Consumers can renew health-insurance policies purchased last year on healthcare.gov or choose a new plan. But the enrollment period will be shorter, and penalties will be higher. Reported by Wall Street Journal 16 hours ago.

WASHINGTON -- The health insurance marketplace opened for business on Saturday and performed much better than last year, but many consumers reported long, frustrating delays in trying to buy insurance and gain access to their own accounts at HealthCare.gov. Reported by TwinCities.com 15 hours ago.

The second enrollment period for people to sign up for federally mandated health insurance has begun. But as Kristine Johnson reports, the law remains highly controversial and is still fighting an uphill battle for acceptance with the American public; and, seven weeks after 43 college students disappeared, protests continue in Mexico over their apparent murder. As Manuel Bojorquez reports, what began as a spontaneous demonstration is becoming a movement of young people fighting political corruption and a culture of fear. Reported by CBS News 14 hours ago.

Compensation Programs, Inc. (ComPro), a health insurance brokerage firm located in Lincoln, Neb., is launching their Myth Busters campaign as they ramp up for Open Enrollment, beginning on Nov. 15.

Lincoln, NE (PRWEB) November 16, 2014

Compensation Programs, Inc. (ComPro), a health insurance brokerage firm located in Lincoln, Neb., is launching their Myth Busters campaign as they ramp up for Open Enrollment, beginning Nov. 15. The campaign focuses on educating the public about some of the fallacies that exist about health care reform or changes that have taken place over the course of the year to the Health Care Reform act.

“We’ve seen from the most recent questions, there is still confusion over the Health Care Reform Act, even though this is the second year. Questions about open enrollment, policy changes, deadlines and how to have an active policy by January 1st,” said Chris McPike, Vice President of ComPro.

ComPro will be working to dispel some of the confusion and misinformation that’s circulating about health care through their Myth Buster segments. Some questions ComPro will address include Do I need a new policy for 2015? What happens if I don’t do anything? Will the Premium Tax Credit that I received in 2014 continue in 2015? I received a letter saying that my policy will not be offered in 2015 - now what do I do? How much will my premium increase in 2015? Visitors to ComPro’s website and Facebook page can learn the answers to these questions and more by visiting http://comproins.com/newsroom/health-care-reform/.

“The Marketplace has opened and that means we are now able to show the benefit plans and premiums that are available to small business owners, individuals and families and can assist people in determining if they are eligible for financial assistance that will lower the cost of their premiums,” says Brian McPike, President of ComPro.

ComPro diligently studies the products, changing regulations and fluid marketplace in order to design the programs that best serve their client. For more information about ComPro, please contact Brian McPike at brianmcpike(at)comproins(dot)com or visit http://www.comproins.com Reported by PRWeb 10 hours ago.

Starting this weekend, anyone interested in changing an existing health insurance policy or buying a new one can do so during the second open enrollment period under Obamacare. Reported by L.A. Times 5 hours ago.

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com· Vladimir Putin eats lunch alone at G20 meeting
· Jonathan Gruber on Obamacare and the stupidity of the American voter
· Massachusetts health care site finally up -- for $254 million
· The implementation of Obamacare

**Vladimir Putin eats lunch alone at G20 meeting**An isolated Vladimir Putin eats lunch alone at G20 meeting on Saturday(Reuters)

Nobody wanted to eat lunch with Russia's president Vladimir Putin on Saturday at the G20 Leaders' Summit being held in Brisbane, Australia. It was supposed to be an economic summit, but most other leaders used the opportunity to blast Putin for Russia's repeated military intervention in Ukraine, for annexing Crimea, and for supplying the weapons and training to the Russians who shot down the MH17 airliner over Ukraine, killing hundreds of innocent passengers. Several leaders told Putin bluntly to "get out of Ukraine."

By lunch time, Putin was so isolated that no one wanted to be seen having lunch with him, so he sat at a lunch table alone. Later, his delegation announced that he would be leaving the G20 meeting early, calling the meeting "nonsense." Australian Broadcasting
**Jonathan Gruber on Obamacare and the stupidity of the American voter**

Obamacare supporters have been fleeing in droves from MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who was the principal architect of Obamacare. But there's no getting away from him. A glowing article in the NY Times on March 28, 2012, made it clear that Gruber was the number one health care expert in the country, not only because he had been developing models for decades, but also because he was a prime architect for Romneycare in Massachusetts, on which Obamacare was based.

Gruber's lectures at MIT are available on videotape, and they've revealed everything from the contemptuous attitude of Obamacare officials, and also deception and fraud in the selling of Obamacare.

According to Gruber:This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.... Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass... Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

I'd like to point out that it's not people like me that Gruber is calling "stupid." The stupid people, in Gruber's view, are the supporters of Obamacare, who are presumably too stupid to see through the deception and fraud of Obamacare, as I was and many others were able to do. Gruber's remarks are an indictment of the Obamacare supporters, mostly Democrats who, in Gruber's view, were too stupid to see what was going on.

When I first wrote about the "Obama's health plan, a proposal of economic insanity" in 2009, I said that this plan would never be implemented because it would destroy markets and be economically disastrous. I compared it to President Richard Nixon's wage-price controls which were not as disastrous for the markets as Obama's health plan, but still wrecked the economy for close to a decade. I've repeated that many times since, and I'll discuss if further below.

However, let's turn to another Gruber quote, this one revealing financial fraud on the part of the Obamacare officials.

Obamacare advocates have repeatedly made statements to the effect, "Romneycare worked in Massachusetts, which proves that Obamacare can work across the country." However, another Gruber videotape says that's not true, because Romneycare was essentially bailed out by the federal government:We had a pretty powerful senator you may have heard of named Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy had managed to figure out a way to rip off the federal Medicaid program to the tune of about $500 million a year through a series of strange manipulations.

Here was Mitt Romney’s dirty little secret that we don’t like to talk about in Massachusetts, which is the way we passed our law is the federal government paid for it.

George Bush said why am I sending this Democrat $500 million a year, I’m taking it back. Mitt Romney to his credit went to George Bush and said, look, can we keep the money if we use it for universal coverage. And Bush to his credit said yes.

We realized that we can’t do this at the state level anymore. The feds are going to have to get involved. [...] 

[Kennedy was] delivering about $400 million a year in slush funds to our SafeNet hospitals, basically ripping off the federal Medicaid program.

So Romneycare was never self-sustaining, as Obamacare supporters have said, but was actually "ripping off the federal Medicaid program" to survive, according to Gruber. We now know that Obamacare was based on deception and fraud on many levels:· "You can keep your doctor" was a knowing lie.
· "You can keep your health plan" was a knowing lie.
· "Premiums will decrease by $2,500" was a knowing lie.

Daily Caller and Washington Examiner and New York Times (29-March-2012)
**Massachusetts health care site finally up -- for $254 million**

It's almost impossible to even imagine the astronomical sums that have been spent on the greatest IT disaster in world history, the HealthCare.gov web sites. As I wrote a year ago, this would have been a $10 million project if implemented in the private sector. (See "1-Dec-13 World View -- Obamacare: 500M lines of code, $500M, only 60% completed" from last year.)

But let's say that it should have cost $20 million. Then triple that amount because everything the government does is inefficient, and wastes enormous amounts of money, due to corruption, public sector labor unions, and cronyism. So that would be $60 million paid to the government for something that the private sector could do for $10 million.

According to some estimates, Healthcare.gov implementation costs are now in the billions of dollars.

On Saturday, open enrollment began, and the Massachusetts Obamacare web site, known as the Health Connector, came up. The cost for this one state web site? $254 million. And that was $80 million over budget.
This is almost unbelievable. Where is all this money going? There's no way that this is simply IT development expenses. There must be hundreds of millions of dollars being skimmed off by the contractors implementing Obamacare, and those contractors are going to be big Obama supporters and Democratic party contributors. My guess is that Obamacare contractors are skimming off hundreds of millions of dollars and kicking it back to Obama administration cronies, to pay for the 2016 elections. That's the most credible explanation, until someone tells me where billions of development costs have been going.

Boston Business Journal
**The implementation of Obamacare**

As soon as Obamacare was proposed, I called it a "proposal of economic insanity," and compared it to Nixon's wage-price controls, which is the same kind of proposal as Obamacare, at its core. I said that Obamacare would never be implemented, and I've repeated that many times.

Has Obamacare been implemented? It was supposed to be universal health coverage, and it certainly is not.

Nixon's wage-price controls were supposed to reduce inflation from 4% to 2%. That didn't happen. Instead, the economy was so screwed up with shortages and misallocations that the inflation rate rose to 12%. In other words, Nixon's wage-price controls destroyed the economy, and not only accomplished nothing, but were much worse than nothing.

Nixon's wage-price controls were popular because they promised something for nothing. They promised price controls that would keep prices of everything low. But then the shortages started occurring -- gasoline, heating oil, red meat, soybeans, and numerous other products. Nixon did everything he could to save the controls, granting special exemptions and perks to favored people, announcing frequent rule changes to resolve each new problem as it arose, and so forth.

Obamacare has followed the same path. People loved the promise of low-cost health care. But then shortages started showing up in the form of restricted networks. Skyrocketing insurance premiums are being ameliorated by federal subsidies that are a clearly in violation of the Obamacare law, and are being reviewed by Supreme Court, with a decision to be announced in June. (At least Nixon didn't try to reduce high prices with federal subsidies. That's an Obama invention.) And Obama has issued a wealth of rule changes and modifications to Obamacare to keep it from collapsing.

Obamacare supporters like to brag that there are 8 million more insured people now. That's a distortion of the situation. There are millions of "insured" people with deductibles of $5,000-$15,000. These millions of people are effectively uninsured, because they have to pay all of their medical expenses, in addition to the Obamacare insurance premiums.

The heart of Nixon's wage-price controls were the mandates -- it was illegal to increase prices or wages by more than a certain amount.

The heart of Obamacare are the mandates -- the employer mandate that forces employers to provide insurance, and the individual mandate that forces people to purchase insurance.

Both of these have been eviscerated, for the time being. Because they were so unpopular, Obama was forced to effectively postpone them until 2015, under the assumption that Obamacare would be so wildly popular by 2015 that the mandates could be implemented then. Even so, millions of people with full-time 40 hour/week jobs have been forced into part-time 29.5 hour/week jobs by employers who can't afford to pay for health insurance for their employees. These mandates are at the core of Obamacare, just as wage/price mandates were at the heart of Nixon's controls, and without the mandates, both Nixon's controls and Obamacare become meaningless.

Nixon desperately did everything he could to save his wage-price controls, but in the end they were so unpopular and so disastrous that Congress forced them to be ended. They did enormous damage to the economy and accomplished nothing.

Similarly, Republicans are going to control both houses of Congress next year. My expectation is that some "compromise" will be found to weaken the mandates so much as to make them meaningless. In that case, both Obama and Republicans will be able to declare victory, and the only casualty will be the health care system which has been enormously damaged by Obama's "Obamacare" ego trip. But no matter. Obama will have his meaningless Obamacare legacy, and his cronies will have their hundreds of millions of dollars.*KEYS: *Generational Dynamics, Russia, Vladimir Putin, G20, Ukraine, Crimea, MH17, Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare, Richard Nixon, Wage-price controls, Romneycare, Massachusetts, George Bush, Mitt Romney
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Receive daily World View columns by e-mail Reported by Breitbart 3 hours ago.

By now everybody knows what happened in the 2014 midterms. The challenge is to keep the results—a great victory for Republicans—in perspective.

In particular, now that the 2014 midterms have passed into history, we can ask: What implications can we draw about the 2016 election?

The first point to be made is that the voters—God bless ‘em!—are fickle. One can see an electoral roller coaster ride in just about every decade of American history. We might take note, for instance, of the Roaring Twenties. They began with the 1920 Warren G. Harding Republican landslide, a 26-point margin, which crushed even a young Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Democratic ticket. Then in, 1922 came the Democratic comeback in Congress; Democrats won 76 House seats that year.

Yet 1924 saw yet another Republican presidential landslide, as Calvin Coolidge led the top of the GOP ticket.

And so it goes, on and on, lots of reversal of fortune, lots of comebacks.

More recently, we can think back to the electoral zigzags of 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2012, and 2014 and be reminded, yet again, that yes, the voters are fickle.

But suppose we drill down specifically on the“second midterm” phenomenon, sometimes called “the six year itch.” That is, let’s examine the second midterm election for the party in the White House—such as 2014 for the Democrats. Here, the general rule is that the incumbent party suffers big losses, although that doesn’t always happen; it didn’t happen, for instance, to the Democrats in 1998.

But most of the time, the second midterm election brings heavy punishment to the “in” party, and 2014 was no exception. The typical pattern is that a presidency is mostly played out by its sixth year, and the voters signal their desire for a change in the second midterm. Indeed, the midterm-election victories of the “out” party in 1918, 1950, 1958, and 1974 all prefigured a win for that same party in the next presidential election two years later—in 1920, 1952, 1960, and 1976.

