Celebrating muckraker Morton Mintz’s 100th birthday

By

 Dan Froomkin

 -

January 26, 2022 

Morton MIntz

Morton Mintz is turning 100 today, a good excuse to briefly review his extraordinary career as a pioneering hero of investigative reporting in medicine and public health.

As a reporter at the Washington Post for 30 years – from 1958 to 1988 – Mintz relentlessly exposed corporate crime and misconduct, particularly in the drug, tobacco and automotive industries.

In 1962, Mintz broke the story of the consequences of using thalidomide, the sedative/tranquilizer that caused thousands of babies to be born armless, legless or limbless to women who had taken the drug during the first trimester of pregnancy.

As he wrote in a 2013 essay, “The story dealt a lasting blow to the then widely-held notion that science and technology always or nearly always produce benign results.”

His continued to report on unsafe medicines and medical devices, most notably the Dalkon Shield, an intrauterine birth control device that seriously injured tens of thousands of women.

In his book, “AT ANY COST; Corporate Greed, Women and The Dalkon Shield” Mintz wrote that he saw the Dalkon Shield story as proof of “the chasm between the flesh-and-blood person and the paper corporate person.”

He famously concluded: “The human being who would not harm you on an individual, face-to-face basis, who is charitable, civic-minded, loving, and devout, will wound or kill you from behind the corporate veil.”

After leaving the Post, Mintz became a powerful critic of the corporate media. In a 1991 essay, he wrote about how a “built-in, chronic tilt chills mainstream press coverage of grave, persisting, and pervasive abuses of corporate power.” He called out “pathetically inadequate coverage of life-threatening corporate misconduct.”

In an email to a fellow journalist, Mintz wrote: “It’s long seemed to me that, in my experience, too many reporters, too much of the time, failed to ask themselves a simple two-word question: ‘What’s important?’”

He was one of the founders of NiemanWatchdog.org, a website that operated between 2004 and 2012. It posed questions that journalists should ask to hold the powerful accountable. I was deputy editor.

The most lasting lesson I learned from Mintz was about the value of congressional oversight – and the terrible cost of its absence.

I once asked him how he was able to break so many incredible stories.

“I stayed until the end of the hearings,” he said.

He spoke nostalgically about the virtuous circle that used to exist between journalists and the heads of congressional committees, one playing off the other to advance important investigations.

And he explained how much the country was suffering from the collapse of congressional oversight.

At the Post, Mintz was a real reporter’s reporter – and distinctly not an editor’s reporter. He was a proud union member, at one point writing a series of Guild bulletins documenting the Washington Post Co.’s own corporate greed under the headline “The Fruits of Your Labor.” He once wrote a letter to then-editor Ben Bradlee complaining that his editors had subjected him to “morale-crushing discouragement and nibblings to death.”

I posted a note on the Washington Post alumni Facebook page about Mintz’s upcoming birthday.

Eugene L Meyer, a former longtime Post reporter, wrote:

Mort is an exemplar and an inspiration. He always spoke truth to power, was an important voice in our Wash Post Guild unit. He was a bottomless pit of (appropriate) outrage. His achievements were hall-of-fame monumental. We are all in his debt.

John Schwartz, now a science reporter for the New York Times, wrote:

They say never meet your heroes, but meeting Mintz was a joy. I’d taken up the FDA beat at the Post and marveled at his work on thalidomide and on the early smoking lawsuits. He missed nothing. We talked and emailed and he was helpful and provided insights that helped me immeasurably on tough topics that he knew more about than I ever would. When we finally did meet, he startled a little and said, “John, I had a completely different mental image of you!”

“I know,” I said. “I write taller.” And we had a good laugh.

And Nell Henderson, economics editor at the Wall Street Journal, emailed:

Happy Birthday Mort!

Hope you’re well and enjoying your long life surrounded by family, friends and fans.

When I joined the Washington Post’s Business Section in 1984, your desk was between our section and Woodward’s office overlooking the Russian embassy.

I was in awe of your work, exposing defects in the making and selling of public dangers like the Dalkon Shield and defective arthritis medicines and heart valves.

Thank you for being tireless, persistent and stubborn in your determination to make the world safer for us all.

And thank you for inspiring all the journalist around you, including me.

All the best,

Nell Henderson

Happy birthday from me, too, Mort. You’re one of the greats.

Muslim and Jewish paramedics pause to pray together. One of many inspiring moments in the coronavirus crisis


By Oren Liebermann and Michael Schwartz, CNN  March 26, 2020


Jewish paramedic Avraham Mintz faces Jerusalem, his prayer shawl hanging off his shoulders. Muslim paramedic Zoher Abu Jama kneels facing Mecca, his prayer rug unfurled before him.

Jerusalem (CNN)There was barely any time to pause.

Avraham Mintz and Zoher Abu Jama just finished responding to a call regarding a 41-year-old woman having respiratory problems in the southern Israeli city of Be'er Sheva.
Before that, they were checking on a 77-year-old man. There would be more calls ahead. Of that, there was no doubt.

As the clock neared six in the afternoon, Mintz and Abu Jama realized it may be their only break of the shift. The two members of Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's emergency response service, paused to pray. Mintz, a religious Jew, stood facing Jerusalem, his white and black prayer shawl hanging off his shoulders. Abu Jama, an observant Muslim, knelt facing Mecca, his maroon and white prayer rug unfurled underneath him.

