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Extra SNAP benefits are ending as US lawmakers resume battle over program that helps low-income Americans buy food

More than 41 million people rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to buy their groceries. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the program…

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For some Americans, the decline will be quite sharp. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Millions of Americans will find it harder to put enough food on the table starting in March 2023, after a COVID-19 pandemic-era boost to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits comes to an end. Congress mandated this change in budget legislation it passed in late December 2022.

Roughly 41 million Americans are currently enrolled in this program, which the government has long used to ease hunger while boosting the economy during downturns.

Many families enrolled in the program, commonly known as SNAP but sometimes called food stamps, stand to lose an average of roughly US$90 per person a month.

While researching SNAP for an upcoming book, I’ve observed that this program has provided critical assistance to struggling families over the last three years. The extra benefits, which Americans can use to purchase food at the roughly 250,000 stores that accept them, have helped millions of people weather the pandemic’s economic fallout and high inflation rates.

SNAP benefits grew during the pandemic

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, lines at food banks grew and millions lost their jobs. One way that Congress responded was with legislation that let the states, which administer this federally funded program, expand SNAP benefits during the public health emergency.

Under this temporary arrangement, all families who were eligible for SNAP could get the maximum allowable benefit amount for the size of their household. Otherwise, that maximum amount would only be available to people with no income at all. But starting in March 2023, SNAP benefits will once again be distributed everywhere on a sliding scale based on income levels.

Some states began to drop the extra benefits in the spring of 2021. But 32 states and the District of Columbia were still offering the extra help in February 2023.

A study from the Urban Institute, a think tank, estimated that the extra benefits kept 4.2 million people out of poverty at the end of 2021 and had reduced overall poverty in states still offering the benefits by 9.6% and child poverty by 14%.

Although the unemployment rate has recently fallen to the lowest level since 1969, the extra SNAP benefits have continued to help low-income families deal with soaring prices that increased the cost of food consumed at home by 11.3% in the 12 months ending in January 2023.

With more people enrolled in the program today than before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the distribution of extra benefits, SNAP spending reached a record $114 billion in the 12 months that ended in September 2022.

Looming hunger cliff

Many experts on food insecurity have long argued that SNAP benefits have historically been too low.

The Biden administration has already tried to boost them by adjusting the “Thrifty Food Plan” – the standard the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses to set SNAP benefits based on the cost of a budget-conscious and nutritionally adequate diet.

As a result, benefits rose an average of $36 a month, a 21% increase, in October 2021. That increase more than offset the expiration of a temporary seven-month boost in benefits that Congress had approved earlier that year.

SNAP benefits automatically adjust every October based on the increase in food prices in July as compared with the previous year. In 2022, they increased 12.5%. But when prices are rising quickly, as is currently the case, SNAP benefits can lose a lot of ground in the months before the next adjustment.

Many advocates for a stronger safety net say that SNAP benefits are too low to meet the needs of low-income people. They are warning of a looming hunger cliff – meaning a sharp increase in the number of people who don’t get enough nutritious food to eat – in March 2023, when the extra help ends.

At that point, the lowest-income families will lose $95 in benefits a month. But some SNAP participants, such as many elderly and disabled people who live alone and on fixed incomes and who only qualify for the minimum amount of help, will see their benefits plummet from $281 to $23 a month.

Most people on SNAP who get Social Security benefits will see their SNAP benefits fall. That’s because of the 8.7% cost of living increase in Social Security benefits implemented in January 2023, which increases their income and lowers the amount of nutritional assistance they can receive. And some of these Americans may even have enough income that they no longer qualify for SNAP at all.

For an average family of four on SNAP, benefits will fall from the maximum of $939 to $718, according to an estimate by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, an anti-poverty research group.

Food banks, already under stress because of higher food costs and falling donations, are bracing for higher demand. Food banks in some states that ended the emergency boost in benefits early have seen a 30% increase in need.

More people on SNAP also reported skipping meals in the states that dropped extra benefits than those that did not.

Lawmakers poised to resume a longtime fight

Several Democrats have proposed legislation to increase SNAP benefits over the long term. But many Republicans want to reduce spending on SNAP and put more limits on who can get the program’s benefits.

Debate centers around whether unemployed adults deemed capable of working should be able to get SNAP. This argument, almost as old as the program itself, was largely set aside during the pandemic.

