Pacific Progressive

Fukushima Fallout Not Affecting U.S.-Caught Fish

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Michael Conathan 

In recent weeks, there has been a significant uptick in news from Fukushima, Japan. Officials from the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, admitted that radioactive water is still leaking from the nuclear plant crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The new revelations about the amount of water leaking from the plant have caused a stir in the international community and led to additional scrutiny of Pacific Ocean seafood. Last week, South Korea announced it had banned all imports of Japanese seafood from a large area around Fukushima. And Al Jazeera reported that the cost to the region’s fishing industry over the past two years exceeds $3.5 billion.

Now, fears are mounting that the radiation could lead to dangerous contamination levels in seafood from more of the Pacific Basin. Numerous blog posts and articles expressed concern about the potential for higher concentrations of radioactive particles, particularly in highly migratory species such as tuna that may have encountered Fukushima’s isotopes—including highly dangerous and toxic materials such as cesium-137, strontium-90, and iodine-131—on their transoceanic travels.

Flood of New Data Should Be a Wakeup Call to Policymakers

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Kitty Richards and Michael Linden

Over the next six weeks, Washington, D.C.—and especially the U.S. Congress—is going to be completely obsessed with the federal budget. But over the past week, there have been a handful of important releases of new economic data that show just how off-track that discussion really is. The new data underline the struggles of the middle class and the continuing drag of poverty and inequality. They also reveal that government debt, while once on a legitimately concerning trajectory, is now on a much more manageable path. Taken together, the numbers should make policymakers turn away from yet another damaging and acrimonious debate over deficits and toward a conversation on the pressing problems facing the country right now.

The Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage yesterday, and the findings are alarming. Fully 15 percent of Americans, or 46.5 million people, currently live in poverty—an elevated level that has remained essentially unchanged since 2010 even though our economy is supposed to be in recovery. A broader measure of hardship that more accurately captures the difficulty American workers are facing—the share of Americans with incomes below twice the poverty line—now stands at 34.2 percent. This number has not fallen in two years and represents a 12.1 percent increase over prerecession levels.

4 Ways that Austerity Demands Have Reached New Extremes

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Harry Stein 

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.  Download the report: PDF  Read it in your browser:  Scribd

Although Republicans have called for deep spending cuts since taking over the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections, their austerity demands became even more extreme this year. The spending levels in this year’s House Republican budget are dramatically lower than the House Republican budgets from the past two years. In fact, last year, the House overwhelmingly rejected a proposal for severe austerity nearly identical to the budget it now embraces. This year’s spending cuts are so severe that the House Republican caucus has been unable to pass actual spending bills to implement its own budget plan, since those bills would have to make deep and specific cuts that are beyond the pale of what even most conservatives would support.

Patient Advocates Seek A Gentle Transition From High Risk Pools To New Exchange Plans

By Michelle Andrews

This material was published by Kaiser Health News.

State high-risk insurance pools around the country provide coverage to approximately 220,000 people who have medical problems and are often turned down for traditional policies.

When the federal health law takes effect in January, insurers can no longer deny coverage to people who have medical problems and some of the state high-risk programs will disappear. But experts worry that enrollees, for whom reliable health care is critical, may not get much help finding a new plan or adequate notice about the changes coming.

The pools are operating in 35 states, and some have been in existence for decades. Premiums are often high, sometimes twice the price of a typical individual plan, as are out-of-pocket costs. Deductibles of $10,000 aren’t unusual.

More than a dozen of those pools plan to close or are considering doing so in the first six months of 2014, according to the National Association of State Comprehensive Insurance Plans, a membership organization for state high-risk pools. The remaining pools will continue or officials haven’t yet announced plans, according to NASCHIP. 

Consumers need to examine their options carefully, and it’s unclear how much help they’ll get from the pools that are closing, says Katie Keith, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms.

"Many states require plans to give notice, help them find new coverage," she says. "But a lot of states are not helping consumers much."

More From This SeriesInsuring Your Health

Cash for Homes: Policy Implications of an Investor-Led Housing Recovery

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Sarah Edelman  Download the report: PDF   Read it in your browser:  Scribd

Across the country, investors are taking advantage of the nation’s foreclosure crisis to purchase homes at bargain prices, often beating out potential homeowners who remain sidelined. In July, cash-on-hand investors bought about 55 percent of the homes sold in Las Vegas and numerous properties in other major metropolitan areas such as Miami, Phoenix, and Prince George’s County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Investors can play a key role in a housing recovery. By absorbing excess inventory, they establish a floor for home prices and jumpstart appreciation. Responsible investors can also offer quality, affordable rental opportunities to families who may be locked out of homeownership due to foreclosure or lost wealth from the recession.

