Stephanie Mencimer

Reporter

Stephanie works in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. A Utah native and graduate of a crappy public university not worth mentioning, she has spent the last year hanging out with angry white people who occasionally don tricorne hats and come to lunch meetings heavily armed.

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Stephanie covers legal affairs and domestic policy in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She is the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. A contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, a former investigative reporter at the Washington Post, and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004 for a Washington Monthly article about myths surrounding the medical malpractice system. In 2000, she won the Harry Chapin Media award for reporting on poverty and hunger, and her 2010 story in Mother Jones of the collapse of the welfare system in Georgia and elsewhere won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.

The Real Problem With Romney's Offshore Investments

Forget the 47 percent. Foreign tax havens—and investment vehicles like those the GOP candidate established at Bain Capital—are robbing world treasuries of billions.

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Tue Sep. 25, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Mitt Romney's taxes are once again in the news thanks to Friday's release of his full 2011 tax return. As with his 2010 filings, the documents highlight the GOP candidate's extensive overseas holdings, which some tax experts believe has allowed him to lessen his tax liability. But the problem with Romney's reliance on offshore tax havens goes beyond his own tax bill.

The Internal Revenue Service and many members of Congress have sought for years to close some of the loopholes that are draining billions of dollars from the federal treasury and shifting the tax burden from wealthy corporations to average individuals. Yet through his work at Bain Capital and his personal investments, Romney has supported a shadowy financial system with far-reaching ramifications for the US and foreign governments.

To date, Romney has refused to answer questions about why, for instance, he needs to keep some of his money in places like Bermuda, rather than a bank in Belmont, Massachusetts, or in a US-based investment vehicle. When he dodges these types of questions, Romney's not just depriving voters of critical information about his own taxes. He's sidestepping a much larger policy question about this unaccountable financial system that has been a key driver of global inequality.

[Read the full article]

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Alabama Voters to Decide Whether to Save Poor Kids

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Tue Sep. 18, 2012 10:02 AM PDT

Tengler Children, Hale, Alabama

As Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have spent the past few months tangling over whether the administration is trying to change the welfare program to give poor, unemployed single moms money for nothing, they've missed a troubling new development about the future of the US safety net. Over the past few months, the state of Alabama has been seriously considering dropping out of the federal public assistance program altogether.

Today Alabama voters go to the polls to decide whether or not to approve an amendment to the state's constitution that would allow shifting $437 million from the state's gas and oil drilling royalty trust to the state's general fund to cover a $150 million budget deficit. Alabama suggested earlier this year that if the measure is defeated it may become the first state in the country to simply quit the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare program, a move that could push more than 40,000 children in the state even deeper into poverty.

Such a move would have been unthinkable before 1996, when President Clinton signed a welfare reform bill passed by a Republican controlled Congress. Before that, welfare was a federal entitlement program whose budget grew according to need. But the 1996 reforms turned the program into a block grant which gave states a fixed amount of federal money every year, no matter how bad the economy got or how many people were in dire straits. Under the 1996 law, states were also required to spend a certain amount of their own money to receive federal funds.

Under the block grant, states could also choose not to contribute, and thereby forgo any federal cash. There are consequences to such a decision: If Alabama stops paying its share of TANF, it would lose $93 million a year in federal cash—money that Congress has allowed states to spend on things that have nothing to do with keeping kids out of poverty. Last year, for instance, only 27 percent of Alabama’s TANF program funds were even spent on direct cash assistance to families. In Alabama, TANF benefits are really hard to get. A family of three won't qualify if the parent earned more than $3,200 in annual income; that's five times below the federal poverty line. And the average payment is only $189 a month. That amount could be higher, but Alabama diverts almost a quarter of its TANF grant to other projects, like child abuse and neglect programs—initiatives that the state would have to pay for itself if it lost its federal block grant funds.