Yet not always: In the midterm elections of 1926, 1938, and 1986, we find three instances that are very similar to 2014—that is, the party in possession of the WH suffered a stinging midterm defeat in the second midterm—and yet even so, the “in” party managed to win a third term in the White House two years later.

It wasn’t that long ago—in the wake of the 2012 elections, to be precise—that the Republican National Committee felt compelled to conduct an “autopsy” on itself. And then, in November 2013, the GOP lost the governorship of Virginia. That was a landmark victory for Democrats; it was the first time that the Old Dominion had elected a governor of the same party as the White house in nearly half a century. Thus began a chorus of punditical speculation about a demographic “Coalition of the Ascendant” that would supposedly carry the Democrats to victory in perpetuity.

Yet the good news for the Donkey Party didn’t last long—as we know, in 2014, the Elephants came charging back.

Now, over at the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz just announced that the Democrats will be doing a “top-to-bottom assessment” of their party. In other words, it’s their turn now for the post-mortem.

So the voice of historical wisdom should be telling us only one thing: “Whatever is happening now is not necessarily going to keep on happening.”

However, even amidst the predictable tumult, an increased volatility—perhaps based on dissatisfaction with both parties—is evident. National Journal’s Ron Fournier recently wrote that the volatility we have seen in the past 15 years, as measured by changing partisan control of Congress, is the greatest since the 19th century.

So if we’re thinking historically, we might come to a second point: the importance of interpretation, and how a greater understanding of the past might guide us in the future. Yet even here we must be careful, because one event—one historical fact—can give rise to multiple interpretations.

^^^

It’s been said that all political struggles occur in three time phases: the past, the present, and the future.

That is, implicit in any political argument is that the favored policy agenda is a great idea because it worked so well in the past. Or, conversely, one says of the other party that its policy agenda would be terrible because it worked so badly in the past. In other words, to make a point about the present-day, to win a fight in the here-and-now, it helps to excavate some history.

Yes, the past has its grip: After the US Civil War, the political slogan for both the North and South was, “Vote as you shot.” That is, Northerners were supposed to vote for the Republicans, the Party of the Union, while Southerners were supposed to vote for the Democrats, the Party of The Lost Cause.

Another good way to make a point about the present-day is to excavate, as it were, the future: The argument goes: If we follow our party’s policy, the future will be bright, but if we follow our opponent’s policy, the future will be blighted.

Indeed, sometimes an idea, or a name, is so potent that it works to define both the past and the future. And in doing so, of course, it also defines the present moment.

For example, long after he was banished forever from electoral politics after the 1932 election, the name of the 31st President, Republican Herbert Hoover, kept popping up in Democratic campaign rhetoric as the ultimate political boogeyman. In using the word “Hoover,” Democrats were simultaneously summoning up the ghost of the Depression and suggesting that it could happen again—if the Republicans were to regain power.

We might note that “Hoover” proved to be an effective epithet until the late 1970s, when it was replaced by “Carter.”

^^^

So let’s look at each of the three time phases a bit more closely:

We can start with the past, and with explanations as to what happened. We all know the results of the 2014 elections, but why did they happen? The explanation is still up for grabs. Not surprisingly, the two parties have divergent explanations, and within the respective parties, those divergent explanations further diverge.

Republicans have two schools of thought: which might be called the Establishment school and the Populist school.

The Establishment school credits the GOP victory to a laser-like focus on the economy and Obamacare: The standard Establishment line was, “Incumbent Democrat X voted with Obama 97—or 96, or 98—percent of the time.”

The Populist school, including the Tea Party, was hardly a fan of Obama and his works, but nonetheless, it chose to put the focus, especially toward the end of the campaign season, on the national issues of border security, immigration, and so on—with a late burst on Ebola as a sort of October Surprise.

Yet these Populist issues, of the border and US sovereignty, were for the most part ignored by the Establishment GOP, perhaps because many Establishmentarians have supported “Gang of Eight”-type “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

So as we think about the 2014 results, we can ask: Who was more correct—the Establishmentarians or the Populists? Who had the better theory of the case?

Stipulating that there was a fair amount of overlap between the two sides, it’s still possible to conclude that the Populists did a better job of catching the 2014 Zeitgeist.

The Establishment critique—Democrat X voted with Obama 98 percent of the time!—seems potent at first glance, but the problem for Republicans was that it led to the localization of each race. And if, as master Democrat Tip O’Neill liked to say, “all politics is local,” then the Democrats had a better chance. That is, a local Democrat who knows the local terrain, and can adapt to local conditions, is more likely to survive in a red state than a “national” Democrat. As Alan Ehrenhalt argued 30 years ago in his smart book, The United States of Ambition, the Democrats, as the more naturally political party, are better than the Republicans at pure politics.

A case in point is the Arkansas Senate race: Republican Rep. Tom Cotton challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. For the most part, for most of the campaign, Cotton followed the Establishment playbook and hit Pryor for being an Obama clone. Yet every time that Cotton cited Pryor’s voting record, Pryor would hit back citing some vote that Cotton had cast against farmers, or against Social Security, or against disaster relief. That is, if Cotton accused Pryor of being too liberal for Arkansas, Pryor came right back and accused Cotton of being too conservative for Razorbacks.

Thus the two candidates went at it, back and forth, with no clear winner. If anything, Pryor seemed to have the advantage; in May, the esteemed election analyst Charlie Cook even suggested that based on Cotton's vote against the farm bill, Pryor might be the slight favorite in the race.

But then along came the border issue: Cotton jumped on it, and so the GOP challenger ended up benefitting from a blistering national issue. In other words, Cotton “nationalized” what had been a local election; he ended up riding the Red Wave, defeating Pryor by a whopping 18 points.

Another ’14 candidate who won by riding the Red Wave was Thom Tillis of North Carolina. He was definitely a candidate of the Establishment; before winning the Tarheel Senate seat, he was Speaker of the North Carolina House.

Running as an Establishmentarian, Tillis was mostly a steady four or five points down; he kept incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan below 50 percent in her re-elect number, but he himself was mired in the low 40s.

Yet Tillis ended up winning by two points. And here’s how: He nationalized the election. On the Saturday before Election Day, Tillis wan’t talking about Kay Hagan, he was talking about the national context:

“Can you imagine if we don’t get a Senate majority what this president will do in the remaining two years of his term? He will pack the federal courts with the most liberal activist judges you’ve ever seen. He will sign an executive order granting amnesty, threatening American workers and threatening our safety and security….That’s why I’m running for Senate.”

Powerful. And so Tillis came from behind and won.

By contrast, running in the state next door, Virginia, Republican challenger Ed Gillespie campaigned on “economic growth,” and never mentioned the border—at least not that anybody ever knew. And he lost. It was a close election, to be sure, but he lost.

Another Populist issue was guns. And that issue heated up spontaneously, from the grassroots, in the wake of the August shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

The Establishment—both Democrats and Republicans, joined by various others—had its initial read on the incident: The big issue, they said, was “the militarization of the police,” as well as an implicit condemnation of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

The Populists had a different take on Ferguson: Buy more guns. Indeed, gun sales in the whole St. Louis area spiked. And every time the media showed footage of either the late Michael Brown in that convenience store, or the protestors on the street, the Populist argument grew stronger.

And the national ’14 election results speak for themselves: The 114th Congress will likely be the most pro-gun Congress in decades.

A.W.R. Hawkins of Breitbart News summed up the politics of guns: Echoing the famous quote from James Carville, “Its the economy, stupid,” Hawkins added a quip: “It’s the Second Amendment, Stupid.” That even makes for a snappy acronym: ITSAS.

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake augmented Hawkins’ point. Citing a wealth of polling data— including a survey that showed that the number of Americans who think that having a gun helps improve home security has doubled in the past 15 years—Blake observed:

“The vast majority of Americans believe in guns, not just in general, but for protecting their own homes. [NRA leader Wayne] LaPierre’s position on guns and self-defense is embraced by broad swaths of the American public.”

If the Republicans are divided, Establishment vs. Populist, in their interpretation of the ’14 midterms, the Democrats, meanwhile, are also divided amongst themselves. On the Democratic side, the split might be called “Stand Pat” vs. “Change,” or, to put it more bluntly, Pro-Obama vs. Anti-Obama.

The leading pro-Obama voice is, not surprisingly, Barack Obama himself.

In his White House press conference on Wednesday, November 5, the day after the election, Obama suggested that since two-thirds of the electorate hadn't voted, the election results didn't matter all that much. As far as he was concerned, he still had his mandate left over from 2012.

The President is not alone in this dismissive view of the results. On the November 11 edition of NBC Nightly News, anchorman Brian Williams made a point of announcing that voter turnout in 2014 was the lowest since 1942; some might say that he was thus doing his part to minimize, even delegitimize, the midterm election results.

Other top Democrats, too, sought comfort in the Stand Pat view. Here’s House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi telling Politico:



I do not believe what happened the other night is a wave . . . There was no wave of approval for the Republicans. There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us.



Got that? It wasn't the Republican wave, it was the Democratic ebb. And of course, Pelosi, having decided that she wanted another term as Minority Leader, immediately labeled her critics as "sexist," which will likely shut down criticism, at least from Democrats.

Still, not every Democrat agrees with the cheerful assessment of Obama, Pelosi, and their record in office.

We can start with a basic question: Is the economy in good shape or not? We might even adapt Ronald Reagan’s question—“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”—and ask, “Are you better off than you were two years ago?”

Obama’s answer was “Yes.” After all, the unemployment rate is down, and the stock market is up. Yet Middle America wasn’t buying the happy-days-are-here-again schtick, and in the wake of the elections, even the MSM had to notice the despairing reality of many ordinary Americans.

As Greg Sargent wrote in The Washington Post:



The exit polls show that candidates like Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan, Bruce Braley and Mark Udall lost by anywhere from large to truly massive margins among non-college whites and older voters.



In fact, many economic indicators, such as the labor force participation rate and real wages and incomes, are bleak. Thus the veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told The Los Angeles Times that Obama was “tone deaf” in his economic pitch. Such happy talk turned the voters off, Greenberg continued; it made regular folks think that Democrats didn’t get it.

Another prominent Democratic pollster, Celinda Lake, added:



We have a huge problem: People do not think the recovery has affected them, and this is particularly true of blue collar white voters. 



So the struggle—Stand Pat vs. Change—to interpret the ’14 election results will continue. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean says that Democrats should move left, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren makes the same point. And Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only avowed socialist in the Congress, now says that he wants to run for president in 2016, as a Democrat.

These are the contours of the struggle to interpret the past: Inside the GOP, Establishmentarians vie with Populists, although neither side can complain much about the results. And on the Democratic side, the Stand Patters are arrayed against the Changers, in an intra-party feud that’s made more bitter by the embittering results.

So now we can shift our time frame, from the past to the present. And we can ask: How will the various political players, guided by their understanding of the past, choose to act in the very near term—like tomorrow?

One immediate flashpoint is the White House staff. Before all the ’14 votes were even counted, longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod was heard saying that the President needed to make changes in his White House team.

And when critics think of needed changes at the White House, the name that comes up most often is Valerie Jarrett, the object of much criticism. But Jarrett, seemingly secure in he relationship with POTUS and FLOTUS, seems to be planning on staying. Meanwhile, Donna Brazile was writing for CNN that criticism of Jarrett was “sexist.” Once again, uttering that word, “sexist,” will probably put the kibosh on criticism, at least for Democrats.

Moreover, Bob Woodward of The Washington Post reports that Obama thinks he’s right about the issues, and so has no plans to make any staff changes.

Still some issues might lend themselves to relatively easy compromise: One such issue is tax reform.

But for the most part, it seems likely that the 114th Congress will be just as contentious as the 113th, and the 112th, and so on.

Just on Monday, the President laid out his position on the “net neutrality,” which appeared to be to the left of even his own handpicked choice to run the Federal Communications Commission.

Then on Wednesday came the President’s agreement with China on carbon dioxide emissions; some of us are old enough to remember when they were called “greenhouse gases,” with the assumption being that they were causing “global warming.” As one observer said of this new deal, it’s easy to strike a deal when all the concessions come from your side. Indeed, the Americans will bear all of the burden through 2030. In other words, even after Obama leaves office, the next two or three presidents will supposedly be reducing US carbon dioxide while China continues to emit more—all on the promise that Beijing will start to reduce its emission sixteen years hence.

In the wake of the announcement, both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have called the China deal an anti-growth “job-killer” and will presumably be taking steps to thwart it.

In the meantime, Newt Gingrich, who has a PhD in history, makes the provocative comparison between Obama, the 44th President, and Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President:



There are a lot of parallels between the two presidents. Both were college professors. Both liked to hide on a golf course (Wilson holds the record having played more than 1,000 rounds as President). Both were powerful orators. Both had deeply held convictions. Both disliked the Congress.



Indeed, as Gingrich notes, the parallels go further than that: After Republicans won control of Congress in the 1918 midterms, Wilson defiantly continued on his course, handling the post-war negotiations over the Versailles Treaty—including US membership in League of Nations—without Congressional consultation. Gingrich continues:



Wilson did not seem to realize how powerful that Senate control was . . . He also did not realize how deeply senators feel about their prerogatives and constitutional authority.



