously donated to Sinema and had not held fundraisers for either before this year, though he donated $1,000 to Manchin’s 2018 reelection campaign.

The website for Ryan’s tax consulting firm says it works at “liberating our clients from the burden of being overtaxed.”

The firm’s lobbyists have been monitoring the debate in Congress over the tax implications of the domestic policy bill, according to disclosure filings. Ryan, who said in an email that the measure would “make a bad tax code worse and kill economic growth,” has ties to Republicans who have helped lead opposition to it.

He advised Trump on tax policy during his presidential campaign in 2016. One of the partners in Ryan’s tax consulting firm is Jeff Miller, a corporate lobbyist and close political adviser to Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader.

Miller, who is a top Republican fundraiser, helped steer Ryan’s team to people who could assist in planning the fundraisers for Sinema and Manchin. And Miller’s wife gave to Sinema’s campaign.

In the days around the fundraisers at his home, Ryan, his employees, his company’s political action committee and a relative’s law firm combined to donate nearly $80,000 to Sinema’s campaign and more than $115,000 to Manchin’s.

The $2.6 million raised by Sinema’s campaign through the first nine months of this year was 2 1/2 times as much as she raised in the same period last year, while the $3.3 million raised by Manchin’s campaign was more than 14 times as much as his haul through the end of September last year.

Overall, Sinema’s campaign took in about $6.1 million in donations between the beginning of 2019 and the end of September, and it had $4.5 million in the bank with three years to go until she faces the voters in Arizona. Manchin’s campaign raised about $3.8 million and had $5.4 million on hand.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

NYT INTERVIEW
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Why Democrats' 'Talking Points Are Not Enough'

Astead W. Herndon
Sun, November 21, 2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on financial stability, on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Last year, after Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination, a group of progressive lawmakers rallied around him to project party unity at a critical time.

More than a year later, as the president seeks to pass a robust spending package of social policies that represent the bulk of his domestic agenda, many of the same leaders are looking for a return on their political investment.

In an interview with The New York Times, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the country’s most prominent progressives, questioned whether Democratic leaders and the White House understood the scope of the demands coming from the party’s base.

The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: Why do you feel this social policy bill has to pass as soon as possible, at the biggest scale possible?

A: I think the stakes are really, really high.

The entire reason that the Progressive Caucus gave their votes [for the infrastructure bill] was based on direct promises from the president, as well as direct promises from more conservative Democratic holdouts. And from House leadership as well. So if those promises don’t follow through, it’s going to be very, very difficult for them to get votes on anything moving forward, because the trust that was already so delicate will have been broken.

Q: Do you think these extended negotiations and the stuff that was cut will have an electoral effect? Obviously the Senate will have its say, but if the spending bill largely looks like what the House passed, will Democrats say it fulfills the promise of Election Day?

A: I think that if we pass the Build Back Better Act as the House passed it, that we have a shot to go back to our communities and say we delivered. But that’s not to say that this process has not been demoralizing for a lot of folks, because there were enormous promises made. Not just at the beginning, and not just during the election, but that continued to be made.

And this is where I have sounded the alarm, because what really dampens turnout is when Democrats make promises that they don’t keep.

With the bipartisan infrastructure plan, there’s all of these headlines going around. And I understand the political importance of making a victory lap. But I think that the worst and most vulnerable position we could be in is to overpromise and under-deliver.

So let’s not go around and say, “We’re going to replace every lead pipe in this country,” because according to the bipartisan infrastructure plan, that is not going to happen. That has not been funded. And if the Build Back Better Act gets cut even further, then that’s definitely not going to happen.

Q: You and other progressives backed Biden during the general election. Do you feel that this White House has continued to be open to the left?

A: And that created trust, because trust requires vulnerability from all parties.

There was some good faith with the American Rescue Plan [Democrats’ $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package, signed in March]. But after that, which was quite early, it’s been a bit of a slog.

I actually don’t direct this critique directly at the White House. I think, in general, the party doesn’t quite fully grasp what is happening in deep-blue communities.

Q: What is it that you say they’re missing?

A: The talking points are not enough.

Yes, is child care great? Absolutely. Universal pre-K, this is something I’m deeply, deeply supportive of. But we also have too much of a top-down strategy when it comes to our base. We’re always giving them the medicine and telling them what they need to accept, as opposed to really monitoring where the energy is and being responsive to it. And allowing that to shape our strategy.

