Author: ajohnstone

Pandemic? Alright for Health Insurers

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 US health insurers doubled profits in the second quarter of 2020 compared with the same time last year.



 US’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, reported $6.7bn in profits compared with $3.4bn for the same quarter last year. Anthem’s profits rose to $2.3bn from $1.1bn for the same three-month period in 2019. Humana reported last week its earnings rose to $1.8bn, compared with $940m in 2019.

The cost of providing medical care was lower in 2020. People were avoiding the doctor’s office and delaying elective surgeries such as knee replacement. Those with mild symptoms of Covid-19 were initially advised to stay home unless they needed urgent care.
But the money insurance companies collect each month from individuals, known as premiums, kept pouring in. “Private insurance companies make money by taking in premiums and not paying for care,” Dr Steffie Woolhandler, professor at Cuny Hunter College and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.
The drop in spending was a benefit for insurers, but has left already struggling independent doctor’s offices and rural hospitals vulnerable to closures and layoffs. In late July, 20% of clinicians had salaries skipped or deferred over the previous four weeks and 24% reported recent layoffs or furloughs, according to a survey.
Andy Slavitt, a health official in Barack Obama’s administration, tweeted last week. “It’s a system designed for & by insurance companies & pharma companies. Not us. Not doctors and nurses.”

Relaxing Pollution Controls

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The Environmental Protection Agency is revoking rules that require oil and gas drillers to detect and fix leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas that heats the planet far faster than carbon dioxide. Methane has a much more potent short-term warming effect than CO2 and addressing it is critical to slowing global heating as the world is already on track to become more than 3C hotter than before industrialization. Roughly a quarter of global warming the planet has experienced in recent decades has been due to methane, said Robert Howarth, a researcher who studies methane at Cornell University. The oil and gas industry is the biggest source of the pollutant.



 Agency administrator, Andrew Wheeler, will announce the rollback from Pennsylvania, which has major oil and gas operations and is also a politically important swing state. The rule change is part of what Trump calls his “energy dominance” agenda. The methane rollbacks are part of a broad deregulatory campaign by the Trump administration, which has weakened environment and climate standards.



 In 2016 Obama enacted rules and regulations in an effort to help stall climate change during a boom in fracking – a method of extracting fossil gas by injecting water and chemicals underground. The regulations required companies to regularly check for methane leaks from valves, pipelines and tanks. Even those in the large oil companies have argued for keeping the rules, saying they are needed so the industry can limit its climate footprint as it markets gas as a smart alternative to coal – which emits far more carbon dioxide.



 Methane emitted today is largely gone in 30 years and totally gone in about 60 years, but it has a big effect on the climate in the meantime. That effect is most significant in the first months methane is released, when it is about 120 times stronger than carbon. That drops to around 86 times more powerful over 20 years and 33 times more powerful if compared with carbon over 100 years. Reductions in carbon have a delayed effect on temperatures. But reductions in methane have a more immediate impact. By 2021, methane emissions from existing oil and gas operations could total 9.8m metric tons,  a report from the Environmental Defense Fund. EPA could cut that amount by 37%, or 3.6m metric tons.



 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/13/trump-rolls-back-methane-climate-standards-oil-gas-industry