For the two paramedics, who routinely work together two or three times a week, the joint prayer was nothing new. For so many others, it was an inspiring image in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic.

A picture of the two men snapped by a co-worker quickly went viral, garnering thousands of likes on social media and appearing in international media coverage. One user responded on Instagram: "I'm proud of all of the rescue services, it doesn't matter from what community or religion." On Twitter, another user said: "One fight! One victory! Let's unite."

"The fact that it is so simple makes it so powerful. I believe that Zoher and I and most of the world understand that we have to raise our heads and pray. That's all that's left," Mintz told CNN. A father of nine who lives in Be'er Sheva, the 42-year-old is a full-time MDA worker who trains volunteers.

For the colleagues, the joint prayer was nothing new. For others, it was an inspiring image.
Abu Jama, a father of seven from the nearby Bedouin city of Rahat, was one of those volunteers. He left his job as a driving instructor to help out as much as possible now. "In terms of belief and personality we believe in the same things and we have something in common," the 39-year-old told CNN. "I believe he is a person that gives and takes the feeling of honor and that is important."

Across Israel, MDA teams have fielded 100,000 calls on peak days, more than 10 times their normal volume, according to Zaki Heller, a MDA spokesman.

In addition to the normal work of paramedics and EMTs, MDA teams are responsible for getting coronavirus patients to hospital or to designated quarantine hotels, carrying out coronavirus tests, collecting blood donations and more. Earlier this month, they even staffed polling stations for those in self-quarantine.

MDA Director General Eli Bin beamed with pride when talking about his team, comprised of 2,500 full-time employees and 25,000 volunteers. "The people of MDA are facing the virus, looking it in the eye. The workers of MDA are working with their hands and their gloves and their masks," he told CNN. "We are the heroes of Israel."

If Mintz and Abu Jama see themselves as heroes, they certainly didn't let it show. They know their job, and they know their faith. "Everyone is afraid of the virus," said Mintz. "So are we, but we have the belief that everything is under the control of God, blessed be He. We both believe this."

Abu Jama echoes his partner. "I believe that God will help us and we will get through this. We should all pray to God to get us through this, and we will get through this world crisis."
The two prayed for about 15 minutes. Then it was back into the ambulance. And back to work.

COLONIALIST TOMB ROBBERY
Religious artifacts returned to Thailand after decades

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two stolen hand-carved religious artifacts, sandstone lintels dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries, were returned to the Thai government on Tuesday in a ceremony more than 50 years overdue.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The 1,500-pound (680-kilogram) antiquities had been stolen and exported from Thailand — a violation of Thai law — roughly a half-century ago, authorities said, and donated to the city of San Francisco, authorities said. They had been exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.

San Francisco, which owns the museum, agreed to hand over the ancient sandstone slabs following a three-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a civil lawsuit. The lintels had been structural parts of two religious sanctuaries in northeastern Thailand.

Records showed that the lintels had been obtained by a collector in galleries in London and Paris in the 1960s, according to the civil complaint. The collector, Avery Brundage, was apparently aware that at least one of the lintels had been illegally taken out of Thailand, the complaint states. Brundage, a former controversial president of the International Olympic Committee who donated the art to establish the museum, died in 1975.

The museum, however, contends that authorities conflated the two lintels with a third — which Brundage actually returned to Thailand in 1970 when he found out it may have been illegally removed from the country, according to Robert Mintz, deputy director of the Asian Art Museum.

The third lintel was never part of the San Francisco art collection, Mintz said, and museum officials say there's no evidence Brundage knew the other two lintels may have been stolen.

The Thai government had been trying to get the museum to return the other artifacts since 2016. The Los Angeles Times reported the mystery surrounding the lintels, and various attempts to return them to Thailand, in March.

Mintz said the curators are entrusted with artifacts held for the public and it was their responsibility to determine if any challenges to provenance are valid.

Mintz said the museum followed its bylaws — which stipulate certain steps must be taken — and did not seek to delay the return of the lintels.

“We're very happy that the Thai lintels have officially returned,” he said. “The two lintels really are going to where they belong."

But the museum still maintains that the lintels may not have been stolen. The artifacts left Thailand “under circumstances that are very unclear,” Mintz said, and turned up in Europe, where Brundage bought them.

No documentation regarding their export from Thailand has ever been found — which U.S. and Thai authorities say is evidence they were stolen. But Mintz says that a lack of evidence does not mean there is proof of that a crime was committed.

The case prompted the museum to review the provenance of its other artifacts.

The San Francisco city attorney, which represented the museum in litigation, did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.

U.S. officials stressed the importance of repatriating stolen cultural artifacts. The repatriation ceremony, which included Thai dancers and prayers, was held in Los Angeles because the consulate is in the city — which also has the largest Thai population in the U.S.

The Thai ambassador to the U.S., Manasvi Srisodapol, called the ceremony part of the lintels' “sacred journey back home" and acknowledged the ongoing illegal trade of Thai artifacts in the black market.

“I do wish that the story of the Thai lintels will help raise public awareness to prevent removal of historic, religious and cultural treasures form their original sites in local communities," he said.

