Washington Examiner falsehood: "$373 million in stimulus money for better vending machine food"
On October 14, The Washington Examiner ran the false headline, "Michelle: $373 million in stimulus money for better vending machine food." However, Michelle Obama, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Examiner article itself contradict the headline; HHS will award $373 million to communities through a competitive grant process for "comprehensive" programs -- one component of which could include healthier vending machine food -- that would "reduce obesity."
Wash. Examiner: "Michelle [Obama]: $373 million in stimulus money for better vending machine food"
From an October 14 Washington Examiner headline:
Wash. Examiner article contradicts headline
York writes that $373 million to be spent on "plans to, among other things, improve the healthfulness of foods in vending machines" [emphasis added]. In the first paragraph of his October 14 article, chief political correspondent Byron York wrote that Michelle Obama "touted HHS's recently-announced plan to spend $373 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on plans to, among other things, improve the healthfulness of foods in vending machines." York further contradicted the Examiner headline later, writing:
"Congress and the president included $1 billion for prevention and wellness programs in the Recovery Act," she told the crowd of cheering DHS workers, "and that includes funding for initiatives that will give communities the resources they need to address the obesity epidemic in their communities. This includes $373 million announced last month that would be available for communities that put together comprehensive plans to reduce obesity -- $373 million -- and that would include everything from incentivizing grocery stores to locate in underserved areas; it could include improving meals at school; to getting more healthy, affordable foods into vending machines; to creating more safe, accessible places for people to exercise and play; and a whole lot more."
Last month HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the $373 million in stimulus money will be the "cornerstone funding" of the Recovery Act Community Prevention and Wellness Initiative. The announcement was an invitation to groups around the country to apply for grants under the program, which will be called Communities Putting Prevention to Work. "Funded projects will emphasize high-impact, broad-reaching policy, environmental, and systems changes in schools (K-12) and communities," the HHS announcement said. "For example, communities will work to make high-fat snack foods and sugar-sweetened beverages less available in schools and other community sites and to use media to promote healthy choices. In addition, funded communities will be encouraged to provide quality physical education in the nation's schools and enact comprehensive smoking bans."
Michelle Obama: $373 million for "comprehensive plans to reduce obesity"
Michelle Obama: $373 million "available for communities that put together comprehensive plans to reduce obesity." In her October 13 speech, on which the false Examiner headline is based, Michelle Obama did not say that $373 million is solely available for "better vending machine food." Rather, she cited "getting more healthy, affordable foods into vending machines" as one component of a possible "comprehensive" plan to "reduce obesity." From the White House's transcript of her remarks:
That's why Congress and the President included $1 billion for prevention and wellness programs in the Recovery Act --- (applause) -- and that includes funding for initiatives that will give communities the resources they need to address the obesity epidemic in their communities. This includes $373 million announced last month that would be available for communities that put together comprehensive plans to reduce obesity -- $373 million -- and that would include everything from incentivizing grocery stores to locate in underserved areas; it could include improving meals at school; to getting more healthy, affordable foods into vending machines; to creating more safe, accessible places for people to exercise and play; and a whole lot more.
But in the end, of course, our government and our communities, as you all know, we can only do so much. There's only so much policy and even money can do. And no grant program can sit at the dinner table with a child, right, and convince them to eat what they're supposed to eat. (Laughter.) But we say in my household, "Just eat it." (Laughter.) "You're not going to like it. Just finish it." (Laughter.) "Get on with it." (Laughter.) No grant program can make sure that the kids step away from the TV and set down those videogames and figure out a way to move their bodies. Ultimately all of that is up to parents and families. Ultimately we're the ones who influence our kids.
HHS: "projects will emphasize high-impact, broad-reaching policy, environmental, and systems changes in schools (K-12) and communities"
From a September 17 HHS press release:
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced a funding opportunity for communities and tribes to apply for $373 million in cooperative agreements for the comprehensive public health initiative, Communities Putting Prevention to Work, to be led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"This initiative will make disease prevention and health promotion top priorities in states and communities across the country," Secretary Sebelius said. "Preventing disease is vital as a strategy to improve our nation's health and reduce health care costs."
Communities Putting Prevention to Work will change systems and environments -- for example, improving access to healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity -- and putting into place policies, such as clean-indoor-air laws, that will promote the health of populations. Funded entities will have two years to complete their work.