Food insecurity under COVID-19

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The coronavirus pandemic has had a catastrophic effect on the nutritional health of the UK’s poorest citizens with as many as one in 10 forced to use food banks, and vast numbers skipping meals and going hungry, according to the government’s food safety watchdog.  Food insecurity in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was experienced by about 16% of adults – equivalent to up to 7.8 million people. 
This figure more than doubled under Covid-19 and has remained stable over the first four months of the pandemic.  Food bank use has remained high, with one in 10 people reporting they had accessed one in June. Separate figures published by Food Standards Scotland found 5% used food banks. Prior to Covid-19 best estimates put UK food bank use at about 2% of adults. Despite the surge in numbers using food banks since lockdown, the FSA’s qualitative study noted that many of the struggling people interviewed said they had avoided food charity because they felt too ashamed at being unable to provide for their family, and would rather cut meals rather than accept handouts.
Food insecurity has shot up even further since lockdown as people’s income reduced, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said, heightening the risk both of malnutrition and obesity as struggling families adopted highly restrictive “basic sustenance” diets that largely cut out healthy foods.
Food during the Covid crisis was “a continual source of concern and worry” rather than nourishment and security for many families, it found. “Many quickly cut calorie intake and reduced the quality of the food eaten – with far-reaching physical and emotional impact. Many children went without.”
Increasing food prices meant some doubled their food spend, even though they ate less. Many struggled to afford food used to manage their health – such as gluten-free. Birthday meals and Sunday lunches were cancelled. “There was little sense of social sharing when serving toast for the second ‘meal’ of the day.”
The FSA is concerned that many people in food insecurity reported regularly eating food beyond its use-by date such as bagged salad, cheese and smoked fish. Over a quarter said they drank milk that was past its use-by date. “Stretching out” food in this way put them at risk of food poisoning.
“Our research shows our food habits changed rapidly in lockdown and that food insecurity has become an issue for many people,” said the FSA’s chief executive, Emily Miles.
Food insecurity is broadly defined as experiencing hunger, the inability to secure food of sufficient quality and quantity to enable good health and social participation, and cutting down on food because of a lack of money. 
For the better off, Covid-19 has for many provided nutritional benefits, the FSA noted, with its tracker survey showing more people cooking at home from scratch using healthy ingredients rather than having takeaways or buying processed meals, as well as enjoying more family meals together.
These benefits were largely denied to people in food insecurity, whose diet narrowed sharply and was biased towards cheap carbohydrates like rice and pasta. One man, the FSA study found, “ate mostly tinned peas on toast; another woman mostly bread.” Many showed “early signs” of malnutrition. Others put on weight.
The FSA’s independent Covid-19 expert advisory panel had identified food insecurity as a “prioritise and act” issue – echoing the findings of the recently published National Food Strategy, which concluded that post-lockdown recession many more families will struggle to feed themselves adequately.
The FSA said its independent Covid-19 expert advisory panel had identified food insecurity as a “prioritise and act” issue – echoing the findings of the recently published National Food Strategy, which concluded that post-lockdown recession many more families will struggle to feed themselves adequately.
“These reports speak of the brutal reality of being too poor to put a meal on the table and how debilitating this is for households with children,” said Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation thinktank. “All scenarios point to a worsening of this bleak situation…”

Meat the Amazon Deforestation Corporation

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Banking giant HSBC have sounded the alarm over the potential risks of investing in JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, after a string of investigations raising concerns about Amazon deforestation issues in its beef supply chain. JBS has annual revenues of $50bn (£38bn) and slaughters almost 35,000 cattle a day in Brazil. JBS’s trucks had moved cattle from a ranch marked by government data as being under sanction due to illegal deforestation to a “clean” farm, which in turn sold cattle onto JBS abattoirs.
The meat giant “has no vision, action plan, timeline, technology or solution” for monitoring whether the cattle it buys originate from farms involved in rainforest destruction, according to analysis by the bank, which has substantial investments in the troubled meat packing firm.
HSBC analysts said they had asked the company “multiple times” about its plan to address deforestation but appeared to be unsatisfied. The analysts expressed disquiet that in their view the company had allowed a smaller competitor to take on the mantle of addressing forest destruction, after Marfrig – another Brazilian beef exporter – committed to full traceability of its Amazon cattle by 2025.
“We have never seen a major industry leader default an industry matter this serious to a smaller participant,” the report said. “It is the major risk on JBS that worries us because it speaks to seriousness of purpose on ESG [environmental and social governance] matters for a company that in our view, has something to prove.” It adds: “There is a valuation benefit that goes with being the largest solution provider to deforestation in Brazil and unfortunately, we don’t see JBS inclined to lead and own that title.”
HSBC analysts discussed JBS’s recent attempt to split the Brazilian part of its business from its global operations, in order to float the international arm on the New York Stock Exchange with no Amazon risk for investors. The report also refers to other historical issues. “After its legacy of governance and corruption problems, JBS’s board and senior leadership are in need of proof points that the firm has indeed turned over a new leaf on ESG responsibility matters.”
JBS is coming under increasing pressure from investors over its environmental record. The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group last month dropped the company from its portfolio. JBS is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund.
The bank’s report comes amid global outrage over the fate of the world’s biggest rainforest. The Amazon is a crucial buffer in stabilising the regional and global climate. Experts say its preservation is essential to tackling the climate emergency. Last year, a study by supply-chain initiative Trase concluded that JBS’s global beef exports were linked to up to 300 sq km of deforestation per year in Brazil.
Despite all this, HSBC report still recommends buying JBS stock. “We like JBS for its debt reduction story, diverse portfolio of proteins, geographic footprint, leadership in the industry and scale. Its proposed New York listing would likely improve governance if done correctly, reduce cost of capital and strategically position the company for new growth opportunities.” HSBC holds JBS shares and bonds worth some $9 million