Legislation enacted in early 2020 suspended a requirement that limited benefits for adults under 50 who meet the government’s definition of able-bodied and have no dependents. They can receive no more than three months of SNAP benefits every three years – unless they work or participate in a work-training program at least 20 hours a week.

This time limit will come back when the public health emergency ends in May 2023.

But many critics of SNAP have argued the work requirements were never effectively enforced. A few Republicans want to make tightening restrictions on SNAP benefits a condition for raising the debt ceiling. At this point, it isn’t clear if they will succeed.

Debate over SNAP reforms is likely to come up when Congress considers the program as part of broad food and agriculture legislation known as the farm bill. Congress must act to renew the program before October 2023.

But with the House narrowly controlled by Republicans and the Senate controlled by a slim Democratic majority, I believe it will be hard to make big changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Tracy Roof does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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The Virality Project’s Censorship Agenda

The Virality Project’s Censorship Agenda

Authored by Andrew Lowenthal via the Brownstone Institute,

In November 2023 Alex Gutentag and…

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The Virality Project’s Censorship Agenda

Authored by Andrew Lowenthal via the Brownstone Institute,

In November 2023 Alex Gutentag and I reported on the Virality Project’s internal content-flagging system, as released by the US House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and led by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the Virality Project sought to censor those who questioned government Covid-19 policies. The Virality Project primarily focused on so-called “anti-vaccine” “misinformation;” however, my Twitter Files investigations with Matt Taibbi revealed this included “true stories of vaccine side effects.”

A further review of the content flagged by the Virality Project demonstrates how they pushed social media platforms to censor such “true stories.” This was often done incompetently and without even a cursory investigation of the original sources. In one instance, the Virality Project reporters told platforms that reports of a child injured in a vaccine trial were “false” due to the timing; citing the dates of a Moderna trial when in fact the child had been in a Pfizer trial.

Trigger-happy researchers-turned-activists at the Virality Project went further, alerting their Big Tech partners (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok) of protests, jokes, and general dissent.

Led by former CIA fellow Renee DiResta, the Virality Project functioned as an intermediary for government censorship. Ties between the US government and the academic research center were extremely close. DHS had “fellows” embedded at the Stanford Internet Observatory, while SIO had interns embedded at CISA, and former DHS staff contributed to the Virality Project’s final report.

The Virality Project also had contact with the White House and the Office of the Surgeon General, described the CDC as a “partner” in its design documents, and the California Department of Public Health had a login to access the Jira content flagging system, as did CISA personnel.

Kris Krebs and Alex Stamos – former directors of CISA and SIO, respectively – became business partners soon after leaving their positions.

Norwood v. Harrison established that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Stamos knew this too and put it simply; the government “lacked the legal authorisation” and so they built a consortium to “fill the gap of the things the government could not do themselves.”

Judicial precedents regarding “joint participation” and “pervasive entwinement” between public and private entities make clear that the government cannot outsource to third parties like the Virality Project actions that would be illegal for the government itself to do.

The Virality Project had several unnamed partners that appear in the content-flagging system, including billion-dollar military contractor MITRE and a communications consultancy linked to the Democratic Party, Hattaway. Founder Doug Hattaway was an “advisor and spokesperson for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and provided strategic counsel to the Obama White House and the Democratic leadership of the US House and Senate.” Like the Virality Project, Hattaway worked with the Rockefeller Foundation during the pandemic on issues of disinformation.

The Virality Project does not declare any relationship with MITRE or Hattaway despite providing them access to their Jira system.

The Virality Project was partly funded by the Omidyar Network, which provided $400,000 to VP partner and Pentagon consultant Graphika. Much of the Virality Project’s funding however is unknown and is also not declared on their website.

This and much more have led five plaintiffs, including Harvard and Stanford professors, to accuse the US government of violations of the First Amendment with the Virality Project as one of the key proxies. On March 18, their case will be heard by the US Supreme Court.

The Virality Project and Murthy v. Missouri

The Murthy vs Missouri plaintiffs allege that, “CISA launched a colossal mass surveillance and mass-censorship project calling itself the “Election Integrity Partnership” (and later, the “Virality Project”). The Election Integrity Project (EIP) “monitored 859 million posts on Twitter alone.” 

The Virality Project used the same Jira system as EIP for flagging content and included the same core public partners: SIO, the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and Graphika, with the addition of NYU and the congressionally chartered National Conference on Citizenship.

