Tag: Republicans

Reports of COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events in Predominantly Republican vs Democratic States

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2816958?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=032924

Graphic:

Abstract:

Importance  Antivaccine sentiment is increasingly associated with conservative political positions. Republican-inclined states exhibit lower COVID-19 vaccination rates, but the association between political inclination and reported vaccine adverse events (AEs) is unexplored.

Objective  To assess whether there is an association between state political inclination and the reporting rates of COVID-19 vaccine AEs.

Design, Setting, and Participants  This cross-sectional study used the AE reports after COVID-19 vaccination from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database from 2020 to 2022, with reports after influenza vaccines from 2019 to 2022 used as a reference. These reports were examined against state-level percentage of Republican votes in the 2020 US presidential election.

Exposure  State-level percentage of Republican votes in the 2020 US presidential election.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Rates of any AE among COVID-19 vaccine recipients, rates of any severe AE among vaccine recipients, and the proportion of AEs reported as severe.

Results  A total of 620 456 AE reports (mean [SD] age of vaccine recipients, 51.8 [17.6] years; 435 797 reports from women [70.2%]; a vaccine recipient could potentially file more than 1 report, so reports are not necessarily from unique individuals) for COVID-19 vaccination were identified from the VAERS database. Significant associations between state political inclination and state AE reporting were observed for all 3 outcomes: a 10% increase in Republican voting was associated with increased odds of AE reports (odds ratio [OR], 1.05; 95% CI, 1.05-1.05; P < .001), severe AE reports (OR, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.24-1.26; P < .001), and the proportion of AEs reported as severe (OR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.20-1.22; P < .001). These associations were seen across all age strata in stratified analyses and were more pronounced among older subpopulations.

Conclusions and Relevance  This cross-sectional study found that the more states were inclined to vote Republican, the more likely their vaccine recipients or their clinicians reported COVID-19 vaccine AEs. These results suggest that either the perception of vaccine AEs or the motivation to report them was associated with political inclination.

Author(s):David A. Asch, MD, MBA1,2; Chongliang Luo, PhD3; Yong Chen, PhD2,4,5Author(s):

Publication Date: 29 Mar 2024

Publication Site: JAMA Network Open

ESG Crime

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-17/making-esg-a-crime

Excerpt:

Oh sure whatever:

Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire are seeking to make using ESG criteria in state funds a crime in the latest attack on the beleaguered investing strategy.

Representatives led by Mike Belcher introduced a bill that would prohibit the state’s treasury, pension fund and executive branch from using investments that consider environmental, social and governance factors. “Knowingly” violating the law would be a felony punishable by not less than one year and no more than 20 years imprisonment, according to the proposal.

Pensions & Investments reports:

“Executive branch agencies that are permitted to invest funds shall review their investments and pursue any necessary steps to ensure that no funds or state-controlled investments are invested with firms that invest New Hampshire funds in accounts with any regard whatsoever based on environmental, social, and governance criteria,” the bill said.

The New Hampshire Retirement System “shall adhere to their fiduciary obligation and not invest with any firm that will invest state retirement system funds in investment funds that consider environmental, social, and governance criteria, as the investment goal should be to obtain the highest return on investment for New Hampshire’s taxpayers and retirees,” the bill said.

Investors aren’t allowed to consider governance! Imagine if this was the law; imagine if it was a felony for an investment manager to consider governance “with any regard whatsoever.”

….

I’m sorry, this is so stupid. “ESG” is essentially about considering certain risks to a company’s financial results: You might want to avoid investing in a company if its factories are going to be washed away by rising oceans, or if its main product is going to be regulated out of existence, or if its position on controversial social issues will cost it sales, or if its CEO controls the board and spends too much corporate money on wasteful personal projects. Obviously ESG in practice is also other, more controversial things:

  1. If you care about the environment, social issues, etc., you might want to invest in companies that you think are environmentally or socially good, whether or not they are good financial investments.
  2. You might incorrectly convince yourself that the stuff you think is environmentally or socially good is also good for the bottom line: You might have a wishful estimate of how quickly the world will transition away from fossil fuels, to justify your desire not to invest in oil companies. You might tell yourself “this company’s stance on social issues will cost it lots of customers” when really the customers don’t care, but you do.

But if you make it a crime for investors to consider certain financial risks then you get too much of those risks.

