PRIVATE FOR PROFIT PRISONS PAID FOR BY THE UNVACCINATED
Alabama Gov. Ivey approves COVID-19 relief funds for prison construction


Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signs legislation in 2019. Earlier this week, she signed a bill funding new prison construction. File Photo courtesy of Alabama governor's office
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Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Alabama will build new prisons with federal COVID-19 pandemic relief dollars under a bill signed by the state's Republican governor.

The $1.3 billion plan to build two new men's prisons is intended to address overcrowding issues in its current facilities that have drawn scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice, reports AL.com.

Signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, the legislation directs $400 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, a coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress earlier this year. The rest will be funded with a $785 million bond and $154 million in state funds.

Ivey, speaking at a press event Friday, called the plan an "Alabama solution" to problems facing the state's prison system that has been subject to 15 federal mandates over conditions while draining state funds. She said the construction of the prisons was a major step forward in reforming the state's criminal justice system.

"Addressing these challenges through the construction of new prison facilities is the legal and fiscally sound thing for us to do," she said. "And it's also morally the right thing to do to ensure we have safe working conditions for our corrections staff and proper rehabilitation capabilities for the inmates."

One of the 4,000-bed men's prisons will be built in Elmore County and will focus on addiction treatment programs as well as mental health services and education. The second will be built in Escambia County.

The move had drawn criticism from Democrats. Earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., said in a statement that he was "deeply disturbed" by the state's plan to use the money on prisons while COVID-19 was still spreading rapidly among its population.

RELATED States can use pandemic funds to extend unemployment benefits

"Alabama currently has the highest COVID-19 death rate in the country," he said. "To be clear, the current state of the Alabama prison system is abhorrent, but the use of COVID-19 relief funds to pay for decades of our state's neglect is simply unacceptable."

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who chairs the House judiciary committee, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking her to block states from using relief money for prisons, The Hill reported.

He said that using the money to "fuel mass incarceration" runs against the purpose of the relief package, harming communities of color already disproportionately impacted by over-incarceration and the effects of the pandemic.

RELATED Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signs law banning COVID-19 'vaccine passports'

Ivey responded with a statement, telling Nadler to focus on the federal government's own fiscal challenges.

"The Democrat-controlled federal government has never had an issue with throwing trillions of dollars toward their ideological pet projects," she said in the statement. "These prisons need to be built, and we have crafted a fiscally conservative plan."

MONOPOLY CAPITALISM
CD&R wins $10bn auction for UK supermarket Morrisons

Oct 2, 2021 

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Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) has won the auction for Morrisons with a $9.5bn bid, paving the way for the U.S. private equity firm to take control of Britain’s fourth-biggest supermarket group.

The Takeover Panel, which governs M&A deals in the UK and arranged the auction, said on Saturday CD&R had offered 287 pence a share, while a consortium led by the Softbank owned Fortress Investment Group offered 286 pence.

CD&R’s victory marks a triumphant return to the UK grocery sector for Terry Leahy, the former chief executive of Britain’s biggest supermarket chain Tesco, who is a senior adviser to the firm.

The winning bid was only slightly higher than CD&R’s 285 pence a share offer that Morrisons’ board recommended in August.

The board, due to meet later on Saturday, is expected to recommend shareholders accept the new offer at a shareholder meeting slated for Oct. 19.

Morrisons and CD&R had no immediate comment on the outcome of the auction.

If shareholders approve the offer, CD&R could complete its takeover of Morrisons by the end of the month, the second UK supermarket chain in a year to be acquired by private equity after a buyout of no.3 player Asda completed in February.

Eggs and Butter

Bradford, northern England, based Morrisons started out as an egg and butter merchant in 1899. It listed its shares in 1967 and is Britain’s fourth-largest grocer after Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda.

The battle for Morrisons, which has been running since May, is the most high-profile of a raft of bids for British companies this year, reflecting private equity’s appetite for cash-generating UK assets.

CD&R has committed to retain Morrisons’ Bradford headquarters and its existing management team led by CEO David Potts, execute its existing strategy, not sell its freehold store estate and maintain staff pay rates. The commitments are not, however, legally binding.

Leahy was CEO of Tesco for 14 years to 2011 and will now be reunited with Morrisons CEO Potts and Chairman Andrew Higginson, two of his closest lieutenants at Tesco.

Potts, who joined Tesco as a 16-year-old shelf-stacker, will make more than 10 million pounds from selling his Morrisons shares to CD&R. Chief operating officer Trevor Strain will pocket about 4 million pounds.

