Category: Opinion

President Joe Biden’s administration is allocating $1 billion in American Rescue Plan funding to expand independent meat and poultry processing capacity as consumer prices continue to skyrocket.

The White House announced the plan for a “Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain” on Monday. Biden also spoke with independent farmers and ranchers Monday afternoon about the new plan.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation. That’s what we’re seeing in the meat and poultry … industries now,” Biden said during the virtual meeting.

In a fact sheet detailing Biden’s four-step plan, The White House described the meat and poultry processing sector as “a textbook example” of an industry “dominated by a handful of large companies that control most of the business and most of the opportunities.”

The administration argued that this is “raising prices and decreasing options for American families” and said the “lack of competition [is] hurting consumers, producers, and our economy.”

The $1 billion comes from the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress in 2021, and the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) plans to allocate the money towards specific efforts. Specifically, the USDA is providing up to $375 million in grants to produce more independent processing plants, $275 million as a partnership with lenders who will give out loans and support businesses, and $100 million to improve the workforce, as well as other projects.

“Roundtable participants described how lack of competition in the meat and poultry supply chain impacts their businesses and their lives, and the challenges they face because a few large companies dominate the processing markets,” the White House said. “The farmers and ranchers explained that they are often at the mercy of just a few buyers who determine the price they receive and that even as these conglomerates raise prices at the grocery stores, they push down prices for farmers and ranchers, taking wealth out of rural communities and hurting consumers.”

U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) data shows the price for beef in November had risen 20.9% from the previous year. In November, inflation hit its highest level in 39 years.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement saying that the Biden administration’s decision to allocate $1 billion in funding to try and solve meat prices, is “misguided.”

“Like so many other products, the factors driving meat prices higher include increased demand, COVID-related supply chain disruptions, and increased input costs, especially higher energy and labor costs,” Neil Bradley, U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, said in a statement.

“One has to ask, if, as the administration asserts, consolidation in meat and other industries has been a problem for years and it is also driving the current surge in prices, then why didn’t it drive prices higher before? It is pretty clear that the administration is attempting to use higher prices to justify their preexisting agenda to overturn decades of bipartisan consensus around antitrust and competition policy in favor of a ‘government-knows-best’ regulatory approach,” Bradley added. “That isn’t economics, it is politics and sadly, such government intervention would likely further constrain supply and push prices even higher.”

Thousands of drivers were stranded on a Virginia highway for over 15 hours due to icy roads, heavy snowfall, and a tractor-trailer crash Monday.

North and southbound traffic on I-95 came to a standstill between Ruther Glen, Virginia, in Caroline County and exit 152, in Dumfries, Virginia, in Prince William County, after a massive winter storm caused poor driving conditions that led to a tractor-trailer accident, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.

“We know many travelers have been stuck on Interstate 95 in our region for extraordinary periods of time over the past 24 hours, in some cases since Monday morning,” Marcie Parker, the state transportation agency’s Fredericksburg District Engineer said in the press release.

“This is unprecedented, and we continue to steadily move stopped trucks to make progress toward restoring lanes. In addition to clearing the trucks, we are treating for snow and several inches of ice that has accumulated around them to ensure that when the lanes reopen, motorists can safely proceed to their destination,” Parker said.

Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said that his team had worked through the night with state police, transportation, and emergency officials.

“An emergency message is going to all stranded drivers connecting them to support, and the state is working with localities to open warming shelters as needed,” Northam tweeted. “While sunlight is expected to help the Virginia DOT clear the road, all Virginians should continue to avoid 1-95.”

Up to 11 inches of snow fell in the area Monday, causing many accidents and triggering some to leave cars abandoned on the interstate.

The accumulated snow along with the crash delays made it impossible for cars to move, leaving hundreds of travelers posting distressed messages on social media platforms.

Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine tweeted that he had been stuck on the road for 19 hours, and one reporter on NBC’s “Morning Joe” even joined the show while sitting in the traffic jam.

President Joe Biden assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a phone call Sunday that the U.S. and allies would “respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine.”

“President Biden made clear that the United States and its allies and partners will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday evening following the phone call with Zelensky. “The leaders expressed support for diplomatic efforts, starting next week with the bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue, at NATO through the NATO-Russia Council, and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.”