The $373 million in cooperative agreements will be awarded to communities through a competitive selection process. The cooperative agreements will support evidence-based prevention strategies foryouth and adults and will promote partnerships across communities and sectors.
The remainder of the funds for this initiative will be made available in the coming weeks to states, territories, and organizations to support, extend and evaluate the reach and impact of the community projects.
Funded projects will emphasize high-impact, broad-reaching policy, environmental, and systems changes in schools (K-12) and communities. For example, communities will work to make high-fat snack foods and sugar-sweetened beverages less available in schools and other community sites and to use media to promote healthy choices. In addition, funded communities will be encouraged to provide quality physical education in the nation's schools and enact comprehensive smoking bans.
"The CDC is excited to have this opportunity to help states and communities do more to deliver proven prevention strategies, in ways that reach whole communities and populations," said CDC Director, Thomas Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. "Chronic diseases linked to obesity, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and tobacco use are the leading causes of death and disability in our nation. These additional resources will improve the quality of life for millions of Americans."
HHS: $373 million for physical activity, nutrition, decreased smoking, among others
HHS program website lists achieving an increase in "physical activity," "improved nutrition," decreased obesity, tobacco use, and secondhand smoke as intended outcomes. From HHS' website for the Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative:
The cornerstone of the initiative is the Community Program ($373 million), with cooperative agreements to be awarded to communities through a competitive selection process.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will support evidence-based community approaches to chronic disease prevention and control in selected communities (urban and rural) to achieve the following prevention outcomes:
Increased levels of physical activity;
Improved nutrition;
Decreased overweight/obesity prevalence;
Decreased tobacco use; and
Decreased exposure to secondhand smoke.
- Communities will implement a set of evidence-based interventions related to the behaviors listed above which aim to achieve broad reach, high impact, and sustainable change. The specific amount of funding per community will be determined by a mix of interventions, population size, ability to reduce health disparities, and likelihood of success.
- Communities will assemble an effective communitywide consortium with a history of working with partners such as local and state health departments and other governmental agencies, health centers, schools, businesses, community and faith-based organizations, academic institutions, health care, mental health/substance abuse organizations, health plans, and other community partners to promote health and prevent chronic diseases.
- This component also includes a robust support plan to ensure funded communities are successful and that the communities are able to evaluate the impact of their efforts. The plan consists of a three-pronged approach: program support, community mentoring, and evaluation.
Hypocrite punks.
I can't stand these Republican hypocrites.
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Couldn't have said it better.
Very well said...and it should be said over and over. So take your money grubbing hands off the taxpayers money and keep the hell out of the school system.
We don't need anymore govt-run gobbledygook in the school system.
What about the companies who make the snack chips and candy bars that stock these vending machines, that keep people and families employed due to the sales these vending machines generate? What happens to them when the government steps in and yanks their products from school vending machines and replaces it with "healthier better vending machine food"? How is that fair to these companies? Fact is, it isn't. And that is the inherent problem when the government gets involved in issues such as this that they have no business picking and choosing for us.
Keep your grubby hands off our choices.
Right on, right On...enough with the nanny business. It's a waste of money and won't produce any results.
As for snack food companies being employers, get over it. They survived just fine before they had vending machines in schools and they'll do fine when they're gone. Capitalism is not a form of government and does not work in the interest of healthy living.
Next time you go on about the plight of someone think about what a phony you are. I am not impressed.
Do you think it's OK for the government to regulate companies that spew out land, water, and air pollution?
You say that people need to take personal responsibility. What about young kids? Should they know better? And what about the addicts who DO know better but have become addicted to the junk? Have you ever had an addiction? Smoke cigarettes, perhaps? Addiction is awful.
Yes, because I have to drink the water that comes out of my tap, or at least use it - and I have to breathe the air, I don't have a choice like I do whether or not to eat potato chips.
Don't deny it, preserving a hierarchy with a clearly defined upper, ruling class is what the conservative worldview is all about. Oligopoly is what Reagan began implementation for through his sweet heart tax deal for the wealthy and called it trickle down. It hasn't trickled down, boy. All it has succeeded in doing is creating the greatest wealth inequality gap since the last time the Republicans blew up our economy in 1929.