Fortress is left to lick it wounds and mull the cost of the saga. Documents published in July showed that Fortress expected to incur banking and advisory fees and expenses of 263.5 million pounds.

In a statement the group said it wished those involved with Morrisons the best for the future, adding: “The UK remains a very attractive investment environment from many perspectives, and we will continue to explore opportunities to help strong management teams grow their businesses and create long-term value.”

Sainsbury’s has in recent months been mooted as another possible target for private equity and investment companies.

Source: Yahoo Finance

Donald Trump said AOC makes the old men in Congress 'shiver in fear' because she has a strong base like him, report says

Alia Shoaib
Sat, October 2, 2021

Former President Donald Trump (L), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (R) Getty Images (L), AP Photo (R)

Donald Trump said AOC elicited fear in Congress because she had a strong base like him, a new book extract says.


Trump said the AOC was a "failed geek", but praised her for her outsize influence in the Democrat Party.


He made the comments at a closed-door event with business leaders including Jeff Bezos in 2019.

Former President Donald Trump said that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made old men "shiver in fear" in the halls of Congress, reports say.

Trump reportedly made the comments at an event attended by a hundred business leaders in 2019, according to an excerpt from the book "In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP" by journalist David Drucker, seen by The Daily Mail.

In the closed-door meeting, Trump called the New York congresswoman a "failed geek" but expressed admiration for her outsize influence within the Democratic Party.

"Let me tell you something about AOC. I've watched her walk down the halls of Congress, and I see these old men shiver in fear. They shiver in fear whenever they see her," Trump said.

"You want to know why? Because AOC has a base, just like me."

Trump's comments elicited "nervous laughter" from the crowd, according to the book extract quoted by The Daily Mail.

Trump also reportedly told the business leaders that reelecting him was the only way to continue their work and defeat AOC's Green New Deal.

"You definitely want to see me reelected if you want to keep being in business," Trump said.

"You've got this Green New Deal. It's completely crazy. It'll completely shut down American energy. And it's from this failed geek, Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez."

Trump's speech was an early reelection pitch, the book said, which came shortly after the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections.

High-profile business leaders in the audience included Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and CEOs of companies like JP Morgan, Boeing, and Blackrock.

Some members of Trump's entourage were also in attendance, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his daughter Ivanka Trump.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Afghan girls' soccer squad find new home in Ronaldo's Portugal

Afghan girls' soccer squad find new home in Ronaldo's Portugal

Captain of Afghanistan's national women football team Muhtaj poses for a portrait with teammates at the Belem Tower in Lisbon

Catarina Demony
Thu, September 30, 2021

LISBON (Reuters) - Leaving her homeland Afghanistan was painful, says 15-year-old Sarah. But now safely in Portugal, she hopes to pursue her dream of playing soccer professionally - and perhaps meeting her idol, star striker Cristiano Ronaldo.

Sarah was one of several players from Afghanistan's national female youth soccer squad who fled their country in fear after the Taliban hardline Islamist movement seized power in August.

Portugal has granted asylum to the young footballers.

"I'm free," she said, smiling from ear-to-ear as she visited Lisbon's landmark Belem Tower on the River Tagus with her mother and teammates.

"My dream is to be a good player like Ronaldo - and I want to be a big business woman here in Portugal," she said.

She hoped to go back home one day but only if she can live freely.

Her mother, who requested that Reuters did not use their surname, had experienced first-hand a previous era of Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001. She is less optimistic they will ever be able to return.

Taliban leaders have promised to respect women's rights but under their first government, women could not work and girls were banned from school. Women had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative when they left home.

A senior Taliban official said after the Aug. 15 takeover that women would probably not be allowed to play sport because it was "not necessary" and their bodies might be exposed.

"The reason we took on this mission (to evacuate the team) was to ensure they can aspire and play the sport they love," said Farkhunda Muhtaj, captain of the Afghanistan women's senior national team, who flew to Lisbon on Wednesday to surprise the youth team players.

From her home in Canada, where she works as assistant soccer coach at a local university, Muhtaj has been in touch with the girls throughout the evacuation process, codenamed Operation Soccer Balls. It managed to rescue a total of 80 people - the female youth team and family members, including babies.

They landed in Portugal on Sept. 19.

When Muhtaj showed up on Wednesday night, the girls were ecstatic. They hugged. Some could not hold back the tears.

"They been through so much, so many challenges," Muhtaj said. "They were just resilient and they were able to make it happen."

