Retailers hurt by shrinking lending- Business Week

Retailers hurt by shrinking lending- Business Week

By Lauren Coleman-Lochner

Dec. 23 Bloomberg -- Target Corp. and U.S. retailers may lose almost $9 billion in holiday sales as banks rein in lending to cash-strapped consumers before a new credit-card law takes effect.


Sales in November and December may fall 1.2 percent to $436.7 billion from the same period in 2008, said Britt Beemer, chairman of consumer polling firm Americaâ??s Research Group. If lenders werenâ??t cutting customer spending limits and rejecting more credit-card applicants, sales would gain about 0.8 percent to $445.5 billion, he said in a Dec. 21 interview.


Target Chief Financial Officer Douglas Scovanner says the credit-card legislation is exacerbating a spending slump just as consumers begin to consider more discretionary purchases they would usually buy with credit. Items such as clothing, jewelry and home goods suffered steeper declines during the recession and are among the most profitable sales for retailers.

Feeding our hungry - Miami Herald

Feeding our hungry - Miami Herald


Istrongly believe that America's ingenuity and sense of fairness should be applied to the effort of eliminating childhood hunger in this country. The Department of Agriculture is deeply involved in this effort as we work toward a national approach that promotes economic opportunity.

Last year 17 million households, 14.6 percent of us, had difficulty putting enough food on the table at some point, according to a recent USDA report. This is an 11.1 percent increase from 2007 and the highest level seen since food-security surveys were initiated in 1995.

Equally troubling, one-third of food-insecure households had what is termed low food security -- 5.7 percent of all U.S. households, up from 4.1 percent in 2007. And, while children in U.S. households are usually protected from the worst results of food insecurity, last year 1.3 percent of households with children -- about a half million -- had very low food security, up from 0.8 percent the previous year.

The fundamental cause of food insecurity and hunger in the United States is poverty, defined by a lack of adequate resources to address basic needs such as food, shelter and healthcare.

While USDA's nutrition safety net improves food access to those with critical needs, addressing the root of hunger requires a broad strategy. The Obama administration has taken aggressive action on these fronts through an expansion of critical services for Americans most in need. For one, the historic investments of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act increases nutrition-assistance benefits for the 36.5 million people, half of whom are children, who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly the food stamp program, each month.

Getting $80 more

ARRA allocates an additional $20 billion for SNAP, increasing much-needed benefits to recipients and helping states administer the program more efficiently. A four-person household, for example, now receives an average of $80 more for groceries, while states can expand benefits to more jobless adults beyond the usual three-month time limit.

We have another extraordinary opportunity to improve the health and nutrition of our children when Congress debates the Child Nutrition Reauthorization. The National School Lunch Program, for one, serves 31 million children a healthy meal each school day, and in some cases is a needy child's primary meal. Through direct certification, children participating in SNAP are automatically eligible for the school lunch program.

And the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children ensures mothers and their children have access to nutritious options as well. Almost half of all children born in this country participate in this program.

Eliminate gap

Through the reauthorization, Congress can make it easier for families and administrators to bring eligible children into the program and eliminate gap periods when children struggle to find the nutrition assistance they need -- at breakfast, during summer and in after-school settings.

President Obama and I are dedicated to improving access to child-nutrition programs, enhancing the nutritional quality of school meals and reducing the growing epidemic of childhood obesity. The president's budget recognizes the opportunity presented by reauthorization and his priorities underscore his commitment to people who are hungry and nutritionally at risk. Through concerted efforts and partnerships at all levels, we can pass a groundbreaking reauthorization bill to meet these goals and strengthen America's safety net against hunger.

The administration has put in place unprecedented measures and legislation to combat hunger and poverty in America and to assist food-insecure households. But hunger will never be eliminated unless we unite in this fight. The recent USDA report on food security is another wake-up call for all of us.

