Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced new grants to support schools as they strive to serve healthy food, provide nutrition education, and create an environment focused on healthy eating and physical activity.
"When we serve our children healthy school meals, we're making a critical investment in their academic performance, their physical health, and their future," said Merrigan. "Today's announcement reflects our ongoing commitment to provide States with the tools they need to build a healthy school environment. Providing nutrition education resources, extending training and technical assistance to foodservice professionals, and building community support helps ensure that every child in America has a chance to succeed."
Funded in support of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the Team Nutrition training grants will assist schools in meeting the new school meal requirements, encourage HealthierUS School Challenge participation, support students' nutritious choices by structuring the cafeteria environment in a way that encourages the selection of healthy foods, and promote healthier environments to align with the Local Wellness Policy requirements established in the Act.
USDA is awarding approximately $5.2 million in 18 States and one territory including:
Alaska, $242,847.00 (competitive)
Arizona, $319,772.00 (competitive)
Florida, $311,500.00 (competitive)
Guam, $330,344.00 (competitive)
Hawaii, $233,016.00 (competitive)
Idaho, $245,120.00 (competitive)
Illinois, $50,000.00 (non-competitive)
Iowa, $348,335.00 (competitive)
Kansas, $349,715.00 (competitive)
Michigan, $333,420.00 (competitive)
Missouri, $342,609.00 (competitive)
Montana, $349,924.00 (competitive)
New Jersey, $324,151.00 (competitive)
North Dakota, $247,580.00 (competitive)
Ohio, $345,849.00 (competitive)
Utah, $41,540.00 (non-competitive)
Washington, $222,508.00 (competitive)
Washington, $46,772.00 (non-competitive)
West Virginia, $346,515.00 (competitive)
Wisconsin, $203,056.00 (competitive)
Funding will be made available for the period of September 30, 2012 through September 30, 2014, to assist State agencies in achieving the Team Nutrition goals. States must apply Team Nutrition's three behavior-focused strategies:
Provide training and technical assistance to child nutrition food service professionals to enable them to prepare and serve nutritious meals that appeal to children. Provide fun and interactive nutrition education for children, teachers, parents, and other caregivers. Build school and community support for creating healthy school environments that are conducive to healthy eating and physical activity.
This school year, 32 million students across the country are benefiting from new meal standards for the National School Lunch Program for the first time in more than fifteen years. The healthier school meals are a key component of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was championed by the First Lady as part of her Let's Move! campaign and signed into law by President Obama. To learn about the new meal standards, go to www.fns.usda.gov/healthierschoolday.
USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) oversees the administration of 15 nutrition assistance programs, including school meals programs, that touch the lives of one in four Americans over the course of a year. These programs work together to form a national safety net against hunger. Visit www.fns.usda.gov for information about FNS and nutrition assistance programs.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
Hospital Payment Assistance Program
The “Hospital Payment Assistance Program” (SB12-134), which becomes law August 8, 2012, will help working families who cannot afford insurance to responsibly pay their hospital bills.
Uninsured patients, who do not have the bargaining power of large insurance companies or public programs, are charged much higher prices for hospital care than those with insurance. Public programs and private insurers negotiate lower prices with hospitals. Uninsured patients are the only group that pays the full listed prices for hospital care. These higher prices are a significant hardship for working families that already struggle to afford medical care, forcing many patients to go into debt, or even declare bankruptcy.
The “Hospital Payment Assistance Program” addresses this issue by creating increased transparency standards regarding hospital discount policies, regulating debt collection practices, and limiting the price that can be charged to uninsured patients below 250% of the Federal Poverty Level. These measures gives working families important information about hospital discount policies and charity care and a chance to responsibly pay their medical bills.