In particular, I suspect, you get too much governance risk. If every investor tomorrow said “okay we don’t care about the environment,” most companies probably wouldn’t ramp up their pollution: Their executives probably don’t want to pollute unnecessarily, polluting probably wouldn’t help the bottom line, and many companies just sit at computers developing software and couldn’t pollute much if they wanted to. But if every investor tomorrow said “okay we don’t care about governance,” then, I mean, “governance” is just a way of saying “somebody makes sure that the CEO is doing a good job and doesn’t pay herself too much.” If the investors don’t care about that, then a lot of CEOs will be happy to give themselves raises and spend more time on the corporate jet to their vacation homes.

Author(s): Matt Levine

Publication Date: 17 Jan 2024

Publication Site: Bloomberg

EBSA Secretary Defends ESG Rule as Legislative, Litigation Battles Continue

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ai-cio.com/news/ebsa-secretary-defends-esg-rule-as-legislative-litigation-battles-continue/

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The Department of Labor’s assistant secretary of labor for employee benefits security, Lisa Gomez, defended the DOL’s final rule allowing the consideration of ESG factors in retirement plan investments at a webinar hosted Monday by Ceres, a sustainability advocate.

The rule, which took effect on January 30, permits, but does not require, the use of ESG considerations in investment selection by retirement plan fiduciaries. There is a pending lawsuit in Texas challenging the legality of the rule.

Gomez explained that this rule is “not a per se requirement” to use ESG and clarifies that ESG factors may be considered as part of a fiduciary’s ordinary risk-return analysis. She also explained that this new rule does not allow fiduciaries to sacrifice the financial health of a plan to pursue other goals: A fiduciary may consider the risks and opportunities of climate change and other ESG factors.

Gomez dubbed the rule “a return to neutrality.”

According to Gomez, the previous rule, passed during the administration of President Donald Trump, which required only “pecuniary factors” to be used in investment selection, had a “chilling effect” on the consideration of ESG factors. Gomez said the word “pecuniary” neither appears in the text of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the governing statute for both rules, nor does it occupy a “long-standing place in employee benefits law.”

Gomez briefly discussed one of the more nebulous provisions of the new rule when she said participant preferences for investments can be considered in menu selection on the grounds that it can increase plan participation and deferral rates, thereby increasing retirement security. She did not comment on how fiduciaries should determine adequate participant interest or how much economic gain could be compromised in exchange for increased participation, if any.

Eric Pitt, a climate finance consultant at Ceres who moderated the webinar, asked Gomez how a fiduciary should consider a hypothetical ESG large-cap stock fund for a plan menu: Should the fiduciary compare it to other similar ESG funds or the entire universe of large-cap funds? Gomez answered that there is no special treatment for ESG funds, and a fiduciary should look generally at the risk and return for any and all large-cap equity funds available, whether they use ESG considerations or not.

Despite the branding of the rule as neutral, Republicans in Congress have increased their organized opposition to the use of ESG considerations in retirement-plan investing.

Representative Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, announced the creation of a “Republican ESG working group” on Friday. The purpose of the working group is to “combat the threat to our capital markets posed by those on the far-left pushing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) proposals.”

Author(s): Paul Mullholland

Publication Date: 6 Feb 2023

Publication Site: ai-CIO

GOP-led House committee launches working group to combat ESG proposals

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.pionline.com/washington/republican-led-house-committee-launches-anti-esg-working-group

Excerpt:

Congressional Republicans on Friday took another step in their quest to dismantle the Biden administration’s environmental, social and governance rule-making initiatives.

The House Financial Services Committee has formed a working group to “combat the threat to our capital markets posed by those on the far-left pushing environmental, social and governance proposals,” the committee’s Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., announced.

The group will be led by Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., and include eight other Republican committee members.

Among its priorities, the group will examine ways to “rein in the SEC’s regulatory overreach;” reinforce the materiality “standard as a pillar of the nation’s disclosure regime;” and hold to account market participants who “misuse the proxy process or their outsized influence to impose ideological preferences in ways that circumvent democratic lawmaking,” according to a news release.

“This group will develop a comprehensive approach to ESG that protects the financial interests of everyday investors and ensures our capital markets remain the envy of the world,” Mr. McHenry said in the news release. “Financial Services Committee Republicans as a whole will continue our work to expand capital formation, hold Biden’s rogue regulators accountable, and support American job creators.”