Ukraine has accused Russia of dispatching tanks and more sniper teams as an affront in Donbas, a pro-Russian conflict area of Ukraine.

“President Biden underscored the commitment of the United States and its allies and partners to the principle of ‘nothing about you without you,’” Psaki added, echoing a White House statement from earlier in December. “He reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. He also expressed support for confidence-building measures to de-escalate tensions in Donbas and active diplomacy to advance the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, in support of the Normandy Format.”

During the president’s Thursday call with Putin, Biden  “made clear that the United States and its allies and partners will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a separate statement.

Zelensky acknowledged “the first international talk of the year” as proof of “the special nature of” relations between Ukraine and the U.S. He thanked the U.S. for its “unwavering support of” Ukraine and said they discussed “keeping peace in Europe, preventing further escalation, reforms, [and] deoligarchization.”

Biden maintained economic sanctions are still central regarding Russia, and he dismissed the idea of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine to help earlier in December. He told reporters at the time that this is “not on the table.”

“President Biden voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European Allies about Russia’s escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine and made clear that the U.S. and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of military escalation,” the White House said in early December after Biden spoke with Putin. “President Biden reiterated his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and called for de-escalation and a return to diplomacy.”

Rhode Island implemented a coronavirus mandate for health care workers this fall but has now made it an option for COVID-positive health care workers to continue working if their facility is facing a staffing crisis.

“Also, facility administrators should be using their clinical judgment in making staffing decisions. For example, a facility may opt for a COVID-19 positive worker to only care for COVID-19 positive patients,” Joseph Wendelken, a spokesperson from the department of health, said Saturday.

A memo was sent to employees of state-run Eleanor Slater Hospital on Friday outlining that “those who are exposed or have a positive Covid test but are asymptomatic” can continue reporting to work “in crisis situations for staffing” if they wear N95 masks.

The memo came after Rhode Island updated its isolation and quarantine guidance in December to reflect the CDC’s updated guidance.

“For the general public, the updated guidance, which shortens the isolation and quarantine period in some instances, is reflective of science that indicates that most SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness,” Wendelken said.

Workers at other hospitals and skilled nursing homes in the state who are “mildly symptomatic” can also continue working if the facilities are facing a staffing crisis, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health. Any hospital that needs to activate crisis staffing mode needs to notify the state Department of Health.

For now, the hospitals have not needed to call on COVID-positive workers to report to the job.

“No, no facility has reported to us yet that they are in a position that requires COVID-19 positive healthcare providers to be working. If a facility does reach that point, that information would be posted publicly so patients and families would be aware,” Wendelken added.

Like other states, Rhode Island required health care workers to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 1 of last year. The mandate resulted in the termination of hundreds of health care workers in the state.

However, in November, there were 32 unvaccinated employees at Eleanor Slater who were allowed to stay on the job due to staffing shortages.

“The Department of Health and Eleanor Slater did the very best they could do. Sometimes when there’s not a decision to be made, it’s an easy one to make,” Democratic Gov. Dan McKee said at the time.

“I’m disappointed that we haven’t been able to get everyone vaccinated. But at the same point in time, right now our responsibility is to take care of the patients in the hospital,” he added.

Staffing issues have plagued hospitals and nursing homes across the country, leading state leaders to call in the National Guard to support the facilities after thousands of other health care workers were fired last year over vaccine mandates.

“Oh crap. We don’t have enough people,” one Eleanor Slater Hospital staffer said after reading Friday’s memo on opening the option for COVID-positive workers to continue reporting to work.

Another anonymous health care worker speculated that opening the option was the “right thing” to do because “all hospitals, struggle with staffing. We have no choice.”

The average number of COVID-19 tests per day is close to record highs as Americans wait for hours in long lines around the country to get tested following the holidays.

The American Rescue Plan, ushered through Congress by the Biden administration last March, allocated $47.8 billion “to carry out activities to detect, diagnose, trace, and monitor SARS–CoV–2 and COVID–19 infections.”

Roughly 80% of those funds were gone by mid-December, according to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.

“Are we going to have more than $10 billion worth of needs and costs? (With) COVID, especially regarding testing, there’s a strong chance we will, depending on, again, where Omicron takes us,” Becerra told reporters on Dec. 14.