And so, of course, the US Senate ultimately rejected Wilson’s cherished treaty—and broke not only Wilson’s presidency, but also his own personal health.

Gingrich makes a great historical analogy, except for one thing: Obama’s deal with China can’t even be called a treaty, since the Obama administration has no plans to submit it to the Senate for ratification. In other words, Obama plans to do it all on his own; that’s a course of action that Gingrich labels as “suicidal.”

Indeed, it appears that one side of the CO2 deal with China is going to be proven very wrong. If, in fact, as The New York Times has reported, this deal is an effort by senior White House aide John Podesta, as part of the Hillary Clinton for President effort, well, that could make things even more complicated—for Hillary.

Yet the biggest and most explosive issue of all, potentially, is an Executive Order legalizing illegal immigrants. And once again, context matters. As Politico has reported, the Obamans see this Executive Order in not only historical terms, but also, starkly political terms:

“This is the long-term play,” a senior administration official said. “This is something that may be difficult in the short term, but for legacy reasons, for 2016 electoral reasons, it may be the most important thing we do.”

Those words from the unnamed official—“for legacy reasons, for 2016 electoral reasons”—are worth pausing over; no doubt Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the leading Congressional champion of American Sovereignty, has already paused over them.

Thus it seems likely that the confirmation battle over Loretta Lynch, Obama’s choice for Attorney General, will be divisive—and the key fight is coming up soon. In particular, one wonders: Will her confirmation be conducted in the “lame duck” Senate session of the 113th Congress, which the Democrats control, or the new 114th Congress, to be controlled by the Republicans?

Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, joined by others, have staked a firm position. They want Lynch to express an opinion on the legality of the Executive Order in advance of her confirmation. And they will be in a better position to press Lynch on this point if Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley controls the Judiciary Committee gavel.

Meanwhile, Republicans are exploring their options in the 114th Congress. If history is a guide, further investigations will be effective: the Democrats mercilessly flyspecked the Ford administration in the 95th Congress, and that set the stage for the Democratic presidential victory of 1976. (Although, of course, the president they elected that year, Jimmy Carter, proved to be not quite what the Democrats had in mind; not only was Carter tossed out in 1980, but so were a dozen Senate Democrats, giving Republicans control.)

By contrast, when the Republicans went further than investigation, all the way to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, they were were much less successful—in response to the perceived Republican overreach, the Democrats actually made gains in the 1998 midterms; that was six-year midterm, when precedent suggested that they should have suffered big losses. So the historical lesson seems to be: Yes to vigorous investigation, No to any talk of impeachment—the ’16 election comes soon enough!

So now we come to the third phase in our temporal triptych: the future of national politics.

We might begin by noting that only once since the 1940s has a party won a third consecutive term in the White House—and that, of course, was in 1988.

So that suggests that Hillary’s row might be harder to hoe than many currently suspect. Yes, we should begin with a close look at the former Secretary of State: Does she really intend to run, as The New York Times reports, as the candidate of climate change in ’16?

If not, what is her message going to be?

Here we might note the perverse “contribution” made by David Brock, the now-liberal activist who has gone from being Hillary’s biggest detractor in the 90s to her biggest supporter—one of them, anyway—in the 10s. As Brock put it recently,

“President Obama’s legacy is now entirely dependent on the election of a Democratic successor as president who will protect and extend it.”

Does that really help Hillary’s cause, to put the matter like that? Will swing voters really rally to Hillary on the idea that she’s the key to defending the Obama legacy?

Brock’s words would seem to turn conservative pundit George F. Will’s jibe—that a victory or Hillary would be a third term for Obama—into a campaign pledge. Once again, it’s hard to see how that linkage to the 44th President will help Hillary become the 45th President.

Meanwhile, we might put three big concerns that fall in the category of what Fox pundit Bill O’Reilly might call an “unresolved problem.”

The first unresolved problem is “Whither Obamacare?” It’s easy for conservatives to say, “Repeal Obamacare,” and, in fact, that’s probably the most popular view on the right—and maybe the country as a whole. And the “smoking gun” comments of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber add further fuel to the fire.

Yet, as they say, the devil is in the details: In particular, are Republicans going to seek to repeal the health-insurance protections for those under 26? Or the protections for those with pre-existing conditions? And what of Medicaid expansion—where important Republican governors can be found on both sides of the issue? No doubt many libertarian-leaning thinkers are up for the challenge of threading all these needles in a politically satisfactory way, but it might prove harder to persuade the voters.

The second unresolved issue is the Middle East. By now, just about everyone—even Obama!—opposes ISIS, and most Americans support a vigorous campaign to roll back ISIS—provided, of course, that it doesn’t cost many American lives. Bombs and cruise missiles are one thing, boots on the ground are quite another. It’s not an issue right now, since Obama is president, but Republicans might recall that foreign-war quagmire cratered the Bush administration in the second-midterm elections of 2006, just as the Vietnam quagmire cratered the Johnson administration way back in the second-midterm election of 1966.

If Obamacare and the Middle East are concerns of unresolved problem, we might add a third concern, which is an unresolved political problem: The GOP must show that it can crack the “Blue Wall.” David Gergen is only the latest pundit to note the 18 states plus the District of Columbia, possessing 242 electoral votes, that have gone Democratic in six straight presidential elections. That’s a formidable electoral fortress for Democrats.

We might note that 242 is short of 270, and so, in theory, the GOP can lose all the Blue Wall states and still win the White House, but it gets a lot harder.

Still, as the ’14 midterms remind us, blowouts are still possible. And as they look to the future, Democrats should beware of an ominous trend: the hijacking of their policy agenda by well-funded but exotic fringe forces.

As Lloyd Green, a veteran of the Bush 41 administration and many Republican campaigns, observed after the election for The Daily Beast:



The Democrats have paid a high price for making the unholy trinity of Lena Dunham, Al Sharpton, and billionaire climate-change crusader Tom Steyer the face of their party.



Well put. So let’s take a closer look at this new kind of “unholy trinity”:

The first part of the trinity is the lifestyle libertarians: Yes, Lena Dunham, joined by Sandra Fluke and all the other “war on women” warriors. These hardcore feminists have not helped the Democrats—and even some Democrats have noticed. Here’s how Politico summed up Democratic concern in a post-election article:



Nearly a dozen senior aides and Democratic insiders said there is a desire for a broader election message from party leaders. There are complaints about Pelosi focusing so strongly on women without a broader message that could play to other groups, such as older voters and men.



Of course, nothing seems to have come of this discontent—and once again, Nancy Pelosi will be House Democrats’ leader in the 114th Congress.

The second part of the trinity is the Al Sharpton-type racialists and multiculturalists. Here we might include all those who are not only anti-police, but also pro-open borders and pro-amnesty. 

In 2014, these views were a losing message with voters: At the local level, “law and order” was a winner, and at the larger level, American nationalism was also a winner.

The third part of the trinity is the Malthusians—the Green Aristocrats who have their money, and now want everyone else to stay poor. Exhibit A for this group is Bay Area billionaire Tom Steyer, who made much of his money in coal, and now wants to share his guilt with the world. Steyer poured a reported $70 million into his effort to help likeminded—or should we say, subservient—Democrats. And yet for all his trouble, Steyer will be remembered as a kind of Green Pied Piper—leading Democrats to jump off a cliff. (More precisely, Steyer enticed Democrats off a cliff; he’s fine, it’s they who went into the abyss.)

In the angry words of West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, speaking for Coal Country, “It doesn't make sense that we have to fight so hard against our own government and our own administration.”

Manchin added that West Virginians have “the perception of the government attacking them, which basically is what’s happening.”

Manchin’s sentiment might seem to bode poorly for Steyer and his extreme-Green ideological ism. Yet we might note that there are now few elected Democrats left who agree with Manchin; most of their seats are now held by Republicans. Today, there are fewer voices to rise up, within the Democratic Party, against Steyer. He still has billions left, and who is there, now, to oppose him? Only a few surviving Democratic office-holders—and a few million folks desperate to save their jobs and livelihoods.

So as we look to the Future, we see that while Republicans face challenges, Democrats face even more.

But as we have seen, the voters are fickle. Inconstancy is the one constant.

Indeed, the only thing more malleable than voter-intentions is the interpretation of past events. And that interpretation, as we have seen, is malleable indeed. In 2015 and beyond, the players, pundits, and people will still be arguing about the meaning of 2014. Reported by Breitbart 2 hours ago.

TRENTON, N.J.—The second time around for the health insurance exchange means New Jersey advocates for the program have experience, but it also brings the challenge of trying to persuade more people to sign up when those most willing already have.… Reported by Epoch Times 58 minutes ago.

Washington Healthplanfinder, the state's health insurance exchange website -- is open for business this morning after staff worked overnight to fix a glitch in the system's software for calculating 2015 tax credits. Reported by Seattle Times 20 minutes ago.

Washington states health insurance exchange was back up and running Sunday after shutting down for a day because of a glitch involving tax credit calculations. Reported by MyNorthwest.com 22 hours ago.

There are at least two notable issues that emerge  from this brief clip of Barack Obama's latest remarks on the current fire storm surrounding Jonathan Gruber, ObamaCare and the White House.

First, Obama describes Gruber as "Some adviser who never worked on our staff." While that may be technically correct, it would depend on what the definition of "staff" is. While Gruber didn't take the pay cut that joining Obama's staff may have cost him, certainly he was specifically sought out and retained by the administration as a key figure in their efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act.

The other issued raised by Obama's comments is significant and pertains to Gruber, as well.



In 2009, just one month after President Obama took office, the Department of Health and Human Services put out a sole-source solicitation titled “Technical Assistance in Evaluating Options for Health Reform.” The contract would be with Gruber, who the document said was the only person “reasonably available to satisfy agency requirements.”

As the agency put it, “Dr. Gruber developed a proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model that has the flexibility to ascertain the distribution of changes in health care spending and public and private sector health care costs due to a large variety of changes in health insurance benefit design, public program eligibility criteria, and tax policy.”



At approximately 1:05 in Obama encourages "every press outlet here to go back and pull up every clip, every story ...." in citing the "transparency" surrounding the ObamaCare debate.

 However, one doesn't have to try very hard to find clips which reveal the lack of transparency around the debate, most especially as it involves the role of the now controversial Jonathan Gruber. He wasn't even disclosing that he was raking in big bucks from the White House in many of those clips. Consequently, as he was a key source for both the legislation and a major source for the ensuing press coverage, there's no reason to believe anything in and around the Obamacare debate was truly transparent, as Obama tried to claim. 

Perhaps that he was speaking today from down under in Australia explains why he seems to have everything upside down right now.



The first four months of (Gruber's) contract (with the Obama administration) could not be found on the FedBizOpp.gov Web site, but in June 2009, HHS renewed the contract for eight months, with a value of $297,600. Gruber in an e-mail confirmed that the first part of the contract was for $95,000.

That adds up to $392,600 — or “almost $400,000.”

Gruber’s consulting was largely unknown at the time, and eventually it became an issue as he had been frequently quoted by journalists and lawmakers who may not have known of his connection to the administration; he also generally did not disclose his connection when writing opinion articles.

In one especially fishy circumstance, Nancy-Ann DeParle, at the time director of the White House Office of Health Reform, wrote about Gruber’s work on the White House blog on Nov. 29, 2009. “MIT Economist Confirms Senate Health Reform Bill Reduces Costs and Improves Coverage” was the headline on the post.

DeParle made no reference to the fact that Gruber had already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars working for the administration. She described him as an “MIT economist who has been closely following the health insurance reform process.”

(The emphasis on reducing costs in Gruber’s report is especially interesting in light of the Gruber video that emerged Thursday. “What the American public cares about is costs,” Gruber said in 2010. “And that’s why even though the bill that they made is 90 percent health insurance coverage and 10 percent about cost control, all you ever hear people talk about is cost control.”)

In any case, the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 has been lucrative for Gruber and his microsimulation model. All told, he has been hired by at least eight states to provide advice or assist in creating the health-insurance exchanges that are at the heart of the Affordable Care Act: Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Not all of the contracts could be found on public Web sites, but here is a sampling. In some cases, Gruber worked with other consultants, so the fees were shared. These figures also might not represent the final payout, and of course these are gross figures, before expenses. But it’s safe to say that about $400,000 appears to be the standard rate for gaining access to the Gruber Microsimulation Model.

Michigan: $481,050

Minnesota: $329,000

Vermont: $400,000

Wisconsin: $400,000

Gruber has also earned more than $2 million over the last seven years for an ongoing contract with HHS to assess choices made by the elderly in Medicare’s prescription-drug plan.

Reported by Breitbart 22 hours ago.

TRENTON, N.J.—The second time around for the health insurance exchange means New Jersey advocates for the program have experience, but it also brings the challenge of trying to persuade more people to sign up when those most willing already have.… Reported by Epoch Times 22 hours ago.