One relative, 25-year-old Zaki Rasa, recalled the chaos at the Kabul airport, where he spent three anguished days. He is now delighted to be in Portugal and wants to continue his studies.

"There is some uncertainty about the future," he said. "The important thing is that we are safe."

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Angus MacSwan)

Fleeing Afghan women footballers seek new home from Pakistan

Women's football is so frowned upon by the Taliban that they have allegedly burned down some players' homes. DW spoke to the former national team captain, Khalida Popal, who's trying to get her compatriots to safety.

Watch video03:52 Women banned from sports under Taliban: Khalida Popal speaks to DW

A group of 32 Afghan women football players and their families are seeking safe haven from the Taliban in third countries after fleeing to Pakistan, the former Afghanistan women's team captain said on Friday.

Women's team captain Khalida Popal told DW that some of the players "had their houses burned down and some family members were taken by the Taliban."

Some 135 people — 32 players and coaches as well as their families — "were displaced from their provinces" because of their involvement in women's football, Popal added.

"They are in Pakistan and we are trying our best to find a host country for them," she said.

'Stay strong,' Popal urges

Popal told women in the country not to give up: "I am feeling sorry and sad for my people, for especially women in Afghanistan. I want to tell you, stay strong. We are trying our best to help you in any way possible."

Khalida Popal, former Afghan national team captain, has fought hard for women soccer players

Popal, who now lives in Denmark, said she was happy that some of her fellow soccer players could get out of the country and have the opportunity to play the sport they have grown to love.

"As one of the founding members of the Afghanistan Women's first National Team I found my freedom through football," Popal told DW. "The foundation of women's football was based on standing up for our rights for the women of Afghanistan, but also challenging the culture that was taking the basic human rights from women."

Popal had even warned women and girls who played football to burn their kits and delete their social media accounts back in August when the Taliban seized power.

Watch video 04:36 From the archives: Popal on DW TV on September 9 this year

Escaping Afghanistan

Over 3,000 women and girls who played football in Afghanistan feared for their lives after the withdrawal of Western forces and the Taliban takeover of the country.

The Taliban had banned women and girls from education or playing sports between 1996 to 2001.

On September 8, a Taliban spokesman, Ahmadullah Wasiq, told Australian broadcaster SBS that "Islam and the Islamic Emirate do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed."

The women's national senior and youth teams were the first to leave the country, securing asylum in Australia and Portugal respectively.

Watch video 01:46 Afghanistan girls' soccer team safe in Portugal

The Football for Peace international organization arranged the departure of Afghan provincial football players and their families to Pakistan throughout September.

The Pakistan football federation received the first group of them at its headquarters in Lahore with red flowers in mid-September.

jc/fb (Reuters, AFP)

Wave of US labor unrest could see tens of thousands on strike within weeks

Michael Sainato
Fri, October 1, 2021

Tens of thousands of workers around the US could go on strike in the coming weeks in what would be the largest wave of labor unrest since a series of teacher strikes in 2018 and 2019, which won major victories and gave the American labor movement a significant boost.

The unrest spans a huge range of industries from healthcare to Hollywood and academia, and is largely focused on higher wages, fighting cuts and better working and safety conditions, especially in light of Covid-19.

Related: ‘A race to the bottom’: Google temps are fighting a two-tier labor system

It also plays out against a backdrop of an economy bouncing back from the torrid experience of widespread economic shutdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, but one that is still marked by profound inequality.

However, the pandemic is also seen as potentially providing a shot in the arm for US labor unions by increasing bargaining power amid increased union drives and labor shortages in some industries.

About 24,000 nurses and other healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente in California represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals will vote on a strike authorization from 1 to 10 October. The union took issue with Kaiser Permanente’s 1% wage increase for workers, cuts to wages for new staff, and benefit cuts in the company’s most recent offer.

“We have people burned out, complaining of mental health issues and PTSD. We’re in a situation as a union where we’re concerned about the future of nursing, [and] how we recruit and retain nurses and other healthcare professionals,” said Denise Duncan, president of UNAC/UHCP and a registered nurse.

About 700 building engineers at Kaiser Permanente in the San Francisco area are already on strike.

An additional 3,400 health workers in Oregon and 7,400 health workers with USW at Kaiser Permanente also announced strike authorization votes. Other unions representing thousands of workers at the company with expiring union contracts are considering strike authorization votes.