David Keller, the Homeland Security Investigations special agent who oversaw the repatriation case for nearly four years, said officials believe European dealers illegally exported the lintels out of Thailand. The antiquities' combined estimated value is $700,000.

Tatum King, the special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in San Francisco, said the case reinforces the need for museums and art collectors to inventory their items and see if any are in fact stolen artifacts.

“Museums are often the front line of this, and we need their help,” King said.

Stefanie Dazio, The Associated Press

HOBBY LOBBY HAS BE FOUND GUILTY OF THIS  CRIME BY LOOTING GOODS FROM THE HOLY LAND, REGARDLESS OF RELIGION

US due diligence firm Mintz Group says staff detained in China after office raid

24 Mar 2023 

WASHINGTON :U.S. corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group said on Thursday its Beijing office was raided by authorities and five Chinese staff were detained, stoking worry among foreign companies in China just as its capital hosts an international economic forum.

News of the raid and detentions comes as Sino-U.S. relations have spiraled downwards following months of diplomatic tensions, including over the U.S. military downing in February of a suspected Chinese spy balloon and a planned U.S. transit next week by the president of Taiwan, the self-governed island China claims as its territory.

"We can confirm that Chinese authorities have detained the five staff in Mintz Group's Beijing office, all of them Chinese nationals, and have closed our operations there," the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

The company said it was ready to work with Chinese authorities to "resolve any misunderstanding that may have led to these events", and that its top concern was the safety and wellbeing of colleagues in China.

"Mintz Group has not received any official legal notice regarding a case against the company and has requested that the authorities release its employees," the company said.

A source at the New York-headquartered firm earlier told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the company's local legal counsel said the raid occurred on the afternoon of March 20, and that the employees were being held incommunicado somewhere outside of Beijing.

The Chinese foreign ministry and the Beijing public security bureau did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

'RED ALERTS'

As per Mintz Group's website, the Beijing office is its only one in mainland China. The website says the company specialises in background checking, fact gathering and internal investigations and has 18 offices around the world and hundreds of employees.

Randal Phillips, a partner at the firm who heads its Asia operations but is based outside of China, is listed on its website as the Central Intelligence Agency's former chief representative in China.

Phillips worked in Beijing for years after leaving the CIA. There was no indication the incident was related to him.

The news of the raid and detentions comes as Beijing is gearing up to hold the three-day China Development Forum from Saturday, where executives from multinationals and representatives from international organisations will be among the more than 100 overseas delegates present.

One U.S. business community person told Reuters the Mintz Group incident sent a "remarkable signal" that Beijing wants foreign money and technology but that it won't accept credible U.S. firms conducting due diligence on Chinese partners or the business environment.

"Red alerts should be going off in all boardrooms right now about risks in China," the source, who did not wish to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the matter, said.

Western due diligence companies have gotten into trouble with Chinese authorities before. British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng, who ran risk consultancy ChinaWhys, were detained in 2013 following work they did for British pharmaceuticals giant GSK.


Source: Reuters

PUNJAB

Rahim Yar Khan: riding the cane bandwagon
Ahmad Fraz Khan Updated 07 Dec 2020



Located on the extreme southern edge of Punjab, Rahim Yar Khan is a geographically diverse district. It is spread across a vast desert and enormous riverine area with three canals that water its farmlands. This natural endowment gives it enormous tapped and untapped potential for agricultural and livestock production.

The district has benefitted a great deal from this natural gift. It is known for the finest quality cotton. It has helped Pakistan meet its milk and meat requirement. It is now sustaining the sugar industry by producing high-yield sugar cane.

The success, however, has its flipside. The district morphed from being a cotton champion to the sugar industry’s sustainer. It is now persistently blamed for failing cotton crop and hurting textiles at a most critical juncture of our economic journey.

For the last one and a half decade, the district is known, at least in the agricultural sense, for jettisoning cotton and embracing sugar cane. The trend seems irreversible at least for now. The sugar industry not only led the change but also cemented its success both at policy and commercial levels to an extent that a reversal looks almost impossible.

The commercial success of the sugar industry has been so comprehensive that traditional landlords are now sugar mill owners as well

It has helped farmers improve seed. It has helped them lease out vast tracts of land at double the normal rate. It has helped farmers introduce latest machines and techniques. Most importantly, the cut-to-crush time has gone down to less than 24 hours, securing huge financial benefit in the process.

At the policy level, sugar cane production has been incentivised with a two-pronged strategy: steadily increasing the minimum indicative price and ensuring ample water for this water-guzzling crop. The five-year acreage chart further clarifies the situation. As per the data of the Punjab Crop Reporting Service, the area under cultivation of sugar cane increased from 310,000 acres in 2014-15 to 430,000 acres this year. In 2017-18, it touched 477,000 acres before sliding down a bit subsequently. Its production rose from 10.56 million tonnes to 13.2m tonnes in the same period. Six sugar mills — two plants of JDW, RYK Group, Hamza, Ittehad and Gulf — in the district led and rode the cane bandwagon.

Fed from the Panjnad barrage, supply data shows how water helped ensure the cane success in Rahim Yar Khan. Three canals — Panjnad, Abbasia and Abbasia Link — irrigate over 1.5m acres in the district that is mainly a brackish aquifer although there are a few sweet water pockets.