Oil and The Amazon

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Indigenous people living at the headwaters of the Amazon have called on European banks to stop financing oil development in the region, as it poses a threat to them and damages a fragile ecosystem, after a new report found $10bn in previously undisclosed funding for oil in the region.
The headwaters of the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru are home to more than 500,000 indigenous people, including some who choose to live in voluntary isolation. The area, covering about 30m hectares (74m acres), hosts a diverse rainforest ecosystem, but it is threatened by the expansion of oil drilling. An oil spill in April in Ecuador contaminated hundreds of miles of two major rivers and affected 35,000 people in river communities, and there have been ongoing oil spills in Peru. Previous oil exploration in the region resulted in about 17m gallons of crude oil being spilled. About 40% of the oil is exported to refineries in California.
Many banks have pledged to halt or limit the finance they provide to fossil fuel projects, particularly in delicate ecosystems, but the new report focuses on a grey area of bank lending: instead of project finance, the authors looked at trade finance. Project finance is used to start and develop oil wells, fossil fuel extraction, refineries and pipelines, but trade finance is used to move the oil and gas from production to refineries. Banks make loans to companies seeking trade finance, sometimes through intermediaries, but these loans often do not fall under their standard sustainability goals. In a new report, Stand.earth Research Group and Amazon Watch traced $10bn (£7.6bn) of trade finance since 2009 from 19 European banks covering oil in the headwaters of the Amazon. Several of the banks named in the report have confirmed that trade finance – unlike project finance for fossil fuels – did not fall under their standard pledges on sustainable lending.
Marlon Vargas, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, said: “I wonder if the executives of banks in Europe know the real cost of their financing. How can they possibly sleep peacefully knowing their money leaves thousands of indigenous peoples and communities without water, without food and in devastating health conditions due to the pollution of the Coca and Napo rivers? It is time for the banks, companies and consumers of the oil extracted in the Ecuadorian Amazon to acknowledge how their businesses affect our territories and way of life.”
Tyson Miller, the forest programmes director at Stand.earth, told the Guardian: “The Amazon sacred headwaters region is a cultural and ecological gem. It is considered to be the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystem on the planet, maintaining the hydrological cycle for all of the Americas, and helping to regulate Earth’s climate. New and ongoing oil extraction in the region is a gateway to deforestation and increased agricultural and industrial activity, which is why indigenous leaders in the region have repeatedly voiced their opposition to the expansion of the oil industry, and other industrial activities in their territories.”