In an emailed statement, Kaiser Permanente’s senior vice-president of human resources, Arlene Peasnall, said: “Kaiser Permanente’s Labor Management Partnership was created 24 years ago, and has a great track record of serving as the framework through which we can solve sometimes very difficult problems. Instead of abandoning it, in the spirit of the partnership we ask union leaders to continue to work constructively toward an agreement, rather than call on nurses and other employees to walk away from patients who need them during this pandemic.”

A nurse from the Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills medical center in California holds an electric candle during a candlelight vigil in memory of those lost during the pandemic. 

Photograph: Valérie Macon/AFP/Getty Images

After four months of negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)announced a strike authorization vote for 60,000 workers across the film and television industry in the US. If the union moves forward with the strike, it would be the first among Hollywood production workers since the second world war.

Hollywood workers have reported long workdays and unsafe schedules that have worsened during the pandemic. Pay rates for many workers have remained low, at just above the minimum wage in the Los Angeles area, while streaming services and shorter television series have also depressed wages.

“They wouldn’t have much to film if we weren’t here building everything for them,” said Joe Martinez, a IATSE Local 44 member and special effects technician. “They need to start looking at it from a perspective of what would happen if we weren’t there. And then it changes the whole dynamics, because there’s no way they would ever have a central product if we weren’t there.”

The voting starts 1 October, with 75% of each local union’s delegates required to vote in favor of the strike authorization. The AMPTP argued IATSE left a “generous, comprehensive package” on the bargaining table for a strike authorization vote.

Several other large groups of workers have voted to authorize strikes around the US while continuing new union contract negotiations, such as 2,000 Frontier Communications workers in California, transit workers in Beaumont, Texas, and Akron, Ohio, about 450 public works employees in Minneapolis, Minnesota, dining workers at Northwestern University, and hundreds of group home workers in Connecticut.

Graduate workers at Harvard and Columbia University are currently holding strike authorization votes and Illinois State University graduate workers have authorized the bargaining team to call for a strike vote.

About 1,100 coalminers in Alabama have been on strike for the past six months and 2,000 carpenters in Washington have been on strike since 16 September.

On 12 September, 10,100 John Deere production and warehouse workers in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas, represented by nine locals with the United Auto Workers voted 99% in favor of a strike authorization if a new six-year union contract isn’t attained through negotiations with the company.

After the strike vote, some union members held a protest outside John Deere headquarters in Moline, Illinois, over the company’s first contract offer.

John Deere’s Harvester Works facility in East Moline, Illinois. 

Workers protested against the company’s first contract offer.

 Photograph: Daniel Acker/Reuters

According to workers at the strike authorization meetings, John Deere’s first contract offer included increases in healthcare costs, including premiums and deductibles, the end of a no plant closure commitment in the union contract agreement, and reducing eligibility for overtime after eight hours a day to only after exceeding 40 hours in a week. The current union contract expires on 1 October.

“The initial offer is really a slap in the face,” said Chris Larsen, a member of UAW Local 74 in Ottumwa, Iowa, who has worked at John Deere for 19 years. “There are a lot of dissatisfied people.”

John Deere has reported record profits in 2021, breaking their annual profit record in the first nine months of this year with new earnings records set each quarter in 2021 so far. The company reported a net income of $4.7bn on 2 August, compared with their previous record profit year in 2013 where the annual net income was reported at $3.5bn.

A spokesperson for John Deere declined to comment on the initial offer.

Elsewhere 2,500 nurses and other hospital staff represented by the Communications Workers of America are fighting for a new union contract with Catholic Health at three hospitals in the Buffalo, New York, area. At Catholic Health’s Mercy hospital 2,000 workers voted 97% in favor of authorizing a strike to start on 1 October, when their current contract expires.

Tina Knop, a nurse at Mercy hospital, argued unsafe staffing ratios, lack of support staff and supply shortages have worsened working conditions through the pandemic, and made it more difficult to adequately care for patients.

“What we’re fighting for is to have better staffing and Catholic Health to come forward and work harder to actually staff their facilities,” said Knop. “They’re not providing us with support, emotionally or physically, and all they want to do is cut our pay, take away the pension targets, and charge more for our health insurance.”

Cheryl Darling, an immediate treatment assistant at Mercy hospital, recently tested positive for Covid-19 though she is vaccinated, but only found out from a rapid test she took before visiting her mother at a local nursing home. She described chaotic working conditions at the hospital due to staffing shortages from housekeepers to nurses, leaving workers struggling to keep up with the workloads.