And keep on bashing science like the ignorant punk you revel in being. These metrics for healthier living for which our government is granting funds to communities are based in research and best practices. These are not simply arbitrary awards for being good political cronies like ya'll do on the right for staying loyal to your rigid conservative ideology of abstinence only and creationism.
You people are so damn knee jerk stupid, it's amazing you remember to breathe.
Which is picking and choosing your emotional flavor of the moment while ignoring what it actually does to those who aren't privy to your incredible left-wing generosity. They get the shaft.
Next time think through the policies you advocate all the way through instead of just the surface ripplings they create. Then you may restore some credibility where your phony compassion is concerned.
Liberals have initiated every facet of social justice we enjoy today. The weekend, 40 hour week, overtime, women's suffrage, civil rights, clean clean water and on and on. And what did you regressive conservative knee jerk conservatives do? You fought it, called it socialism, communism; tried to scare people by saying, civil rights for instance, would shred our social fabric.
You suck. You hate the unions that actually help working people instead of exploiting them and you hate it when liberals actually do something, through OUR government, that actually benefits ordinary people. You love the tax cuts that gives more and more and more to the wealthy so that they can enjoy a greater political voice, and greater liberty, than a guy like me who works very hard for very little.
Go away until you grow a thicker skin you overly sensitive little gas bag.
Oh and I don't give a damn how many times you tell me about I don't care about working people and you do, it's baloney. For all the reasons I gave you earlier, with your "get over it" comment. It means either one of two things, you are a phony and don't give a rat's behind about working people, or you refuse to admit you haven't thought through the ramifications of your liberal policies and are too much of a wuss to admit it. Either way it doesn't look good for you.
But hey, if civil rights is a failed liberal policy, you can make that argument. If the 40 hour work week is a failed liberal policy, you can make that argument. If vacation time is a failed liberal policy, you can make that argument. If voting rights for women and African Americans is failed liberal policy, you can make that argument. If using good government to benefit the majority of people in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness is failed liberal policy, then make that argument; go ahead and expose yourself as the jungle law conservative you are.
And I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of your own intellect that you think I'm merely tossing out platitudes to you. I truly pity your ignorance.
Nobody's talking about what you're talking about, nobody has ever advocated for what you are saying. You are making crap up. I'm talking about restoring a broken social contract between the people and our government. A contract that entitles people to certain protections and services, investments in our future if you will, like healthcare and education, in exchange for working hard, paying your taxes and playing by the rules.
Yours is jungle law, 'you're on your own' and it doesn't work. In America we care about each other and we help each other. It's how it's always been, it's what America is about. We help other nations and people, we should help each other too.
Until you liberals start bucking up and saying exactly what you mean, exactly what you advocate, and specifically what you want from successful people to make your eutopia come to life, then don't get all upset when people question your motives. Talk numbers and specifics instead of railing on Reagan and rich people. It's childish.
I want an American healthcare plan that covers everyone equally, with no exceptions for pre-existing conditions etc., in exchange for being a good citizen who works hard, pays their taxes and plays by the rules. I want affordable universities for all in exchange for being a good citizen who works hard, pays their taxes and plays by the rules. Like I said earlier, and you ignored, healthcare and education are investments in our future. Is that clear enough for you, or are you too stupid to read simple english?
On the other hand, you've offered nothing but conservative pap. You've offered no specifics and you can't because if you cons said what you really wanted nobody would buy it. So you resort to scaring people with things like 'death panels' and ignorant cries of 'socialism' to undermine healthcare reform and preserve outrageous salaries and bonuses for insurance bureaucrats. Meanwhile, people go broke and lose their homes because they get sick. 80% of medical bankruptcies happen to people with private, for profit health insurance. It's stupid and unsustainable to continue down this road.
And on what you say above, I absolutely could not agree more. We always have, way before anyone even knew what welfare was, when charitable contributions far exceeded what they are now. Which is why we don't need the government to get involved. American's generosity does not need the hand of Uncle Sam to do it for us. You made my point exactly.
America's generosity indeed has a very distinct need to be administered, in large part, through government. Before social security went into effect, our nation's elderly were living in dire poverty and charity was not up to the task of alleviating their plight. During the Great Depression, people were living in tent cities because they couldn't get a job and there wasn't enough space in churches and charitable establishments to house them all. So the government came in and gave them jobs building roads, bridges, dams and highways, as well as establishing our national park system as the envy of the world.
