September, 13 2012, 01:29pm EDT
Coalition Urges Consumer Protection From Deceptive Oil and Gas Leases
WASHINGTON
More than 100 grassroots consumer, religious, public health and environmental organizations from 20 states are calling on the Obama administration to address the impact of deceptive oil and gas leasing practices on U.S. property values and mortgages.
In a letter sent Thursday to Richard Cordray, director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the groups urged the agency to focus on companies that misrepresent or conceal the inherent risks of fracking as they approach landowners to lease their property for oil and gas exploitation.
"As we continue to weather this country's housing crisis, regulators must prevent oil and gas companies from using deception to acquire drilling leases - deception that could carry ramifications for homeowners and lenders," said Thomas Cluderay, EWG assistant general counsel.
"We encourage the CFPB to look into the risks that homeowners and their families face in signing these lease contracts, such as inadvertently signing away their property rights and potentially losing the value of their homes or being stuck with water unsafe to drink," said Ellen Bloom, director of federal policy for Consumers Union.
The organizations ask the federal watchdog bureau to:
* Investigate the extent to which oil and gas companies misrepresent or fail to disclose the risks of drilling and hydraulic fracturing when they approach landowners to lease their land for drilling operations;
* Develop robust disclosure standards and other regulations that would prevent oil and gas companies from engaging in deceptive leasing practices and hold them accountable for representations made by their leasing agents; and
* Work with state regulators, the lending community, insurance companies and public interest groups to develop a campaign to educate the public about the ways that oil and gas leases may affect property values and mortgages.
An EWG investigation found that drilling companies regularly disclose the risks of fracking to their shareholders and investors, yet downplay or conceal these very same risks from potential leaseholders.
Some of the risks disclosed to investors but not property owners include leaks, spills, explosions, bodily injury and even death.
The letter to Cordray says:
The debate over drilling and hydraulic fracturing has largely focused on whether it can be done safely, without compromising water supplies. However, we cannot afford to ignore its serious spillover effects, including how drilling operations affect property values and mortgages. We believe this is an area where the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should be taking the lead to protect the public, especially when no other regulatory agency appears to have the ability to address this issue on a comprehensive, national scale.
Support for natural gas drilling lies at the cornerstone of the Obama administration's "all-of-the-above" energy strategy. Earlier this month, President Obama repeated his pledge to create more than 600,000 jobs new jobs in natural gas alone, a far greater employment outlook than the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projection.
A copy of the letter was also sent to the Federal Housing Finance Agency and to Attorneys General of certain states impacted by oil and natural drilling.
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Calls Mount for US to Provide Free School Meals to All Children
"Hiving off a tiny part of the public school bundle and charging a means-tested fee for it is extremely stupid," argues Matt Bruenig.
Mar 20, 2023
Minnesota last week became just the fourth U.S. state to guarantee universal free school meals, triggering a fresh wave of demands and arguments for a similar federal policy to feed kids.
"Universal school meals is now law in Minnesota!" Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents the state, tweeted Monday. "Now, we need to pass our Universal School Meals Program Act to guarantee free school meals to every child across the country."
Omar's proposal, spearheaded in the upper chamber by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), "would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income, eliminate school meal debt, and strengthen local economies by incentivizing local food procurement," the lawmakers' offices explained in 2021.
Congressional Republicans last year blocked the continuation of a Covid-19 policy enabling public schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to all 50 million children, and now, many families face rising debt over childrens' cafeteria charges.
"The school bus service doesn't charge fares. Neither should the school lunch service."
Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, highlighted Monday that while children who attend public schools generally have not only free education but also free access to bathrooms, textbooks, computer equipment, playgrounds, gyms, and sports gear, "around the middle of each school day, the free schooling service is briefly suspended for lunch."
"How much each kid is charged is based on their family income except that, if a kid lives in a school or school district where 40% or more of the kids are eligible for free lunch, then they are also eligible for free lunch even if their family income would otherwise be too high," he detailed. "Before Covid, in 2019, 68.1% of the kids were charged $0, 5.8% were charged $0.40, and 26.1% were charged the full $4.33... The total cost of the 4.9 billion meals is around $21 billion per year. In 2019, user fees covered $5.6 billion of this cost."
Bruenig—whose own child has access to free school meals because of the community eligibility program—continued:
The approximately $5.6 billion of school lunch fees collected in 2019 were equal to 0.7% of the total cost of K-12 schooling. In order to collect these fees, each school district has to set up a school lunch payments system, often by contracting with third-party providers like Global Payments. They also have to set up a system for dealing with kids who are not enrolled in the free lunch program but who show up to school with no money in their school lunch account or in their pockets. In this scenario, schools will either have to make the kid go without lunch, give them a free lunch for the day (but not too many times), or give them a lunch while assigning their lunch account a debt.
Eligibility for the $0 and $0.40 lunches is based on income, but this does not mean that everyone with an eligible income successfully signs up for the program. As with all means-tested programs, the application of the means test not only excludes people with ineligible incomes, but also people with eligible incomes who fail to successfully navigate the red tape of the welfare bureaucracy.
The think tank leader tore into arguments against universal free meals for kids, declaring that "hiving off a tiny part of the public school bundle and charging a means-tested fee for it is extremely stupid."
Bruenig pointed out that socializing the cost of child benefits like school meals helps "equalize the conditions of similarly-situated families with different numbers of children" and "smooths incomes across the lifecycle by ensuring that, when people have kids, their household financial situation remains mostly the same."
"Indeed, this is actually the case for the welfare state as whole, not just child benefits," the expert emphasized, explaining that like older adults and those with disabilities, children cannot and should not work, which "makes it impossible to receive personal labor income, meaning that some other non-labor income system is required."
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A tax for everyone with a certain income intended to make up the $5.6 billion in school meal fees, he argued, "would have a larger base and thus represent a smaller share of the income of each person taxed and such a tax would smooth incomes over time," while also eliminating means-testing—which would allow schools to feed all kids and ditch costly payment systems.
As Nora De La Cour reported Sunday for Jacobin: "The fight for school meals traces its roots all the way back to maternalist Progressive Era efforts to shield children and workers from the ravages of unregulated capitalism. In her bookThe Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, Jennifer Gaddis describes how early school lunch crusaders envisioned meal programs that would be integral to schools' educational missions, immersing students in hands-on learning about nutrition, gardening, food preparation, and home economics. Staffed by duly compensated professionals, these programs would collectivize and elevate care work, making it possible for mothers of all economic classes to efficiently nourish their young."
Now, families who experienced the positive impact of the pandemic-era program want more from the federal government.
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Fresh protests erupted in Paris and other French cities on Monday after President Emmanuel Macron's government narrowly survived a pair of parliamentary no-confidence votes over bypassing the lower house of Parliament to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
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