And even with the infrastructure plan, this kind of investment is deeply needed in underserved communities like the Bronx. However, if we as a party are asking every single person in this party to take a victory lap, and do a news conference in front of a bridge or pothole, and we aren’t funding and actually fixing that pothole, I’m very concerned about how people are going to interpret that a year from now.

Q: But doesn’t the White House agree — didn’t it propose a more robust package? The obvious response here is that the administration faces the reality of a 50-50 Senate.

A: There is an enormous amount of executive action that they’re sitting on that I think is underutilized. On student loans. We’ve got executive action on the table with respect to climate. There are certainly things that we can do with immigration.

So why are we taking this as a legislative compromise, when the opportunity is so much greater, or when Biden could do this stuff with a stroke of a pen, and is just reminding us that he’s choosing not to?

We always try to tell people why they need to settle for less, instead of being able to harness the energy of our grassroots and take political risks in service of them, the same way that we take political risks in service of swing voters. We can do both.

Q: Is this frustration a growing sentiment in the Democratic congressional caucus? Or is this just you?

A: Frustration is there, and it’s part of why the Progressive Caucus was holding out on passing both of these two pieces of legislation together, because we’re like, listen, we’re not going to take these empty promises anymore.

We went from the American Rescue Plan to six months of watching us just hand the pen to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. If you even look at the [infrastructure bill], it was drafted in the Senate, and they didn’t even allow conferencing with the House version. They said you just need to take this legislation as is — no compromises, no edits, nothing.

You’ve got to give me something to work with, with my communities. And if you’re not, how can I make the argument that they should turn out again? And this notion that saying “We’re not Trump” is enough — this is such a deeply demoralizing message.

Democrats have a trifecta and have been unable to pass voting-rights protections. And so people can wring their hands and say “but Manchin” all they want or “but the filibuster” all they want, but at the end of the day, what people see are the results of their actions and the results of investing their time.

We are up against political nihilism. The idea that nothing we do matters, because as long as I live in the Bronx, the political reality of this country is that no one’s going to fight for me. That is why it’s so important that we take some of these risks for our base.

Q: Your party is trying to project political victory at this moment — and pulling out all the stops to do so. You’re sounding the alarm.

A: Before the Virginia elections, it was very clear that our help and our participation was not wanted or asked for, which is fine. I’m not here to tell people how to run their races. But at the same time, to consider the members here that have some of the tightest relationships to our political base as just a uniform liability — and not something that can be selectively deployed or consulted or anything — I think it’s just sad. I think it was a mistake.

And we saw a big youth turnout collapse. Not a single person asked me to send an email, not even to my own list. And then they turn around and say, “It’s their fault.” When I think it was communicated quite expressly that we were unwelcome to pitch in.

The idea that we just accept a collapse in youth turnout — and essentially turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy — in times when races are decided by such narrow margin points: I think it’s ill-advised.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE USA
Cap on drug price hikes for privately insured sparks battle

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

FILE - Pharmaceuticals are seen in North Andover, Mass., June 15, 2018. Workers and families with private health insurance would reap savings on prescription drugs from a little-noticed provision in President Joe Biden's sweeping social agenda bill. Drug companies would have to pay rebates to Medicare if they increase prices above the rate of inflation. Business groups are paying close attention, and the issue has divided them in a fierce lobbying battle. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Workers and families with private health insurance would reap savings on prescription drugs from a little-noticed provision in President Joe Biden’s sweeping social agenda bill. It’s meant to break the cycle of annual price increases for widely used medicines.

That provision would require drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they increase prices above the rate of inflation. Drugs sold to private plans would count in calculating the penalty, like a tax on price increases. The issue is dividing business groups in a fierce lobbying battle.

Corporate groups focused on affordable employee benefits want to keep the language as is so it would provide price-increase protection for companies and their workers and not just Medicare enrollees. Other groups such as the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce are backing the pharmaceutical industry’s drive to block restraints on pricing, including inflation caps, saying they would stifle innovation.