Their joint allocation (both for Kharif and Rabi) as per the Irrigation Department data is 5.05m acres feet (maf) a year. The district received 6.96maf in 2014-15, 7.11maf in 2015-16, 5.96maf in 2016-17, 4.99maf in 2017-18, 6.67maf in 2018-19 and 6.27maf last year. During these years, the province has suffered up to 40 per cent seasonal shortages. Yet water supplies to Rahim Yar Khan remained impervious to these troubles mainly because of flood supplies during the monsoon.

The commercial success of the sugar industry was so comprehensive that traditional landlords, including many branches of the Makhdoom family, are now sugar mill owners as well. New entrants like Chaudhry Munir and Jahangir Khan Tareen earned a place in national politics on the back of their successes in the sugar industry.

The decline of cotton happened alongside the rise of sugar. During the period mentioned above, cotton acreage dropped from 511,000 acres to 474,000. The dip was sharp in 2017-18 when its acreage dropped to 389,000 acres. Its production came down from 743,000 bales to 621,000 bales during the same period. Cotton has had many problems of its own. It was not the only crop rolled over by sugar cane: many mango orchards that dotted the district also lost their battle to cane.

Apart from the cotton-cane battle, the district has been a livestock success story because of rangelands in the Indus catchment. Livestock is a result of the nomadic lifestyle of the Cholistan tribes, which also feeds it. As temperatures start rising in the desert, many tribes and their huge herds follow rains — feeding their animals along the way — to the river catchment. This is in addition to over 200 cattle farms (of more than 50 animals) and over 400 buffalo farms and individual livestock farming in the district.

Eleven districts in South Punjab meet 60pc beef and meat requirements of the province. Rahim Yar Khan alone contributes 12-14pc of the supply chain, according to data released by the Livestock Department.

As for milk production, the district produces over 500,000 litres daily and is a major supplier to multinational corporations that sell milk to consumers. Of late, low fat and more nutritious camel milk has carved out a niche market for itself, thanks to some local initiatives by the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences that connect producers to major city markets.

The district has historically been dominated by the Makhdooms, Qureshis, Legharis and Rais families. It has also been helped a lot by the United Arab Emirates whose ruler, the late Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, started making yearly sojourn to the area to hunt houbara bustard and deer in the 1960s and ’70s. He and his sons helped build roads, hospitals, schools and colleges in the area that helped achieve close to a 40pc literacy rate in a predominantly rural district.

Of late though their interest seems to be waning, but the infrastructure investment in the area still reflects the attention it once received from the Arab world.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, December 7th, 2020

Sugar - Sidney Mintz

sidneymintz.net/sugar.php

Sugar, or sucrose (C12H22O11), is manufactured photosynthetically by green plants. We humans can't make sugar. The best we can do is to extract it, and change its form. We have been doing so zealously, for more than 2,000 years.

Mintz (2008) Time, Sugar, and Sweetness - Geneseo Food ...

https://wiki.geneseo.edu/display/food/Mintz+(2008)+Time,+Sugar,+and...

2011-02-18 · Mintz outlined the usage of sugar cane starting in the seventeenth century. This was a time when sugar cane was a significant crop in the New World and was used to create several things Europeans consumed, namely sugar, molasses, and rum.

Sidney Mintz - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Mintz

• Overview
• Early life and education
• Career
• Training and influences
• Research
• External links

Sidney Wilfred Mintz (November 16, 1922 – December 27, 2015) was an American anthropologist best known for his studies of the Caribbean, creolization, and the anthropology of food. Mintz received his PhD at Columbia University in 1951 and conducted his primary fieldwork among sugar-cane workersin Puerto Rico. Later expanding his ethnographic research to Haiti and Jamaica, he produced historical and ethnographic studies of slavery and global capitalism, cultural hybridity, Caribbean peasants, and the po…

Wikipedia · Text under CC-BY-SA license

Implementing carbon pricing during the pandemic could help countries recover greener, smarter

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Research News

 

PRINCETON, N.J. --Countries across the globe have been struggling to deal with the impact of Covid-19 and its accompanying economic slowdown. As economies "build back better," it may be an opportune time to introduce carbon pricing to tackle climate change, according to new Princeton University policy research.

While endorsed by many economists, carbon pricing has been slower to gain traction because of its potential to shock economies and the difficulty of securing political support for increasing taxes. However, fuel prices are already low and people are buying fewer goods and traveling less, so there could be greater benefits to introducing or strengthening carbon prices, the authors argue in the journal Climate Policy.

Carbon pricing -- whether in the form of taxes or emissions trading -- is an economic approach to account for the environmental costs of emitting greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. Carbon taxes typically apply to the producer with increased costs ultimately trickling down to any activity using carbon. For example, oil-extraction companies would be taxed, adding costs to any process that involved burning oil. Emissions-trading schemes set some cap on emissions and permits to emit are traded, but the number of total permits available correspond to that cap.

"When we think about long-term problems like the pandemic or climate change, it's easy to assume that the solutions could conflict since they all require massive resources," said lead author Kian Mintz-Woo, a former postdoctoral research associate in Princeton's University Center for Human Values and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). "But what we describe in this article is how the context of the coronavirus crisis actually provides a unique opportunity for mutually reinforcing forward-thinking solutions to improve sustainability and wellbeing as countries recover."