The Bill
Uninsured patients, who do not have the bargaining power of large insurance companies or public programs, are charged much higher prices for hospital care than those with insurance. Public programs and private insurers negotiate lower prices with hospitals. Uninsured patients are the only group that pays the full listed prices for hospital care. These higher prices are a significant hardship for working families that already struggle to afford medical care, forcing many patients to go into debt, or even declare bankruptcy.
The “Hospital Payment Assistance Program” addresses this issue by creating increased transparency standards regarding hospital discount policies, regulating debt collection practices, and limiting the price that can be charged to uninsured patients below 250% of the Federal Poverty Level. These measures gives working families important information about hospital discount policies and charity care and a chance to responsibly pay their medical bills.
The Bill
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Wealth Doesn't Trickle Down – It Just Floods Offshore
Wealth Doesn't Trickle Down – It Just Floods Offshore, Research Reveals
21st July 2012 - Heather Stewart, The Guardian
The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy.
James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group – sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system.
Comedian Jimmy Carr became the public face of tax-dodging in the UK earlier this year when it emerged that he had made use of a Cayman Islands-based trust to slash his income tax bill.
But the kind of scheme Carr took part in is the tip of the iceberg, according to Henry's report, entitled The Price of Offshore Revisited. Despite the professed determination of the G20 group of leading economies to tackle tax secrecy, investors in scores of countries – including the US and the UK – are still able to hide some or all of their assets from the taxman.
"This offshore economy is large enough to have a major impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt ratios; and – most importantly – to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax bases of 'source' countries," Henry says.
Using the BIS's measure of "offshore deposits" – cash held outside the depositor's home country – and scaling it up according to the proportion of their portfolio large investors usually hold in cash, he estimates that between $21tn (£13tn) and $32tn (£20tn) in financial assets has been hidden from the world's tax authorities.
"These estimates reveal a staggering failure," says John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. "Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people.
"This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich."
In total, 10 million individuals around the world hold assets offshore, according to Henry's analysis; but almost half of the minimum estimate of $21tn – $9.8tn – is owned by just 92,000 people. And that does not include the non-financial assets – art, yachts, mansions in Kensington – that many of the world's movers and shakers like to use as homes for their immense riches.
"If we could figure out how to tax all this offshore wealth without killing the proverbial golden goose, or at least entice its owners to reinvest it back home, this sector of the global underground is easily large enough to make a significant contribution to tax justice, investment and paying the costs of global problems like climate change," Henry says.
He corroborates his findings by using national accounts to assemble estimates of the cumulative capital flight from more than 130 low- to middle-income countries over almost 40 years, and the returns their wealthy owners are likely to have made from them.
In many cases, , the total worth of these assets far exceeds the value of the overseas debts of the countries they came from.
The struggles of the authorities in Egypt to recover the vast sums hidden abroad by Hosni Mubarak, his family and other cronies during his many years in power have provided a striking recent example of the fact that kleptocratic rulers can use their time to amass immense fortunes while many of their citizens are trapped in poverty.
The world's poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have fought long and hard in recent years to receive debt forgiveness from the international community; but this research suggests that in many cases, if they had been able to draw their richest citizens into the tax net, they could have avoided being dragged into indebtedness in the first place. Oil-rich Nigeria has seen more than $300bn spirited away since 1970, for example, while Ivory Coast has lost $141bn.
Assuming that super-rich investors earn a relatively modest 3% a year on their $21tn, taxing that vast wall of money at 30% would generate a very useful $189bn a year – more than rich economies spend on aid to the rest of the world.
The sheer scale of the hidden assets held by the super-rich also suggests that standard measures of inequality, which tend to rely on surveys of household income or wealth in individual countries, radically underestimate the true gap between rich and poor.
Milorad Kovacevic, chief statistician of the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, says both the very wealthy and the very poor tend to be excluded from mainstream calculations of inequality.
"People that are in charge of measuring inequality based on survey data know that the both ends of the distribution are underrepresented – or, even better, misrepresented," he says.