The fact that bolting from TANF has even been part of the budget debate in Alabama suggests a new willingness by cash-strapped states to simply give up on their obligations to the poor rather than raise taxes.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Even Evangelicals Sorta Kinda Like Obamacare Now

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Fri Sep. 14, 2012 3:13 PM PDT

Attendees at this year's Values Voter Summit, the annual DC conference sponsored by the evangelical Family Research Council, have been among the most fervent opponents of President Obama's health care reform law. Some of the groups currently suing the Department of Health and Human Services over the law's requirement that health insurers cover contraception are on hand as exhibitors and panel discussion members. But even here, many attendees I interviewed Friday had to admit that now that the law had survived the Supreme Court and was starting to take effect, there were parts of Obamacare they not only liked, but which had already helped family members or people they knew.

Wes Cantrell, visiting from Atlanta, is no fan of Obamacare. He thinks it should mostly be repealed. Except for the part that's allowing his his grandson to stay on his parents' insurance plan while he's in college. "That's good," he concedes. Cantrell also admits that the ban on denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions ought to be spared. I didn't get a chance to explain that keeping the bit about preexisting conditions would be impossible without the individual mandate (the law's requirement that people buy health insurance or pay a fine), which will force lots of young healthy people into the system to subsidize the sicker people.

Another attendee, a doctor from Maryland who refused to give his name, told me that he had a sibling who got care for a very serious illness thanks to the new law. "That's a positive thing," he admitted. Even so, like many people I spoke with, for the doctor, the benefits still didn't outweigh what they see as the law's primary flaw: the mandatory contraception coverage. "I object to the burden imposed on institutions to provide contraception for free," the doctor said.

In the hotel hallway, I ran into a group of recent college graduates interning for the Family Research Council and asked them whether any of them were still on their parents' insurance plans. The horrified looks on their faces suggested that except for the British guy, every single one of them was getting insurance from their folks—the major benefit so far of Obamacare, which allows young people to stay on their parents' plans until the age of 26. They refused to talk about it and tried to pawn me off on some high school kids coming down the stairs.

What was perhaps most remarkable about the impact of Obamacare on its most fervent opponents was how little impact it had had on them. The most controversial part of the law, the individual mandate and the requirements for businesses to provide coverage, haven't kicked in yet, so it's still too early to say. But I didn't talk to a single person at the summit who had been enslaved by the law, as opponents so often claimed would be the result. Most wouldn't even be affected by the mandate or the business requirement. Obviously it's not a very scientific sample. Values Voters skew old; they don't need birth control. Many of the people I spoke with were already getting their health care from the government, including some young people from Liberty University who had military health coverage. (One guy from Liberty U. I spoke with was convinced that Obamacare was taking money out of his paycheck every month, until informed by a colleague that those withholdings were for Medicare.)

But for all of the angry freakouts by conservatives who have claimed that Obamacare was going to be the end of the world as they knew it and the triumph of socialism over freedom, not a single person I spoke with could offer up concrete evidence that Obamacare was now or would ever be ruining their lives. Bruce Jones, from Liverpool, NY, who is retired from the military and thus gets generous health benefits from the government, conceded that it might be hard for people to point to anything specific about the law that might be hurting them. The opposition, he says, "it's more ideological now than anything real."

Values Voters: America's Last Prudes

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Fri Sep. 14, 2012 8:33 AM PDT

"Does God really care what I wear?" That's the headline on a flyer on an exhibit table at this year's Values Voter Summit, the annual evangelical political confab sponsored by the Family Research Council. The exhibit hall is an especially good reminder that the evangelical community may be among the last bastions of American prudery.

Modesty Matters, the group behind the flyer, is a new addition to the event this year. It was founded by a modestly dressed retired pharmacist from Roanoke, Virginia named J.H. Woolwine. He gave me a leaflet showcasing some models of modest dress for young people. They look like Mitt Romney’s high school yearbook photos: Buttoned up college students from 1965 wearing knee-length dresses and neckties.

A "back porch thing" run by Woolwine and his wife, Modesty Matters is a somewhat quixotic effort to "move the media back to modesty," which Woolwine believes could be a compelling nonpolitical issue that people on all sides could agree on. He could be right about that. Anyone who has struggled to find clothes for young girls that don't make them look like hookers might agree.