The Virality Project had extensive contact not only with CISA but also with the White House and the Surgeon General. White House representatives sent direct censorship requests to Twitter including, “Hey folks – Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP.” And the more threatening:

 “Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”

Flaherty also conveyed that his communications came with the backing of the very top echelons of the administration: “This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH.”

The Virality Project hosted a launch with the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as part of the Surgeon General’s campaign against “misinformation.” In the presentation, Renee DiResta also introduced Matt Masterson, former senior adviser at DHS, and now a “non-resident policy fellow” at SIO.

Murthy ends the presentation by telling Renee, “I just want to say thank you to you, for everything you have done, for being such a great partner.”

At that same time the White House, OSG, and others were on the warpath, claiming social media platforms were “killing people” for allowing so-called “misinformation” to circulate.

With access to the White House, the Surgeon General, CDC, DHS, and CISA, along with top-level relationships with almost every major Western social media platform, the Virality Project was a key, if not the key, coordinating node for Covid-related censorship on the Internet. 

The Content-Flagging System

When the Virality Project said it considered, “true stories of vaccine side effects” to be “misinformation,” it wasn’t joking, and it flagged content to its Big Tech partners accordingly. 

Perhaps the most egregious was that of Maddie de Garay. Maddie and her siblings were enrolled in the Pfizer vaccine trial at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She was later unblinded and confirmed as being in the vaccine and not the placebo group. 

Within 24 hours of her second shot in January 2021, Maddie developed a host of symptoms, including “severe abdominal pain, painful electric shocks on her spine and neck, swollen extremities, ice cold hands, and feet, chest pain, tachycardia, pins and needles in her feet that eventually led to the loss of feeling from her waist down.” To this day Maddie continues to suffer from a lack of feeling in her lower legs, difficulty eating, poor eyesight, and fatigue among other persisting symptoms.

Virality Project staff logged a Jira ticket titled “Maddie’s Story: False claim that 12-year-old was hospitalized due to vaccine trial” and provided extensive documentation of offending “engagement” on social media, including the micro-policing of content citing Maddie’s story with just two likes and two shares.

Much doubt has been cast on the veracity of Maddie’s injuries. Maddie’s mother, Stephanie de Garay, provided me with several doctor’s letters that confirm the link, including that of the emergency room doctor who discharged her on her initial visit. Their diagnosis was “Adverse effect of the vaccine.” Stephanie de Garay also testified under oath in front of the US Congress in November of 2023 regarding her daughter’s experience.

Most egregiously, the idea that the story was “false”rested on the claim that Maddie was in a Moderna trial. But she was in a Pfizer trial, as stated in the posts the Virality Project collected and linked to in the very same ticket.

“Dear Platform Partners,” the reporter writes as they bring the posts to the attention of Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Medium, Pinterest, and the aforementioned Hattaway Communications:

…very likely false due to issues in timing. The Moderna trial in children [began on March 16], when the participants received their first doses. However, the video claims that Maddie has an MRI scheduled for 03/16, and that these symptoms have been occurring for 1.5 months. Thus, Maddie would have had to have received the second dose of the vaccine during/before February, which is at least a month before the Moderna trials began.

“Ack – thanks for raising!” replies a platform representative. 

Not only are our self-appointed censorship overlords micro-managers, they are often incompetent. 

The posts were flagged “General: Anti-Vaccination” despite the de Garays volunteering their three children for the vaccine trial.

Some content flagged in the report remained up, and others were taken down. A video of Stephanie de Garay’s testimony was removed from Twitter. Whether or not this was specifically taken down due to the Virality Project report cannot be ascertained, but their intent was clear.

In another instance, the Virality Project wanted people circulating a mainstream media report censored:

“Platforms, this unconfirmed story of a healthy youth athlete who was hospitalized after being vaccinated continues to be used by anti-vaccine activists to spread misinformation about vaccines.”

“ack, thanks” responded a platform representative. 

Even a report by an ABC news affiliate, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the United States, fell into the category of “General: anti-vaccination” and “Misleading Headline.”

The main link provided, to a YouTube video, was removed. 

The Jira system was set up to track the actions the Big Tech partners took, as illustrated below:

The content was flagged to get platforms to take action.

“Hello Google team – sending this over as our analysts noticed that a google ad on a politico article this morning was peddling the antivax claims from the medical racism video you were monitoring. Is this against your policies?”