“I’m afraid to go into work, because I don’t know what my day is going to be like,” said Darling. “I go to bed the night before work and I’m a bundle of nerves, because I don’t know where they’re going to put me or what my work conditions are going to be.”

In a statement, Catholic Health’s president, Eddie Bratko, said: “I want to assure our community that our top priority is the welfare and safety of our patients, and our hospital will remain open and operational during a strike to continue providing safe, high quality care.”

SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY FIX

• 

  Fixing capitalism

  Capitalism is just a collection of human decisions. We can change it if we want to.

  Tip: tap card to advance👉

  THE MOST PRESSING QUESTION

  Can capitalism work for stakeholders as well as shareholders?

  For decades—centuries, even—capitalism was sustained by individuals pursuing their own self interest, with the “invisible hand” of the market efficiently allocating resources and opportunities. Now this approach is under reappraisal, and a growing number of CEOs are realizing that businesses have a broader responsibility to a broader array of stakeholders: their employees, their community, and the environment.
  
  Stakeholder capitalism can be smart business, but it can also force companies to make tough choices. And shareholders aren’t going down without a fight.

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Covid is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of urbanites

REUTERS/BRYAN WOOLSTON

Covid is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of urbanites.
By Lauren Weber & Kaiser Health News
Published September 30, 2021

Rural Americans are dying of Covid at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts—a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer, and less vaccinated.

While the initial surge of Covid-19 deaths skipped over much of rural America, where roughly 15% of Americans live, nonmetropolitan mortality rates quickly started to outpace those of metropolitan areas as the virus spread nationwide before vaccinations became available, according to data from the Rural Policy Research Institute.

Since the pandemic began, about 1 in 434 rural Americans have died of Covid, compared with roughly 1 in 513 urban Americans, the institute’s data shows. And though vaccines have reduced overall Covid death rates since the winter peak, rural mortality rates are now more than double urban rates—and accelerating quickly.

In rural northeastern Texas, Titus Regional Medical Center CEO Terry Scoggin is grappling with a 39% vaccination rate in his community. Eleven patients died of Covid in the first half of September at his hospital in Mount Pleasant, population 16,000. Typically, three or four non-hospice patients die there in a whole month.

“We don’t see death like that,” Scoggin said. “You usually don’t see your friends and neighbors die.”

Part of the problem is that Covid incidence rates in September were roughly 54% higher in rural areas than elsewhere, said Fred Ullrich, a University of Iowa College of Public Health research analyst who co-authored the institute’s report. He said the analysis compared the rates of nonmetropolitan, or rural, areas and metropolitan, or urban, areas. In 39 states, he added, rural counties had higher rates of Covid than their urban counterparts.

“There is a national disconnect between perception and reality when it comes to Covid in rural America,” said Alan Morgan, head of the National Rural Health Association. “We’ve turned many rural communities into kill boxes. And there’s no movement towards addressing what we’re seeing in many of these communities, either among the public or among governing officials.”

Still, the high incidence of cases and low vaccination rates don’t fully capture why mortality rates are so much higher in rural areas than elsewhere. Academics and officials alike describe rural Americans’ greater rates of poor health and their limited options for medical care as a deadly combination. The pressures of the pandemic have compounded the problem by deepening staffing shortages at hospitals, creating a cycle of worsening access to care.

It’s the latest example of the deadly coronavirus wreaking more havoc in some communities than others. Covid has also killed Native American, Black, and Hispanic people at disproportionately high rates.

Vaccinations are the most effective way to prevent Covid infections from turning deadly. Roughly 41% of rural America was vaccinated as of Sept. 23, compared with about 53% of urban America, according to an analysis by The Daily Yonder, a newsroom covering rural America. Limited supplies and low access made shots hard to get in the far-flung regions at first, but officials and academics now blame vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, and politics for the low vaccination rates.

In hard-hit southwestern Missouri, for example, 26% of Newton County’s residents were fully vaccinated as of Sept. 27. The health department has held raffles and vaccine clinics, advertised in the local newspaper, and even driven the vaccine to those lacking transportation in remote areas, according to department administrator Larry Bergner. But he said interest in the shots typically increases only after someone dies or gets seriously ill within a hesitant person’s social circle.


Additionally, the overload of Covid patients in hospitals has undermined a basic tenet of rural healthcare infrastructure: the capability to transfer patients out of rural hospitals to higher levels of specialty care at regional or urban health centers.