So take your stupid, you're on your own, mentality and shove it. Government is good. Good can be done through our government.
And do you know why that is? It's because of the ever increasing tax burden that liberals want to impose on upper income earners, who give much to charities as they are able to do so. Another unintended consequence of liberal policies that are not thought through, again.
"America's generosity indeed has a very distinct need to be administered, in large part, through government"
You just contradicted yourself when you lauded American's caring spirit just one post ago? Surely you can see that. In any event, no it does not. The government's inefficiency and bureaucratic nightmarish way of doing things can't administer much, so don't sit there and tell me that government needs to monitor my generosity, I can do it just fine on my own. If you can't, that is your problem.
Bwahahahaha. Because of high taxes libs want? As in taxes that are currently nonexistent? Wealthy folks won't give because liberals merely WANT higher taxes. Whatever, you are stupid, stupid, stupid befuddled little person who wants to preserve a social hierarchy with the rich telling everybody else what the rules are. Taxes have dick to do with giving. Rich people give less to charity as a percentage of their income than poor to moderate income earners. Just ask the researchers at Indiana University.
"The new Indiana University Center on Philanthropy research on the rich really does offer some eye-opening findings. You just won’t the Center’s flacks talking about them.
The reason: This new study, once you actually dive into the survey data, makes America’s very rich — the clients the Bank of America most covets — look something less than generous. Much less.
Between 2005 and 2007, Wall Street’s biggest go-go years, charitable contributions from Americans who make over $5 million a year dropped 14.1 percent, after taking inflation into account.
We can’t say exactly what happened to the incomes of these wealthy Americans over that two-year span, because the IRS hasn’t yet released any official stats for 2007. We do know that taxpayers making over $5 million — just three-hundredths of 1 percent of the taxpaying public — upped their share of America’s total income, between 2005 and 2006, from 9.1 to 10 percent.
That’s the equivalent of a $45.9 billion swing to the 40,848 households at the tippy top of America's economic ladder. A significant sum, to be sure, but not enough apparently to prevent the super wealthy from cutting back, one year later, on their charitable giving. Households making over $5 million a year dropped their average giving from $995,192 in 2005 to $855,200 in 2007.
But doesn’t this $855,200 still represent a hefty act of generosity? Not really, not once you consider the net worth of America's richest families. In 2007, families worth $50 million or more gave an average $885,387 to charity. That sum computes to just 1.48 percent of their average 2007 net worth.
Between 2005 and 2007, we need to remember, the hedge funds that the super rich were busily stashing their fortunes into were routinely returning 15 to 20 percent per year and more. Even the most conservative of wealthy investors were getting double-digit returns from their private wealth managers.
The super rich, given these investment returns, could have upped what they actually gave to charity in 2007 by five or ten times and still ended the year with a higher household net worth than when the year started.
Back in the 1990s, a multimillionaire San Francisco money manager named Claude Rosenberg started a research group dedicated to demonstrating to rich people this very message, that they could easily afford to give far more of their fortunes to charity than they actually do.
In the year 2000, Rosenberg’s researchers would go on to document, households with $1 million or more in income could have given $128 billion more to charity than they did in fact give, without losing any net worth over the course of the year.
Claude Rosenberg, a true generous soul, died last May at the age of 80. His message to the rich, the new data from the Indiana University Center for Philanthropy make abundantly clear, remains sadly unheeded."
Too Much
Oh well, when ya got nothing of substance to say, ya got nothing of substance to say. Try refuting the facts and reconciling your worldview to your morality and I'll start listening again. Otherwise, later loser.
The US Dept of Education says this about our money, "Even in this current time of the war against terror, taxpayer investment in education exceeds that for national defense...the United States is a world leader in education investment. However, nations that spend far less achieve higher levels of student performance."
I don't know what the heck your education utopia looks like, but chances are we tried it in the 1880s.
In the words of the great singer of sad songs, Vern Gosdin..."That just about does it...don't it"...
Your personal feelings about the government aren't of interest to anybody. If you have anything real and solid to criticize about the government, over and above what can be criticized of private enterprise, ...
...well, you missed your chance to mention it.
Randy