"There is rarely a household from the top 1% earners that participates in the survey. On the other side, the poor people either don't have addresses to be selected into the sample, or when selected they misquote their earnings – usually biasing them upwards."
Inequality is widely seen as having increased sharply in many developed countries over the past decade or more – as described in a recent paper from the IMF, which showed marked increases in the so-called Gini coefficient, which economists use to measure how evenly income is shared across societies.
Globalisation has exposed low-skilled workers to competition from cheap economies such as China, while the surging profitability of the financial services industry – and the spread of the big bonus culture before the credit crunch – led to what economists have called a "racing away" at the top of the income scale.
However, Henry's research suggests that this acknowledged jump in inequality is a dramatic underestimate. Stewart Lansley, author of the recent book The Cost of Inequality, says: "There is absolutely no doubt at all that the statistics on income and wealth at the top understate the problem."
The surveys that are used to compile the Gini coefficient "simply don't touch the super-rich," he says. "You don't pick up the multimillionaires and billionaires, and even if you do, you can't pick it up properly."
In fact, some experts believe the amount of assets being held offshore is so large that accounting for it fully would radically alter the balance of financial power between countries. The French economist Thomas Piketty, an expert on inequality who helps compile the World Top Incomes Database, says research by his colleagues has shown that "the wealth held in tax havens is probably sufficiently substantial to turn Europe into a very large net creditor with respect to the rest of the world."
In other words, even a solution to the eurozone's seemingly endless sovereign debt crisis might be within reach – if only Europe's governments could get a grip on the wallets of their own wealthiest citizens.
Original source....
21st July 2012 - Heather Stewart, The Guardian
The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy.
James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group – sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system.
Comedian Jimmy Carr became the public face of tax-dodging in the UK earlier this year when it emerged that he had made use of a Cayman Islands-based trust to slash his income tax bill.
But the kind of scheme Carr took part in is the tip of the iceberg, according to Henry's report, entitled The Price of Offshore Revisited. Despite the professed determination of the G20 group of leading economies to tackle tax secrecy, investors in scores of countries – including the US and the UK – are still able to hide some or all of their assets from the taxman.
"This offshore economy is large enough to have a major impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt ratios; and – most importantly – to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax bases of 'source' countries," Henry says.
Using the BIS's measure of "offshore deposits" – cash held outside the depositor's home country – and scaling it up according to the proportion of their portfolio large investors usually hold in cash, he estimates that between $21tn (£13tn) and $32tn (£20tn) in financial assets has been hidden from the world's tax authorities.
"These estimates reveal a staggering failure," says John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. "Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people.
"This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich."
In total, 10 million individuals around the world hold assets offshore, according to Henry's analysis; but almost half of the minimum estimate of $21tn – $9.8tn – is owned by just 92,000 people. And that does not include the non-financial assets – art, yachts, mansions in Kensington – that many of the world's movers and shakers like to use as homes for their immense riches.
"If we could figure out how to tax all this offshore wealth without killing the proverbial golden goose, or at least entice its owners to reinvest it back home, this sector of the global underground is easily large enough to make a significant contribution to tax justice, investment and paying the costs of global problems like climate change," Henry says.
He corroborates his findings by using national accounts to assemble estimates of the cumulative capital flight from more than 130 low- to middle-income countries over almost 40 years, and the returns their wealthy owners are likely to have made from them.
In many cases, , the total worth of these assets far exceeds the value of the overseas debts of the countries they came from.
The struggles of the authorities in Egypt to recover the vast sums hidden abroad by Hosni Mubarak, his family and other cronies during his many years in power have provided a striking recent example of the fact that kleptocratic rulers can use their time to amass immense fortunes while many of their citizens are trapped in poverty.
The world's poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have fought long and hard in recent years to receive debt forgiveness from the international community; but this research suggests that in many cases, if they had been able to draw their richest citizens into the tax net, they could have avoided being dragged into indebtedness in the first place. Oil-rich Nigeria has seen more than $300bn spirited away since 1970, for example, while Ivory Coast has lost $141bn.
Assuming that super-rich investors earn a relatively modest 3% a year on their $21tn, taxing that vast wall of money at 30% would generate a very useful $189bn a year – more than rich economies spend on aid to the rest of the world.
The sheer scale of the hidden assets held by the super-rich also suggests that standard measures of inequality, which tend to rely on surveys of household income or wealth in individual countries, radically underestimate the true gap between rich and poor.
Milorad Kovacevic, chief statistician of the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, says both the very wealthy and the very poor tend to be excluded from mainstream calculations of inequality.
"People that are in charge of measuring inequality based on survey data know that the both ends of the distribution are underrepresented – or, even better, misrepresented," he says.
"There is rarely a household from the top 1% earners that participates in the survey. On the other side, the poor people either don't have addresses to be selected into the sample, or when selected they misquote their earnings – usually biasing them upwards."
Inequality is widely seen as having increased sharply in many developed countries over the past decade or more – as described in a recent paper from the IMF, which showed marked increases in the so-called Gini coefficient, which economists use to measure how evenly income is shared across societies.
Globalisation has exposed low-skilled workers to competition from cheap economies such as China, while the surging profitability of the financial services industry – and the spread of the big bonus culture before the credit crunch – led to what economists have called a "racing away" at the top of the income scale.
However, Henry's research suggests that this acknowledged jump in inequality is a dramatic underestimate. Stewart Lansley, author of the recent book The Cost of Inequality, says: "There is absolutely no doubt at all that the statistics on income and wealth at the top understate the problem."
The surveys that are used to compile the Gini coefficient "simply don't touch the super-rich," he says. "You don't pick up the multimillionaires and billionaires, and even if you do, you can't pick it up properly."
In fact, some experts believe the amount of assets being held offshore is so large that accounting for it fully would radically alter the balance of financial power between countries. The French economist Thomas Piketty, an expert on inequality who helps compile the World Top Incomes Database, says research by his colleagues has shown that "the wealth held in tax havens is probably sufficiently substantial to turn Europe into a very large net creditor with respect to the rest of the world."
In other words, even a solution to the eurozone's seemingly endless sovereign debt crisis might be within reach – if only Europe's governments could get a grip on the wallets of their own wealthiest citizens.
Original source....
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Healthier School Year
Agriculture Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon today announced that America's students will see healthier and more nutritious foods in the cafeteria as they return to school this year. The new nutrition standards for school meals, implemented as a result of the historic Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, will help to combat child hunger and obesity and improve the health and nutrition of the nation's children.
"Improving the nutrition of school meals is an important investment in the future of America's children," said Concannon. "We know that healthy food plays a vital role in strengthening a child's body and mind and the healthier school meals will help to ensure our children can learn, grow, and reach their full potential."
Starting this school year, schools will phase in the nutrition standards over a three-year period. Schools will focus on changes in the lunches in the first year, with most changes in breakfast to take place in future years. The new meal standards:
Watch a special back to school welcome video from First Lady Michelle Obama.
USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) oversees the administration of 15 nutrition assistance programs, including school meals programs, that touch the lives of one in four Americans over the course of a year. These programs work in concert to form a national safety net against hunger. Visit www.fns.usda.gov for information about FNS and nutrition assistance programs. To learn about the meal standards, go to www.fns.usda.gov/healthierschoolday.
"Improving the nutrition of school meals is an important investment in the future of America's children," said Concannon. "We know that healthy food plays a vital role in strengthening a child's body and mind and the healthier school meals will help to ensure our children can learn, grow, and reach their full potential."
Starting this school year, schools will phase in the nutrition standards over a three-year period. Schools will focus on changes in the lunches in the first year, with most changes in breakfast to take place in future years. The new meal standards:
- Ensure students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week;
- Substantially increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods and low-fat milk or fat-free milk varieties;
- Limit calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and
- Focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats and sodium.
Watch a special back to school welcome video from First Lady Michelle Obama.
USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) oversees the administration of 15 nutrition assistance programs, including school meals programs, that touch the lives of one in four Americans over the course of a year. These programs work in concert to form a national safety net against hunger. Visit www.fns.usda.gov for information about FNS and nutrition assistance programs. To learn about the meal standards, go to www.fns.usda.gov/healthierschoolday.
Farm Exports
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack released the following statement today on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's export forecast for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, which shows a level of U.S. agricultural exports unmatched in our nation's history.
"Today's export forecast marks indication of an historic achievement for America's farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses. Even with tough odds due to extreme weather, U.S. agriculture is now poised for three consecutive years of record exports, smashing all previous records and putting America's agricultural sector on pace to achieve President Obama's goal under the National Export Initiative of doubling exports by the end of 2014. These exports will support more than 1 million jobs in communities across the country.
"Exports of U.S. food and agricultural products are expected to reach $143.5 billion in fiscal 2013, well above the record set in 2011. At the same time, the forecast for fiscal 2012 is revised upward to a near-record $136.5 billion. Since 2009, U.S. agricultural exports have made gains of 50 percent.
"When we look beyond the remarkable results, we see two strong storylines. The first is a story of American innovation and resiliency. U.S. agriculture as a whole is resilient thanks to producers' ability to innovate, reduce their debt and capitalize on expanding market opportunities. The second is a President who has laid the groundwork for success in rural America. Since 2009, under the President's National Export Initiative, the Obama Administration has renegotiated and implemented important trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia, expanded trade in organics with the European Union, removed hundreds of unfair barriers to trade for American companies, and provided businesses the credit, knowledge and connections they need to reach new markets.
"At the same time, the Obama Administration has invested in rural America's future with support for renewable energy and bio-based products that provide rural communities with a sure path toward a sustainable period of growth and innovation.
"Thanks to this successful partnership, U.S. agriculture is stronger today than at any time in our nation's history, supporting and creating good American jobs for millions.
"Congress needs to help ensure that this success continues by passing a comprehensive, multi-year Food, Farm and Jobs Bill that provides greater certainty for farmers and ranchers."
"Today's export forecast marks indication of an historic achievement for America's farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses. Even with tough odds due to extreme weather, U.S. agriculture is now poised for three consecutive years of record exports, smashing all previous records and putting America's agricultural sector on pace to achieve President Obama's goal under the National Export Initiative of doubling exports by the end of 2014. These exports will support more than 1 million jobs in communities across the country.
"Exports of U.S. food and agricultural products are expected to reach $143.5 billion in fiscal 2013, well above the record set in 2011. At the same time, the forecast for fiscal 2012 is revised upward to a near-record $136.5 billion. Since 2009, U.S. agricultural exports have made gains of 50 percent.
"When we look beyond the remarkable results, we see two strong storylines. The first is a story of American innovation and resiliency. U.S. agriculture as a whole is resilient thanks to producers' ability to innovate, reduce their debt and capitalize on expanding market opportunities. The second is a President who has laid the groundwork for success in rural America. Since 2009, under the President's National Export Initiative, the Obama Administration has renegotiated and implemented important trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia, expanded trade in organics with the European Union, removed hundreds of unfair barriers to trade for American companies, and provided businesses the credit, knowledge and connections they need to reach new markets.
"At the same time, the Obama Administration has invested in rural America's future with support for renewable energy and bio-based products that provide rural communities with a sure path toward a sustainable period of growth and innovation.
"Thanks to this successful partnership, U.S. agriculture is stronger today than at any time in our nation's history, supporting and creating good American jobs for millions.
"Congress needs to help ensure that this success continues by passing a comprehensive, multi-year Food, Farm and Jobs Bill that provides greater certainty for farmers and ranchers."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)