The Language of Hate, Not Humanity

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Ministers have been accused of “stoking tension and division” with comments on migrant boat crossings in the English Channel.
Boris Johnson has called the journeys “very bad and stupid and dangerous and criminal”, while a former royal marine has been put in the new post of “clandestine Channel threat commander”. Priti Patel, the home secretary, called crossings “totally unacceptable” and government statements have repeatedly labelled them illegal.
An official UNHCR document on terminology states that the term “illegal migrant” is legally incorrect and “dehumanising”, adding: “The word ‘illegal’ depicts migrants as dishonest, undeserving, and criminals who are a threat to the public good. This normalises the use of punitive measures, enforcement, and procedures to punish and deter irregular migrants.”
The Refugee Council said the term “illegal migrants” should not be used to describe vulnerable people seeking safety and protection. Its director of advocacy Lisa Doyle said: “This unhelpful language can stoke tension and division, at a time when we need the government to show strong, compassionate and responsible leadership on asylum policy.”
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said the continued use of the word “illegal” was “dehumanising, wrong, and seems calculated to whip up anti-migrant sentiment”.
Its legal policy director Chai Patel added: “People have a legal right to cross borders without documents in order to seek asylum. No human being is illegal, and this language wrongly leads to a perception that migrants should be prosecuted and punished, instead of treated with the dignity and respect everyone deserves.”
Charity Refugee Action accused the government of “overt and aggressive hostility” towards asylum seekers crossing the channel by boat. “It is making a bad situation dramatically worse,” said chief executive Stephen Hale. “Their language shows no understanding and no compassion for people who have come from violent and oppressive countries and suffered in ways that are beyond many of our imaginations. This language is also certain to exacerbate the anxiety felt by many people already in the UK who have claimed asylum, and to give cover to those who may wish them harm.”
Anne McLaughlin, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Refugees, told The Independent it was “not illegal for people to cross the Channel” using irregular routes. “The language seems very deliberate and ideological about views that people need to be seen as not human, but criminal,” she added. “I don’t believe for a minute that they’re not aware that using language like ‘Channel threat commander’ will make the public see people as a threat.”
She called the prime minister’s comments on “dangerous and criminal” crossings “vile”, adding: “It’s intended to sow division. As far as I can see, what the government is concerned about is building walls to stop people getting into the Channel and not about tackling the root causes,” she added.
Laura Padoan, a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said “We should respond with humanity rather than hyperbole.”
David Simmonds, the Conservative co-chair of the APPG on Refugees, urged the government to bolster “robust legal routes” to seek asylum in order to bring the situation under control.  Simmonds said “a lot” of migrants had already died attempting to reach the UK and the true number is unknown.
Extremist group Britain First has launched a “patrol boat” in the Channel and far-right activists have been harassing migrants at a reception centre in Dover.


The Power of the Vote

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Poverty affects more than 38 million people in America.



  A report for the Poor People’s Campaign of the country’s 63 million registered low-income or poor voters, 34 million did not cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election.



 “If the low-income electorate showed up at the same participation rate as high-income voters, it could swing the election in 10 states that were previously Republican, and five states that were previously Democrat,” said Robert Paul Hartley, the study’s author and a professor of economics at the Columbia School of Social Work.



 An increase of at least 1% of the non-voting, low-income electorate would equal the margin of victory in the 2016 presidential election in Michigan or a 4% to 7% increase in states such as Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin,” the study notes.



 But low-income and impoverished voters still have to turn out, and first they must register to vote. Voter turnout reached a 20-year low in 2016. But 2020 represents an unprecedented year marked by a pandemic, a recession and racial uprising following the killing of George Floyd which has sparked a surge among mostly, young and progressive Americans, many of whom will be voting for the first time.



 Shelton McElroy of Louisville is one of them. Formerly incarcerated, McElroy was disenfranchised until the Kentucky governor pardoned him. Now associate director of operations for the Bail Fund, McElroy says this election is about making sure his children see their father as an example of using your voice and vote as power.



 “We want to vote for people who actually share our interests,” he said. 

The worsening coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 5 million Americans, killing nearly 160,000. The crisis has disproportionately hit Black, Latino and indigenous Americans, especially those who are poor or low-income. More than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment since the pandemic hit. As the economic disaster bites deeper many expect a housing crisis to follow. The Aspen Institute estimates between 30 million and 40 million people “could be at risk of eviction in the next several months”.
The Rev William Barber, the Poor People’s Campaign’s national co-chair, argued that although poverty has rarely been front and center in presidential campaigns trail, that’s now changing.
“Poor people were in a depression before Covid. They are saying we won’t be ignored any more,” he said. “So the question is will poor and low-wealth Americans have a major place on the ballot and conventions? So we are challenging both parties to say you cannot ignore poor and low-wealth families any more.” Barber added, “Changing the political landscape is critical,” he said. “The interlocking injustices that must be addressed simultaneously, that’s systemic racism and systemic poverty, are not marginal issues.”

Dehumanising the Desperate

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Nearly half of the British public have little or no sympathy for asylum-seekers making the desperate journey across the Channel from France. Half of the British adults surveyed felt the UK does not have a responsibility to help protect migrants are arriving in England from France. Again approaching half of Britons believe that in comparison with other EU countries, the UK has “done more than our fair share to accommodate refugees” even though data shows that, in 2019, Germany received 165,600 asylum applications – the largest of any EU country, followed by France with 128,900, Spain with 117,800, Greece with 77,300, and the UK with 44,800.