Mintz-Woo, who recently joined the Philosophy and Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork, Ireland, added that this research expands on an op-ed co-authored with Princeton Professor Peter Singer published on May 7 by Project Syndicate.

With markets already reorienting to adjust to supply-and-demand shocks brought on by the pandemic, introducing carbon pricing now would result in marginally less disruption and could actually help drive greener economic activity. Placing a price on carbon could prompt industries to move away from more costly fossil-fuel intensive practices and toward long-term economic and environmental sustainability.

"Since carbon pollution already increases health and environmental costs borne by society, forcing those generating the costs to pay for them would lead to fairer production and consumption," Mintz-Woo said.

In the context of low fuel prices over an extended period, as seen in recent months, the researchers suggest that a carbon tax could help stabilize prices and ensure that renewable energy sources -- the prices of which were becoming cost-competitive even before the Covid-19 crisis -- can remain competitive. The researchers say that as economies move toward recovery, a carbon price can drive individuals and firms to adopt less carbon-intensive processes, rather than locking-in unsustainable energy practices that will ultimately require more drastic future corrections.

"Preventing commitment to future emissions is the key," Mintz-Woo said. "But that cannot come at the expense of those who may be at risk for job losses in this transition. Governments should use the revenue to both reduce any regressive effects of the taxation and retrain those who come from industries that could be adversely affected."

The researchers acknowledge that governments are under pressure to prioritize economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, so any policy changes with the potential to dampen a stimulus effect could be unpopular. However, they argue that high prices are not the primary obstacle to consumer purchasing; the cause of the economic slowdown has more to do with restricted market activity during the pandemic.

Revenue generated from a carbon price could contribute toward government spending on social safety nets, fund other green priorities to drive innovation and new jobs, or be returned as credits to taxpayers. In all cases, the potential revenue source could be a welcome infusion during the Covid-19 crisis, when regional and national governments face massive fiscal shortfalls which can be expected to grow in the coming months.

"Right now, governments are considering bailouts for carbon-intensive sectors, like the airline industry," Mintz-Woo said. "While it's really hard on employees in that industry right now, government money would be far better spent on clean research and development investments and other strategies to help companies prepare for the future. And that means preparing for employment transitions away from carbon-intensive jobs and towards areas that will be more beneficial to the environment. Carbon pricing can help us do just that."

###

The paper, "Carbon Pricing and COVID-19," first appeared in Climate Policy on 15 November.
Additional co-authors on the article are Francis Dennig (Yale-NUS Singapore); Hongxun Liu (Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs); and Thomas Schinko (Risk and Resilience Program (RISK), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis).

A short version of the article's arguments is expected to be released on the blog
https://climatestrategies.wordpress.com.

PROPERTY IS THEFT

Some landlords got a piece of Texas’ $2 billion in rent relief money — and evicted their struggling tenants anyway

Grungy Old Door With A Yellow Eviction Notice 

Shutterstock/ Mr Doomits

LONG READ 

The Texas Tribune April 08, 2022

When Cherice Scott received a notice last September that she, her husband and their four children would soon be kicked out of their Katy apartment, she said employees at the complex told her not to worry about it.

Scott and her husband had fallen behind on rent in June after Scott stopped working to take care of her youngest daughter, who has Down syndrome, and the medical bills piled up.


The next month, their landlord started the eviction process, even though Scott, 37, had taken the rental office staff’s advice and requested help from Texas’ $2 billion, federally backed rental assistance fund. Scott said she spoke to the office staff and walked away believing she didn’t need to worry about eviction as they waited for the relief money — or to bother showing up to court.

When the state sent the rent relief check to the wrong address, Scott said the staff assured her they were working to get the money re-sent.

“I trusted them,” Scott said. “I shouldn’t have.”

Scott had landed a new job as a dietician at a local hospital when she returned from work one afternoon in early October to find most of her belongings spread out on the lawn and the locks changed. Thieves had walked off with their electronics.

Jeff Williams, a Harris County justice of the peace, had approved the eviction without Scott present in court — a typical outcome in eviction cases when tenants don’t show up to their hearings.

Scott wanted to know: What happened to the rent relief money?

After weeks of phone calls, a Texas Rent Relief program staffer told Scott that her former landlord had indeed received the rent relief money in mid-November — more than $11,000, enough to cover the six months’ back rent they owed.


Cherice Scott’s son, 6-year-old Teegan McKinney, plays at a park in Houston. 

Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

“They were very well informed that that money was there and it was coming to them,” said Scott, who’s now living in a short-term rental in Missouri City with her four kids. “Yet they still pushed us out.”

Scott’s former landlord — Blazer Real Estate Services, a Houston property management company — did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment. An employee at Blazer’s office who answered the phone declined to answer questions.

The federal government and the state of Texas both had people like Scott and her family in mind when they hurriedly created a safety net for struggling renters amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Texas received more than $2 billion out of the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package President Joe Biden signed into law last year, to set up the Texas Rent Relief program, designed to help such families stay in their homes as the pandemic triggered a tsunami of business closures and hundreds of thousands of layoffs.

But The Texas Tribune interviewed tenants from across the state who were approved for federal rental assistance and were evicted anyway.

Two landlords, like Scott’s, evicted their tenants in the period between the initial rent relief application and when the government money arrived and then kept it — an apparent violation of the program’s requirements for landlords. In those cases, the check was initially sent to the wrong property — and only arrived after the tenant was kicked out.

One landlord received federal money through the Texas Rent Relief program and later chose not to renew their tenant’s lease — which was legal in that case.

In order to receive federal rent relief funds through the state, landlords had to sign an agreement that forbids them from evicting tenants for nonpayment during the time period covered by the assistance.


But housing advocates and lawyers who represent tenants facing eviction say they routinely see cases of Texas landlords accepting thousands of dollars from the government and evicting the tenants the money was intended to help.

The Tribune contacted government agencies involved in the program and found that none of them — including the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, which runs the state rent relief program — track how often this happens.

And it’s not just happening in Texas.

According to the National Housing Law Project, 86% of the 119 lawyers across the country who responded to a survey gauging how the end of a federal moratorium on evictions was affecting tenants said they had seen cases where landlords either declined to apply for assistance from rent relief programs or took the money and proceeded to kick out their tenants.

“The industry standard here is fraud,” said Stuart Campbell, managing attorney at Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, speaking generally about instances in which landlords receive rent relief funds and evict tenants. “These landlords are the prime beneficiary of these rental assistance programs and just en masse have been violating the provisions of the programs and on top of that consistently misleading judges and securing judgments and evictions, even when they’re receiving funds.”

Many landlords have tried to work with their tenants to try to avoid evictions for back rent during the pandemic, said David Mintz, vice president of government affairs for Texas Apartment Association, a trade group of rental property owners.

But receiving rent relief dollars wasn’t guaranteed, so some landlords filed for eviction in case the money didn’t come through and as a last resort after months of going without rent, Mintz said. Under the program rules, landlords are allowed to evict only in specific situations, such as lease violations related to criminal activity, property damage or “physical harm” to others, Mintz pointed out.

If tenants feel they have been unjustly evicted, they can appeal the eviction, Mintz said. Any allegations that “either a renter or a rental property owner isn’t following the program rules” should be reported to the program to be investigated, he said.

“We believe owners have done their best to try to understand the intricacies of the program and comply with its requirements,” Mintz said.

When Congress set aside more than $46 billion for emergency rental assistance, they intended for that money to keep people in their homes, said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Houston. The idea of landlords taking rent relief dollars and still evicting tenants is “outrageous,” she said, and could warrant investigation.


Since being evicted from their home in Katy, Cherice Scott and her four children have lived in hotels and other temporary settings, most recently a short-term rental in Missouri City.

 Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

“I think any landlord that accepted money or got money directly for rent absolutely should not have evicted anyone,” Garcia said. “And if they did, it should be audited and reviewed by [government investigators] so that we can recoup our funds for the misuse of the dollars.”

Texas closed the rent relief program to new applicants in November, citing overwhelming demand for rental assistance dollars. The state received another $47 million in March, which TDHCA said would go toward helping tenants who applied before the November cutoff. As of Wednesday, the program has assisted more than 300,000 households.

The money was considered crucial to prevent a wave of tenants losing their homes as eviction bans expired; in recent months, three Texas metro areas — Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth — have seen some of the highest eviction case filings in the country among the 31 cities tracked by Eviction Lab, a research center based at Princeton University that tracks eviction filings.

To qualify for rental assistance from the Texas program, tenants had to fall below a certain income level, prove they experienced some kind of financial hardship during the pandemic and make the case that they would be at risk of losing their home if they didn’t receive rent relief.

A collection of state and federal agencies — including the TDHCA — are tasked with looking into allegations of fraud, waste and abuse in rent relief programs. But none of the agencies contacted by the Tribune would say whether any landlord has been credibly accused of taking rent relief money and improperly ousting their tenants, or whether they have imposed penalties on landlords for doing so.

Some tenants who spoke to the Tribune about their cases said they called a hotline used to report fraud, waste and abuse in the state rent relief program and never heard back about their complaints.

Scott said she complained to a program staffer in October about her landlord’s conduct, and the staffer referred the complaint to the program’s anti-fraud division. Two months later, Scott received an email acknowledging her complaint — but said she hasn’t heard back since.


Stephanie Gates’ rental assistance check initially went to the wrong address — and reached her landlord less than two weeks after she was evicted from her Round Rock home in January. 

Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
“I was a good tenant”

Stephanie Gates also thought the state rent relief program would save her from an eviction. In her case, the check arrived in time — but went to the wrong place.

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Gates, a 42-year-old Round Rock resident, saw her hours as a temp working in guest services at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport cut in half, and by January 2021 she was behind on rent for her two-bedroom apartment. In June, Gates said she lost her job after she missed a week of work because of a medical problem.

But in September, Gates received good news: Not only did she qualify for help paying back rent, but the program would cover her rent through November — 11 months all together, totaling $12,740.

“I’m sitting thinking, ‘My rent’s paid, OK, all I have to worry about is December and January,’’’ Gates said.

Then in December, the property owner filed an eviction case against Gates and gave her a notice to vacate.