Of course, the information Woolwine is handing out might put off a few potential supporters, especially the women he's seeking to persuade. On the flyer asking whether God "cares what I wear," the writer explains that women need to dress more modestly in church because "men are particularly visual. Immodesty in church can trigger lustful thoughts." It's an interesting sentiment among a crowd obsessed with the possibility that Islamic militants could impose Sharia law on America. Woolwine is also distributing a "Resolution for Women," which asks women to make a number of pledges, including "I will champion God’s model for womanhood in the face of a post-feminist culture."

But Woolwine insists that his activism isn't just aimed at women. "It's for guys, too," he says. So far though, his group hasn’t really picked up steam. He's got flyers out asking for someone to make him a website, and the table in the exhibit hall features a little box for donations. But he says he's gotten quite a few signatures for his petition to ask Congress to make the day after Labor Day national "Modesty Day," to remind kids going back to school to put some clothes on.

I ask Woolwine how some political women stacked up in the modesty department. He said he thinks that Michelle Obama has served as a good role model in that department, as has former First Lady Laura Bush. Not only that but 'each has advocated good things," like reading and eating right, he adds. How about, say, Sarah Palin? Woolwine declines to express an opinion on the former vice presidential candidate. When I mention that her kids might not be the models of modesty he's looking to champion, he says, "You may have a point there." But the real winners in the political modest department, in Woolwine's opinion, seem to be the Romneys, who look a lot like the people in his flyers (although this was before Romney disclosed to Kelly Rippa that he likes to sleep in "as little as possible" and expressed his admiration for Snooki, who's hardly a paragon of feminine propriety). "I think the Romneys dress and behave modestly, as do their families," he says.

Sarah Palin and Free Stuff Vs. Freedom

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Fri Sep. 14, 2012 3:11 AM PDT

Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple (who is my husband) noticed an interesting trend this week: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has a snappy new one-liner. Palin has used the same riff repeatedly, and she did it again on Fox News Friday night. Here's what she said:

"I just pray that Americans will open their eyes between now and November when they know that they'll have to make that choice between free stuff or freedom. You can’t have both."

Wemple notes that Palin has been throwing the line around a lot lately, and traces its origin back to a February Washington Times op-ed written by Ted Nugent. But the "free stuff" meme has also been pushed by GOP presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, who has used it repeatedly in response to questions about health care. In Florida earlier this year, in response to a heckler who asked about free contraception under Obamacare, he said, "If you're looking for free stuff you don't have to pay for? Vote for the other guy, that's what he's all about, okay? That’s not, that's not what I'm about." And then shortly after he got booed at the NAACP convention this summer, he told a group of donors in Montana what he told all those black folks in the room:

I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff.

Romney's association of the "free stuff" meme with Obamacare suggests Republicans are desperately looking for a new way to attack the health care law, which has been the animating force of much conservative rhetoric and tea party activism over the past three years. Despite all the GOP predictions that Obamacare would usher in a new era of socialism and government tyranny, the reform law is finally making people's lives better. Voters are starting to realize that, and Republicans appear to be freaking out about it, if Palin's multiple attacks are any indication.

It's hard to generate angry crowds over a health care plan that, in the past year, has delivered health insurance to millions of additional people. Women voters, a key constituency, are finally starting to get free contraception (a part of the bill that's on the way to saving my own family at least $600 a year!). Seniors and disabled people have saved upwards of $4 billion in reduced prescription drug costs, and nearly 13 million families this year got more than $1 billion in rebates from insurance companies that were spending too much of their premiums on private jets and not enough on health care.

At a time when median income has totally hit the skids, "free stuff" is probably coming as welcome relief to people who may now be more inclined to re-elect President Obama as a result. Romney has offered no viable alternative health care solutions other than to propose repealing Obamacare. If Palin's latest offensive is any indication, Republicans are resorting to an attack on the law's beneficiaries themselves, as if Americans who take the rebate or free birth control pills are morally weak, freedom-hating slackers looking for a handout. It's hard to see how this is going to win over many voters. You can watch Palin explain all this here: