How’s that austerity thing working out for you?

School meals are ‘made smaller to save money’

Richard Garner, The Independent

Tuesday 03 April 2012

School meal portions are being shrunk, leaving children to go hungry, teachers and parents have warned. Smaller portion sizes caused by cost-cutting are reported in schools across the country and are of particular concern, given the increase in the number of impoverished pupils who rely on school lunches as their only hot meal of the day. Primary-age children, in particular, are going hungry after being given lunches that are too small, according to teachers.

…

In the ATL survey, teachers warned that private providers, who are often hired to supply school meals, were cutting portion sizes to make their budgets go further and win new contracts. “The younger children pay the same price but get much less than the older ones,” said one reception class teacher in Bradford. “Also, they do not get the choice as this is also saved for the older ones.”

…

A spokeswoman for the Association for Public Service Excellence, which monitors the school meals service, said the major costs for caterers were staffing and overheads such as kitchens, equipment and energy supplies, and these would be targets for cuts rather than portion sizes. However, she added that government grants for school dinners were no longer ring-fenced and had been incorporated into schools’ overall budgets, thereby making the meals service less secure.

The system has undergone radical change in recent years. Schools can hire private providers to run their service – or do it themselves. Local authorities have catering services but schools are free to decide whether to buy into them or not.

…

The standards do set out minimum calories for each age group. But Christine Lewis, of the public service union Unison, which represents school dinner staff, said it had “almost been left on faith with the providers to abide by them”. “There is a possibility providers are violating the standards,” she added.

To further complicate matters, academies and free schools are exempt from the nutritional standards.

(h/t Chris in Paris @ Americablog)

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Eight Big Mistakes Democrats Made Regarding the Constitutionality of ObamaCare

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Friday March 30, 2012 7:48 am

In the end, the decision about the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the entire Affordable Care Act will come down to the nine members of the Supreme Court. It is ultimately their call, and they will be fully responsible for what they decide. That said, the Democrats had many chances to take steps to prevent the health care law from ever getting to the point where there is even the possibility the Supreme Court could throw it out. The issue only got to this point because Democrats, on multiple occasions, horribly mishandled their job and totally failed to prepare for what was an entirely foreseeable eventuality.

…

1. Lack of severability clause in the law
2. Ignoring Republican promises to challenge the mandate
3. Ignoring public hatred of the mandate
4. Dropping the Public Option
5. Congress refusing to call it a tax
6. Obama team refusing call it a straight tax
7. Obama administration’s bizarre severability argument
8. Failed to articulate a clear limiting principle

Still, overturning the ACA might be the best thing that could happen from a policy standpoint.

Individual Mandates and Unraveling the Great Society

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Thursday March 29, 2012 9:26 am

There are are two main ways for the government to provide universal public goods. The first and normally best way is to have the government raise money through taxes and then use that money to directly provide the service to everyone. The other option is to create an individual mandate forcing everyone to buy the service from private corporations while having the government subsidize some of the cost. These needless middlemen mostly just increase costs for regular people and the government. This is why corporations love this setup and push hard for it.

…

If the Supreme Court rules against this individual mandate in a way that basically makes it legally impossible to replace most of our current public insurance systems with mandated private systems, that should be seen as a big silver lining for progressives.

A stronger prescription for what ails health care

By Eugene Robinson, Washington Post

Published: March 29

Eventually, however, our health-care system will be restructured. It has to be. The current fee-for-service paradigm, with doctors and hospitals being paid through for-profit insurance companies, is needlessly inefficient and ruinously expensive.

When people talk about out-of-control government spending, they’re really talking about rising medical costs that far outpace any conceivable rate of economic growth. The conservative solution – shift those costs to the consumer – is no solution at all.

Our only choice is to try to hold the costs down. President Obama tried to make a start with a modest approach that works through the current system. If this doesn’t pass constitutional muster, the obvious alternative is to emulate other industrialized nations that deliver equal or better health-care outcomes for half the cost.

I’m talking about a single-payer health-care system. If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, a single-payer system will go from being politically impossible to being, in the long run, fiscally inevitable.

This week’s episodes originally aired September 30, 2005.

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