Researchers at the Texas State University School of Criminal Justice analyzed 84 shooting events between 2000 and 2010, and found that the frequency of the events is increasing—and that the leading weapon of mass shooters was the pistol, followed by the rifle and the shotgun.
"In the wake of the tragic active shooter attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, police administrators are struggling both to respond to their citizens’ concerns and to ensure that their departments are prepared should an attack happen in their jurisdictions," reads the report [PDF]. "It is our hope that the information contained here will provide police administrators with the data needed to base their active shooter preparations on empirical evidence."
The data paints a picture of diverse, bloody encounters, with a median of four individuals shot and two deaths per episode.
While some shooters surrender or commit suicide before law enforcement arrive, others engage "aggressively" with the police, with one in five incidents further complicated by taking place in open, outdoor spaces.
Out of the three cases in which armed bystanders ended the confrontation by shooting the attacker, two were by off-duty police officers and one was by a US marine. However, report author J. Pete Blair disputes easy conclusions about the role of bystanders in halting mass shootings.
"While armed civilian intervention has been rare, it has occurred and stopped events," he said. "Arguments can easily be made either way and will primarily be driven from ideological starting points."
Early tracking suggests that mass shootings have continued to increase in frequency since 2010, Blair said.
Mass shootings are still a minor threat compared to other types of shooting deaths.
According to the FBI, mass shootings in 2010 accounted for less than one percent of homicide victims.
]]>The report released by Tufts University found that just 45 percent of individuals between ages 18 and 29 are now believed to have cast ballots, down from an earlier estimate of 50 percent.
The Tufts University Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement revised its previous estimate down by more than five percentage points in response to newly-released census data, challenging dominant narratives about the role of social media and young people in contemporary politics.
"It is hard to make a case that we have entered a positive new era because of generational change, new technology, or the behavior of candidates," said director Peter Levine. "Turnout was higher in battleground states, though, which reinforces the importance of competition."
And if there isn't a generational shit toward robust civic engagement, there's another cause to worry for those vying for the youth vote, as more Millennials age into the electorate.
Spending for conservative youth engagement is outstripping progressive investments, which could help transform narratives that parties on the right are no place for youth.
Researchers based their earlier figure on exit polls and population estimations. The newer, more accurate figure is based on the Census Current Population Survey, which provides a larger, more accurate sample size.
According to the new numbers, President Obama saw a drop of nearly 2.5 million votes between 2008 and 2012.
Though recent electoral cycles saw elevated turnout by young voters, Levine cautions that youth civic participation has showed no clear trend in recent decades.
"The youth turnout decline in 2012 underlines the challenge we face," Levine said. "Turnout rose in 2004 and 2008, but that growth was not sustained. The turnout trend since the 1970s is a wavy line, with neither a strong upward or downward trend."
It is widely believed that the Obama campaign coasted to victory in 2008 on the strength of its historic focus on social media. Regardless of the turnout in 2012, internet culture played an undeniable role spanning an explosive viral video release and widespread political memes.
]]>But the bill would forbid health professionals from diagnosing, treating, or providing preventative measures to minors for sexually transmitted diseases, mental health disturbances, substance abuse, or pregnancy-related care without written parental consent.
“There’s no question this would have a real chilling effect on young people,” Paige Johnson, Vice President of External Affairs for Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina, told Campus Progress.
“They wouldn't seek professional care, and we would see really tragic outcomes from young people from being too afraid of seeking health care,” she continued.
If written parental consent isn't acquired by the minor, the bill mandates that he or she go a local judge and petition for a waiver of the parental consent requirement.
Not only would this be unduly burdensome for the minor, especially with a time-sensitive ailment, it would also encumber an already over-stretched court system that likely cannot handle an influx of hearings related to this bill.
The process of either obtaining parental consent or going to a local court to bypass consent would also increase the amount of time that a minor must go without being treated or diagnosed, which could lead to more health problems.
Additionally, the legislation potentially hinders minors from troubled homes from accessing necessary care.
“I just don’t think they’re thinking about the realities for some families, where there isn't good communication, where there isn't healthy involvement,” Johnson said.
“They’re also not thinking about the young people who have a great relationship with their parents, but they’re too embarrassed to let their parents down," she continued, "But if they seek professional care, the caregiver can help them bring their family in.”
The mandate comes on the heels of other health-related legislative measures being considered in North Carolina, including a refusal to expand Medicaid to poverty-stricken families, and a bill passed by the NC House this week that would allow employers to refuse to cover insurance for contraceptives under a "religious, moral, or ethical objection" clause.
These legislative measures are being considered to allow families to make their own health-care related decisions without forced involvement from the government, but in reality they may obstruct the ability of families from receiving quality and timely care.
"Everybody believes that teenagers who can talk to their parents fare better, that the outcomes are much better,” Johnson said. “But this bill is not going to force the families that are not healthy to be healthy.”
]]>“The policy change represents a movement among a lot of colleges toward more merit-based and less need-based aid," CMC junior Carly Lenderts told Campus Progress. "That shift harms low-income students more than this specific loan policy. As a middle-class student at a private college, I'm obviously biased toward need-based aid as it allows me to be here.”
CMC was among a handful of schools that instituted policies in recent years to remove student loans from the financial aid packages offered to undergraduate students in order to make college more accessible to lower-income students.
The college enacted its No Package Loan policy in 2008. Instead of loans, the school pushed for more financial aid programs. But with the recent economic recession, the school's board of trustees decided the college wouldn't be able to sustain the policy.
Research and input from the admission and financial aid committee guided the decision, which studied the effects of the No Packaged Loan financial-aid policy over the past five years.
“CMC's generous financial-aid policy is definitely responsible for me being here," Lenderts said. “My parents never would have signed the paperwork without the promise of significant financial aid.”
College President Pamela Gann announced the policy-shift in an email to the college community March 14. She explained need-based students who enter CMC in fall 2014 will be provided “reasonable loan amounts of up to $4,000 per year in the financial aid package.” And emphasized that students up to the Class of 2017 will not be affected by the change in policy.