“We literally have email Listservs of rural chief nursing officers or rural CEOs sending up an SOS to the group, saying, ‘We’ve called 60 or 70 hospitals and can’t get this heart attack or stroke patient or surgical patient out and they’re going to get septic and die if it goes on much longer,’” said John Henderson, president and CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals.

Morgan said he can’t count how many people have talked to him about the transfer problem.

“It’s crazy, just crazy. It’s unacceptable,” Morgan said. “From what I’m seeing, that mortality gap is accelerating.”

Access to medical care has long bedeviled swaths of rural America—since 2005, 181 rural hospitals have closed. A 2020 Kaiser Health News analysis found that more than half of US counties, many of them largely rural, don’t have a hospital with intensive care unit beds.

Pre-pandemic, rural Americans had 20% higher overall death rates than those who live in urban areas, due to their lower rates of insurance, higher rates of poverty, and more limited access to healthcare, according to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

In southeastern Missouri’s Ripley County, the local hospital closed in 2018. As of Sept. 27, only 24% of residents were fully vaccinated against Covid. Due to a recent crush of cases, Covid patients are getting sent home from emergency rooms in surrounding counties if they’re not “severely bad,” health department director Tammy Cosgrove said.

The nursing shortage hitting the country is particularly dire in rural areas, which have less money than large hospitals to pay the exorbitant fees travel nursing agencies are demanding. And as nursing temp agencies offer hospital staffers more cash to join their teams, many rural nurses are jumping ship. One of Scoggin’s nurses told him she had to take a travel job—she could pay off all her debt in three months with that kind of money.

And then there’s the burnout of working over a year and a half through the pandemic. Audrey Snyder, the immediate past president of the Rural Nurse Organization, said she’s lost count of how many nurses have told her they’re quitting. Those resignations feed into a relentless cycle: As travel nurse companies attract more nurses, the nurses left behind shouldering their work become more burned out—and eventually quit. While this is true at hospitals of all types, the effects in hard-to-staff rural hospitals can be especially dire.

Rural health officials fear the staffing shortages could be exacerbated by healthcare vaccination mandates promised by President Joe Biden, which they say could cause a wave of resignations the hospitals cannot afford. About half of Scoggin’s staff, for example, is unvaccinated.

Snyder warned that nursing shortages and their high associated costs will become unsustainable for rural hospitals operating on razor-thin margins. She predicted a new wave of rural hospital closures will further drive up the dire mortality numbers.

Staffing shortages already limit how many beds hospitals can use, Scoggin said. He estimated most hospitals in Texas, including his own, are operating at roughly two-thirds of their bed capacity. His emergency room is so swamped, he’s had to send a few patients home to be monitored daily by an ambulance team.

This article is republished from Kaiser Health News under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A hint the Afghanistan war isn't really over

Bonnie Kristian, Deputy editor

THE WEEK
Fri, October 1, 2021

Afghanistan. Illustrated | iStock, Library of Congress

The United States will continue "over the horizon" strikes against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Thursday, a month after the U.S. war in Afghanistan theoretically came to a close. The statement raises an important question: Just how completely did the war end?

When President Biden first announced his withdrawal timeline in May, his administration sent decidedly mixed messages. Biden himself had long favored keeping a residual American force on the ground indefinitely. Reports at the time indicated U.S. airstrikes would continue, a sizable presence of "clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors, and covert intelligence operatives" would remain, and many recently exited U.S. forces would set up shop in nearby nations and waters so they could continue training Afghan allies and conducting airstrikes.

Clearly some of that plan has changed following the chaotic U.S. withdrawal and Taliban takeover of Kabul. In recent weeks, Biden has rejected the residual force idea. Hopefully, we're no longer training the military of an Afghan government that no longer exists. But the status of clandestine troops, contractors, and spies is more uncertain. In early September, the Biden administration said only 100 to 200 Americans remained in Afghanistan. But some U.S. contractors aren't American, and if the Special Ops forces and spies were still present, they might not be included in that count. Admitting covert operatives are still in the country kind of ruins the whole "covert" thing.

Then there are these "over the horizon" strikes, which Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby clarified aren't exclusively drone hits, like the recent U.S. strike that killed seven children and no terrorists. "It doesn't even always have to mean aviation," Kirby said. "'Over the horizon,' as [Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin] defined it, means that the strike, assets, and the target analysis comes from outside the country in which the operation occurs."

In other words, plans to restation U.S. forces just outside Afghan borders may be significantly unchanged. (Strangely, those forces may set up shop on Russian military bases.) Some of these strikes — if they're not airstrikes — may even have U.S. boots once again on Afghan ground. And the strikes will fall under the aegis of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). That's the very authorization that launched the war in Afghanistan, the war that's supposed to be done.