Greater Chicago Food Depository distributes food donated from supermarkets- Chicago Tribune

Greater Chicago Food Depository distributes food donated from supermarkets- Chicago Tribune
'Food rescue' program helps area pantries fight hunger while reducing food waste


The trove of food on the loading dock of a Countryside Jewel supermarket on a recent Friday morning would make many nutritious meals. Fresh bread and buns. Bags of spinach and carrots. And lots of meat straight from the cooler: loin steaks, ground turkey, chicken wings, sausage.

All of it would have been landfill-bound if not for the Greater Chicago Food Depository's food rescue program. Instead, by the end of that Friday, those groceries and much more perfectly edible food went to food banks across Chicago.

The rescue program, which counts Jewel as its biggest donor, is a nonprofit/corporate partnership that helps reduce the nation's mountain of food waste while helping to fight hunger. The food program resonates even more now as the numbers of unemployed continue to rise.

"Picking up the excess from supermarkets is important and valuable in that it puts food to use," said Jonathan Bloom, who runs Wasted Food, a Web site chronicling food waste issues.

Still, supermarket food rescue is only "a piece of the puzzle," he said. Food waste abounds from farms, where crops are sometimes plowed under when prices are low, to restaurants that serve gigantic portions to consumers who pitch their leftovers.

Efrain Reyes, a 46-year-old South Sider who works for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, crisscrosses the city in a truck daily, calling on several supermarkets. The holiday season is the busiest time of the year.

On a recent Friday, Reyes, driving a new truck donated by Charter One bank, pulled out of the food depository's Southwest Side headquarters at 7:02 a.m., headed for a Sam's Club in La Grange. He'd stop at seven more supermarkets on this day: one Food 4 Less outlet and six Jewels. Then he'd ferry the goods directly to four church-run food pantries on the South Side.

Reyes' early-morning stops yield a smorgasbord: various beef cuts, whole chickens, surimi (ground fish), shucked cold oysters, chilled pineapple slices, bags of lettuce, pies and other baked goods. "There's a certain date it has to be sold by, but it's still good food," he said.

The food Reyes picks up has reached its "sell by" date. That's a label many food retailers put on their products as a self-imposed quality assurance standard, said Miguel Alba, a spokesman for Jewel, the Chicago area's largest supermarket chain.

Though freshness declines after the sell-by date, many products will continue to remain nutritious and edible for an extended period, Alba said, and freezing items such as meat and baked goods can further extend their life.

Jewel donated 62 percent of the 6.1 million pounds of food distributed through the Chicago food rescue program in its most recent fiscal year. Dominick's, the area's second-largest grocery chain, doesn't participate in the rescue program, but it helps to support the depository through cash donations and food drives at its stores.

The depository operates eight trucks that visit dozens of supermarkets throughout Cook County. A similar, though smaller, food rescue program run by the Northern Illinois Food Bank serves the surrounding counties. Rescue programs thrive in cities across the country, as well on a national level through hunger-relief agency Feeding America.

They have plenty of food to pick up. Food waste per capita in the U.S. has been steadily increasing, according to a study published last month by researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md.

They found that from 1974 to 2000, food waste as a percentage of food supply rose from 30 percent to 40 percent, though it tailed off a bit through 2005, the most recent year covered in the study. That finding encompasses food lost at the production level, through retail channels and from consumer waste.

But U.S. Department of Agriculture data show that the loss at grocery stores alone can be significant. A USDA study released this year showed that in 2006, 8.4 percent of all fresh produce at supermarkets went to waste.

Landfills swell with food waste -- food scraps made up 12.7 percent of the 250 million tons of municipal solid waste generated last year in this country, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

And unlike paper, metal or glass, food is not easily recyclable. Only 2.5 percent of food waste was recycled -- and that includes composting -- while 55.5 percent of paper waste was recovered, according to the EPA.

Food rescue programs are effectively recycling efforts. And companies have economic and social incentives to participate in them, said Bob Dolgan, a food depository spokesman. "They get a tax break, and it's more efficient for them to donate to us and do some good than dispose of (waste food) themselves."

The rescue program provided about one-tenth of the 58 million pounds of food distributed by the Chicago food depository in its most recent fiscal year. The rest came from donations from the federal government, the Chicago International Produce Market (a wholesaler) and packaged-food makers, notably Kraft Foods and Sara Lee, both of which are based in the Chicago area.

As the supply of donations has grown, so has demand.



A USDA report released last month found that 14.6 percent of U.S. households had difficulty at some time during 2008 providing enough food for all their members. That was up from 11.1 percent in 2007 and was the highest level recorded since the USDA began collecting such data in 1995.

Since the USDA's 2008 survey, economic damage has only spread, as the U.S. unemployment rate rose from 6.6 percent in October 2008 to around 10 percent in October 2009. Lost jobs means lost money to buy food.

During the nine months ending in September, visits to food pantries supplied by the Chicago food depository soared 33 percent to 3.6 million. One of those food pantries is run by Cornerstone Church of Chicago on the Southeast Side.

"It's been hitting us really hard," Adraine Lloyd, coordinator of the church's food pantry, said of the recession.

Lloyd said the food rescue program meets a particular need because it includes so many fresh items. "Last week, we got a lot of meat," she said of a recent delivery from the food rescue truck. Sometimes fresh fish even shows up: "It's like, 'Oh my God, we got the fish.' "

Barbara Smith, who runs the food pantry and soup kitchen at Bryn Mawr Community Church on the South Side, said the food rescue truck "is showing up with items that are highly desirable." That includes fresh produce and, of course, meat.

"Meat is a top commodity," said Reyes as he drove from one Jewel store to another. "Everybody wants the meat."

mhughlett@tribune.com

Want to help?
--To learn about volunteering or donating food or money to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, call 773-247-FOOD (3663) or go online at chicagosfoodbank.org.

--Feeding America comprises a nationwide network of food banks, including the Northern Illinois Food Bank. Search for Illinois food banks at feedingamerica.org.

--The Living Room Cafe in Woodlawn and the Inspiration Cafe in Uptown serve restaurant-style meals to the homeless. To learn about volunteering, visit inspirationcorp.org.

--Other local organizations include the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation,antihunger.org, and the Illinois Hunger Coalition, ilhunger.org.

Copenhagen reveals nations are worlds apart - Patriot News

Copenhagen reveals nations are worlds apart - Patriot News
By Patriot-News Op-Ed
December 24, 2009, 5:30AM

There was something new in the air at the recently concluded Copenhagen climate change negotiations even though they have largely been deemed a failure.
These developments have profound implications for the international community, particularly for developed countries.

I’ve been participating in international climate change negotiating sessions since the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, including seven conferences under the United States Framework Convention on Climate Change.

I also negotiated climate change and other environmental issues for the EPA at the United Nations from 1995 to 1998.

This experience leads me to conclude that there are two big new stories that unfolded in Copenhagen: ethical dilemmas and the practicalities of adaptation.
In the past, worldwide interest on climate change negotiations was focused mainly on national emissions targets.

The first new issue is the frequency and centrality in which arguments were made in Copenhagen that climate change is an ethical issue, and its solutions must be guided by ethical, justice and human rights principles and not national self-interest alone.

The Copenhagen agenda included dozens of meetings expressly devoted to the ethical dimensions of climate change.

Hundreds of delegates from poor nations whose citizens already are suffering from a warming world passionately implored rich nations to take action sufficient to protect the vulnerable.

They described killer droughts and growing deserts in Africa, loss of glacier-fed water supplies for millions in Central Asia and South America, and rising seas that are now threatening the existence of small island states. For many poor countries, climate change is an urgent matter of life and death.

Despite the growing recognition that climate change is an ethical matter, many developed nations continued to negotiate as if national economic interest alone was a sufficient justification for national positions.

In fact, no developed nation put on the table a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that was congruent with what science is now saying is necessary to protect those most vulnerable from dangerous climate change.

President Obama was constrained by domestic politics because he could not commit to emissions reduction levels that had little chance of passing in Congress. Yet many in the rest of the world saw the U.S. position as based upon narrow U.S. economic interest, not duties to poor people.

The United States was willing to commit to a 17 percent reduction below 2005, which equaled a 4 percent reduction below 1990 levels.

Yet recent science has concluded that the world needs to reduce global emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 by 2020 to avoid dangerous climate change. From the standpoint of the most vulnerable poor countries, the U.S. position amounted to a death sentence.

The United States was not alone.

When Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd arrived in Copenhagen, he announced that he was not going to sign any agreement that was not in Australia’s interest.

The second big item that happened in Copenhagen was the huge blossoming of climate change damage issues. All of a sudden, the world has awakened to specific adaptation questions such as who is going to pay for climate change damages? How should these monies be administered? To whom should they go? How to set priorities among adaptation needs? And how much money will be made available for growing adaptation needs?

From the standpoint of the poorest developing countries, adaptation issues have been a high priority for some time, but now they have become critical.
dbrown.jpgDonald Brown

The proposed negotiating text called for developed countries to finance several adaptation needs of poor countries including: (a) vulnerability assessments, (b) national adaptation planning, (c) project adaptation implementation, (d) new international and regional adaptation bodies, and (e) pay for all of this with mandatory, new, and predictable funding. The proposed text also called for funding in the range of $70 to $140 billion per year until 2020 and then updated after that.

Although President Obama managed to get an agreement among a few of the larger polluting countries, this deal does not have the support of most developing countries, nor is it likely to be a blueprint for a future global deal.

Copenhagen did not produce the deal hoped for by many because developed and developing countries are on a different track. The developing countries want justice and the developed countries want to protect their economic interests.

Donald Brown is assistant professor of environmental ethics, science and law at Penn State University.

Senate Passes Sweeping Health-Care Bill - WSJ

Senate Passes Sweeping Health-Care Bill

WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved sweeping health-overhaul legislation on Thursday, a landmark moment for White House-led efforts to expand insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans.

The bill, approved by a 60-39 vote, would deliver on a long-promised Democratic goal of extending coverage to nearly every American, and would represent the biggest expansion of the federal safety net since the 1965 creation of Medicare, the health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

Thursday's vote was a victory for President Barack Obama, who made the issue his top domestic priority despite lingering divisions among Democrats and the fierce opposition of Republicans. And it was a validation of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to build consensus on his side of the aisle, rather than reach across party lines, a move that would have forced a lowering of ambitions.


Republicans said the bill would impose massive regulatory and financial burdens on taxpayers and businesses, and would dig the government even deeper in debt. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) told the chamber just before the vote that Democrats should expect an "earful" from angry constituents when they go home

"This fight is long from over," Mr. McConnell said. "My colleagues and I will fight to ensure this bill doesn't become law. That's the clear will of the American people."

Mr. Reid said he also expected to get an earful, but from Americans who will benefit from the expanded health-care coverage and new rules on insurance companies. "Our charge is to move forward," he said, adding that the bill meets a national need that presidents have pushed for since Harry Truman. "Though some may slow the progress, they cannot stop it," he said.

With Christmas looming, Mr. Reid closed a series of last-minute deals to secure the support of balky Democrats and then plunged the Senate into a forced march, beginning with a 1 a.m. vote Monday and culminating with Thursday's roll call at 7 a.m. on passage of the bill.

The 10-year $871 billion measure would expand Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, and create new tax subsidies to help lower- and middle-income families comply with a mandate to purchase insurance. That mandate would be enforced by a financial penalty of up to $750 for any individual who fails to get coverage.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation would reduce the budget deficit by $132 billion over the next decade, through a combination of tax increases on the health-care sector and spending cuts, which largely fall on Medicare payments to health-care providers.

The last time the Senate voted on Christmas Eve was 1895, the issue then being whether to provide federal benefits for U.S. servicemen. In a ceremony with 19th-century echoes, senators rose one by one Thursday from their simple wooden desks to cast their votes. Vice President Joe Biden presided over the chamber.

"Mr. President, this is for my friend Ted Kennedy. Aye," said 92-year-old Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, referring to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was a champion of universal health care. Sen. Kennedy's widow watched the vote from the gallery.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) called the vote the "most important" in his more than 20 years as a U.S. senator.

More at the link