“The administration showed us the changes in college cost vs. ability to pay," Lenderts said. "College cost has risen quickly, and ability to pay has risen slowly. A lot of that is because of the recession, and as a result CMC has overspent its financial aid budget in the past few years. Families have less money to send kids to college, but it costs colleges more to retain their competitive edge."
Other schools that have dropped or altered their no-loan policies include, Carleton College of Northfield, Minn., Cornell University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, and Williams College.
Many colleges advertise diverse student bodies and try to recruit students with diverse backgrounds.
“I think that's great, but socioeconomic diversity is woefully absent at a lot of private liberal arts schools." Landerts argued. "Regardless of other diversity factors, you can't claim to represent a wide array of life experiences if the only students who can afford to come to your college are upper- and upper-middle class.”
She continued:
The debate within the CMC community is centered upon this policy being announced right after other announcements about doubling our endowment and plans to renovate dorms and build a new fitness center. Obviously, donors select what their money goes toward and financial aid is less glamorous than a shiny new building with your name on it. Hopefully CMC will focus future fundraising efforts on increasing the funds for need-based aid.
With more than 38 million Americans burdened with $1 trillion of student loan debt, there's no mistaking that student debt is a growing crisis in need of meaningful solutions.
Reducing the amount of funding students are pressured to acquire through student loans was a step toward that, but as colleges and universities face the unsustainable nature of no-loan financial aid programs it's becoming clear that other avenues are necessary to lessen the burdens experienced by student loan borrowers.
]]>Like many other universities around the country, UC–Berkeley students passed a referendum to divest from the fossil fuel industry earlier this year. But in recent months, the university has gone far beyond that, using its economic power to shout its disapproval in other arenas, including divesting in the prison-industrial complex, companies that utilize conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and now those that perpetrate human rights violations in Palestine.
This last move was of particular interest to Al-Bayan, a student publication at UC–Berkeley that works to shed light on issues relevant to Muslim students.
An article in the publication's newest issue explained how the university came to this decision, one that its readership likely finds very interesting since Al-Bayan's target readership is Muslim students at UC–Berkeley. The staff of Al-Bayan continue to do a good job of framing issues for their readers and expanding the diversity of voices on their campus.
Al-Bayan is a member of the Campus Progress Journalism Network, which supports independent, student publications that work to serve their communities in this way, giving a voice to areas that are often overlooked by their primary local media.
For most publications, managing one print issue a month is a huge undertaking with little to no support from professors. But this year, Al-Bayan not only produced great print issues drawing light on issues like divestment, the publication staff also launched a new website and spent a good part of the year planning for a sustainable future. At a recent Campus Progress training with the staff of Al-Bayan, we discussed the publication's new website and how to make it as user-friendly as possible, bringing more readers into conversations.
Publications like Al-Bayan serve a special service to their communities and are a necessary element to continuing a tradition of an open society in our country.
The Campus Progress Journalism Network aims to support quality independent, student journalism and launch young people into successful careers. If you're running a publication or interested in starting one on your campus, head over to the Journalism Network page for more information.
]]>
The Obama administration's expected $50 billion profit from student loan borrowers.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released figures this week showing the agency increased its fiscal year profit forecast for 2013 for the Department of Education by 43 percent to $50.6 billion, according to the Huffington Post.
That's an increase from its previous estimate in February of $35.5 billion; more than the nation's most profitable company—Exxon Mobil.
Hitting more than $1.1 trillion, student debt keeps breaking records over other forms of debt in the nation's market economy. But as the Department of Education racks up nearly $120 billion from returns on student loans, what's being done to rescue students—and prevent student—from drowning in debt?
Senate Democrats introduced new legislation Wednesday to keep the current interest rate on federal Stafford loans from doubling come July 1, extending the current rate for two years.
And President Obama asked Congress to tie interest rates on student loans to the government's costs of funding the program.
But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and regulators at the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have all made warnings to the Obama administration about how more needs to be done to manage this type of debt, which cannot be eliminated upon bankruptcy.
Many officials are forecasting that student loan debt will continue to contribute to serious financial instability, and the marker in profits from the CBO only drives the point home.
More than a quarter of a million people are backing the idea that Congress should give students the same interest rate deal that is currently offered to big banks through the Fed. More than 250,000 people have signed a petition by Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would cut interest rates on federal Stafford loans to 0.75 percent from their current 3.4 percent rate.
Approximately 7 million people will be impacted by the Stafford student loan interest rate hike if nothing's done before the July 1 deadline, but lawmakers, bureaus and youth advocacy groups are all calling for long-term solutions.
Options like refinancing and introducing income-based repayment models in the private education loan industry have been a few of the recommendation to upend the student debt crisis floating around but it's up to Congress to parse out what what will work for the 38 million Americans nationwide who suffer under the weight of student loan debt.
]]>In 2009, Richwine wrote a dissertation in which he argued Hispanics will always have lower IQs than whites.
Heritage announced Richwine's resignation as part of an ongoing damage control effort in the aftermath of public outcry against the flawed immigration report, POLITICO reported.
But the study's lead author, Robert Rector,still stands by the report's assertions though he admitted that he hasn't yet examined the whole immigration bill.
Rector, however, can't count on conservatives to back him up, as many have come out strongly to criticize the flawed findings.
Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Heritage's leader has remained silent on the problematic study after it's release (prior he was rather excited about it).
Now some immigration advocates, like Center for Community Change and Fair Immigration Reform, have interpreted DeMint's silence as a sign of solidarity with the authors Richwine and Rector and are demanding the leader's resignation.
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Doug Holtz-Eakin, Grover Norquist, the Cato Institute, and the Bipartisan Policy Institute's Immigration Task Force all refuted the study.
And here's what some of the more crucial critiques:
Their argument is based on a single premise, which I think is flawed. That is these people are disproportionately poor because they have no education and they will be poor for the rest of their lives in the U.S. Quite frankly that’s not the immigration experience in the U.S. That’s certainly not my family’s experience in the U.S. The folks described in that report are my family. My mother and dad didn’t graduate high school and I would not say they were a burden on the United States…My parents were a lot better off 25 years after they emigrated here than they were when they first got here. And their children certainly have been. I still think we’re that country. And I still think we can be that country and even more in the future, so I guess I just have a lot more belief in the future of the country than some of the folks that helped prepare [the report].