The last thing Obama needed brought up during the just concluded G-20 conference, where world leaders generously agreed to boost global GDP by $2 trillion (let's all hold our breath while they "just go find a cash machine") while bashing Putin pretty much non-stop for 48 hours to the point where the Russian leader left early (due to "lack of sleep"), was the whole "Gruber thing", i.e., the recent revelations that the architect of the "Affordable" Care Act, Jonathan Gruber, relied on the "stupidity of American voters" to pass Obamacare. Sadly for the American president, not even halfway around the world could he get away from the humiliation that has clouded his one and only domestic policy "success" in his 6 year tenure.

Alas, a question about Grubergate is precisely what Obama got when after preaching about "accountability to the people", a member of the press asked the head of the "most hypocritical transparent administration ever" if Obama "misled Americans" about the taxes and about keeping the plan "in order to get the bill passed?"

Obama's response:"No, i did not." This was Obama's conclusion after he had just gotten "well-briefed before he came out here." Indeed, nothing escapes the American president who continued: "The fact that *some adviser who never worked on our staff *expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is no reflection on the actual process that was run."

Obama's argument in a nutshell: "we had a lengthy argument" in the US about Obamacare. True, one that was rammed down the throats of Americans as a tax courtesy of the Supreme Court: a decision that as we now know relied on the stupidity of the American voters. Apparently, one that also relied on the partisan nature of the Supreme Court. But it's ok, because the misleading was done not by the architect of Obamacare but, suddenly, just "some advisor who never worked on our staff."

Unfortunately, because Obama apparently wasn't briefed quite as well as he would have hoped, let's just take a look at what Dr. Gruber did do.

From B-320482, Department of Health and Human Services--Use of Appropriated Funds for Technical Assistance and Television Advertisements, October 19, 2010



On March 25, 2009, *HHS awarded a contract to Dr. Jonathan Gruber*, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to "produce a series of technical memoranda on the estimated changes in health insurance coverage and associated costs and impacts to the government under alternative specifications of health system reform." [3] HHS Contract No. HHSP233200900181P, at 3*. The contract required Dr. Gruber to consult with senior HHS officials "to develop detailed specifications of alternative proposals to increase health insurance coverage" and to use the specifications to "develop estimates of the change in the number of individuals with health insurance coverage *. . . and the costs to the government and the private sector associated with these estimated changes in coverage." Id. This was a firm, fixed-price contract for $95,000. Id., at 1. On June 19, 2009, HHS awarded another firm, fixed-price contract to Dr. Gruber for similar services for $297,600. HHS Contract No. HHSP23320094301EC.

...

Subsequent to the award of the HHS contracts, *Dr. Gruber authored opinion pieces on health care policy that were published in national newspapers*. E.g., Jonathan Gruber, *Reform requires consumer pressure, Boston Globe, Sept. 3, 2009, at 17; Jonathan Gruber, A Loophole Worth Closing, N.Y. Times, July 12, 2009, *at WK-10. Several media outlets quoted Dr. Gruber in articles regarding health care policy. E.g., Alec MacGillis, *Would Tax on Benefits Rein In Spending?, Washington Post, July 30, 2009, *at A1; Lisa Wangsness, Mass. health overhaul offers lessons for US program; *Employees not being dumped on public plan, Boston Globe, July 10, 2009*, at 2. In 2009, Dr. Gruber twice testified before a Senate committee on health care policy issues. Increasing Health Costs Facing Small Businesses: Hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Nov. 3, 2009, video available at help.senate.gov/hearings; Healthcare Reform: Hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, June 11, 2009, available at help.senate.gov/hearings.

...

At issue here is *whether HHS violated the prohibition against using appropriations for publicity or propaganda purposes when it awarded the contract for technical assistance and when it used appropriated funds to produce and air the television advertisements*. The applicable prohibition states that "[n]o part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used directly or indirectly, including by private contractor, for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress."[7]



In other words Obama is right that Gruber wasn't part of the administration. He was nothing short than a well-paid propaganda tool designed to take advantage of, in his own words, American stupidity.

Did we say well paid? We meant very well paid. To wit:

· Michigan: $481,050 (source)
· Minnesota: $329,000 (source)
· Vermont: $400,000 (source)
· Wisconsin: $400,000 (source)
· West Virginia: $121,500 (source)

... and so on, and on, and on.

Because it suddenly becomes all too clear that Gruber was indeed telling the truth: only a nation full of idiots would pay a lying, self-serving propaganda tool nearly $2 million for nothing but constant lies.

As for the Obama exchange, here it is. Reported by Zero Hedge 22 hours ago.

Tens of thousands of people signed up this weekend for health insurance that were in the open enrollment period of the Affordable Health Care Act. Reported by Click Orlando 18 hours ago.

The Obama administration said Sunday that 100,000 people had submitted applications for health insurance on the first day of open enrollment, although some returning customers had trouble remembering their usernames and passwords. Reported by NYTimes.com 3 hours ago.

The following is an excerpt from *State of the South: Building an Infrastructure of Opportunity for the Next Generation*, published by MDC, a non-profit organization in Durham, North Carolina, dedicated to "increasing educational attainment, connecting people to work that pays, and helping them get then resources they need to become successful," according to the group's mission statement. Here we present the report's introduction; in the coming weeks, The American Prospect website will publish the profiles of cities and towns throughout the South that comprise the full report (PDF available here).

 

Five years after the Great Recession, the American South has emerged as a region divided. The great sweep of territory from the Potomac to the Rio Grande offers stark juxtapositions of bright hopes and deep distress and discontent. The South has both powerhouse cities, growing in jobs and population, and depressed towns and neighborhoods, where people seem stuck without prospect of upward mobility.  

The South has a contradictory economy, polarized politics, an anxious populace, a divided head and a conflicted heart. In much of today’s South, economic and demographic vibrancy exist side-by-side, as veritable next-door neighbors, with poverty, underemployment, educational disparities, and stagnant social mobility. The time-worn descriptions of Southern dichotomies—Old South versus New South, affluent urban versus poor rural—do not fully capture the complex set of challenges now facing Southern policy makers, civic and business leaders, and engaged citizens. The persistent inequality and economic uncertainties now afflicting the South are not simply Southern phenomena, but rather national, even international, in scope. Still, the South can learn from its own recent history that it need not be paralyzed in the face of big challenges—that Southern communities can go about fashioning local infrastructures of opportunity to provide uplift for stranded people and places, even as the nation engages in unresolved debates over how to hasten the economic recovery and stimulate the expansion of well-paying jobs.  

 

*Lack of Mobility: The South Stands Out*

New York Times via MDC

CLICK HERE FOR INTERACTIVE VERSION OF MAP AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

It is the purpose of this State of the South report, the eighth in a series dating back to 1996, to apply insights from national data sources and recent scholarly studies to the American South, complemented by a scan of nine Southern communities, to propel initiatives and innovation to promote economic opportunities, to heighten educational achievement, and to increase our young peoples’ chances for upward mobility.  

Consider, for example, contrasting rankings indicating that the South has several of the nation’s strongest metropolitan areas, yet those places of robust growth contain high poverty and wide income inequality.  

In the closely watched Forbes rating of “Best Places for Business and Careers,’’ six Southern metros placed in the top 10 among the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the nation. Raleigh, North Carolina, placed first, followed by Nashville, Tennesee (6th), Charlotte, North Carolina (7th), Dallas, Texas (8th), Atlanta, Georgia (9th), and Houston, Texas (10th). In contrast, Raleigh ranked 92nd in a measurement of inequality, Nashville 67th, Charlotte 36th, Dallas 46th, Atlanta 28th, and Houston 31st. A United Nations report recently projected that North Carolina’s two powerhouse cities—Raleigh and Charlotte—would grow by 70 percent by 2030, leading the list of U.S. cities of more than 500,000. (Southern cities dominated the top 15 in projected rates of growth.) Meanwhile, Census data assembled by the Brookings Institution showed that the poor population of Charlotte grew from 160,000 to 314,000 from 2000 to 2012, and from 66,000 to 130,000 in Raleigh, nearly doubling in each city. Clearly, robust growth has a double-edge—vibrant places attract both high-paid, well-educated citizens and people of low-skills who take low-paying, part-time service work.  

In 2014, scholars from Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, published a paper titled Geography of Intergenerational Mobility. Along with the study came a stunning interactive map that spotlights which American localities offer slim prospects for young people who live in the lowest fifth of household income to rise to the top fifth. Not surprisingly, several old-industry cities in the North ranked low in mobility. But it is sobering to see on that map an expanse of the darkest coloration sweeping across the Southeast, denoting places, including the region’s shiniest cities, with the least prospects for upward mobility. “The fact that children who grow up in low-income families in Atlanta and Raleigh fare poorly is perhaps especially striking because these cities are generally considered to be booming cities in the South with relatively high rates of job growth,” the Harvard and Berkeley scholars wrote.

Along with their fellow Americans, Southerners have a strong sense that the American Dream has faded in the early years of the 21st century. Fully 77 percent of Southerners responded “not confident’’ to this question posed by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies for the NBC News/Wall Street Journal in a 2014 poll: “Do you feel confident or not confident that life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us?’’ Only 21 percent of Americans felt confident in upward mobility, while 76 percent were not confident—a 20 percentage-point rise in no confidence since September 2008.  

Southerners who are honest with themselves know that longheld sentiments and predispositions compound the challenges posed by the slow recovery from the Great Recession of 2007–09. Even with renewed in-migration of black citizens and the expansion of the black middle class, the South remains a region divided along the fault line of race. Even as most Southerners say they are happy living where they are, the South remains afflicted with an absence of long-range vision and low expectations for too many of its people—a failure to imagine a future for people and places beyond the current trajectory. Southern policy often has rested on the assumption that certain people—whites, blacks, and Latinos—will remain stuck at or near the bottom, that mobility is not in their destiny.

 

*The Paradox of the Metro South: Economic Health Indicators for Southern Metros*

Source information available on page 6 of State of the South report, linked in opening editor's note. CLICK HERE FOR LARGER VERSION OF TABLE.

 

*THE POST-RECESSION CONTEXT*

The United States has engaged in a prolonged, intense debate over income and wealth inequality, over signs of weak social mobility and, indeed, over doubts about sustaining the American Dream. This debate takes place in a context of partisan and societal polarization that the South shares with the rest of the nation. In his influential 2008 book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, Bill Bishop, a former writer-in-residence at MDC, described social fractures that impose stresses on U.S. democracy. The 2007–09 recession seems to have done nothing to alleviate, and appears to have exacerbated, conditions and trends that Bishop described six years ago. In June 2014, the Pew Research Center released a major report—based on its largest-ever survey of more than 10,000 adults—that reinforce and extend the findings of The Big Sort. In his outline of the key findings, Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of political research, declared that “political polarization is the defining feature of 21st century American politics, both among the public and elected officials’’—and that “polarization is reflected in the personal lives and lifestyles of those on both the right and left.” An examination of the Pew findings suggests that the South mostly resembles the nation in political and lifestyle polarization. The survey also provides evidence of the South’s divergence from the nation—a tilt toward a more conservative and hardened posture.

Asked whether they prefer elected officials who make compromises with people with whom they disagree or who stick to their positions, 43 percent of Southerners—more than in any other region—rejected compromisers.  

The Pew survey asked, “Would you prefer to live in a community where the houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores, and restaurants are several miles away, or a community where the houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores, and restaurants are within walking distance?” Southerners preferred a spread-out community over a denser community by a 55–43 percent margin, wider than residents of any other region. These findings contribute to an understanding of the South’s decision-making context and of the region’s political landscape. The policy and attitudinal environments across the South erect barriers to sweeping initiatives to address the complex array of factors that produce widening income inequality, softening of the middle class, and stagnant economic mobility.

State by state, the region has experienced a prolonged period of disinvestment, a pulling back from public services. To some extent, the cause can be attributed to the drop in tax revenues resulting from the recession; the states have legal mandates to operate within a balanced budget. But disinvestment also stemmed from policy decisions to cut or hold the line on taxes and to reduce services within limited revenues. While private employment has rebounded in several sectors, state and local government cutbacks have contributed to weaker job markets in the states. Of the 19 states that have not moved forward with Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, nine are in the South—nine that have declined federal funding that would have created jobs and provided healthcare services to people of modest means. In public education, spending per pupil declined in all Southern states, except Tennessee, from fiscal year 2008 to 2014. Spending fell by as little as $60 per pupil in West Virginia and $150 in Florida to as much as $700 in Georgia and $1,200 in Alabama. Meanwhile, across the region, racial re-segregation has proceeded in elementary through high schools. And, according to a calculation by the Southern Education Foundation, half or more of public school students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch in all Southern states, except Virginia.  

Similarly, in the fiscal 2008–14 period, state spending per student in higher education declined in all but three states: North Carolina and Tennessee had modest gains, while Texas went up by 8 percent. State support fell by 9 percent in Alabama, 8 percent in Kentucky, and a huge 34 percent in Louisiana. Tuition rose by more than 50 percent in Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida.