It turns out the state program had sent the check in September — to the wrong address.

At a Jan. 10 eviction hearing, Gates said she told Williamson County Justice of the Peace KT Musselman she had been approved for rent relief and explained that the check went to the wrong address — facts she said the property manager, who represented the landlord in court, backed up.

Despite that, the property manager told Musselman they wanted to proceed with the case, Gates said. Musselman sided with Gates’ landlord and granted the eviction.

In a phone interview, Musselman declined to say why he ruled in favor of Gates’ landlord. But Musselman expressed sympathy for the landlord, noting that they had gone 11 months without rent from Gates. Even if the rent relief check was in hand, it wouldn’t have covered the amount sought by the landlord, Musselman said.

“I can understand an apartment complex coming at this point in the process and saying, ‘It's time to figure out what's going to happen here or move forward,’” Musselman said.

Alexander Stamm, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid who is representing Gates, said Musselman shouldn’t have let the trial take place at all because of a Texas Supreme Court order requiring judges to postpone eviction cases if a landlord confirms they have joined a tenant’s application for rent relief.

“In our view, the judge made a mistake letting the trial proceed as soon as [the property manager] confirmed that the owner had a pending application for rental assistance,” Stamm said in an email.

On Jan. 27, Williamson County constables came to execute the eviction. Newly homeless, Gates stood on the curb in the cold guarding her belongings until a friend could get off work to help her move them.

“I did everything right, and to still have my stuff thrown down the street … it’s just something that I’m still trying to process,” Gates said.

Less than two weeks after Gates’ eviction, she spotted something in her online account with the rent relief program: A pair of checks totaling $12,650 had cleared the property owner’s bank account. Her former landlord had taken the rent relief funds after they evicted her.

Attempts to reach the property owner — RDRH Holdings Inc., an Austin-based corporation — and its president were unsuccessful. Lee Reznicek, a property manager who oversees Gates’ former home for Austin-based Hill Country Property Management, declined to comment when reached by email.

Stamm alleges that RDRH Holdings violated six requirements set out by the program in a contract landlords must sign in order to receive funds.

For example, the program bars landlords from accepting rent relief payments after they evict a tenant. The rent relief checks cleared RDRH’s bank account on Feb. 4 — less than two weeks after Gates was evicted.

Landlords who received rent relief dollars can’t evict tenants “for any reason related to rent or fees during the time period covered by the funds,” according to the program requirements. But those are the exact grounds that RDRH Holdings cited when it sued to evict Gates, Stamm said.

According to the program rules laid out in the agreement Gates’ landlord signed July 13 to receive the funds, if a landlord receives rent relief money after evicting the tenant, they’re supposed to send the money back to TDHCA within 10 days. As of Feb. 17, Gates’ former landlord hadn’t done so, Stamm said.

“You can’t have it both ways with Texas Rent Relief,” Stamm said. “You can’t get paid directly, and also break the promises you made that were designed to keep someone in their home.”

At the moment, Gates is bouncing back and forth between her father’s house and a friend’s while she appeals her eviction in an attempt to strike it from her record and make it easier for her to find a new place.

“I was a good tenant,” Gates said. “You know, we just had the problems from [the pandemic] last year, which everybody did.”

“Tenants are still the ones holding the bag”

Both the federal and state government added enforcement provisions when they created the rent relief programs. In Texas, two state agencies — the TDHCA, which oversees the statewide rent relief program, and the State Auditor’s Office — have the authority to look into allegations of waste, fraud or abuse within the program. At the federal level, that job falls to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General.

TDHCA operates the state hotline where complaints originate. If the agency finds the allegations are credible, it can refer the cases to the state auditor’s office, the Treasury’s inspector general or local law enforcement agencies.

TDHCA says it has received more than 7,500 complaints through the hotline — not all of them related to fraud, waste or abuse — but the agency won’t say how many times it has referred cases to outside agencies for investigation. The State Auditor’s Office declined to say whether it has launched any investigations into potential fraud, waste and abuse of the program.

As of last week, $20.1 million in rent relief has been recaptured, TDHCA spokesperson Kristina Tirloni said, adding that not all of that was connected to allegations of fraud, waste or abuse.

Tirloni said the agency doesn’t track what portion of those clawed-back funds came from landlords found to have improperly evicted their tenants after receiving assistance — or categorize what scenarios would result in recapturing the money.

“TDHCA has taken very seriously the responsibility of helping Texas renters and landlords overcome the financial burden brought on by the pandemic,” Tirloni said.

But none of that recovered money is helping tenants ousted from their homes, said Julia Orduña, Southeast Texas regional director for Texas Housers, a nonprofit low-income housing advocacy group.

“Maybe the money will be returned to Treasury and the wrong will be righted for the government,” Orduña said. “But the tenants are still the ones holding the bag.”

That happens even when tenants win their eviction cases in court.

Diana Johnson, 35, was waiting on rent relief in January when her landlord tried to evict her and her seven children from their three-bedroom apartment in Southeast Dallas.

Johnson, a manager of a hair salon and certified nursing assistant, had asked the program in October for help covering rent while she recovered from giving birth to her son and couldn’t work. Texas Rent Relief approved her for a little over $3,100 — about three months’ worth of rent.