Tim Kane, chief economist for the Hudson Institute and author of a 2006 Heritage Report:
At best, the authors make a compelling case that the U.S. welfare system is dysfunctional. That is true with or without a guest worker program, or with green cards for STEM, or with much of anything to do with immigration.
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan:
The Congressional Budget Office has found that fixing our broken immigration system could help our economy grow. A proper accounting of immigration reform should take into account these dynamic effects.
Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform:
Unfortunately, Rector’s study was severely flawed in its methodology, and thus in its findings. Robert Rector’s work does not speak for the conservative movement; in fact, it does not even speak for the Heritage Foundation.
Former Bush Economic Adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin:
These studies directed conservatives to evaluate the merits of immigration and other policy reforms by their impact on the growth, vibrancy, and health of the private sector...Imagine the confusion among thoughtful conservatives, then, when in 2007, and repackaged and rereleased today as version 2.0, a Heritage study failed to consider the implications of reform and instead looked solely at the cost of low-skilled immigrants and those effects on the government’s profitability!
The new Heritage report is still depressingly static, leading to a massive underestimation of the economic benefits of immigration and diminishing estimated tax revenue. It explicitly refuses to consider the GDP growth and economic productivity gains from immigration reform—factors that increase native-born American incomes. An overlooked flaw is that the study doesn’t even score the specific immigration reform proposal in the Senate. Its flawed methodology and lack of relevancy to the current immigration reform proposal relegate this study to irrelevancy.
Bipartisan Policy Center’s immigration task force, co-chaired by former governor Haley Barbour:
When public discourse focuses solely on potential costs of reform, we lose sight of key economic benefits of a smarter immigration policy...They start a disproportionate number of new businesses, employing hundreds of thousands of workers and contributing billions to the economy. Newly legalized immigrants would further expand the economy and our tax base, particularly after earning full access to the institutions that helped make America the world’s greatest mobilizer of human potential.
Here we go again. New Heritage study claims huge cost for Immigration Reform. Ignores economic benefits. No dynamic scoring.]]>
Here’s an idea: Get rid of them all and instead just give cash assistance to everyone. Yes, literally everyone.
It’s not as radical as it may sound. The concept goes by several names, but here we'll call it Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI). The basic idea is that every citizen receives a monthly stipend of enough value to cover all of their basic living expenses, regardless of financial need, employment status, criminal history, or any other factor. The grant would be funded through taxes on non-GBI earnings. (And of course, calling it “free money” is a bit of a misnomer—many people would contribute more to the program in taxes than they gain in benefits.)
Although GBI has seen some high profile advocacy lately from the likes of MSNBC's Chris Hayes and Wonkblog's Mike Konczal, it would likely take a long time for the program to become politically feasible. But from the standpoint of justice, the merits should be obvious. GBI lifts everyone above the poverty line by default.
“It gives people exit options because their basic core standard of living doesn’t depend upon staying with an abusive spouse or staying with an unpleasant employer,” said Erik Olin Wright, Vilas Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, who has written on GBI.
The grant should “be viewed as just a human right if the society can afford it,” Wright told Campus Progress.
Free money for everyone, no strings attached, sounds awesome in theory. But would it work?
One common criticism is that GBI would be wildly expensive, and therefore not worth the trouble. Of course, the cost of the program depends on how much income is guaranteed, but GBI would at least partially pay for itself.
The idea is that GBI would replace most current government income subsidies. Not just the alphabet soup programs, but also "the massive deductions and exemptions that currently exist in the tax code," said Meg Wiehe, state policy director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. For the cost left over, we would have to "reconfigure the income tax in a way that raises the appropriate amount of revenue," she told Campus Progress.
We probably shouldn't fear that too much, though. "We've had really great economic booms in times when we've had significantly higher tax rates than we have now," Wiehe said.
Another objection: If people could feed at the government’s trough with no obligation to perform labor of any kind, wouldn't the economy train-wreck? (Indeed, this is similar to the conservative objection to the public assistance programs we do have.)
“If it’s true that most people actually want to live at the no-frills basic income—that most people’s life ambition is to live just above the poverty line—then it’s true, the system collapses,” Wright said. “I just don’t think it’s plausible that that’s the way people want to live.”
It’s probably true that the labor force would shrink somewhat. "In a GBI world, an employer has to make work somehow appealing enough to get employees even though everyone's guaranteed a basic minimum whether they work or not," Matthew Yglesias wrote at Slate earlier this year.
But the point is that unappealing, low-paying jobs (fast food and janitorial work come to mind) depend upon people’s desperation in the first place. With GBI cutting down on that desperation, McDonald's might have to provide higher wages and better working conditions. But even if they had to bump dollar menu prices as a result, their workers would boost the overall economy with the extra cash in their pocket.
Other perks of GBI are less tangible. The grant would provide institutional acknowledgement that “work” and “employment” are not the same thing. "One of the reasons I like the basic income as a proposal is that it makes it easier for us to pose the question politically of 'How many of the jobs that we currently have need to exist?'" said Peter Frase, an editor of Jacobin magazine and proponent of GBI. "Not from a standpoint of 'people need the income,' but from the standpoint of 'this is actually something beneficial for society.'"
For example, some jobs in the health insurance industry exist solely to do the clerical work associated with denying coverage. Frase called them "redundancies of the bureaucratic private insurance system." Meanwhile raising children, creating art, or civic activism are all examples of productive activity that currently goes unmeasured in dollars in cents. GBI would effectively allow anyone to make any of those things their “job,” albeit for a very low wage.
“Just imagine the amount of interesting theater and dance and music that would grow up around the country,” Wright said.
Still skeptical of GBI? Well, there have been some real-world tests of the idea.
As an experiment, some residents of Dauphin, Manitoba were given basic income grants in the 1970s—about $17,000 a year in current U.S. dollars, according to Wright. The result was a slight decline in labor force participation, but also fewer high school dropouts, less crime, and better health indicators for people receiving the grant.