MDC/State of the South 2014

*Disinvestment in Education* 

CLICK HERE FOR LARGER VERSION OF THIS GRAPH

 

The quest for recovery has generated a fierce debate between Southerners who see tax cuts and a slimmed-down public sector as the stimulus to job growth through private enterprise, and Southerners who believe that economic advancement and a high quality of life flow out of investments in education and job training, health insurance, and environmental regulations. Republicans who advocate the limited-government, depend-on-private-enterprise approach have gained the upper hand in most state governments in the region. In 2014, Republicans occupied nine of the region’s governor’s offices; Democrats, four. Of the 26 legislative chambers, House and Senate combined, Republicans held a majority in 22, Democrats in four.  

With both Washington and state capitols influenced more by self-limiting ideologies than basic pragmatism, there is all the more reason why communities, especially growing metropolitan areas with adequate resources, must initiate efforts to give the rising generation of Southerners experiences and life-tools to pursue a future better than their parents. While improving mobility will create more equitable conditions for individuals, it is also instrumental to making the South more globally competitive: our young people, successful or not, are poised to determine the progress of the region.

 

*FOCUS ON 15- TO 24-YEAR-OLD SOUTHERNERS*

The South’s teenagers and young adults face an economic future fraught with a lack of upward mobility and greater uncertainty than their parents and grandparents encountered as they completed schooling, formed families, and advanced into working age. At the root of the uncertainty lies a pervasive doubt: whether the South can sustain the American Dream of each generation moving up and doing better than previous generations. Today’s 15- to 24-year-olds, who constitute about 15 percent of the people living in the region, find themselves buffeted by the still-potent effects of the deepest national recession since the Great Depression, as well as by the powerful forces of globalization and technological change. They approach the beginning of their productive lives in a period of sluggish or stagnant wage growth, eroding middle-skills jobs, high rates of poverty, sweeping income inequality, and significant public disinvestment.  

MDC/State of the South 2014

Students in Charlotte, North Carolina

Their grandparents and parents also lived through times of conflict, economic turbulence, and social change. Still, most of them could see a nation and region moving forward through both private enterprise and public investment, providing expanded opportunities and offering the prospects of stable employment and, for many, steadily rising middle-class income.  

Southerners born during and immediately after World War II came of age in a society segregated by laws that severely limited the freedom and prospects of black citizens. The South had a low-wage farm-and-factory economy. Still, most high school graduates could look forward to long-term employment in the same trade or for the same employer. The GI bill and federal research grants stimulated an expansion of higher education, while states developed vocational-technical schools that evolved into community colleges. Interstate highways and airports connected the South to the national and world economies, further diminishing the region’s pre-war, persistent isolation.  

MDC/State of the South 2014

CLICK HERE FOR A LARGER VERSION OF THIS GRAPH

The parents of today’s 15- to 24-year-olds are products of the South that blossomed in the wake of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. The lifting of legalized segregation liberated the South economically. Through both public and private investment, the once-laggard region led the nation in population and job growth in the 1980s and ’90s. Reversing the Great Migration to the North and West, black Americans moved to the South in greater numbers than to any other region. Simultaneously, Spanish-speakers from Mexico and Central America spread across the region, defining its future as multi-ethnic rather than biracial. Old-economy jobs declined, as newer, higher-wage jobs multiplied. While structural changes left a digital divide and a widening urban-rural gap, public universities and community colleges charged relatively low tuition to prepare Southerners for the newer jobs that required education beyond high school.  

Today’s youth and young adults face a South transformed by the two recessions since the turn of the century, which exacted a heavy price throughout the region. The 2000-01 recession, though relatively shallow, stifled the South’s economic momentum built over the last quarter of the 20th century. Then the Great Recession of 2007–09 reshaped the national—and Southern—labor market in dramatic fashion. There has not been—and is unlikely to be—a return to “normal.”

For this analysis, MDC chose to focus on the prospects of 15- to 24-year-olds because the young people in this segment of the population range from students entering high school to young adults recently emerging from college and/or training. In the near term—by 2025 they will, of course, be 10 years older—they should be building careers and families, as well as contributing to their communities’ economic and civic lives. They are our next generation workforce and our next generation parents; failure to help them succeed now weakens their long-term prospects for economic security and, for the poorest, increases the chances that their children will grow up in poverty. It serves the South to pay attention to this cohort of people in developing policies to combat intergenerational poverty, as well as to restore confidence that the American Dream lives on.

MDC/State of the South 2014

 

This report, therefore, calls on the South to develop and implement purposeful policies and systemic practices—which we call here the “infrastructure of opportunity”—to bolster the prospects for its 15- to 24-year-olds to achieve economic resilience as adults and a fulfilling social and civic life. It is a call to action to the region’s state and local governments, to its educational institutions, to its business and civic leaders, and to its philanthropies and nonprofit organizations to demonstrate social innovation despite gridlock in Washington. This population cohort, in effect, combines two “generations’’ much discussed in journalism and popular surveys. The so-called Millennial Generation is generally defined as including today’s 18- to 33-year-olds, while today’s teenagers do not yet have a commonly agreed upon generation name.  

Of the 110 million people who live in the 13 states that constitute the South in this report, more than 15 million are in the 15–24 age range. Just as Southern population growth varies markedly between slow-growing, inner-South states and fast-growing, outer-South states, growth in the youth and young-adult segments of the population is unevenly distributed across the region. From 2000 to 2012, the fast-growing states had high growth in the 15–24 age bracket—29 percent in Florida, 21 percent in North Carolina, and 20 percent in Georgia and Texas. In contrast, Louisiana and West Virginia experienced a decline in 15- to 24-year-olds of 5 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively, and Mississippi had a mere 0.4 percent increase in this age bracket In terms of race and ethnicity, today’s youth and young adults present a significantly different, more diverse, profile than that of older Southerners. Of people in the 15–24 age bracket, half are white, 22 percent black, 19 percent Hispanic, with the remainder including American Indians, Asians, and people of two or more races or ethnicities. In Texas and Florida, where more than 40 percent of the South’s population lives, the population is even more diverse. In Texas, 34 percent of 15- to -24-year-olds are white, 41 percent are Hispanic or Latino, and 12 percent are black. The same age group in Florida is 45 percent white, 21 percent black, and 26 percent Hispanic or Latino.

In March 2014, the Pew Research Center issued a study, Millennials in Adulthood, which sheds light on the implications of economic distress on the life situations and choices of young adults. “Millennials are also the first in the modern era to have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income than their two immediate predecessor generations (Gen-Xers and Boomers) had at the same stage in their life cycles,” said the Pew researchers. They found that only 26 percent of Millennials are married, and 36 percent of them were living in their parents’ homes in 2012. “Most unmarried Millienials (69 percent) say they would like to marry, but many, especially those with lower levels of income and education, lack what they deem to be a necessary prerequisite—a solid economic foundation,” Pew reported.

 

*THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF OPPORTUNITY*

The near-term health of the South’s civil society rests on the urgency with which the region addresses barriers to educational advancement, job creation, and economic mobility. But in addition to removing barriers, the challenge is also to erect an infrastructure of opportunity—that is, the systems and supports to boost young people to higher rungs on the ladder of economic and personal advancement. Those systems and supports reach from quality pre-K programs to retraining options for dislocated workers. Our purpose here is to suggest how communities can connect and design the portion of the infrastructure of opportunity that serves youth and young adults.

MDC/State of the South 2014

 

In our analysis of the prospects for youth and young adults in the South, guided by national research and regional data, we considered the systems, policies, and practices that need to be in place for economic mobility to grow. In visits to nine communities across the South, we looked not simply for promising programs, but for analysis that acknowledges the particular needs of young people and how local systems address those. Other communities in the South could use a similar frame to look at themselves and make decisions about how to change their policies and practices to strengthen their infrastructure of opportunity. Communities should consider how to:  

• *Foster a common strategic vision of aim and outcomes for education and training systems at the secondary and postsecondary level.* They should communicate about and align their curricula, performance measures, and community relationships to devise and promote clear paths for all young people to prepare for, enter, persist in, and complete postsecondary training and credentials that prepare them for good jobs 

MDC/State of the South 2014

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*• Engage young people in work experiences that enhance their learning and training, preparing them to compete in the workforce.* Such engagement requires committed involvement of local employers in the design and provision of work-based learning and job experiences. This alignment is undergirded by policies that move people along the education and employment infrastructure, like an interconnected highway system.

Such policies:

• *support demand-side strategies* in the labor market to stimulate job creation and economic growth, not only with major employers, but also support and promotion of small business development that encourages local entrepreneurs through financing and incubators. This also includes an active role for employers in defining and developing the skills individuals need to be successful in the workforce

• *reform criminal and juvenile justice practices*, including policing and probation systems, that drastically limit employment opportunities and have a disparate impact on communities of color, particularly young men

• *expand access to financial supports* that help individuals and families meet basic needs, build financial stability, offer opportunities for saving and wealth creation, and prevent against predatory pay and lending practices

• *improve job quality*, including family-sustaining wages, flexible work environments and stable scheduling, and quality dependent care   This infrastructure is place-based, taking advantage of local assets and addressing a community’s distinctive challenges while acknowledging regional and even national policies and pressures that influence local conditions. To be effective and sustainable, it also relies on a community’s physical infrastructure. The maintenance and construction of public works and utilities present job opportunities for young people; public transit connects individuals to school and work and has the potential to reduce isolation of marginalized neighborhoods and populations. There also are policies related to physical infrastructure—like affordable housing and broadband access—that, historically and currently, have blocked access to and full participation in the infrastructure of opportunity. Modifying these policies has the potential to reverse or at least mitigate some of the consequences of exclusion. Aligning and maintaining an infrastructure of opportunity requires pragmatic leadership, and in some cases may require new ways of organizing partnerships and institutions to build strong pathways to progress for all young people, both those who are connected to the education and employment systems as well as those who are radically disconnected.  

Currently, across the South, there are gaps in workforce preparation along with a job market that doesn’t provide enough good jobs. At the same time, the social supports and education systems that undergird the infrastructure of opportunity are facing historic disinvestment. (There are federal and state initiatives that could strengthen this infrastructure, like expanding the availability of low-interest student loans and increasing the minimum wage and other efforts to improve job quality.) Instead of disappearing, this infrastructure should be as pervasive and reliable as the physical infrastructure of roads and water lines. It needs to be as integrated and dynamic as any network of power lines and the electric grid to restore what was lost in the Great Recession and to provide a way up for young Southerners with limited prospects for a livelihood.

MDC/State of the South 2014

CLICK HERE FOR LARGER VERSION OF THIS TABLE

 

*WHAT RESEARCH AND DATA SAY *

*Key Research*

The following scan of recent studies outlines the dimensions of the economic mobility challenge facing 15- to 24-year-olds in the South, pointing to gaps in the opportunity infrastructure:

*Geography of Intergenerational Mobility*, the massive study from a team of researchers at Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley, examines children born in the United States between 1980 and 1982 and looked at their income in 2011–12, when they were approximately 30 years old. The national cohort was divided into commuting zones, which are groups of counties defined by commuting patterns.3 Study authors looked at low-income individuals and tracked where they ended up in that income distribution, on average, 30 years later. A higher mobility ranking means that, on average, individuals born in that particular place have moved higher up the income ladder than peers born in other places. Of the nation’s 100 largest commuting zones, no Southern city ranked in the top 20 in this measurement of upward mobility, while eight ranked in the bottom 10, including Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida, and Atlanta, Georgia. These findings call into question whether the American Dream is in good health in the South.

This paper generated considerable attention in the national press. The scholars are careful to say that their study does not show causation for the differences in mobility among U.S. locales. Nevertheless, the Harvard-Berkeley scholars identified five factors as strongly correlated with variations in intergenerational mobility:

• Communities characterized by low mobility tend to feature more residential segregation,

• wider income inequality,

• weaker public schools,

• less social capital, and

• more broken family structures than communities of high mobility.  

*The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago* issued a subsequent report that looked at education and family structure. It generally reaffirms and adds context to the Harvard-Berkeley study. Conducted by Senior Economist Bhashkar Mazumder, the Chicago Fed analysis offers a hopeful finding in that “among those with 16 years of schooling, the racial gap in upward mobility is essentially closed”—a clear signal that efforts to close the college-attainment gap would have a significant payoff. While recognizing progress in the recent past in reducing racial segregation, the Chicago Fed finds that if current patterns of intergenerational mobility persist “blacks on average would not make any relative progress’’ in the income distribution—academic language that contains a clear warning.

(AP Photo/Erica Yoon)

Virginia Tech students Stephanie Wilkinson cuts plywood with the help from Shannon Enright at a home on their third day at the Appalachia Service Project in Jonesville, Virginia, on Saturday, November 10, 2007.