 The survey suggested that many among the British public may favour such increasingly hardline measures. Some in the public sphere accusing those making the desperate journey of being “economic migrants” rather than refugees.



 Of course, such prejudices don’t arise in a political or media vacuum. 



 A group of Tory MPs and peers led by John Hayes insisted  that arrivals were “invading migrants” being put up in “expensive hotels” and enjoying “immediate access” to financial help.



 Britain’s television news broadcasters have been criticised by campaigners over their coverage of migrants crossing the Channel, with claims that some of their reports dehumanise those taking the risk to make the journey. Stephen Farry, the deputy leader of Northern Ireland’s Alliance party, said it was not ethical journalism. “It is voyeurism and capitalising on misery. Media should be seeking to hold the Home Office to account, and the dark forces fuelling this anti-people agenda.”



 BBC presenter Carrie Grace mistakenly claimed that “the rules state, around refugee and asylum status, that asylum-seekers should apply in the first state country they reach”.  There are no such legal restrictions on asylum-seekers.



 Baraa Halabieh, a Syrian actor, interpreter and refugee living in the UK told the BBC explains, that the main reasons asylum-seekers come to the UK are that they speak English or have a family connection in the UK, and because the UK’s family reunification programme is faster than other countries. If it was for the “generous” state benefits that they were coming for, he points out, “If they were after the financial support, they would stay in other European countries where the financial support is way higher than the UK – they are not coming to the UK for £37 a week.”

The government was warned nine months ago that its own policies were “pushing migrants to take more dangerous routes” across the English Channel in an official report by MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee, among them now Home Secretary Patel. The report called for the government to increase legal routes to seek asylum, improve “dire” conditions in French camps, and address the root causes of migration.



 “These are people who are desperate, who have seen violence in countries, they are fleeing from places like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq,” Gulwali Passarlay, who wrote an acclaimed book about escaping Afghanistan when he was a 12-year-old boy. Responding the group of 25 Tory MPs discussing “invading migrants”, Mr Passarlay told the BBC on Tuesday: “They have to look at themselves and have humanity and have decency.”



 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/migrant-channel-crossing-yougov-uk-france-asylum-refugee-a9666041.html



https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/11/bbc-and-sky-accused-of-dehumanising-people-trying-to-cross-channel




Paying the Privileged.

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Companies are using millions of dollars in jobkeeper payments designed to keep Australian workers employed during the coronavirus crisis to help pay increased dividends to shareholders.



 Stock exchange disclosures show that over the past week retailers Adairs and Nick Scali, and dental chain 1300 Smiles, increased their dividend payouts after receiving jobkeeper funding, and market observers expect additional shareholders to reap similar benefits as more companies report their results over the coming fortnight.



 Shareholders pocketing big dividend payments include Nick Scali managing director Anthony Scali, who will collect about $2.5m, and 1300 Smiles founder Daryl Holmes, who is to receive a $1.8m payout – the same amount the company received in jobkeeper.



 Peter Morgan, a former fund manager at Perpetual who is now an independent investor, said jobkeeper was supposed to keep employees in their jobs but there was “obviously money going out the door on a short-term basis, not only to reward shareholders but in a couple of cases there are principals who are clearly quite well-off”.



  Peter Whish-Wilson, the Treasury spokesman for the Greens told Guardian Australia that “Australians will see this as a rort. And they are right – this is corporate welfare, which is neither fair nor affordable.” 



 One market observer said the jobkeeper program was “an invitation to abuse” that was amplified by the lack of transparency.



 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/11/companies-using-millions-in-jobkeeper-payments-to-pay-increased-dividends-to-shareholders

Re-Discovering Aborigine History

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Archaeologists say they have found ancient banana farms once managed by Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

The agricultural system reflected the local regional diet at the time which included staples such as yams, taro and bananas.
“Our research shows the ancestors of the Goegmulgal people of Mabuyag were engaged in complex and diverse cultivation and horticultural practices in the western Torres Strait at least 2,000 years ago,” lead researcher Robert Williams said.
“Food is an important part of Indigenous culture and identity and this research shows the age and time depth of these practices,” said Mr Williams.
Historians have argued that the British denied evidence of Indigenous agriculture systems so they could claim the land was unsettled and unoccupied.

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