But while they can support communities, irresponsible investors can also destroy them by allowing properties to sit empty, declining to bring rental properties up to code, and neglecting tenants’ needs in instances where the home is occupied. Additionally, investors that buy large quantities of properties in a single area can cause prices to overheat and increase market volatility. Conversely, if institutional investors following a set business plan sell numerous properties in the same time frame, prices in those neighborhoods could decline again.

A Handful Of State Marketplaces Opt Not To Charge Smokers More For Premiums

By Michelle Andrews

This material was published by Kaiser Health News.

Since smokers' health-care costs tend to be higher than those of nonsmokers, is it reasonable for smokers to pay higher premiums when they buy insurance through the new state marketplaces that are scheduled to open in October? A handful of states and the District say the answer is no.

"We decided it's not in the good interests of our people" to charge smokers more, says Mohammad Akhter, chairman of the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority, which is developing the District's online marketplace.

Under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, health insurers are allowedto charge smokers 50 percent higher premiums than nonsmokers for new policies sold to individuals and small employer groups.

States have the option to reduce or eliminate the variation in rates, however, and six states and the District have opted not to charge smokers more, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A few others have limited the premium differential to less than 50 percent. 

More From This SeriesInsuring Your Health

Fishing or Mining: Alaska’s Bristol Bay Region Debates Its Future

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Michael Conathan

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy spent part of her tour of Alaska hearing local opinions on the proposed Pebble Mine project, an operation that a recent article in The Washington Post called “the biggest environmental decision facing Obama you’ve never heard of.”

While the planned gigantic open-pit mine in Southwest Alaska has been in the works for roughly a decade, many of the details pertaining to the Pebble Mine and its operation remain under wraps. What the developers—the Pebble Limited Partnership—have been very forthcoming about, however, is the richness of their discovery, which they claim is the largest untapped copper resource left on the planet. They believe it could produce as much as half a trillion dollars in revenue.

But the partnership has yet to release its final mine plan specifying precisely where it will dig and—perhaps of greater concern—where it will dump its waste. The company’s recalcitrance has drawn the ire of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who sent John Shively, the Pebble Partnership’s CEO, a letter earlier this summer criticizing his organization for inciting “anxiety, frustration, and confusion that have become the norm in many communities” by failing to provide details of its proposed operations.

Finally, Iran Reciprocates

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Matthew Duss 

The most significant part of NBC’s interview with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last night was not his announcement that Iran would never seek to develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s leaders have repeatedly said so. Much more important was Rouhani’s assurance that his administration had the backing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—the key decision maker in Iran’s political system—to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. This signals a shift from Khamenei, who has been one of the biggest skeptics of efforts to repair Iran’s relations with the international community and with the United States in particular.

As Iranian-American author and translator Hooman Majd commented on “All In with Chris Hayes” on MSNBC last night, “The Iranian leadership is in sync now for the first time in years.”

This is not to downplay the importance of the gestures Rouhani has made since he took office in August, which are clearly designed to address key concerns of Iran’s major critics in the international community and repair the country’s image in the wake of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The release of political prisoners yesterday, while not unprecedented, was the latest move. Human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was named by President Barack Obama in his 2011 Nowruz greeting to Iran, was among those released—something that is not to be overlooked.

Infographic: Raising the Minimum Wage

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

View the full infographic (CAP Action)

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is poised to sign into law a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage from $8 per hour to $10 per hour by 2016. Currently, a full-time, year-round minimum-wage earner in California earns $16,640 a year, nearly $2,900 below the federal poverty level for a family of three. A wage increase of $2 per hour would translate to $4,160 more in annual earnings for such workers, lifting their wages to just above the poverty level for a family of three and significantly boosting their ability to pay for life’s essentials.

The new law is a significant win for California’s working families, but $10 per hour is still not enough for working families in many of the state’s urban areas to be self-sufficient. Nationwide workers also continue to struggle; nearly a third of all working families in the United States may not have enough money to meet basic needs, and too many American workers earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

View the full infographic (CAP Action)

 

Obama Administration Helped Kill Transparency Push on Military Aid

by Cora Currier ProPublica

The U.S. spent roughly $25 billion last year on what's loosely known as security assistance2014a term that can cover everything from training Afghan security forces to sending Egypt F-16 fighter jets to equipping Mexican port police with radiation scanners.

The spending, which has soared in the past decade, can be hard to trace, funneled through dozens of sometimes overlapping programs across multiple agencies. There's also evidence it's not always wisely spent. In Afghanistan, for instance, the military bought $771 million worth of aircraft this year for Afghan pilots, most of whom still don't know how to fly them.

Last year, legislators in the House drafted a bill that would require more transparency and evaluation of security and all foreign aid programs. The bill was championed by an unlikely coalition of Tea Party budget hawks and giant aid groups such as Oxfam America.