The initiative was scrapped in 1978 due to a lack of national political support, but it’s not the only empirical test of GBI.
“There are plenty of places in the world which in practice, through a patchwork of non-unconditional grants and programs, virtually everyone ends up with a basic income,” Wright said. Think of Scandinavian countries with generous welfare states; above-poverty income is nearly guaranteed and the nations’ economies still manage to function.
It’s easy to imagine that a society with GBI would be a little bit less productive, at least in the conventional sense of the term. But perhaps we’re worried too much about productivity in the first place.
“If you believe that we need to move from an economy that’s mainly oriented toward the growth of material consumption as its driving engine, to an economy that’s much more anchored in human activity,” Wright said, “unconditional basic income makes it much easier for people to decide on the kind of balance between stuff and activity they want.”
If people can’t be compelled by desperation into economic activity, the result might not just be a more ecologically sound society, but also a more free society.
As Wright said, paraphrasing GBI theorist Phillippe Van Parijs: “Real freedom is the ability to say no.”
]]>Kirby explained that Emily suffers from anxiety and has a seizure disorder that is affected by stress. If she brought her the two hours to Denver, Emily would have had an anxious reaction and maybe even a seizure. The doctors listened silently. Their perspectives were about to change.
Emily is an autistic child from Colorado Springs, Col., who benefits from a Medicaid program that helps families with disabled children support themselves and take proper care of their kids. After Emily was born, her special needs began to strain the family budget. Emily’s dad used to take care of her needs with his paycheck. But with the Kirbys’ divorce two years ago, Emily’s mother resorted to Colorado Medicaid money to fill the gap in their now nonexistent income.
Kirby was getting along fine, with some ups and downs. She was finally able to take care of her daughter, thanks to the number of paid hours she was granted by Medicaid as a home certified nursing assistant (CNA), a need-based position. Approved providers can hire CNAs, but often a family member obtains training, goes to work for a home health care agency and serves his or her own family. Medicaid pays the agency, and the agency pays the family member.
However, recent changes to the state's Medicaid program have lead to cuts that hurt families of children with disabilities. For many, the cut in hours couldn’t come at a worse time. Some families even face the prospect of giving up their children to institutions because they can no longer support them.
Medicaid pays $33.21 per hour for CNA services to a third-party service agency, like the Independence Center in Colorado Springs, but Kirby receives just $12 an hour to provide CNA care for her daughter at home.
After having Emily’s condition evaluated by social workers and nurses, Kirby was granted five paid hours to take care of Emily during school days and nine hours for non-school days. With recent changes in the hour-assigning methods, Kirby’s hours were reduced to three during school days and four during non-school days.
Why were her hours cut so drastically? The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) replaced subjective evaluation methods for determining hours with a new, standardized “Pediatric Home Assessment Tool.” The new evaluation takes the form of a questionnaire about the specific needs of a child and the ability of the family to meet those needs. It clearly defines the responsibilities of a parent or adult in the household, as compared to a those of a CNA or nurse. Families get points for each response, and at-home nursing hours are then based on total points. Because of this new method, many families face a reduction in paid hours that will affect their abilities to provide their children with proper care.
“Federal requirements for home health services do not allow for reimbursement for non-professional or unskilled services,” HCPF spokesperson Rachel Reiter said. “They will only pay for medically necessary care. The evaluation was created to help comply with federal requirements to pay for medically necessary care. The tool was thoroughly vetted with stakeholders that included home health agencies, clients and advocates.”
HCPF implemented the tool on Feb. 1. It was intended to measure the appropriate amount of health services for children with disabilities who receive care in their homes as opposed to in a third-party medical facility. The focus of Colorado’s Medicaid agency is to explore additional ways by which services can be delivered to help people keep children at home as much as possible.
However, this assessment may not be working as intended, leading instead to widespread reductions in services. When affected families and health care agencies all over the state began to question the validity and accuracy of the evaluation, HCPF explained that a committee of experts reviewed the tool, which they have developed over several years.
Concerns on the cuts prompted six mothers who take care of children with disabilities to meet with the Medical Services Board on April 12 in Denver. This board overlooks the rules for health care in Colorado and is not directly involved with the development of the tool. The main problem seems to be that the tool is based more on diagnosis than on functional limitations.
Mothers like Kirby and caregiver Elizabeth Shute, who cares for her 17-year-old granddaughter, Siobnah Dann, were there to speak for their children’s rights. They intended to show the board how they are really affected by the cut in paid hours.
Siobnah has cerebral palsy. She cannot do anything by herself. She is 10 months old mentally, and all of her daily activities have to be done for her. She is cortically blind. She needs to be bathed and dressed by Shute. Her grandma puts on her shoes and her braces, brushes her teeth and combs her hair before she goes to a specialized school during the day.
Since 2002, Shute has been taking care of her granddaughter with the help of the Independence Center, an agency in Colorado Springs that advocates for the rights of disabled children and their families. But recently Medicaid cut her CNA hours in half.
“We were taken off two hours because she can walk in the house,” Shute explained. “She only does that because she knows her surroundings. But she cannot walk like a typical person, she cannot go by herself. She can’t go outside and play, because she needs somebody with her 24/7.”
Anita Pope, director of nursing at the Independence Center, said that now that the board got to see the real struggle of the affected families, they are confident that they will pressure HCPF to make some essential changes to the tool’s questionnaire.
“Each mom spoke during a public comment about what the impact of these cuts is going to be and why we want to change the tool,” Pope said. “[The] Colorado Medical Society [CMS] has clearly said that we got to have a tool. But, if the tool sucks, who do we go to?”
Patricia Yeager, CEO of the Independence Center, said that many of their clients have seen their paid hours cut in half, including the single mother of an older child without arms and legs and the grandmother of a child who can only blink and breathe on her own. She definitely thinks the evaluation needs to be reworked.
Some healthcare advocates say that this evaluation was developed to save the state money, although HCPF representatives insist that the changes were not based on financial interests. “It is a way for the government to save money,” Yeager said. “We will lose about $700 a day on fees, on the decreased hours of 14 families, out of the 26 we provide services for. That is about $300,000 a year that we would have been paid and we would in turn pay the parents.”
Yeager insists that she wants to be up front about the economic reasons behind this issue.
“Some people might say that we are just causing this trouble because we are going to lose money,” she said. “But we are more concerned about these parents. Some of them we have known for years, we have watched their kids grow and we know the things that they are going through.”
The truth is that some of these kids need 24-hour supervision. Legally, CNAs can have a maximum of 11 paid hours, but that is still helpful for families with limited resources like the Kirbys. This is a way to keep families together and keep children out of institutions.
Pope pointed out that people in nursing homes cost the state between $50,000 to $80,000 a year, depending on the type of care they need. Moreover, there aren’t any certified state programs to take care of children with disabilities in Colorado. Daycares just don’t want to accept kids with disabilities, because they need constant and specialized supervision. In Colorado Springs, there is no daycare service that can take these kids.
Nationwide, there is a trend to keep patients away from nursing homes and have them live in a house, where they can arguably be happier and more independent. But what would happen if a parent loses too many paid hours and has to find another job to support his or her household? They will have to look for a place to put their child while they work. And, as advocates point out, the state is not ready for this. There is no place for kids with disabilities to go.
Three months after the change, families continue to say that the system isn’t reasonable. For instance, one of the assessment tool’s questions asks how many competent adults live in the home. Pope doesn’t believe it should matter. The agency is providing a CNA. It has clients who have been unable to care for their children because of their work. But in this case, CNAs unrelated to the child who have been assigned to a household have their hours cut, and have to leave. And nobody is left to care for the child.
Pope also questions what the meaning of “competent adult” really is: “You can have an 85-year-old grandma living with you, but can she really help?” she asked. “You can have a 21-year-old college student in your home. But is he gonna help change diapers on a 16-year-old girl?” Even if a second adult lives in the house, that doesn’t necessarily mean he or she can care for the child, as the tool assumes. Advocates for CNA caregivers agree that a standardized method for assigning hours is needed. But they also believe that the state needs a clear definition of medical necessity.
Reiter says that the state is open to suggestions from families, and has been working with stakeholders (including families) to improve evaluation. “We have heard many suggestions,” she said. “And we are looking at ways to improve the tool while we focus on complying with federal requirements and using funding to pay for medically necessary care.”
Meanwhile, for some kids—like those with autism—home health care does not involve a medical procedure. “Because of their lack of judgment, [the kids with autism] may need supervision [in other aspects],” Yeager said. “If they don’t get it, they might set the house on fire. My question is: When does it become a medical necessity? So, the medical necessity is the key on this issue. How do we define it?”
Reiter explained that the department is working with families who have experienced a decrease in hours because of disputes over medical necessity. The department will phase in the decrease over time. This applies to families who experience a 30% or more decrease in their hours.
According to an article published in the Colorado Springs Independent on March 27, experts claim that the new assessment tool was never piloted before it was fully implemented. Medicaid representatives note that there was a pilot, but it didn’t attract enough participation to be reliable.
The Independence Center has already filed an initial appeal on behalf of 14 client families that have seen hours cut, representing more than 50 percent of the 26 families with disabled children that they serve. So far, Medicaid has denied every request on first review. Some clients have pursued the issue further, asking family doctors to contact Medicaid on their behalf for a review. If all else fails, families can take their case to an administrative law judge.
“Families have the opportunity to ask for their case[s] to be re-evaluated,” Reiter said. “These reevaluations include peer-to-peer, reconsideration, a pre-appeal process for clients and formal administrative law judge (ALJ) hearings.” The department did not provide information on the number of cases that have been rejected on first view and did not say if it had accepted any filed appeal so far.
“If you file an ALJ, they have to give you your hours back until the dispute is resolved,” Yeager said. “That’s where we have found the most success, because the ALJ will usually not go against the family doctor.”
Yeager suspects that the state is going after people who are too overwhelmed to complain, people who are trying to keep their family together and have to deal with a challenging kid on a daily basis. The state must think that these families won’t have time to organize and respond. “They did not get away with it this time,” Yeager said. “We have parents that are organizing, talking about this. And I am hoping that we can change this.”
Pope, who attended the Denver meeting, recalls that one of the mothers said to the medical board that speaking up in front of everyone was really embarrassing for her. She felt humiliated to come out in public and talk about her daughter and the horrible things that she does and the horrible shape that she is in. But the mother wanted to tell her story, because she wanted the situation to change. She said: “I want it fixed, and I don’t want it fixed just for me.”
Pope explains that right now HCPF is offering to spot-fix the issue, case by case. The department says it intends to give the hours back to the specific families that have complained. But as far as addressing issues with the tool itself, the advocates haven’t heard any kind of commitment, so far. “We want it all fixed,” Pope said. “We want it to be all right for everybody.”
At least 4,400 disabled children of low- and middle-income families receive help from Medicaid in Colorado. HCPF has not revealed the number of families that have seen their hours cut so far.
Reiter stated via e-mail that since the department does not directly reimburse the caregiver or professional, because the reimbursement is paid to the home health agency, “this question will require more research to get specific numbers.”
Meanwhile, caregivers like Michele Kirby and Elizabeth Shute will continue to look after their children and go to all the meetings it takes in order to get their hours back and to help other families get back what was taken away from them. Caregivers hope the doctors will continue to listen silently. And they hope to change their perspective.
“If I would have brought Emily to that meeting she would have had an anxiety reaction and maybe even a seizure and that would be too hard on her,” Kirby said. “But I brought her picture and I showed it in front of the board. It looks like the members were interested. This is the first time that we actually spoke to the board and it looks like something is going to happen.”
For former students, however, that is not currently an option. Student-loan debt in the United States now exceeds $1 trillion, and borrowers of color are disproportionately affected. Refinancing is just one option to address the looming student-debt crisis, but for borrowers of color it is one that could significantly ease the student-debt burden that drags on individuals and on our economy as a whole.
Today’s average college graduate holds $26,600 in debt when he or she graduates, and the numbers for borrowers of color are more severe. A 2010 study by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center found that 27 percent of black bachelor’s degree recipients had student-loan debt of $30,500 or more, compared to just 16 percent of their white counterparts. Additionally, 69 percent of black students who did not finish their college degree cite the high cost of tuition, compared to 43 percent of their white peers.
These borrowers will be affected for years to come as they attempt to buy homes, open businesses, and begin families. The burden of student debt is one that is carried long after graduation, forcing borrowers to delay homeownership and retirement savings in order to pay off their loans. Since fewer workers now have access to traditional pensions, maintaining long-term savings is crucial to a secure retirement for many Americans.
The option to refinance can especially help Latinos, who continue to face an achievement gap. In 2011 only 13.2 percent of all U.S. Latinos over the age of 25 had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 31.8 percent of their white peers. A 2009 Pew Hispanic Center survey found that the most common reason for this gap was pressure to support their families financially, which forces many Latinos to choose between attending college and caring for their families. Low-interest-rate loans would therefore help open doors for Latinos to be able to go to college without having to make that difficult choice.
According to our calculation, refinancing student loans would save borrowers roughly $14 billion in 2013 alone, creating a boost of about $21 billion for the nation’s economy. For borrowers of color who face higher interest rates from private loans, refinancing is a vital option to reducing their student debt. If a student with $30,000 of student-loan debt, for example, were allowed to refinance his or her loan and reduce the interest rate on it from 6.8 percent to 3 percent for repayment over 10 years, he or she could save $6,667.05 in interest payments over the life of the loan.
The burden of student debt on borrowers of color puts communities of color at a disadvantage when compared to their white peers and exacerbates pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities.
About 20 million Americans attend college each year, and about 60 percent use loans to help offset the costs. About 81 percent of black students borrow money, compared to 65 percent of their white peers. The impact of student debt on borrowers of color is twofold: Students of color tend to borrow more, and when they do borrow, they often face higher interest rates than their white counterparts. Coupled with lower graduation rates and higher levels of youth unemployment, borrowers of color face unique burdens.
Students of color take out private student loans at a higher rate than white students, making them more financially vulnerable to risky interest rates. Private-loan distribution trends differ by students’ race or ethnicity, meaning that students of color take out more risky unregulated private student loans. In 2008 black students had the highest private student-loan participation rate despite the fact that only four years earlier, they had a smaller percentage than both white and Latino students. Mounting levels of high interest rates on student loans leave borrowers of color struggling to make payments on time, often resulting in unforeseen fees for deferment or forbearance—processes that can prevent or delay loan payments. Though these processes may make it easier month to month for borrowers of color, they also make loans more expensive in the long term once tacked onto the increasing interest rates that may have accrued.
Students of color are also more likely to enroll in for-profit schools—the payments for which currently account for nearly half of student-loan defaults. For-profit colleges and universities tend to have higher tuitions, higher dropout rates, and higher occurrences of insurmountable debt for students. This puts economic and academic barriers on students of color by reducing college affordability and shifting more of the financial burden onto students and away from college institutions.
Youth unemployment—defined as the unemployment rate for those ages 16 to 24 years old—is higher among people of color. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August 2012 youth unemployment was 28.6 percent for blacks and 18.5 percent for Latinos, compared to 14.9 percent for their white counterparts. Given this high youth unemployment, more young people are realizing that leaving the labor force to go to school has never been a better option. But once they graduate and are faced with significant student debt—often from predatory financial institutions offering high-interest loans to students—they are faced with a double whammy: a lot of debt and a staggering economy.
More than 13 percent of the students whose loans came due in 2009 defaulted within three years as a result of their long-term failure to make payments. Since borrowers of color tend to take out more money at a higher interest rate to finance their college expenses and have higher rates of unemployment, it is no surprise that students of color have higher default rates as well. The long-term impact of student debt is crippling, hindering youth and inevitably preventing future generations from home ownership and a secure retirement.
Debt not only holds individuals back, it also holds back their families, communities, and the economy at large. Past-due payments on loans lead to plummeting credit ratings, lower wages, and loss of federal benefits such as tax refunds that offset loan debt. Borrowers are losing money out of their own pockets, using more of their income to pay back their student-loan debt instead of saving to buy a home or for retirement. This causes a ripple effect throughout the economy: If fewer people have money to spend throughout the greater economy, less growth will occur and industries will stagnate.
One example of this is in the housing market. First-time homebuyers are essential to the recovery of the housing market. According to the Federal Reserve, however, fewer young people are getting mortgages. Only 9 percent of 29- to 34-year-olds got a first-time mortgage from 2009 to 2011, compared to 17 percent in 2001. For those with significant student debt, the debt-to-income ratio puts homeownership out of reach.
Additionally, young people who are swimming in education-loan debt are less likely to participate in wealth building mechanisms such as 401(k)s and other retirement savings plans. Refinancing their student debt would give students of color the opportunity to save more over their lifetime, allowing them to spend more on long-term savings and leading to wealth accumulation. In fact, the wealth gap among communities of color and their white counterparts is astonishing. In 2007, the latest year for which data are available, the median wealth for married or cohabitating white non-Hispanic couples was $167,500, compared to $31,500 for blacks and $18,000 for Latinos. The numbers are bleaker for single women: White single women have a median wealth of $41,500, compared to $100 for single black women and $120 for single Latino women.
Asset and wealth building occurs over generations, providing communities with economic stability. When barriers such as significant debt hinder young people from saving and building wealth, it can have a long-term effect on their children and grandchildren. In fact, from 1999 to 2007 the Urban Institute estimates that the median net worth of black families was $18,181 and that it was $33,619 for Latino families, compared to $122,927 for whites. These gaps stem from lower asset holding over generations for communities of color.
Long-term loan debt puts entire communities are risk, especially those of color, who have historically faced higher levels of unemployment and barriers to achieving wealth over time. While programs for refinancing student debt are just one of many options to address our nation’s student-loan crisis, the need for reasonable interest rates is crucial for borrowers of color.