House Democrats passed the roughly $2 trillion social agenda legislation on Friday and sent it to the Senate. The bill resets national priorities on issues from climate to family life and faces more scrutiny in that evenly divided chamber. Prescription drugs are but one component, and most of the attention has focused on Medicare provisions to slash out-of-pocket costs for seniors and allow the program to negotiate prices for a limited number of medicines.

But the inflation caps would have far-reaching impact for as many as 180 million Americans with private insurance.

“A lot of people don’t realize that the bill applies to, and will help, privately insured people,” said Shawn Gremminger, health policy director at the Purchaser Business Group on Health. “But that isn’t a sure thing. As currently structured, that would be the case. But we have been worried and continue to be worried that will change.” His coalition represents nearly 40 large employers that cover more than 15 million workers, retirees and their families.

Inflation caps would be a “game changer,” said James Gelfand, a vice president of ERIC, a group that represents major national companies as providers of employee benefits.

Earlier legislation would have based the “inflation rebates” on sales to Medicare plans, but the House-passed bill broadens the formula to include private plans.

“If they raise prices in private markets faster than the economy grows, they will be required to pay that money back to the government,” Gelfand said. The goal is to deter drug companies from extravagant price increases.

Polls show that Americans across the political spectrum overwhelmingly favor government action to reduce drug prices. The chief cost complaints are: high out-of-pocket costs for patients, high and rising list prices, and high launch prices for new medicines. The Biden package would tackle the first two issues, but Democrats were unable to agree on authorizing Medicare to negotiate prices of new drugs.

Annual price increases for established prescription drugs usually outpace inflation, although there have been periods of moderation in recent years.

Gremminger said his group estimates that the privately insured market could save $250 billion over 10 years under the inflation caps currently in the bill. Without them, Gelfand estimates that employers could face an additional 3.7% annual increase in health care costs over the usual medical inflation because drug companies could in effect raise prices on privately insured patients to make up for rebates paid on behalf of Medicare enrollees.

“It’s true that not all the business groups are in the same place,” Gelfand said of divisions in the business community. “If you look at groups on either side of the issue, there are groups that protect the business interests of pharma, and then there’s everybody else.”

The main drug industry lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, says inflation rebates would undermine innovation that continues after medicines are approved.

The generic drug industry wants their products exempted. Dan Leonard, president of the generic lobbying group Association for Accessible Medicines, said he fears his members will be penalized for price increases that amount to pennies on the dollar. “When generics are not exempted ... they’ll get caught up in the jet wash,” he said.

In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has taken a lead role on prescription drugs, supports keeping the inflation caps for privately insured people.

Opponents could pursue a parliamentary challenge under Senate rules, arguing that penalizing price increases by one private company on another has no bearing on federal budgetary issues. If the challenge succeeds, costs to private insurance plans would be stripped from the inflation rebates. Supporters of the caps say they do have a budgetary purpose because they would raise revenue and generate savings for Medicare.

Katie Mahoney, the top health policy expert for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said her organization has “very real concerns” that the drug pricing provisions would undermine incentives for industry to develop new medicines, and is pressing that point in the Senate.

“We continue to hammer on the damage that such policies would do,” she said. “We feel that message is making headway with senators and with some members of Congress.”

Asked about other business groups that are supporting inflation caps, Mahoney said they don’t reflect private enterprise generally.

“When you look at those other organizations, first of all they’re significantly smaller and their policy focus is very narrow,” she said. “They don’t represent business across the board, they represent a very discreet and narrow slice of issues.”

GENTRIFICATION OF ABATTOIR

Dinner on the patio? First, hold the stench

By SCOTT McFETRIDGE

Des Moines Downtown Neighborhood Association president Brandon Brown stands on the roof of his condo building, Friday, Nov. 12, 2021, in Des Moines, Iowa. After decades of downplaying or simply ignoring the problem, Des Moines officials here recently began a comprehensive study that will lead to tighter regulations on some smelly manufacturing plants near downtown. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)


DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Parts of downtown Des Moines have been so transformed in the past decade by new apartments, trendy shops and microbreweries, it’s sometimes hard to reconcile the present with the not-so-distant past.

But one strong reminder of the city’s heritage remains: the stench. A pungent smell of rancid meat regularly wafts through all the shiny new development, a reminder of the region’s less polished history as a pork processing center.

“You can’t escape it,” said Brandon Brown, president of the Des Moines Downtown Neighborhood Association, calling it “very frustrating.”

Many cities eager for new investment and vitality have welcomed urban housing and entertainment venues into older sections of town that housed grittier industries, only to be stumped by what happens when someone like Brown, who moved into an upscale downtown apartment, actually wants to enjoy a latte or meal at an outdoor patio.

After decades of downplaying or simply ignoring the problem, Des Moines officials recently began a comprehensive study that will lead to tighter regulations on some smelly manufacturing plants to finally clear the air.

Similar difficulties are cropping up in other cities with smelly businesses, especially rendering plants that are common in agricultural regions and even some big cities. Angry residents are deluging officials with complaints and filing lawsuits, while some leading companies are installing new equipment, making payments to neighbors or even closing down.

No one tracks such disputes, but Iowa State University professor Jacek Koziel, who studies air quality and livestock odors, said he thinks the conflicts may be increasing. Sometimes, as in Des Moines, it’s because more noses are nearer the bad smells, but in other spots, it’s that residents are simply pushing harder for changes.

“It’s very common in this juncture of animal agriculture in general and meat packing plants or feed processing plants,” Koziel said. “It’s very tough. For us engineers, we know there are technologies to minimize the impact but then come all the fiscal realities of doing that.”

In Des Moines, residents and workers have for decades complained about the smells from an industrial area little more than a mile from downtown, describing the scent as putrid or akin to animal waste. Brown takes a more charitable view, labeling the smell “yeasty.”

People typically blame two companies: pork processor Pine Ridge Farms and rendering plant Darling Ingredients. Although the city created an odor board and odor hotline, its efforts were ineffective and largely abandoned until recently, when people who moved into expensive apartments that had replaced warehouses and scrap yards complained of nauseating smells periodically settling over their neighborhoods.

City officials agree there’s a problem, but say they need more data before deciding what to do.

“You’ve got to know what is the truth that’s out there, and then make the plans work for each of the industries,” said SuAnn Donovan, deputy director of Des Moines’ Neighborhood Services Department. The new study will take air samples and figure out a baseline for air quality.

Iowa is an agricultural powerhouse and Donovan is quick to note that the city wants to work with Pine Ridge, Darling and other companies.

Darling didn’t respond to an inquiry about its Des Moines operations.

Pine Ridge Farms is owned by meat industry giant Smithfield, which said in a statement that its pork plant, which employs about 1,000 people, opened in 1937 and slaughters about 4,000 hogs daily. As more people moved nearby, the company said, it had invested millions of dollars on new technology, such as air treatment equipment, to reduce odors.

“We also follow a rigorous daily cleaning schedule during and after each production run,” the statement said. “At the end of each week, we perform a top-to-bottom deep cleaning to keep odor to a minimum.”

Even with efforts to reduce smells, rendering is an especially pungent business. The plants use heat, centrifuges and other techniques to convert waste animal tissue into fats and proteins for many uses, including as animal feed, fertilizer and cosmetics. There are more than 200 plants in the U.S. and Canada, according to recent estimates.

In Fresno, California, a citizens group filed a lawsuit against a Darling rendering plant that produced a stench so strong that residents complained of health problems. Last year, the company agreed to close the plant. Another rendering plant near the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova that had operated for more than 50 years also opted to close after concluding it couldn’t coexist with new nearby housing.

Rendering plants in an industrial area of Los Angeles have been ordered to abide by strict new rules. And in Denver, where new urban development has been especially extensive, there have been sharp clashes between new residents and old industries.

“People moving in are savvy and they’re not afraid to complain,” said Greg Thomas, the city’s director of environmental quality.

Residents in South St. Paul, Minnesota, filed a class action lawsuit over fumes from a rendering plant, and neighbors received up to $1,000 payments as part of a $750,000 settlement.

Still, though, smells of rancid meat remain.

“The lawsuit didn’t seem to make a difference,” said Chris Robinson, who lives less than a mile from the plant. “Just last night, my husband couldn’t sit out on the deck. It’s still really bad.”

Brown, of Des Moines, said with new outdoor projects underway, from a soccer stadium to a whitewater rafting course, the city has little option but to clear the air.

“You don’t want the smell to contaminate the experience,” Brown said.

___

Follow Scott McFetridge on Twitter: https://twitter.com/smcfetridge