NUCLEAR IS GREEN, IT GLOWS IN THE DARK

France could decide on new EPR reactors before Flamanville plant starts -minister


The questions to the government session at the National Assembly in Paris

Fri, October 1, 2021

PARIS (Reuters) - France could decide to build six new nuclear EPR reactors before EDF's EPR nuclear power plant in Flamanville, northwestern France, is fully operational, Industry Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said on Friday, as the country bets on renewables and nuclear power for its energy sovereignty.

The French government has said until now it would not launch new EPR reactor projects until the Flamanville EPR station, which suffered several delays, is completed.

"Once the EPR at Flamanville is completed, we have to make that decision (on new EPR reactors), maybe we will make it a little bit earlier when we are sure the Flamanville EPR is on the right track", Pannier-Runacher told BFM television.

The minister did not say when the plant at Flamanville will start running.

State-run EDF's CEO Jean-Bernard Levy reaffirmed in April that the new EPR reactor at Flamanville was expected to come on line at the end of 2022 but said EDF could not afford further problems if that timetable was to be met.

Work on Flamanville began in 2007, its expected cost has tripled and work is running a decade behind schedule after delays caused by problems including weak spots found in its reactor vessel head.

(Reporting by Gwenaelle Barzic, Benjamin Mallet and Matthieu Protard, Editing by Louise Heavens)

The Senate confirmed Rohit Chopra to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The student-loan industry could face a crackdown as yet another Elizabeth Warren ally takes a top oversight job for Biden

Ayelet Sheffey
Thu, September 30, 2021, 2:54 PM·3 min read

The Senate confirmed Rohit Chopra to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Chopra helped create the bureau with Elizabeth Warren and cracked down on the student-loan industry.

He joins other Warren allies in Biden's ranks fighting for student-loan borrowers.

Yet another ally of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren - one of the biggest advocates for student-loan borrowers in Congress - joined President Joe Biden's ranks on Thursday.

Before leaving for recess, the Senate confirmed Rohit Chopra to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the government's consumer protection and oversight agency. Chopra previously served in the CFPB as its first student-loan ombudsman, and he was with Warren when she created the agency in 2011 to ensure people across the country are being financially protected. Now, he joins CFPB as student-loan companies face more stringent regulations leading up to February's payment restart after more than a year's pause. In recent weeks, three servicers have said they'll be shutting down, leaving 16 million borrowers to transition to new companies.

After Chopra's nomination was announced in January, Warren wrote on Twitter that she worked closely with him "to set up the CFPB and fight for America's children."

"It's terrific that President-elect Biden picked Rohit to run the @CFPB," Warren wrote. "He's been a fearless champion for consumers at the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and will be a fearless champion leading the consumer agency."

Chopra left the CFPB in 2015 and was sworn in as a Federal Trade Commissioner in 2018, during which he worked to protect consumers from unfair business practices. But his work at the agency suggests the student-loan industry will be facing much stricter oversight from here on out.

As the agency's first student-loan watchdog, he primarily focused on unearthing problems with student-loan companies and ensuring the millions of borrowers across the country were not being mistreated. Chopra helped President Barack Obama establish the Student Aid Bill of Rights, which improves how the companies interact with borrowers, and in 2013, he led the bureau in discovering that more than 7 million borrowers were in default on their debt.

Since then, the CFPB has revealed a number of findings of student-loan abuses, and in some cases, has taken legal action against the companies. For example, the agency sued Navient, one of the biggest student-loan servicing companies in the US, in 2017 for "illegally failing borrowers at every stage of repayment," including causing borrowers to take on more debt than they could pay off.

Now that Chopra is confirmed to lead the agency, he will likely continue enforcing fair student lending. During his March confirmation hearing, Chopra said he will focus on protecting Americans with debt and he acknowledged the challenges that will come in February when the student-loan payment pause lifts.

"We are at a critical moment when so many borrowers are going to have to restart their payments," Chopra said during the hearing. He added that he will ensure the restart is "happening lawfully so we can avoid an avalanche of defaults when any moratorium might end."

Three student-loan companies have already announced their plans to shut down their services at the end of this year, bringing additional administrative hurdles to the already substantial burden the Education Department has with resuming payment collections for 43 million borrowers.