“Thanks for flagging – ack and sending for review.”

“Thanks for the heads up – we’re on it”

“Thanks for sharing! Our team is now tracking this.”

And follow-ups from the Virality Project team:

“Were the ads supposed to have been taken down? Just flagging for you, I just checked now and I’m still seeing another medical racism ad.”

Platforms were apologetic when they didn’t get to Virality Project’s flags quickly enough:

“With apologies for the delayed response (was in meetings) – we took action earlier in the afternoon, thanks again for the flags.”

This of course built on the Election Integrity Partnership’s more flagrant “recommendations,” which included

“We recommend that you all flag as false, or remove the posts below.”

“Hi Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter…we recommend it be removed from your platforms.”

And many more.

The Virality Project was a strategic intermediary between the US government and major social media platforms. As Murthy v. Missouri shows, in many cases the government dispensed even with their chosen intermediary and directly demanded censorship.

With their vast resources, why did Google, Facebook, and Twitter even need an external consortium to flag “misinformation?” The answer of course is they didn’t, the government did. Much like SIO Director Alex Stamos so helpfully reminded us, First Amendment jurisprudence states that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

The First Amendment protects false speech. There is a cost to false claims, but the cost of censoring true claims is much higher. The alternative is a society where the truth is suppressed and powerful actors become even more unaccountable. The government cannot be made an arbiter of what is true.

In this inverted world, the role of academia and civil society isn’t to harness the internet to better pick up safety signals related to corporate products, it is to shield corporations from public scrutiny. In times gone by such ethical violations would see institutions shut down, but the Stanford Internet Observatory and their consortium partners continue with hardly a dent.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a Murthy v. Missouri plaintiff and was the Director of the Medical Ethics Program at the University of California Irvine before he was fired for challenging the university’s vaccine mandate. Asked for his reaction to this censorship he responded: 

While causation in medicine is sometimes difficult to establish, and different evaluating physicians may reach divergent conclusions about a particular case, the Virality Project’s censors (who lacked even basic medical expertise) arrogated to themselves the authority to make veracity judgments about particular medical cases–even overriding the judgments of evaluating physicians. Such censorship is completely antithetical to medical and scientific progress, which relies upon free inquiry and open, public debate.

Much of what the Virality Project flagged was plausible; however, their internet hall monitors, who likely lacked even first aid certificates, deemed themselves arbiters of the truth, and coupled their arrogance with a complimentary laziness and incompetence.

The veracity of the content was of course always irrelevant to the Virality Project, given they considered “true stories” to be “misinformation.”

All told the DHS, CISA, the White House, the Surgeon General, a DNC-aligned communications agency, military contractors, academics, NGOs, and more combined to suppress the stories of real people, including children, who were plausibly injured by the vaccine. They sought to hide it not because it might be false, but precisely because it might be true.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Andrew Lowenthal is a Brownstone Institute fellow and co-founder and former executive director of EngageMedia, an Asia-Pacific digital rights, open and secure technology, and documentary non-profit, and a former fellow of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab.

Tyler Durden Thu, 03/21/2024 - 13:05

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International

This country became first in the world to let in tourists passport-free

Singapore has been on a larger push to speed up the flow of tourists with digital immigration clearance.

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In the fall of 2023, the city-state of Singapore announced that it was working on end-to-end biometrics that would allow travelers passing through its Changi Airport to check into flights, drop off bags and even leave and exit the country without a passport.

The latter is the most technologically advanced step of them all because not all countries issue passports with the same biometrics while immigration laws leave fewer room for mistakes about who enters the country.

Related: A country just went visa-free for visitors with any passport

That said, Singapore is one step closer to instituting passport-free travel by testing it at its land border with Malaysia. The two countries have two border checkpoints, Woodlands and Tuas, and as of March 20 those entering in Singapore by car are able to show a QR code that they generate through the government’s MyICA app instead of the passport.

A photograph captures Singapore's Tuas land border with Malaysia.

Here is who is now able to enter Singapore passport-free

The latter will be available to citizens of Singapore, permanent residents and tourists who have already entered the country once with their current passport. The government app pulls data from one's passport and shows the border officer the conditions of one's entry clearance already recorded in the system.

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While not truly passport-free since tourists still need to link a valid passport to an online system, the move is the first step in Singapore's larger push to get rid of physical passports.

"The QR code initiative allows travellers to enjoy a faster and more convenient experience, with estimated time savings of around 20 seconds for cars with four travellers, to approximately one minute for cars with 10 travellers," Singapore's Immigration and Checkpoints Authority wrote in a press release announcing the new feature. "Overall waiting time can be reduced by more than 30% if most car travellers use QR code for clearance."

More countries are looking at passport-free travel but it will take years to implement

The land crossings between Singapore and Malaysia can get very busy — government numbers show that a new post-pandemic record of 495,000 people crossed Woodlands and Tuas on the weekend of March 8 (the day before Singapore's holiday weekend.)

Even once Singapore implements fully digital clearance at all of its crossings, the change will in no way affect immigration rules since it's only a way of transferring the status afforded by one's nationality into a digital system (those who need a visa to enter Singapore will still need to apply for one at a consulate before the trip.) More countries are in the process of moving toward similar systems but due to the varying availability of necessary technology and the types of passports issued by different countries, the prospect of agent-free crossings is still many years away.

In the U.S., Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was chosen to take part in a pilot program in which low-risk travelers with TSA PreCheck can check into their flight and pass security on domestic flights without showing ID. The UK has also been testing similar digital crossings for British and EU citizens but no similar push for international travelers is currently being planned in the U.S.

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Analysts issue unexpected crude oil price forecast after surge

Here’s what a key investment firm says about the commodity.

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Oil is an asset defined by volatility.

U.S. crude prices stood above $60 a barrel in January 2020, just as the covid pandemic began. Three months later, prices briefly went negative, as the pandemic crushed demand.

By June 2022 the price rebounded all the way to $120, as fiscal and monetary stimulus boosted the economy. The price fell back to $80 in September 2022. Since then, it has bounced between about $65 and $90.

Over the past two months, the price has climbed 15% to $82 as of March 20.

Oil prices often trade in a roller-coaster fashion.

Bullish factors for oil prices

The move stems partly from indications that economic growth this year will be stronger than analysts expected.

Related: The Fed rate decision won't surprise markets. What happens next might

Vanguard has just raised its estimate for 2024 U.S. GDP growth to 2% from 0.5%.

Meanwhile, China’s factory output and retail sales exceeded forecasts in January and February. That could boost oil demand in the country, the world's No. 1 oil importer.

Also, drone strokes from Ukraine have knocked out some of Russia’s oil refinery capacity. Ukraine has hit at least nine major refineries this year, erasing an estimated 11% of Russia’s production capacity, according to Bloomberg.

“Russia is a gas station with an army, and we intend on destroying that gas station,” Francisco Serra-Martins, chief executive of drone manufacturer Terminal Autonomy, told the news service. Gasoline, of course, is one of the products made at refineries.

Speaking of gas, the recent surge of oil prices has sent it higher as well. The average national price for regular gas totaled $3.52 per gallon Wednesday, up 7% from a month ago, according to the American Automobile Association. And we’re nearing the peak driving season.

Another bullish factor for oil: Iraq said Monday that it’s cutting oil exports by 130,000 barrels per day in coming months. Iraq produced much more oil in January and February than its OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) target.

Citigroup’s oil-price forecast

Yet, not everyone is bullish on oil going forward. Citigroup analysts see prices falling through next year, Dow Jones’s Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) reports.

More Economic Analysis:

The analysts note that supply is at risk in Israel, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela. But Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Russia could easily make up any shortfall.

Moreover, output should also rise this year and next in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Guyana, the analysts said. Meanwhile, global demand growth will decelerate, amid increased electric vehicle use and economic weakness.

Regarding refineries, the analysts see strong gains in capacity and capacity upgrades this year.

What if Donald Trump is elected president again? That “would likely be bearish for oil and gas," as Trump's policies could boost trade tension, crimping demand, they said.

The analysts made predictions for European oil prices, the world’s benchmark, which sat Wednesday at $86.

They forecast a 9% slide in the second quarter to $78, then a decline to $74 in the third quarter and $70 in the fourth quarter.

Next year should see a descent to $65 in the first quarter, $60 in the second and third, and finally $55 in the fourth, Citi said. That would leave the price 36% below current levels.

U.S. crude prices will trade $4 below European prices from the second quarter this year until the end of 2025, the analysts maintain.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

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