Since Dec. 14, the 7-day average for new daily cases has risen nearly three-fold, surging from 119,356 to 316,277 new infections last Wednesday.

America is nearing a record number of new tests per day in December as the 7-day average for new tests hit 1,769,532 on Dec. 23.

Prior to the American Rescue Plan, Congress allocated $25 billion in April 2020 as part of the Paycheck Protection Program to “research, develop, validate, manufacture, purchase, administer, and expand capacity for COVID–19 tests.”

The $73 billion allocated through these massive economic stimulus plans has been partly distributed to states, which can then use the money to distribute tests for local residents.

Connecticut announced a plan last week to use federal funds to purchase three million at-home tests made by iHealth Labs. Likewise, Massachusetts announced a plan in mid-December to purchase 2.1 million at-home tests and distribute them to areas of the state with the highest percentage of people below the poverty level.

President Biden announced a plan last month to increase rapid antigen testing by making 500 million at-home tests available to anyone who wants them but admitted that more work needed to be done.

“It’s not enough. It’s clearly not enough. If we’d have known, we’d have gone harder, quicker if we could have,” he told governors last week.

Prior to that, the Biden administration announced a $650 million investment in November to “strengthen manufacturing capacity for quick, high-quality diagnostic testing.”

The National Institutes of Health also established the Independent Test Assessment Program in October to “accelerate regulatory review and availability of high-quality, accurate, and reliable over-the-counter COVID-19 tests.”

The first at-home rapid test wasn’t approved by the FDA until about six months into the pandemic in November 2020. The FDA has since given emergency use authorization to about a dozen antigen over-the-counter at-home tests and three molecular at-home tests.

Footage that surfaced Sunday showed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., maskless in a packed-out bar in Miami.

The majority of the crowd at the drag bar, who were also without a mask, applauded the congresswoman as she waved to them.

“For those of you with zero sense of humor: the whole point of this post is to expose hypocrisy. We don’t actually care she’s maskless. We care she fear mongers about Florida but then has the audacity to vacation here,” wrote Brendon Leslie, the reporter who first tweeted the video.

Ocasio-Cortez’s home state of New York has seen a record surge in COVID-19 cases amid the spread of the omicron variant.

Leslie went on to say that he had no intention of dating the congresswoman, a reference to when Ocasio-Cortez accused her critics last week of being motivated by “sexual frustrations” when they called her out after the National Review reported that she had been seen maskless in Miami.

A photo was published of the congresswoman sipping on a drink with her boyfriend at a restaurant.

“If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Friday in response to former Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortes, who had taken a shot at her boyfriend’s sandals.

“It’s starting to get old ignoring the very obvious, strange, and deranged sexual frustrations that underpin the Republican fixation on me, women,& LGBT+ people in general. These people clearly need therapy, won’t do it, and use politics as their outlet instead. It’s really weird,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

A Tennessee mother came home only to discover that a wanted sex offender, wearing nothing but her daughter’s black shoes, had broken into her apartment.

Daphne Crowley called the Knoxville Police Department (KPD) when upon returning home on Dec. 19 she discovered a nude man, who was later identified as sex offender Michael Tyler Henegar, was burglarizing her home.

Henegar was in the process of stealing a Milwaukee M18 impact drill, a Dewalt 20V handheld work light, and various other items that he was packing into a children’s Scooby-Doo bag.

When Crowley discovered Henegar, she yelled at him and started chasing after him. “I chased him with these sticks cause had I got a hold of him, I would have beat him. But he ran down the street into this pathway,” Crowley said.

Officers, located and arrested Henegar, who had run into a nearby wooded area. Police found a pair of ripped white shoes, believed to belong to Henegar, near the back patio of Crowley’s apartment, where he had entered.

Crowley said she would be having an alarm system installed soon and blocked the patio door with a sofa until then.

“I’m calm now, but at the time I was literally shaking and cried because it’s scary. You think these people are in your house and they are sex offenders and you have your kids running around and you’re thinking you’re safe,” she said.

The KPD discovered that Henegar was convicted in 2014 for sexually exploiting a minor and was also wanted for violating the sex offender registry.

A truck driver who had been sentenced to 110-years in prison after being convicted on charges stemming from a fatal crash west of Denver will now serve only 10 years in prison because Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis stepped in.