And Richard Cordray, the head of the Federal Student Aid office and another Warren ally, suggested in a conference earlier this month that those shutdowns are occurring because those companies do not want to be held to higher accountability standards under Biden.

Insider reported in July on the student-loan advocates that have joined Biden's ranks, and with Chopra now leading the government's consumer watchdog agency, more reforms to the student-loan industry are likely to come.

Fourth student loan servicer quits, Warren decries 'broken system'

Aarthi Swaminathan
·Reporter
Thu, September 30, 2021,

Major student loan servicer Navient (NAVI) is quitting the federal servicing business, the company announced Tuesday, handing off its 5.5 million borrowers holding about $280 billion in federal student loans to Maximus, another servicer.

Advocates and progressive lawmakers led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) heralded the move, in light of Navient's troubled relationship with the federal government's consumer protection bodies.

But the departure adds another challenge when the Education Department (ED) looks to end the student loan payment pause in January — especially after four other servicers quit in the past year.

"Even under the best of circumstances, this is a monumental task," Persis Yu, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, told Yahoo Finance. "It's a process that needs to be managed very slowly and deliberately, [and] I have a lot of concerns about whether or not that can actually be done in the timelines that we have."

Signage is seen on the offices of Navient in Wilmington, 

Delaware, U.S., June 9, 2021. 

REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

'Need to have hand-holding to this entire process'

With Navient's announcement, roughly 16.3 million student loan borrowers will be getting a new loan servicer in 2022.

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency — which services around 8.5 million student loan borrowers — and Granite State — which services around 1.3 million borrowers — both called it quits in July. Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority, which pulled out in October 2020, serviced around 1 million student loan borrowers.

The departures come as the majority of the 43 million student loan borrowers across the U.S must start paying their loans again. The payments have been paused, without interest, since March 13, 2020, with the Biden administration recently extending the pause through January 31, 2022.

Advocates expressed deep concern about the transfer process, given the short timeline between October and February 2022. The U.S. government, which owns trillions of dollars in student loan debt, has already expressed that ending the payment pause needs to be carefully managed.

Navient’s departure aside, these transitions are going to be tricky, especially given uncertainty around whether the servicers "have the staff capacity to handle the influx of borrowers who are going to be confused and are going to need to have hand-holding to this entire process,” Yu said.

Richard Cordray, chief operating officer of Federal Student Aid, which handles the trillion-dollar student loan portfolio, said in a statement that his agency is still reviewing documents and information from both Navient and Maximus "to ensure that the proposal meets all legal requirements and properly protects borrowers and taxpayers."

Richard Nicholls, 22, a graduate in engineering from The City College of New York is on his phone after his commencement ceremony in Manhattan on May 31, 2019. REUTERS/Gabriela Bhaskar

'Behind the scenes company'

Maximus for its part has expressed its intention to provide high-quality service for student loan borrowers with the payment pause ending. Maximus spokesperson Eileen Cassidy Rivera said in a statement to Yahoo Finance that the company was "committed to ensuring a seamless transition for student loan borrowers" and to help borrowers manage the re-starting of repayment come 2022.

But Yu and other advocates also expressed concern that Maximus, despite being a government contractor over the years, had largely been out of the public eye and doesn’t provide the same services that Navient does.

Maximus has until now run debt collection and management for ED, according to a blog post by the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC). And not many borrowers are aware of the company's existence, said Yu.

"Maximus is a company that has not been subject to much public scrutiny. It is a servicer, but it doesn't do the functions that Navient, [the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency], and the other ones do," Yu explained. "So we don't have a track record of how it helps borrowers navigate income-based repayment."

And being a very "behind the scenes company," she added, "it's concerning that Navient can just choose its replacement and choose someone who is not in the public eye, and who has no track record."

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES - 2019/07/23: U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks at a press conference during the introduction of a bill to cancel students loan debt held at the Capitol in Washington, DC. 

(Photo by Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)More

Navient's problems

Navient has long been in the crosshairs of advocates and progressive lawmakers who believed the company was responsible for shoddy servicing, such as steering student loan borrowers into high-cost repayment plans or for deceptive practices from New Jersey to Washington.

Its departure was welcomed.

“Navient has spent decades misleading, cheating, and abusing student borrowers. The Federal student loan program will be far better off without them," Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in a statement.

"Ultimately, the student loan system is broken,” she continued. “The only way to guarantee that borrowers do not face the same predatory behavior from Navient’s replacement is to cancel student debt, so that no borrower’s future is held hostage by corporations profiting off their financial distress.”

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Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.