*An analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finances data by Demos* found that when controlling for income, the median wealth of a white household is three times that of a black household. In other words, a white family has, on average, substantially more wealth than a black family at the same income level. The racial wealth gap, or the difference between the net worth of the median white household ($134,000) to that of the median black ($11,000) or Latino ($14,000) household, shows no signs of narrowing. Wealth building is critical to improving intergenerational mobility. Families with wealth are better able to remain economically stable during unexpected events, such as a layoff or a health crisis, and they have enhanced opportunities to prepare their children for education and employment. As the costs of higher education increase, a family’s ability to financially support a student is even more important for his or her success in completing a postsecondary credential.

*Key Indicators *

To help keep the American Dream alive in the region, Southern leaders should examine data in their own communities to identify policy changes and points of intervention, by both public and private sectors, that hold promise to strengthen the infrastructure of opportunity serving youth and young adults. The following indicators suggest where repair and renewal of the opportunity infrastructure are required to improve the life-chances of 15- to 24-year-olds.  

•* Extreme income inequality*, says Standard and Poor’s, the credit rating agency, can exert a “drag on longrun economic growth.” In an August 2014 report, S&P pointed out that a market economy will inevitably produce differences in income and wealth—and that such differences provide incentives to investment and expansion. But S&P notes that “too much inequality can undermine growth,” and warns that the U.S. is approaching extreme levels.

• *Underemployment* is substantially higher among workers under age 25 than among all workers in every Southern state. In 2013–14, unemployment rates went down in most states, and yet underemployment was higher in 2013 than in 2000. Underemployed people include a combination of jobless people actively seeking work, people working part-time who want full-time jobs, and people who have given up after pathways to progress for all young people, both those who are seeking work in the past year. Seven states—Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee—had underemployment rates higher than the national rate of 27 percent in 2013. National data produced by the Center for Economic and Policy Research show an unemployment rate for recent black college graduates higher than 12 percent, double the unemployment rate for all graduates. More than 55 percent of recent black college graduates work in jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree, compared to 45 percent of all recent college graduates.

• *Disconnected youths* consist of teenagers not in school, not working, and disconnected from societal anchors, thus vulnerable to an array of impediments to achievement. The 2014 Kids Count data book of the Annie E. Casey Foundation reported that every Southern state, except Virginia, had a higher percentage of disconnected youths than the national rate of 8 percent. Two-thirds of 16- to 19-year-olds are not in the labor force; most, of course, are in school. Among those in this age group who are in the labor force—meaning they actively seek work—young African-American Southerners have an especially high unemployment rate—46 percent. That’s compared to unemployment rates of 29 percent for Hispanics and 26 percent for whites. Among the seven out of 10 young adults (20 to 24 years old) in the labor force, unemployment is substantially lower. Still, a major gap exists: Whites and Hispanics have a 14 percent unemployment rate, far below the 27 percent unemployment rate among young black adults.  

• *Income data by quintiles* provide insight into the uneasy economic standing of millions of Southerners. Despite the recovery, poverty rates have remained stubbornly high, and a Brookings Institution report recently showed that several Southern metros—North Port, Flordia; Greensboro, North Carolina; Orlando, Florida; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina, and Cape Coral, Florida—ranked among the 15 metros nationally in increase of poor people from 2000 to 2012.  

And yet, the economic profile of Southerners is not complete in looking only at people in poverty. A data set of households by quintiles—that is, divided into fifths— makes clear that, even if they remain above the poverty line, millions of Southerners live on the economic margins, vulnerable to a loss of job, an illness, or accident that saps a household’s income. This is so despite the fact that the middle class expanded across the region during the expansion years of the late 20th century. Adding together households in the lowest fifth of income and the second lowest fifth shows that four out of 10 households in the South have incomes below $40,000. Only Virginia stands apart, with its second fifth reaching up to $49,000. Mississippi’s second fifth goes up to a mere $28,600 in income. The second fifth in the remaining Southern states fall between $39,700 (Texas) and $30,800 (West Virginia). The federal poverty line is drawn at roughly $23,500 for a family of four.  

For most lower-income Southerners, the challenge is not so much to vault into the top fifth in income (the measurement spotlighted in the Harvard-Berkeley study) as to reach the middle or even upper-middle class. In most Southern states, the third quintile of households—the middle-middle class—has incomes between $50,000 and $60,000, somewhat higher in Texas and Virginia. Upper-middle class households in the fourth quintile have top annual incomes ranging from $125,000 in Virginia, to $103,000 in Texas, to $96,000 in Georgia, to a low of $77,000 in Mississippi.  

For more Southerners to reach into the middle class requires growth in middle-level jobs, increased educational attainment beyond high school, and better alignment of credentialing options and labor market demand. Alan Krueger, a former chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, has pointed out that from 1947 to 1979, households in all five quintiles experienced income growth, but from 1979 to 2010, the top fifth grew, the middle fifths barely grew, and incomes in the bottom fifth declined.  

Educational attainment remains a key determinant of who is employed and who is not, and who earns a good living and who does not. Yes, the Great Recession made it more difficult for college graduates to find the jobs they wanted, and many graduates have taken jobs that do not require a degree, probably displacing people without degrees. Still, as the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the earnings gap has widened between people with a four-year degree and everyone without a degree.  

In the South, the median income of high school graduates is $26,500; for people with some college, $32,299; and for four-year graduates, $48,317. Across all educational attainment levels, a distinct gender pay gap remains in the region, with median income for men higher than for women.

MDC/State of the South 2014

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All across the region, students fall out of the leaky pipeline that runs from ninth grade to college completion, depriving Southern communities of the lift that would result from having more of its young people prepared for higher-skill, higher-wage jobs and connected to those through work experiences like mentorships, on-the-job training, and apprenticeships. It’s important for states and communities to sustain easy access to education, even when state budget cuts put upward pressure on tuition at universities and community colleges. It’s also crucial for the region’s future prosperity that more Southerners attain degrees and credentials beyond high school. The chart above gives a statistical portrait of the leaky educational pipeline of ninth-graders to university graduates. In general, of a cohort of 100 ninth-graders:

• 25 to 40 would not graduate from high school in four years

• Roughly 25 would graduate from high school but not go directly to college

• 15 out of the 100 would enroll in college but not make it through their second year

• Fewer than 20 out of those 100 once-ninth graders would end up with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in three to six years, depending on program type, in most Southern states Outcomes and exit points vary from state to state. Some states lose too many young people in high school; others have a stronger high school graduation rate but a not-so-strong college completion rate. Constructing an infrastructure of opportunity entails plugging the leaks at transition points.  

MDC/State of the South 2014

College Still Pays; Gender Gap Remains

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*MOVING FORWARD*

*As a Region*

As we know from our inquiries around the region, Southern communities abound with pilot projects, demonstrations, models, start-ups—some generated by private enterprises, some by nonprofits. A major challenge facing community leaders has to do with converting successful initiatives into policies and practices that are systemic and sustainable. Just as private businesses thrive when they adopt fresh ideas, so too should city, county and state governments, school systems, higher education, the justice system of police, courts, and prisons, and the complex of arrangements that make up the workforce system. In the last decade—and in some cases, just since the end of the Great Recession—there are national and statewide efforts to change these outcomes for youth and young adults at a large scale. With national philanthropic support, organizations, states, and collaboratives have placed big bets on elements of the opportunity infrastructure to improve educational achievement and employment options. A few examples:

• *Achieving the Dream, the nation’s largest community college reform effort*, has combined new institutional practices with state policy changes to improve instruction, retention, and completion outcomes for community colleges across the country—with a significant footprint in Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, and expanding into Georgia and Alabama.

• *Governor Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise* lays out a plan to cover the full cost of two-year college for every high school graduate beginning in fall 2015.5 Participants also will be paired with a mentor to navigate the college admissions process.

• *Regional workforce development efforts like the National Fund for Workforce Solutions* (NFWS), funded by a group of local and national funders, are supporting employer engagement and innovations to help low-wage workers develop new skills that lead to better career opportunities— and a better prepared workforce for regional industries. NFWS has collaboratives in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

• *New Orleans’s Economic Opportunity Strategy*, spearheaded by Mayor Mitch Landrieu, will connect several anchor institutions—from government, private employers, and education sectors—with philanthropic support to remove barriers for disadvantaged job seekers. Another mayorled effort is under way in Richmond, Virginia; Mayor Dwight Jones created the Office of Community Wealth Building, a response—backed by $3.4 million in city funds—to several community task force efforts focused on lowering Richmond’s 27 percent poverty rate.

*• Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe and Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear bucked a trend in the region by leading efforts to approve Medicaid expansion* under the Affordable Care Act. Discussing his commitment to the expansion, Beshear said: “You’re not going to have a productive workforce unless they’re also a healthy workforce.”

 

*As Communities*

In addition to drawing on studies and analyzing data, MDC sent teams of its staff to diverse communities across the region to explore the potential of—and barriers to—erecting local infrastructures of opportunity to boost young Southerners up the ladders of economic and social advancement. We interviewed local leaders to learn whether and how communities are increasing the likelihood of successful transitions in secondary and postsecondary education, linking learning and work, and addressing weak job markets. We learned what communities can try to accomplish amid fractious politics and economic anxieties. Leaders in Southern communities—as huge as Houston, Texas, and as compact as Port St. Joe, Florida—are striving, and often struggling, to erect institutional structures for people to climb out of economic distress. Indeed, communities can build their own infrastructures of opportunity with a special focus on youth and young adults who need more to hold onto in an era of a sluggish labor market.

 

*Our Findings*

The foundation of an infrastructure of opportunity can be seen in these regional and local efforts, but it is weak and uneven across the South. The conversation, then, begins with what we have to build on. As a starting point for these discussions across the region, here are key findings from MDC’s scan of studies and soundings in communities:

(AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain, NAM)

In this June 8, 2009 file photo, people pass by a card, intended for then-Governor Mark Sanford, after a gathering at the Statehouse for a rally in Columbia, South Carolina.

*1. Across the region as a whole, the South does not have enough jobs, and not enough middle-income jobs.* The national economy has indeed made a long climb up from the depths of the Great Recession. But Southern states and most communities have not rebounded to produce the quantity of jobs needed to keep up with population growth and to afford young people a mobility boost at the outset of their careers. One example of an effort to create new employment is Danville, Virginia, a former mill town that is trying to diversify its economy by building an entrepreneurial ecosystem that draws new investment and provides employment options for local talent.

*2. Job growth, of course, is driven by private investment but depends heavily on federal policies.* And, no doubt, the region’s governments will continue to deploy industry hunters and tax-funded incentives to lure job-producing companies. But, as evidence from the Harvard-Berkeley study and others have shown, those efforts are not sufficient to give upward mobility to thousands of young Southerners. Towns such as Northern Neck, Virginia, and Port St. Joe, Florida, face the unique challenges confronting rural, Southern communities when it comes to expanding the job market.

*3. There is a need for state and local governments to expand the supply of jobs through public works projects—building parks, schools, roads; repairing bridges and old sewer systems—with special provisions for hiring out-of-work or underemployed young people.* The Brookings Institution computes that 14.2 million Americans are employed in building or operating infrastructure, with one quarter expected to retire or leave their jobs by 2022. With interest rates remaining exceptionally low, governments could borrow money for public works, putting people to work now at a relatively modest cost for the future. Another alternative would entail subsidized jobs for connecting young people left behind to the world of work.

*4. Most Southern cities are less dense than most old, industrial cities of the Midwest and Northeast.* In sprawling metropolitanization, a disconnect often exists between low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and the location of good jobs. Further, even in cities with relatively robust job growth, there remains a struggle to communicate job opportunities— and the skills needed—to young people growing up in an environment of little hope. Greenville, South Carolina, is starting in middle school—and involving employers—to change attitudes about career readiness and work experience.

*5. There is no mobility strategy that does not include education.* Even in an era of heightened federal involvement in education, public schools, colleges, and universities remain in the domains of local and state governance. The South’s future depends on state and local policies and funding to assure near-universal high school graduation, to elevate completion rates in community colleges and universities, and to narrow achievement gaps along lines of race and ethnicity. Arkansas is attempting to bridge the gap with initiatives that aim to improve education and employment outcomes at the regional and state level.

(AP Photo/The Ledger-Enquirer, Joe Paull)

U.S. Representative Sanford Bishop and Columbus Councilman Bruce Huff welcome students off buses on the first day of school in the new George Washington Carver High School in Columbus, Georgia, on Monday, August 13, 2012. 

*6. An education agenda has multiple components*, including giving children a strong start with pre-kindergarten enrichment; strengthening middle schools as a means for stifling the propensity of many to drop out around the ninth grade; continuing and expanding the movement to meld high schools and community colleges for young people in need of a job-ready credential but not inclined to pursue a four-year degree; restraining tuition creep and enlarging need-based financial aid to assure access to higher education and contain the debt burden. In Charlotte, North Carolina, K-12, two-year, and four-year systems are working in partnership with community-based organizations, employers, and philanthropy to support young people who face significant barriers to achievement.

*7. The recent enactment of new federal workforce law provides an opportunity for the South to strength its training strategies and systems.* The new Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act requires states to come up with a single, strategic plan for training, employment services, adult education, and vocational rehabilitation, and it emphasizes real-world training. It’s a moment for Southern states and cities to add their own policies and funding to the federal initiative in order to blend work and learning to prepare and connect youth. In Durham, North Carolina, there are efforts to unite neighborhoods, educational and training institutions, and employers into a coherent system to prepare youth and young adults for careers.

*8. A true infrastructure of opportunity gives reliable options to all young people regardless of race and ethnicity, gender, class, or neighborhood.* As data show, however, that is not currently the case, and race specifically remains a significant factor in the economic outcomes of individuals across the South. Blacks raised in low-income homes are less likely to move up the income distribution than low-income whites. A national study from The Pew Charitable Trusts on intergenerational mobility found that more than half of black adults raised in the bottom quintile remain there as adults, and only a third of whites do. The South also has a large population of undocumented students, many of whom are high achievers in our secondary school systems. Undocumented students are ineligible for federal financial aid, and in all Southern states except Texas, they are ineligible for state financial aid and must pay out-of-state tuition. (In Alabama and South Carolina, they are not admitted to public postsecondary institutions.) If these young people are unable to pursue further education, the region stands to lose a promising talent pool and instead see increasing rates of poverty and immobility. To eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in social and economic outcomes, Southern leaders must continue work to remove structural and institutional racism. One of the first steps toward this challenging goal is acknowledging that racial discrimination persists in practice. In our interviews across the South, we asked people to tell us who, of their community’s youth and young adults, is getting ahead and who isn’t. We noted a widespread reluctance to discuss racial and ethnic disparities. Communities can begin by examining data on educational attainment, income, wealth, and health to identify racial and ethnic gaps in well-being. They also can explore their history critically, asking who has benefited from past change and growth and who has the ability to make decisions about the community’s future. As long as patterns of exclusion and segregation match with inadequate economic outcomes, as they do across much of the South, then structural racism persists.

*9. The South has a component of radically disconnected youth who need an array of services and initiatives to tap their potential for education, employment, and civic participation.* Southern states incarcerate 45 percent of all state-held inmates in the nation. African-Americans represent more than one-third of local inmates and state prisoners, well above their share of the population. Four out of 10 prisoners are between the ages of 18 and 29. Incarceration disrupts the educational trajectory of young men and women, and erects barriers to employment. Among the steps to be taken is reconsidering sentencing policies—especially for nonviolent offenders; punishment shouldn’t erect an even higher barrier to a useful career.  

*10. Now is the time for municipal and county officeholders to join with business leaders and demonstrate their ability to lead and rejuvenate American pragmatism.* Because the region’s major cities have emerged as the principal engines of the economy, the South especially needs a broad spectrum of leaders to renew engagement in civic uplift. In today’s polarized politics, mayors have an opportunity to join with leaders in the business community to work across lines of party, class, and race to construct a physical and social infrastructure that gives their residents a boost toward the American Dream.

*11. As long ago as the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville hailed the importance of the American inclination to form voluntary associations that enrich civic life.* Today, the South benefits from the efforts of philanthropies and nonprofits, though they need to work in coordination to be complementary, not redundant. Also, the forging of place-based leadership units—formal coalitions of government, business, nonprofits, and education— can become powerful forces for targeting initiatives toward youth and young adults. Two very different Texas cities— Brownsville and Houston—reveal the potential and pitfalls of private/public partnership.

 

In calling on Southern citizens, as well as leaders in the public and private sectors, to attend to the economic prospects of youth and young adults, this report seeks to contribute to the enhancement of individual lives and the prospects of communities, from metropolitan regions to rural towns. But just as important is that the South renew its sense of, and commitment to, the common good. It was, after all, a leader of one of what are now the Southern states—Thomas Jefferson of Virginia—who wrote words that remain embedded as guiding principles: that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with unalienable rights protected by government deriving its powers from the people. As a slave owner, Jefferson did not fully embody the words he wrote. And yet, after serving as governor of Virginia and president of the United States, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia, a public educational institution, which he said was to be based on the “illimitable freedom of the human mind.”  

In the South, a tension remains between what’s good for an individual and what’s good for the community and nation as a whole. Still, as the opening of the Declaration of Independence suggests, the pursuit of happiness only fully comes alive in a community, region, and nation where citizens work toward the common good.

  Reported by The American Prospect 9 hours ago.

Washington Healthplanfinder, the state’s health-insurance exchange website, reopened for business at 8 a.m. Sunday after recovering from a glitch that caused officials to shut down the system about 22 hours earlier on Saturday morning. Reported by Seattle Times 15 hours ago.

The Center's December 2014 Policy Snapshot, Open Enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplace: Guide for Consumers, provides information about available plans, covered health benefits, enrollment help and more.

(PRWEB) November 17, 2014

Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment efforts are in full swing in Ohio. The open enrollment period for coverage purchased through the federally-facilitated Health Insurance Marketplace began Nov. 15, 2014 and continues through Feb. 15, 2014. Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment activities are aimed at signing more eligible individuals up for health coverage and decreasing the ranks of the uninsured.

Health insurance marketplaces allow consumers to make comparisons among available health insurance plans to determine the best fit for themselves and their families. Through marketplaces, consumers are able to apply for and enroll in an insurance plan as well as determine whether they are eligible for tax credits and reduced cost sharing for health insurance.

The Center's December 2014 Policy Snapshot, Open Enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplace: Guide for Consumers, provides information about available plans, covered health benefits, enrollment help and more.

To browse related information and resources cited in this publication, visit The Center's Marketplace Coverage Pinterest board.

A full list of The Center's publications can be found on the website along with a wide range of resources covering a variety of health policy issues.

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With a rich history as the Northeast Ohio hospital association, dating back to 1916, The Center for Health Affairs serves as the collective voice of hospitals and the source for Northeast Ohio hospital and healthcare information. As the leading advocate for Northeast Ohio hospitals, The Center aims to enhance the effectiveness of the healthcare community and the health of the communities it serves by providing expertise, resources and solutions to address the challenges faced by the region’s healthcare providers. The Center’s efforts focus on areas that benefit member hospitals from a regional approach, including healthcare workforce; emergency preparedness; public policy and advocacy; finance and reimbursement; and community initiatives. And because of its business affiliation with CHAMPS Healthcare, The Center has the resources to provide a broad level of professional services to its members. The Center, located in downtown Cleveland, is proud to advocate on behalf of 34 acute-care hospitals and two long-term acute-care hospitals in six counties. The Center for Health Affairs is honored to be named as one of The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Top Workplaces in 2014 and to ERC’s Northcoast99 List in 2003, 2004, 2010, 2012 and 2014. For more, visit chanet.org. Reported by PRWeb 11 hours ago.

GoodScout App was created to help people finding their way into the insurance marketplace, easily calculate insurance costs and get the best Health Care quotes. The 2015 Open Enrollment period will run until Feb. 15, 2015; Go GoodScout LLC wants to change your views on insurance.

New York, New York (PRWEB) November 17, 2014

GoodScout App was created to help people finding their way into the insurance marketplace, easily calculate insurance costs and get the best Health Care quotes! The 2015 Open Enrollment period will run until Feb. 15, 2015; GoodScout wants you to be ready right now!

Go GoodScout LLC is launching an app that will change your views on insurance.

Goodscout application was created to help people understand the health care insurance marketplace, it includes:· Ability to search for Health Care, Dental, Vision, and Medicare quotes from every health insurance company in the country.
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· And much more...

Their mission? Change the way people buy health insurance. When you purchase their app or an insurance plan using GoodScout, they donate a portion of the proceeds to help support non-profit Health care partners.

“Everyone has to have health insurance today. So why not buy yours from the only company that gives back with every purchase?” Said Tom Pegues, founder and Chief Scout. Tom is a long-time insurance professional with a strong belief in giving back. Committed to social causes, Tom hopes he can empower Goodscout users to do good for themselves and others.

“Finding the right health insurance can be a daunting and time-consuming task,” said GoodScout founder and longtime insurance executive Tom Pegues. “With our In-App Glossary along with our Insurance Cost Calculator, people will have a better understanding of the marketplace. The Get A Quote option gather the most competitive health care quotes, and insurance options from the largest network of providers, all in one place, we are making it simple, faster and easier than ever for consumers to get quality health insurance at a price they can afford.”

Here’s how GoodScout works: prospective buyers, using their desktop or mobile device, begin the quote process by entering their name, email, age, date of birth, gender, type of insurance they are interested in, zip code, and if they are a smoker. The information is run against all of the major carriers nationwide to display every type of insurance available to them. The user is then able to contrast and compare the different types of insurance and pricing including deductibles, premium, co-payment and out-of-pocket costs to make the best informed decision.

About Go GoodScout LLC

Founded by health insurance industry expert Tom Pegues, GoodScout is an online insurance brokerage firm that brokers individual and group medical, dental and vision in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Instead of relying on agents to sell policies, GoodScout uses an online direct-to-consumer sales model. GoodScout also provides information about a broad array of insurance-related topics and plans, including a selection of price and benefit options, complemented by a full-service Customer Care Center of highly trained customer service representatives.

Contact:

Tom Pegues
Go Goodscout LLC
(800) 275-1908
Email: Tom(at)gogoodscout(dot)com
Website: http://gogoodscout.com Reported by PRWeb 10 hours ago.

· Scuttled deals worth $580 billion put hedge funds on back foot (Reuters)
· Mounting Pressure on OPEC Spurs More Wagers on Oil Rally (BBG)
· It's not just US real estate: Chinese Students at U.S. Universities Jump 75% in Three Years (BBG)
· Frankfurt Open for Yuan Clearing as Liquidity Rises (BBG)
· Obama defends healthcare law after adviser criticism (Reuters)
· Michael Hasenstab Bets Big in Controversial Places (WSJ)
· Facebook seeks foothold in your office (FT)
· Russia Seen as Greatest Threat in Poll as Oil Erodes Putin Power (BBG)
· Falling Oil Prices Test OPEC Unity (WSJ)
· Brent Crude Drops as Japanese Recession May Curb Demand (BBG)
· Shale Boom Helps North Dakota Bank Earn Returns Goldman Would Envy (WSJ)
· Hedge Funds Cut Gold Bets in Fastest Exit This Year (BBG)
· Keystone Pipe Vote Tackles Questions History Answered (BBG)
· Draghi Seen Bypassing QE Qualms to Hit Balance-Sheet Goal (BBG)
· How Michael Jackson Made $150 Million in 2014 (BBG)
· Actavis Said Near $62.5 Billion Deal for Allergan (BBG)
· London Homebuyers Vanish as Peak Prices Outpace Wages (BBG)

 

*Overnight Media Digest*

WSJ

* A sales tax increase pushed Japan's economy into a recession in the third quarter, setting the stage for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to postpone a second increase in the sales tax. (http://on.wsj.com/1tZeV8P)

* Bank of North Dakota, the United State's state-owned bank which has one branch and no automated teller, is more profitable than Goldman Sachs Group Inc, has a better credit rating than JPMorgan Chase & Co and has not seen profit growth drop since 2003. The bank has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the boom in Bakken shale-oil production from hydraulic fracturing. (http://on.wsj.com/1EP3J57)

* Sony Corp investors could get a look in the coming week at whether the hard-nosed approach of finance chief Kenichiro Yoshida is producing an impact on the company's outlook. Sony Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, Yoshida and other executives are expected to talk up plans to rebuild around Sony's entertainment businesses, which include the videogame division and Hollywood studio arm. (http://on.wsj.com/1wLmqlG)

* Actavis Plc is nearing a deal to acquire Allergan Inc in a tie-up that would likely be the year's largest and could help shield Botox maker Allergan from a hostile suitor Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. The boards of Actavis and Allergan are expected to meet in coming days to review a cash-and-stock takeover, sources said. (http://on.wsj.com/11g3e6K)

* Mutual-fund manager Michael Hasenstab has piled up big returns and catapulted Franklin Resources Inc's Templeton Global Bond Fund into the largest government-bond fund in the world from investments that sometimes align him with regimes criticized by the United States and Europe. (http://on.wsj.com/1xNiZz3)

* The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries knows it must cut production to lift prices. A collective move to cut output could boost prices, but it would also rob OPEC members of revenue. It is unclear how long such vulnerable OPEC economies as Venezuela and Nigeria could afford to limit production without reopening the spigots. (http://on.wsj.com/1xcjoel)

* Prompted by the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, government and aviation-industry officials are set to announce global standards calling for airliners to automatically report their position at least every 15 minutes, sources said. (http://on.wsj.com/11u9IzZ)

* While economic growth in the eurozone is flattening, money managers are keeping the faith that the European Central Bank will succeed in propping up markets and eventually the economy. (http://on.wsj.com/1t18bHx)

* Standard Chartered Plc is paying the price for an aggressive push into lending to commodity-linked firms, as the bank's soured loans have jumped. A combination of increased competition from local banks and slowing growth in its core markets forced Standard Chartered to make riskier loans to sustain its fast expansion, said Chirantan Barua, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein. (http://on.wsj.com/1BGYuIr)

* United States Federal investigators descended on the coastal city of La Porte, Texas to probe an accident at a E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co chemical plant that left four workers dead. The plant suffered a leak of a poisonous gas called methyl mercaptan, DuPont said. (http://on.wsj.com/14xhuum)

* The decision to get the "Dumb and Dumber" gang back together helped the screwball buddy comedy opening in first place at the weekend box office with an estimated $38.1 million. That put the sequel distributed by Comcast Corp's Universal Pictures, ahead of last week's top films, "Big Hero 6" and "Interstellar". (http://on.wsj.com/1vgFEF9)

* Nearing the one-year anniversary of Target Corp's massive and costly data breach, the company is looking to show that it has moved on. The discounter will report its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday. The recent optimism has helped to lift Target shares to 2014 highs. (http://on.wsj.com/11usGXq)

* Republican control of Congress in 2015 could boost the Grand Old Party's efforts to make the Federal Trade Commission operate more like the Justice Department when it comes to antitrust enforcement. (http://on.wsj.com/1qaPtmd)

* American Airlines Group Inc and its 15,000 pilots continued to negotiate terms for a new, five-year labor agreement, with the pilots asking for big raises to compensate for the profit-sharing deal enjoyed by pilots at Delta Air Lines Inc. (http://on.wsj.com/1ETxdkg)

* The partners at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP voted to hire the majority of partners at Boston law firm Bingham McCutchen LLP. The deal is expected to close by the end of November, Morgan Lewis said. (http://on.wsj.com/1zuWnCK)

* About 100,000 people submitted applications for health insurance on the first day of the relaunch of Healthcare.gov, the online marketplace at the heart of the United States president's health-care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said. (http://on.wsj.com/1qNVobn)

* Apple Inc has struck a deal with China's only domestic bank card provider UnionPay, making it easier for Chinese consumers to buy its apps. The iPhone maker has been facing questions of how it will expand into payment systems in China. Apple's own payment system Apple Pay is not yet available there. (http://on.wsj.com/1xNwRJz)

 

FT

TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC has struck a mobile services deal with Telefonica UK to launch the services over its network as the group looks to grow the market for so-called "quad play" services bundling TV, broadband and fixed and mobile telecoms.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to donate 650 million pounds ($1.02 billion) to a global "green climate fund" this week, that could risk criticism from some Conservative MPs and the UK Independence party.

David Cameron warned the risk of another global recession at the end of the G20 summit in Brisbane, saying the "red warning lights are once again flashing on the dashboard of the global economy".

More bankers should be subjected to a tougher pay regime by the regulators, including bonus clawbacks, MPs who sat on the parliamentary commission on banking standards argued in a report published on Monday.

 

NYT

* Allergan Inc is near a deal to sell itself to Actavis Plc for more than $62.5 billion, people briefed on the matter said on Sunday, potentially ending one of the most bitter merger battles in recent memory. (http://nyti.ms/1xNqRk9)

* With a goal of fiber-optic lines reaching to every school and a Wi-Fi connection in every classroom, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is expected on Monday to propose a 62 percent increase in the amount of money the agency spends annually to wire schools and libraries with high-speed Internet connections. (http://nyti.ms/1vkhRDv)

* When it comes to insider trading in the United States, government officials have built careers on successful prosecutions. Hedge funds have been shut down, and regulators have ensnared even low-level employees who traded on confidential tips. But in Brazil, no one has ever gone to jail for insider trading. On Tuesday, however, Eike Batista, once one of the Brazil's richest and most flamboyant men, is scheduled to defend himself in court against accusations of insider trading and stock market manipulation. (http://nyti.ms/1qNTYO9)

* Hasbro Inc has ended talks with DreamWorks Animation, people briefed on the matter said on Friday, ending discussions that would have united the parent companies of the Transformers and Shrek. The breakup of the negotiations followed a sharp slide in Hasbro's shares after reports of the talks emerged late Wednesday. The toy maker's shares had fallen nearly 5 percent since then, closing on Friday at $54.02. The fall in Hasbro's share price was notable because the company had weighed paying both stock and cash, people briefed on the matter have said. (http://nyti.ms/1t1g9jF)

* Vice Media, the news and entertainment group, is expected to announce Monday that it has hired Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former Obama administration official, as its chief operating officer. (http://nyti.ms/1qaSRgE)

 

Canada

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

** China's state-controlled energy firms are struggling to turn a profit in Canada in part because of the federal government's immigration laws, said Wang Xinping, China's consul general based in Calgary. Xinping said his country's energy companies want to bring in their own employees to reduce costs. But Ottawa has been stingy in issuing work permits. (http://bit.ly/1A6ybJS)

** Liberal Party's David Bertschi has been told he won't be allowed to seek the Liberal nomination in Ottawa-Orleans, clearing the path for Andrew Leslie, a retired general and adviser to Justin Trudeau on foreign policy. (http://bit.ly/1uDJGFq)

** Onex Corp, Canada's largest buyout firm, is leading the bidding for Swiss juice-box maker SIG Combibloc Group AG in what would be one of its biggest European acquisitions, according to people familiar with the matter. Onex may reach an agreement to buy SIG for more than $4 bln as early as this week, the people said. (http://bit.ly/1uDKdXK)

NATIONAL POST

A baby born in Edmonton earlier this year touched off the latest in a string of emotional end-of-life court battles, dying after a judge said removing her from life support was the "kindest" option available, a just-released written ruling reveals. (http://bit.ly/1A6Enla)

** A packed late night Chinese restaurant in downtown Toronto became a scene of carnage just before 4 a.m. Sunday, when someone opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon, injuring two women and killing a man. (http://bit.ly/1A6HKbH)

 

China

SHANGHAI SECURITIES NEWS

- Bad loans at Chinese banks climbed to 766.9 billion yuan ($125.13 billion) by the end of September, an increase of 72.5 billion yuan from a quarter earlier, according to China's banking regulator. Bad loan ratio stood at 1.16 percent, up 0.09 percentage point.

CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL

- Shares of Everbright Securities Co Ltd have been suspended from trading starting Monday, pending announcement of plans for the private placement of shares.

SHANGHAI DAILY

- The first intellectual property (IP) bureau on China's mainland, dealing with all legal issues concerning brands, patents and copyright, opened in the city. So far, these three areas have been handled by different organisations, resulting in complexity in handling IP disputes.

CHINA DAILY

- China will need to rely on capital exports and investment in innovation to drive growth as foreign trade and the domestic property sector, the main engines of the economy, are losing momentum, a leading economist said on Friday. The country is entering a phase where it will use capital exports to drive the overseas growth of its infrastructure-related products and services, such as railways, utilities and machineries.

PEOPLE'S DAILY

- China's aviation industry has narrowed its gap with developed countries through persistent innovation, and should advance to new heights through cooperation.

Britain

Sunday Telegraph

WAITROSE BOSS SAYS SOME FOOD RETAILERS MAY CLOSE

Supermarkets in Britain could start to close as the industry copes with an unprecedented slide in sales and profits, according to Mark Price, managing director of Waitrose. Price said it was "incredibly hard to call" whether all of Britain's food retailers would survive.

FACEBOOK PLANS FREE AFRICA INTERNET WITH AVANTI

Facebook is in advanced talks with satellite operator Avanti Communications over a project to provide free Internet access across swathes of Africa.

BT RULES OUT SALE OF IT OUTSOURCING ARM

BT Group has ruled out a spin-off or sale of its Global Services outsourcing arm in the face of pressure from several major shareholders to offload the business.

Sunday Times

QUINDELL SEEKS HEDGE FUND CASH INJECTION

Insurance services group Quindell has opened talks with hedge funds about a potential cash injection. The company is believed to have met at least two hedge funds in recent weeks. Quindell said it regularly held talks with financial institutions but insisted it had no need for additional cash.

FARROW & BALL IN TALKS TO BE BOUGHT BY ARES

Paint maker Farrow & Ball is in talks to be bought by Ares Management, the owner of upmarket U.S. department store Neiman Marcus, in a deal worth up to 300 million pounds ($470 million).

ISRAELI BILLIONAIRE WEIGHS CAMDEN MARKET FLOAT

Israeli gambling and technology billionaire Teddy Sagi is considering plans to float Camden Market, the north London tourist spot. Sagi has spent an estimated 500 million pounds buying up separate parts of the market.

Mail on Sunday

RBS FACES NEW PAY ROW AFTER FOREX SCANDAL

Royal Bank of Scotland faces a political row over a plan to give former chief executive Stephen Hester millions of pounds in share awards, despite its 400 million pounds fine for collusion in the foreign exchange market.

 

*Fly On The Wall Pre-market Buzz*

ECONOMIC REPORTS

Domestic economic reports scheduled for today include:
Empire State manufacturing survey for November at 8:30--consensus 10.3
Industrial production for October at 9:15--consensus up 0.2%
Capacity utilization rate for October at 9:15--consensus flat at 79.3%

ANALYST RESEARCH

Upgrades

Constellium (CSTM) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Bernstein
CyrusOne (CONE) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Stifel
Hudson Valley (HVB) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Keefe Bruyette
MGIC Investment (MTG) upgraded to Conviction Buy from Buy at Goldman
NuVasive (NUVA) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo
Phillips 66 (PSX) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse
Pinnacle Foods (PF) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank
Rayonier (RYN) upgraded to Outperform from Sector Perform at RBC Capital
Thoratec (THOR) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo
Volcano (VOLC) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse

Downgrades

Allstate (ALL) downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Keefe Bruyette
Boise Cascade (BCC) downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at BMO Capital
CarMax (KMX) downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Morgan Stanley
Denbury Resources (DNR) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Sterne Agee
Denbury Resources (DNR) downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Credit Suisse
Hecla Mining (HL) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Roth Capital
Hertz (HTZ) downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Wells Fargo
Imperva (IMPV) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JPMorgan
JG Wentworth (JGW) downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Keefe Bruyette
Joe's Jeans (JOEZ) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at B. Riley
Marriott (MAR) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS
Nokia (NOK) downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform at Raymond James
Office Depot (ODP) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Goldman
Procter & Gamble (PG) downgraded to Hold from Buy at Canaccord
Starwood (HOT) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS
TubeMogul (TUBE) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup
Wet Seal (WTSL) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at B. Riley

Initiations

Akamai (AKAM) resumed with a Market Perform at JMP Securities
Boston Properties (BXP) initiated with a Buy at Mizuho
DBV Technologies (DBVT) initiated with a Buy at Citigroup
DBV Technologies (DBVT) initiated with an Outperform at Leerink
Eagle Point Credit (ECC) initiated with a Market Perform at Keefe Bruyette
Proteon Therapeutics (PRTO) initiated with a Buy at Stifel
Proteon Therapeutics (PRTO) initiated with an Outperform at JMP Securities
Proteon Therapeutics (PRTO) initiated with an Outperform at RW Baird
Sunoco Logistics (SXL) initiated with a Buy at Jefferies
Transocean Partners (RIGP) initiated with a Buy at Citigroup

COMPANY NEWS

Halliburton (HAL) to acquire Baker Hughes (BHI) for $78.62 per share in cash and stock deal, representing an equity value of $34.6B and enterprise value of $38B
Pfizer (PFE) formed strategic alliance with Merck KGaA (MKGAY) to jointly develop and commercialize MSB0010718C, an investigational anti-PD-L1
antibody currently in development by Merck KGaA as a potential treatment for multiple types of cancer
JPMorgan (JPM) reported October net credit losses 2.26% vs. 2.24% last month
Exterran (EXH) to spin off international, fabrication businesses
Inovio (INO), Roche (RHHBY) terminated collaboration for INO-5150

EARNINGS

Companies that beat consensus earnings expectations last night and today include:
China Mobile Games (CMGE), Sinovac Biotech (SVA), Anthera Pharmaceuticals (ANTH)

Companies that missed consensus earnings expectations include:
JD.com (JD), ContraFact (CFRX), MAG Silver (MVG)

NEWSPAPERS/WEBSITES

Actavis (ACT) close to buying Allergan (AGN) for over $64B, Bloomberg reports (VRX)
Hasbro (HAS) ends DreamWorks (DWA) talks after stock decline, Deadline reports
Facebook (FB) working on 'Facebook at Work' website, FT reports (GOOG, LNKD, MSFT)
DuPont (DD) probed on Texas chemical plant accident that left four dead, WSJ reports
Third Point attempts 'golden leash' strategy in Dow Chemical (DOW) fight, WSJ reports
Ford (F) could rise 30% in a year, Barron's says
Cummins (CMI) could rise over 15% in FY15, Barron's says
Arista Networks (ANET) growth could slow, Barron's says

SYNDICATE

Core Molding (CMT) files $50M mixed securities shelf
Dyax (DYAX) files automatic mixed securities shelf
Magellan Petroleum (MPET) files $100M mixed securities shelf
PICO Holdings (PICO) files to sell $400M mixed securities shelf Reported by Zero Hedge 6 hours ago.