Polis commuted the lifelong sentence given to Rogel Aguilera-Mederos following the vehicular manslaughter convictions from the 2019 pileup to 10 years after outcry over the original sentence led to an online petition that gathered millions of signatures.

“The length of your 110-year sentence is simply not commensurate with your actions, nor with penalties handed down to others for similar crimes. There is an urgency to remedy this unjust sentence and restore confidence in the uniformity and fairness of our criminal justice system, and consequently, I have chosen to commute your sentence now,” Polis wrote in a letter to Aguilera-Mederos on Thursday.

“The crimes you were convicted of are serious. Four individuals lost their lives and others were seriously injured because of your bad decisions. The families of these victims will never again have the chance to embrace their lost loved ones,” Polis said.

The commutation of the sentence was met with criticism from Alexis King, district attorney for Jefferson and Gilpin counties, although King had previously asked the judge in the case to reduce the original term to a 20-30 year sentence.

“We are meeting with the victims and their loved ones this evening to support them in navigating this unprecedented action and to ensure they are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect during this difficult time,” King said.

Truck drivers nationwide had threatened not to drive to Colorado following the original sentence.

Democratic Mayor London Breed started an emergency police intervention on Tuesday aimed at San Francisco’s rising crime and drug problem and called “bullshit” on left-wing policies such as defunding the police.

Breed described San Francisco as a city that prides itself on compassion and rehabilitation but warned that its compassion should not be mistaken for weakness or indifference. “We are not a city where anything goes,” she said.

Breed’s “tough love” program includes an emergency intervention plan for the Tenderloin district, providing emergency police funding, amending surveillance ordinances so law enforcement can prevent and stop crime in real-time and hinder the illegal sales of stolen goods.

Recently, retailers such as Walgreens and Safeway have been forced to close stores in San Francisco due to rampant and brazen theft.

Under Proposition 47, a California ballot initiative passed in 2014, theft of less than $950 in goods is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted. Retail establishments often instruct employees and security guards not to intervene when they witness a crime, due to fear of lawsuits and personal safety.

There were 3,375 reports of larceny-theft citywide in November, the majority of them were car break-ins. Tourist hotspots have seen 876 reports of smash-and-grabs in November, that number is up from 442 last year.

San Francisco is not alone in the fight against surging crime, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia have seen a drastic surge in violence and crime since the push from Democratic lawmakers to defund the police following the George Floyd protests.

Although Breed is hoping to rein in crime all over San Francisco, the Tenderloin district has “obvious problems” she said.

“Just imagine if you had to walk your kids down the streets of the Tenderloin every single day with people shooting up (on drugs), selling drugs and because the sidewalks were so packed with people, you had to walk out into the streets in incoming traffic on a regular basis,” she said.

“At the end of the day, the safety of the people of San Francisco is the most important thing to me. We are past the point where what we see is even remotely acceptable,” Breed concluded.

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced last week that troops in 15 metropolitan areas and 21 non-metropolitan counties in the continental United States will no longer be eligible for a cost of living allowance starting Jan. 1.

The change will mean approximately 48,000 troops missing out on the Continental United States Cost-of-Living Allowance (CONUS COLA), according to Stars and Stripes.

Approximately 6,000 service members will continue to be recipients of the $8.5 million that the Pentagon allocated for the stipend, which is given to troops stationed at excessively expensive locations in the lower 48.

The 2022 list is made up of 20 non-metropolitan counties and six metropolitan areas including New York City, Long Island, and Staten Island in New York; Nantucket, Mass.; Boulder, Colo.; and San Francisco, Calif.

The COLA rate is based on information gathered by a contractor, which analyzes the cost of transportation, goods and services, federal income taxes, sales taxes, and miscellaneous expenses, according to the DoD.

A location is deemed eligible for COLA when non-housing costs exceed 8% above the national average.

Among the locations that were cut in 2022 is the Washington, D.C., area, where troops had received a 1% supplement in 2021. Stipends for troops in Boston and Worcester, Mass., were also cut off.

Troops located in New York City will receive the highest stipend at 6%, which is down from 7% in 2021.

How much COLA a service member earns depends on geographic duty location, pay grade, years of service, and dependency status. The Pentagon explained that monthly payments for each CONUS COLA percentage point vary from $33 to $59 per month for troops with dependents, and from $22 to $45 per month for those without dependents.