Sophia Kerby is a Research Assistant for Progress 2050 at the Center for American Progress.
]]>Judge Edward Kormen ordered the FDA to make the morning after pill accessible over-the-counter without age or point-of-sale restrictions within 30 days of April 5. But the Obama Administration responded by lowering the age restriction from 17 to 15 years-of-age and requsted a delay on the implementation of Judge Kormen's ruling so it could work on an appeal.
The Justice Department said Korman's April 5 decision "undermines the regulatory procedures governing FDA's drug approval process."
The FDA battle for unrestricted access to emergency contraception began in 2011 when the FDA approved the product to be made available over-the-counter without age restriction. But in December of that year, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA's recommendation, continuing to restrict the pill from girls under the age of 17 without a doctor's note.
Korman said the secretary's move was politically motivated, and not based on medical necessity. The tactic was "something out of an alternate reality," he said, "frivolous and is taken for the purpose of delay."
Judge Korman has made it clear in court proceedings that he doesn't believe this case is about the potential misuse of emergency contraceptives by 11-year-olds, especially since very few are even physically able to bear children. He also pointed out that in addition to Plan B being among the safest over-the-counter drugs available, the FDA permits drugs that it finds unsafe for pediatric patience to be sold over-the-counter as long as labeling restrictions exist. Kormen said maintaining restrictions is "a convoluted triple-tiered marketing scheme that will only increase the confusion that already prevents women from obtaining timely access to emergency contraceptives."
If the court rules in favor of the FDA, only a single product, Plan B One-Step, will be available without a prescription to individuals with identification proving they are at least 15-years-old.
Kormen said this plan that keeps similar products with the same active ingredient behind pharmacy counters gives the pharmaceutical company that makes Plan B, Teva, "privileged marketing status and exclusivity to increase the cost of the drug...The price of Plan B One-Step under the new marketing regime is expected to be $60, significantly more than the one- or two-pill generic version."
USA Today interviewed 22-year-old Carelton College student Amelia Schlossberg about how this ruling will impact college campuses.
"With this change, you could just get it over the counter from the front desk receptionist," instead of consulting with a registered nurse, which is the current policy Schlossberg said. "That's really important for college students."
The appeals court will address the issue on May 28. Until its judges reach a decision, Judge Kormen’s ruling will not go into effect.
]]>The loans, which are reserved for undergraduate students, are set to double from their 3.4 percent rate to 6.8 percent on July 1. Members of the Senate, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), unveiled the proposal today, saying the short-term solution is crucial for protecting borrowers while giving Congress time to formulate long-term solutions to our student debt crisis.
Joining Reid in introducing the legislation, which would be paid for by closing tax loopholes, were Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Jack Reed (D-RI).
“This two-year extension is the most viable way forward to protect students and fully pay for it,” said Harkin, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "Unlike some proposals that would extract billions more from students by charging them higher interest rates or make them vulnerable to sky-high interest rates in the future, this legislation will help ensure that college remains within reach for students who rely on federal loans to pay for their education. This bill will allow us to engage in a careful and thoughtful way on student loans in the context of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act."
Higher education advocates are already coming out in support of the proposed legislation.
"It’s a smart, short-term solution that keeps subsidized Stafford loans at the current fixed rate of 3.4 percent for two years," said Pauline Abernathy, vice president of The Institute of College Access & Success. "It pays for itself by closing unnecessary tax loopholes, two of which President Obama included in his most recent budget proposal."
The costs of extending the interest rates would be offset by closing three key loopholes: limiting tax-deferred retirement accounts as a complicated estate planning tool, closing corporate offshore tax loopholes, and raising revenue by treating oil from tar sands like other petroleum products.
"I believe we need to continue to work in a bipartisan way to maintain, not increase, student loan rates, and preserve our historical commitment to protecting students from outrageous interest rates," Harkin said.
With 38 million Americans across the country sharing a collective student debt load of $1 trillion, the impact it has on consumer spending and the economy is a growing concern. Annie Lowrey recent noted in the New York Times that student debt is "delaying purchases of things like homes, cars and other big-ticket items and acting as a drag on growth." By easing the burden on student loan borrowers, the government can help people save thousand of dollars—money that can be spent on the kinds of goods and services that help create jobs and grow the economy.
Other sponsors of the bill include Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Patty Murray (D-WA), John Rockefeller (D-WV), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Al Franken (D-MN), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Christopher Murphy (D-CT), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
]]>A new report by the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute, noted an increase in merit aid awarded to wealthy students and a decrease in financial aid to low-income students at public and private colleges. According to the report, colleges and universities lure wealthy students who can afford to pay nearly full tuition at the expense of aid to low-income students.
“[C]olleges are not just looking for the best and brightest students,” said the report. “They are also working hard to bring wealthy students to their campuses in order to maximize their revenue.”
Colleges have always awarded merit aid, but the upward swing is notable.
In the 1995-1996 school year, 24 percent of students at private institutions received merit aid, while 43 percent received need-based aid.
Compare that to the 2007-2008 school year, in which 44 percent of students received merit aid and 42 percent of students received need-based aid, and the higher education industry’s shift in priorities becomes clear.
Low-income students at two-thirds of private universities surveyed were charged up to half of their family’s yearly income in tuition, the report found. That equals a “net price,” or the amount of tuition students pay after an institution’s aid has been distributed, of over $15,000 a year.
“In many cases,” the report said, “these institutions are trying to lure in top students who will help them improve their standing in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings so they can enhance their reputations and marketability.”
George Washington University and Boston University both scaled up their recruiting efforts of wealthy or desirable students over the past few decades, leaving low-income students to foot the bill. One such student is Garineh Panosian, a Boston University senior.
“I've had a pretty terrible experience with the financial aid here,” Panosian told Campus Progress in an email. “My family’s combined income puts us in the lower middle class bracket and BU barely gave me a quarter off the tuition.”
Despite the President Obama’s goal for the U.S. to have the world’s highest proportion of graduates by 2020, the outlook for low-income students at these universities seems bleak.
Needy students denied aid who decide to take on debt for their education often end up having to work during school, making graduation in four years less likely, said the report. Their debt adds to economic stress, increases the chances that they will rely on social welfare programs, and promotes the cycle of poverty and the education gap.
Panosian, who plans to finish her degree requirements at another institution, said BU not only skimped on financial aid, but also charged her late fees when she had trouble with her bank. She said she now realizes the lack of support in higher education isn’t universal.
“Had I known another institution would’ve paid for full or even half, I would’ve gone there, but hindsight is 20/20,” Panosian said. “That was a very expensive decision, and I don’t know if I still stand by it.”
]]>The concept: Congress should give students the "same deal" on student loan interest rates that they offer to big banks through the Federal Reserve. More than 250,000 MoveOn.org members have signed Sen. Elizabeth Warren's petition, which mirrors her first bill in the Senate. If passed, Warren's legislation would cut interest rates on Stafford student loans down to 0.75 percent from their current 3.4 percent rate.
Rates on these federal loans are set by Congress and are scheduled to double on July 1, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.
“The biggest banks in the country—the ones that wrecked our economy and cost millions of Americans their jobs—pay next to nothing on their debt, while students pay nine times as much," the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts says in her petition. "That isn't right.”
The Feds argue that the super low interest rate reserved for banks is a necessary mechanism to keep the still struggling economy afloat. But recent research collected by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggests that mounting student debt affects millions of Americans of all ages and various markets.
More than 38 million Americans have a collective $1 trillion in student debt, with the average graduate today shouldering upwards of $26,000.
While Warren's proposal is only a short-term fix specifically for Stafford loan interest rates, she also reminded Americans on the Senate floor last week that the growing student debt crisis will need more meaningful legislation that should take more time to craft.
"This will give them relief while giving Congress a chance to find a long-term solution," she said. "Doubling interest rates on new loans will just increase pressure on our young people. These young people didn't go to the mall and run up charges on a credit card. They worked hard; they stayed in class; they learned skills; and they borrowed what they needed to get an education."
One possible solution is student loan refinancing, a viable option for student loan borrowers struggling to make their monthly payments. Plenty of lenders in the public and private sector offer refinancing during times of financial hardship. Mortgage holders, credit-card borrowers, and even the government can refinance their debt.
Campus Progress launched the #ItsOurInterest campaign this year in response to the growing student debt crisis, noting that refinancing could help alleviate the burden of student loan debt for millions of Americans. If student loan borrowers were allowed to refinance, monthly payments on their loans would be reduced and they'd save thousands of dollars on average. With the extra cash, borrowers could put money back into the consumer-based economy.
Last year, Stafford interest rates were also set to double, but Congress passed a one-year measure to prevent the hike after hearing from thousands of young organizers and families across the country.
]]>Millennials consist, depending on whom you ask, of people born from 1980 to 2000. To put it more simply for them, since they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their heads, thanks to computers, the group is made up mostly of teens and 20-somethings.
LOL, Joel! Sorry, you didn't grow up with computers. In that case, let me carefully explain another Internet term that we Millennials learn while checking our phones every hour for 88 daily text messages:
A "troll" is somebody who deliberately goads others on "internet message boards" (you might remember these from GeoCities) just to get a reaction. And you, Joel Stein, are the perfect example of an offline troll: a journalist who riles up readers by smearing an entire generation as lazy—only to turn around and completely undermine his own half-baked shock-bait with the latter half of his article. I'm loath to feed a troll, but this particular troll, who admitted to "cozying up to the editor of the magazine" in his early career, has too wide and too credulous an audience.
"I have studies! I have statistics!" Stein crows. Actually, he has about two paragraphs of cherry-picked data! He has hand-waving generalizations! He has quotes from 20 people over age 32, and only two under age 30! (Thanks to fellow Millennial and Campus Progress alum Tyler Kingkade for the latter observation.)
Some of Stein's mistakes may be simple carelessness. Maybe, when he wrote that Millennials "have less civic engagement and voter participation than any previous group," he just hadn't read that Millennials are most interested in civil service careers and volunteerism, had record levels of voter participation last year, and care far more about family than fame.
Maybe it didn't occur to him, when citing a survey of middle schoolers who want to grow up assisting famous people, that early adolescence isn't the best time to evaluate most people's career paths. And maybe he just hadn't heard that the National Institutes of Health survey about Millennials' narcissism has been called into serious question under peer review.
But too many of Stein's blunders are internal contradictions that if not he, then his editors, should have known better than to print.
He says young people are stunted because they spend more time socializing with peers than adults, then says Millennials don't rebel as much because they have friendlier relationships and more in common with their parents. He snarks about middle-class families displaying far more photos of themselves than in the 50s, but those are the houses Millennials grew up in, not the ones they head—and then he says vacation-slide-showing baby boomers, given the same technology, would have been just as obnoxious as Facebook-oversharers. He debunks his own claims about the self-esteem-hyping, over-trophying culture of the 1970s by writing that "millenials' perceived entitlement isn't a result of overprotection but an adaptation to a world of abundance."
Maybe that "perceived" entitlement is just "how rich kids have always behaved," but Stein's most glaring omission is failing to acknowledge just how not-rich this generation is becoming, and just how badly the baby-boomer-created system has failed them.
It's hard to fathom how Stein can call Millennials lazy when too many of them slave for 60-hour weeks working multiple jobs to take unpaid internships, all so that they can see no wage gains from all that extra work.
It's outrageous to connect Millennials' supposedly "stunted" intellectual growth with the popularity of keeping them on their parents' insurance until age 26, when the reality is that "good jobs" with benefits are getting harder to find.
And it's jaw-droppingly insulting that Stein's only discussion of low-income youth is a flippant reference to "ghetto-fabulous" lifestyles.
The "how Millennials will save the world" part of the piece has some decent points.
Millennials have positive attitudes. They are shaped by, and shape, the technology and environment they are presented with. Their egalitarian, decentralized understanding of the world will change and benefit both them and the world.
But Millennials and their world won’t benefit from confused, stereotype-driven understandings of who they are and what they care about. While we keep building bridges to the future, let’s keep the trolls tucked away underneath them.
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