But the Obama administration successfully pushed to have security assistance exempted from the bill's requirements, according to a letter obtained by ProPublica and interviews with Congressional staffers.

Future Choices II: An Update on the Legal, Statutory, and Policy Landscape of Assisted Reproductive Technologies

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Jessica Arons and Liz Chen 

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this report.

Download the report: PDF

Download introduction & summary: PDF

Read it in your browser: Scribd

In 2007 the Center for American Progress released its report “Future Choices: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Law,” which described a range of assisted reproductive technologies and their legal and regulatory background. The report also examined the policy implications of the largely unregulated field of reproductive technology, especially in the context of traditional feminist positions on reproductive rights. If a woman has the ultimate right to decide whether or not to bear a child when she is pregnant, for instance, does that principle hold true when she would like to become pregnant with the use of specific embryos? Is surrogacy a noble pursuit undertaken by autonomous, well-informed, and altruistic women, or is it a practice that exploits the low-income and vulnerable?

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Will Benefit American Workers

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Adriana Kugler and Patrick Oakford

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.   Download the report: PDF  Read it in your browser: Scribd

Few people would dispute the fact that our country has a broken immigration system. More than 11 million people are living in the United States without legal status, millions of people are waiting to be reunited with their families, and employers are not able to recruit the foreign-born workers our economy needs. But the effects of this broken system extend beyond immigrant workers, their families, and employers; all American workers are harmed by the nation’s dysfunctional immigration policies. Specifically, they are harmed because our immigration system undermines the employment protections of immigrants and subsequently erodes the effectiveness of employment laws for all workers.

To fully understand why American workers are harmed, one must first consider the role of immigration enforcement in the workplace and how it affects the employment rights of immigrant workers. Under current immigration law, it is illegal for employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers. Despite this prohibition, unscrupulous employers use workers’ undocumented status to avoid compliance with employment laws and deter them from filing formal employment complaints with federal agencies. Many of these employers have therefore managed to go unpunished for their unlawful employment actions.

Iran’s Deeds Will Matter More Than Its Words

This material was published by the Center for American Progress.

By Matthew Duss

Over the past few weeks, a number of public statements have indicated that newly elected President Hassan Rouhani intends to make good on his campaign promises to improve Iran’s relations with the international community. While these gestures by themselves do not represent a change in policy, the United States and its partners should test whether they represent an opening for a negotiated solution to the standoff over the Iranian nuclear program.

Both Rouhani and his new foreign minister, Mohamed Javad Zarif, have been active on Twitter. Rouhani’s campaign staff reportedly operates his Twitter feed, whereas Zarif personally operates his own. “My gov[ernment] has prioritized achieving stability & security in region. If invited to conference on Syria in Geneva, we’re ready to cooperate,” Rouhani tweeted on August 22. “Iran is committed to international regulations including NPT & all nuclear activities take place under IAEA supervision,” he tweeted on September 10.

A Reader Asks: I Get Coverage Through My Estranged Husband. Can I Choose To Go To The Marketplace?

This material was published by Kaiser Health News.

By Michelle Andrews

Q. I'm not living with my husband, but he still provides health insurance for me through his employer. Will I be eligible to go on the health insurance marketplace if I choose not to have him cover me through his employer?

A. Almost anyone can buy a plan on the health insurance marketplace, sometimes called an exchange. But tax credits that reduce the premium are only available to people who don't have access to other coverage that meets the law's standards for affordability and adequacy. Coverage is considered affordable if it costs no more than 9.5 percent of income, and adequate if it pays at least 60 percent of allowed medical expenses. Chances are your husband's employer health plan meets those standards. If it does, you probably wouldn't be eligible for subsidized coverage on an exchange, say experts.

More From This Series Insuring Your Health

Readers Ask: Will Premium Subsidies Come In A Lump Sum And What Happens When You Don’t Pay Your Premium?

By Michelle Andrews

This material was published by Kaiser Health News.

With the opening of the online health insurance marketplaces just a little over a month away, I've been receiving many questions about how they'll work.

Q. It sounds like people who buy health insurance on the exchange will have to pay the full monthly premium for that insurance, and subsidies will be paid through tax credits that are received annually as a tax refund. How could any low-income person who is living from paycheck to paycheck afford to do that?

A. They won't have to. When consumers apply for a plan on the health insurance marketplace, also called an exchange, they'll be asked to provide income information to determine whether they're eligible for a premium tax credit. That subsidy will be available to people with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($45,960 for an individual in 2013, or $94,200 for a family of four).

If they qualify, consumers can opt to receive the tax credits in advance, and the exchange will send the money directly to the insurer every month. This subsidy will reduce how much people owe up front. Consumers can also choose to receive their credit when they file their taxes the following year.