Author(s): Brian Croce

Publication Date: 3 Feb 2023

Publication Site: Pensions & Investments

Does the GOP Want a Government Default So It Can Kill Social Security?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://jacobin.com/2023/01/republicans-debt-ceiling-shock-doctrine-spending-cuts

Excerpt:

The debt ceiling is normally a dull topic, and many have understandably neglected to follow along. To recap, the debt ceiling is the artificial cap Congress places on the amount of money the government can borrow. As Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and others have pointed out, there is little practical reason for the debt ceiling to exist at all. From a technical point of view, it is a formality to authorize the Treasury to pay bills the government has already incurred. Through creative accounting, the Treasury can keep paying for a few more months, and then it will have to stop unless Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling.

All sides agree that the US government deliberately defaulting on debts would be the financial equivalent of an atom bomb, causing immediate painful shocks across the world economy and unpredictable long-term effects. In order to avoid this scenario, voting to raise the debt ceiling is usually a matter of course — though the number of near and actual government shutdowns from Congress playing chicken with the ceiling have increased in recent decades.

But it might be different this time. As Politico reported last week, a number of former government officials who negotiated during previous standoffs over the debt ceiling think there’s much less room for a negotiated settlement this year.

The main reason is that, at least on the surface, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is in a weak position, effectively held hostage by conditions that were imposed on him by the most extreme members of the House Republican conference during his election to speaker. Those conditions specifically require significant spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

….

Democrats also argue that though Republicans insist on reducing spending, they have refused to make specific demands for what they want cut. Here is where The Shock Doctrine might provide a hint of what’s to come. The idea of privatizing Social Security has been “lying around” since George W. Bush’s presidency. Joe Biden himself has a long, well-documented history of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare, though in public statements since 2020 he has consistently said he would not agree to do so.

Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans have repeatedly floated the idea of cutting the popular programs over the past year. While McCarthy appeared to abruptly back off the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare as part of the debt ceiling negotiations on Sunday, his ambiguous promise to “strengthen” the programs without specifying what that means leaves plenty of room for privatization.

Author(s): Ben Beckett

Publication Date: 31 Jan 2023

Publication Site: Jacobin

Republicans ride ESG backlash to state financial offices

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://rollcall.com/2022/11/17/republicans-ride-esg-backlash-to-state-financial-offices/

Excerpt:

Republicans picked up state financial officer positions during the midterm elections amid a campaign against environmental, social and governance investing.

Five positions — in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada and Wisconsin — flipped from Democratic to Republican in races for state auditor, controller or treasurer. Of the 50 directly elected positions, Republicans won 29 and Democrats won 19, according to an analysis from Ballotpedia. Two races remain uncalled.

A handful of Republicans’ campaigns for state financial officers focused on ESG, echoing sentiments from GOP officials at statehouses across the country and in Congress who say ESG investing is harming capital markets and domestic energy production and reject the case made by Democrats, major investors and other proponents.

At stake is a suite of legislation and rules that would curb ESG as a material consideration, along with other financial factors, for investors. The proposals include policies for states’ pension funds to divest hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions that incorporate ESG — and especially climate — in their investment decisions.

Author(s): Ellen Meyers

Publication Date: 17 Nov 2022

Publication Site: Roll Call

19 GOP Attorneys General Slam BlackRock Over ESG Investments

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ai-cio.com/news/19-gop-attorneys-general-slam-blackrock-over-esg-investments/

Excerpt:

A group of 19 Republican state attorneys general have written a letter to BlackRock stating that the asset manager is using state pension fund assets in environmental, social and governance investments that “force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation and weaken the national security of the United States.”

The eight-page letter outlines how the group believes BlackRock is using “the hard-earned money of our states’ citizens to circumvent the best possible return on investment.”

“Our states will not idly stand for our pensioners’ retirements to be sacrificed for BlackRock’s climate agenda. The time has come for BlackRock to come clean on whether it actually values our states’ most valuable stakeholders, our current and future retirees, or risk losses even more significant than those caused by BlackRock’s quixotic climate agenda,” the letter says.

The attorneys general asked BlackRock to respond by August 19.

Author(s): Amy Resnick

Publication Date: 9 Aug 2022

Publication Site: ai-CIO

All Men Must Die, But They Don’t Have to Die in Office

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/all-men-must-die-but-they-dont-have?s=w

Graphic:

Excerpt:

What’s interesting about the Senate age distribution is that though we have some difference in the lumpiness, when I look at the average age of the senators by party, they’re basically the same: 64 years old (and some change). On the younger end of the Boomers.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 29 April 2022

Publication Site: STUMP at substack

Kentucky Lawmakers Override Pension Bill Veto

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ai-cio.com/news/kentucky-lawmakers-override-pension-bill-veto/

Excerpt:

The GOP-run Kentucky state legislature has overridden Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a pension reform bill that will place new teachers in a hybrid pension plan that incorporates aspects of a defined contribution (DC) and a defined benefit (DB) plan.

Under House Bill 258, new teachers are required to contribute more to their retirement plans than current teachers do, and they will have to work for 30 years instead of 27 to earn their maximum benefits. The new rules will become effective at the beginning of 2022.

The bill had been passed by large majority of both chambers of the legislature earlier this year, with the House passing it by a vote of 68 to 28 and the Senate passing it by a count of 63 to 34. Because the state’s Republicans have a supermajority in both the House and Senate, they didn’t have much difficulty in overriding the veto, which was one of 24 vetoes passed down by Beshear, a Democrat, that were overridden in one day.

Author(s): Michael Katz

Publication Date: 1 April 2021

Publication Site: ai-CIO

GOP says ‘no’ to state and local aid as Senate heads toward vote on COVID bill

Mary Pat Campbell
GOP says ‘no’ to state and local aid as Senate heads toward vote on COVID bill

Excerpt:

Supporters of the bill — including numerous Republican mayors — say the answer is a clear “yes.” They argue that a number of states, particularly those that rely on service industries and tourism, have seen steep revenue declines, and local governments are facing deeper financial strains as they struggle to expand services with fewer employees.

“Many of our cities have furloughed workers, shrunk their workforce through attrition, cancelled police and fire recruitment efforts, and frozen capital budgets that build community infrastructure — all while absorbing additional expenses to respond to COVID, delivering essential services and reaching out to our communities that have been disproportionately affected,” a bipartisan group of Ohio mayors wrote to federal lawmakers last month.

But congressional Republicans, who also opposed including more state and local aid in the coronavirus stimulus bill approved in December, largely have been unpersuaded. They point to data showing some states outpacing their revenue projections, and argue that sending more financial help to states would unfairly reward those that locked down their economies instead of lifting restrictions on businesses.

Author(s): Laura Olson

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: NC Policy Watch

Kansas Lawmakers Already Have Plans for COVID Relief Funds

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/finance/Kansas-Lawmakers-Already-Have-Plans-for-COVID-Relief-Funds.html

Excerpt:

Republican lawmakers are eyeing the relief dollars to fund $500 million in tax cuts, heavily targeted to multinational corporations and wealthy and retired Kansans. They also want the money for refunds to students relegated to online learning and replenishment of the state’s unemployment insurance fund, which has been depleted by a record volume of legitimate and fraudulent claims. A House committee on Thursday recommended using the federal aid to fund $500 bonuses for teachers and grants for school security.

The state Senate approved the tax cut earlier this month after growing its size from a proposed $175 million to an estimated $500 million. Though the House has not yet picked up the measure, Senate Republicans have pitched federal dollars as a way to keep it alive.

Senate Majority Leader, Gene Sullentrop, a Wichita Republican, said immediately after the vote that the final size of the cut would be dependent on federal funding.

Author(s): KATIE BERNARD, THE KANSAS CITY STAR

Publication Date: 1 March 2021

Publication Site: Governing

Many State Senators Want To Strip Cuomo Of Emergency Powers, Citing Nursing Home Cover-Up

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://dailyvoice.com/new-york/northsalem/politics/many-state-senators-want-to-strip-cuomo-of-emergency-powers-citing-nursing-home-cover-up/803232/

Excerpt:

New York State Senate Republicans, and now, a growing number of Democratic Senators, are seeking a special session in an effort to remove Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s emergency powers in the wake of the report into the underreporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes statewide.

Senate Republican Leader Robert Ortt and members of the Republican Conference called on the Senate Majority to convene a special session and strip Cuomo of his emergency powers while calling for a thorough investigation into his administration. They were later joined by 14 Democratic senators.

…..

“This administration has shown a callous disregard for these vulnerable residents and their families for months, but this stunning admission is a horrific new low,” she said. “A full, independent investigation into the state’s handling of the COVID crisis in New York’s nursing homes needs to be launched immediately and any lawmaker who is not actively working to make that happen is complicit in the cover-up—period.”

Author(s): Zak Fallia

Publication Date: 13 February 2021

Publication Site: Daily Voice