Johnson’s landlord — a partnership owned by Mark Musemeche, a Houston developer — had already accepted more than $4,200 in federal money in August to pay four months of rent, according to a copy of Johnson’s rent ledger she provided to the Tribune. Around that time, Johnson said she caught COVID-19 and had to miss a month of work.

Johnson had asked the office manager whether they had received the latest check, she said. They told her there was no way to see if they had received it, she said.

The morning of her March 18 eviction hearing, a Texas Rent Relief staffer told Johnson that her landlord had cashed the check two days earlier and gave her the check number. Johnson’s lawyer recorded the call.

When Dallas County Justice of the Peace Juan Jasso heard about the check and phone call, he asked the property manager whether they had received the check, Johnson said. The property manager quickly confirmed that they had — and Jasso tossed the eviction.

But Johnson’s victory was short-lived. The same day, her landlord told Johnson her lease wouldn’t be renewed when it expired the following week, she said.

Johnson’s trying not to dwell on the saga. She’s focused on finding a new place for her and her seven children to live. Her landlord gave her until the end of May to do so.

“The more I sit here and think about it, I just know to just go ahead and do what I need to do,” Johnson said.

Calls to Musemeche were not returned. An employee at the apartment complex, Crestshire Village Apartments, declined to comment.
“It takes away your pride”

Since their October eviction from their Katy apartment, Scott and her four children have lived in hotels and other temporary settings.

She said the past few months have been hard. Around the time of the eviction, Scott and her husband separated. He took the car, which made it difficult for Scott to hunt for work and shelter. Then she gave up her job at the Katy hospital to care once more for her youngest daughter.

Weeks after her eviction, Scott received an email from Texas Rent Relief on Nov. 9 acknowledging that it had initially sent the check to the wrong address. But the program had fixed that error, the email said.

“As the tenant was evicted from the unit associated with this application, pursuant to program policies, rental arrears are only approved for the time period the tenant was in the unit,” the email reads.

In other words, Scott had already been evicted, but Texas Rent Relief was letting the landlord keep the money — more than $11,000 — in apparent contradiction of its own policy.

Tirloni, the TDHCA spokesperson, declined to discuss individual tenants’ cases, including Scott’s, citing state law that prevents TDHCA from disclosing information about people who receive benefits from programs administered by the agency. But she said the program doesn’t allow landlords to receive back rent if they’ve evicted a tenant — the opposite of what the email to Scott said.

“We strive to always do better,” Tirloni said in an email. “As much as we work to mitigate human error, the potential for application errors exists. If issues are discovered or brought to our attention, like payments sent to an incorrect address, or payments sent to a landlord who has evicted the tenant, we will take corrective measures, like recapture or other necessary steps.”

Meanwhile, Scott is trying to rebuild her life. In late March she started a new job teaching at an early learning center. But she still hasn’t found a place to live. She said she has spent thousands of dollars on application fees to at least 10 homes and apartment complexes — and all of them have denied her because she now has an eviction on her record.

“It's embarrassing,” Scott said. “It takes away your pride and makes me feel like I failed as a parent. It hurts, that really hurts. But I don’t want to give up.”

Disclosure: The Texas Apartment Association 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.

We can’t wait to welcome you in person and online to the 2022 Texas Tribune Festival, our multiday celebration of big, bold ideas about politics, public policy and the day’s news — all taking place just steps away from the Texas Capitol from Sept. 22-24. When tickets go on sale in May, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/08/texas-landlords-rent-relief-evictions/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth
Jul 30, 2009
University of California Television (UCTV)
(1:06 - Start of Presentation) Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Recorded on 05/26/2009. [7/2009] [Show ID: 16717]
Mini Medical School for the Public
(https://www.uctv.tv/minimed)
Explore More Health & Medicine on UCTV
(https://www.uctv.tv/health)
UCTV features the latest in health and medicine from University of California medical schools. Find the information you need on cancer, transplantation, obesity, disease and much more.
UCTV is the broadcast and online media platform of the University of California, featuring programming from its ten campuses, three national labs and affiliated research institutions. UCTV explores a broad spectrum of subjects for a general audience, including science, health and medicine, public affairs, humanities, arts and music, business, education, and agriculture. Launched in January 2000, UCTV embraces the core missions of the University of California -- teaching, research, and public service – by providing quality, in-depth television far beyond the campus borders to inquisitive viewers around the world.
(https://www.uctv.tv)

Food and Diaspora, Professor Sidney Mintz, SOAS University of London

•Jun 27, 2017

SOAS University of London

This recently rediscovered Distinguished Lecture titled "Food and Diaspora" was given by Professor Sidney Mintz (Johns Hopkins University) at the launch of two new SOAS research centres: The SOAS Food Studies Centre & The SOAS Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies on 11 October 2007 You can find out more about this event at https://goo.gl/oh5fbg https://www.soas.ac.uk/foodstudies/ https://www.soas.ac.uk/migrationdiasp... Sidney W. Mintz is a Research Professor in Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. A pioneering scholar in Afro-Caribbean studies and in the Anthropology of Food, Professor Mintz is the author of Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History, Caribbean Transformations, and Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. The lecture will launch two new SOAS research centres: The SOAS Food Studies Centre & The SOAS Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies

Licens