Losses related to Affordable Care Act health insurance plans led Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina to reconsider the scope of plans it might offer on HealthCare.gov in 2017 and beyond. “We are doing everything we can to participate in the exchange, but must evaluate the sustainability and affordability of any plans we offer our customers for 2017,” according to a statement released by the health insurer on Thursday. One of the widely debated provisions in the ACA saw private health…
Reported by bizjournals 9 hours ago.
Blue Cross to 'evaluate' its Affordable Care Act participation in 2017
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How Obama Would Fix Obamacare If Congress Would Let Him
WASHINGTON -- The Affordable Care Act is nearly six years old, and over that time it's made real headway accomplishing some of its key goals.
The uninsured rate is the lowest ever recorded, health insurance coverage is now guaranteed to everyone regardless of their pre-existing conditions, low-income people have access to low-cost or even no-cost coverage, and national health care spending has grown at a historically low pace.
But as anyone who has paid attention to Obamacare knows, the law is far from perfect. Tens of millions of Americans remain without health coverage and the insurance policies sold on the exchange marketplaces are still unaffordable to too many people, even with subsidies. Shopping for health insurance continues to be a headache, especially in an era of high deductibles and narrow networks of providers.
These are just a few of the shortcomings of the American health care system that the Affordable Care Act either didn't address, failed to resolve or even created. There has been a lot of progress toward a more equitable, stable and accessible health care system, but more is needed.
President Barack Obama knows this, even as he brags about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. While Congress has been busy repeatedly attempting to repeal Obamacare, the White House has proposed a series of fixes that could make it work better.
Obama signed off on a bunch of small changes to Obamacare and reluctantly agreed to delaying some key provisions last year, but most of his ideas for further reforming the health care system aren't likely to get so much as a hearing in today's rancorously partisan political atmosphere.
Drawn mainly from the budget request the White House released this week and proposals from previous years, here are some of the big ways Obama would improve Obamacare if he had his way:
Expand The Medicaid Expansion
The most important part of the Affordable Care Act for low-income people was its expansion of Medicaid to anyone earning up to 133 percent of the poverty level, which is about $15,700 for a single person. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states could refuse to participate, and 19 states still haven't taken part in the expansion, which leaves their poorest residents with no access to affordable health care.
A key incentive to expand Medicaid is that the federal government pays the full cost of expansion from 2014 to 2016, then gradually decreases its share to 90 percent by 2020. Obama wants to alter this policy so that states get three free years of Medicaid expansion regardless of when they put it into place. This could go a long way to further reducing the uninsured rate.
Simplify Health Insurance Plans
In most states, the sheer number of health insurance plans available on the exchanges can be daunting for consumers, particularly since it can be really hard to tell one Bronze plan from the next. The White House has proposed to further standardize plans -- which might reduce the number of products on the exchanges, but would make it easier to differentiate one from another and make things like copayments more consistent from policy to policy. California has already done this in its successful exchange.
Fix Surprise Medical Bills
It's frustrating and all too common: You think you do everything right, picking a hospital and a doctor in your insurance network, only to get a bill later from another professional at the hospital who's not in your network.
Obamacare didn't address this, but the White House wants to change the rules so providers and insurers are tasked with working out a payment, rather than sticking patients with the cost. New York enacted strong protections against surprise bills last year, and Florida, Pennsylvania and other states are looking into it, too.
Extend Coverage For Kids
The Children's Health Insurance Program, created in 1997, is a big reason why nearly all kids in the U.S. have health coverage. When Obamacare was being written, some lawmakers wanted to eliminate the benefit and move children into Medicaid or exchange plans, but the final bill continued funding CHIP. The White House wants to keep the program funded for another three years, through fiscal year 2019.
Buff Up The Cadillac Tax
Last year, Obama signed a large government spending bill that postponed the introduction of a tax on high-priced health insurance plans from 2018 to 2020, even though he opposed the delay. The so-called "Cadillac tax" is designed to dissuade employers from offering generous health benefits that encourage the heavy use of medical care. This was supposed to cut health care spending and raise money to pay for the rest of Obamacare.
But big business and big labor hate the tax, and enough Democrats agreed with Republicans to push it back. The White House has pitched modifications to the tax that would soften the blow on lower-income workers or people whose insurance is expensive because they live in areas with higher-than-average health care costs.
Improve Insurance Provider Networks
Health insurance policies, especially on the exchanges, increasingly come with access to fewer doctors and hospitals than they used to. Excluding providers that won't accept lower payments is one way insurers try to keep premiums down. But as a result of these narrow networks, patients sometimes can't get appointments or have to travel long distances to visit a specialist or a hospital.
Washington state and others have tough standards requiring insurers to contract with more medical professionals. The Obama administration wants to take smaller steps. In a regulation proposed last fall, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it may begin scrutinizing provider lists more closely.
Rein In Prescription Drug Costs
Obama hasn't proposed radical changes to the pharmaceutical industry to lower U.S. drug prices to what people pay in other countries, but he has floated a handful of policies that could help some people.
The White House would let Medicare set prices for the most expensive drugs; force drugmakers to pay bigger rebates to the government when Medicare beneficiaries buy medicine, like they do under Medicaid; require pharmaceutical companies to disclose their justifications for the prices they charge; and crack down on deals drug companies make to delay generic drugs from reaching the market. Obama also wants to enhance Medicare's prescription drug benefit.
Tackle Health Care Costs And Quality
The Affordable Care Act includes a plethora of policies and experiments designed to change the way health care is delivered, like financial incentives for hospitals to ensure that patients don't have to be treated for the same thing twice or to better coordinate the care they provide with doctors.
Obama's budget would expand and extend some of these programs, including Accountable Care Organizations, which are alliances of doctors and hospitals that collaborate on patient care to improve quality and reduce costs.
Yet even with all these proposals, the White House hasn't directly addressed some of the significant problems Obamacare and American consumers face. Some big health insurance companies are struggling financially in the exchanges. Affordability is major concern for middle-income households. Progress in covering the uninsured may have stalled.
Looking beyond Obama's presidency, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed changes she argues would strengthen the Affordable Care Act, and her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) favors replacing the entire health care system with a single-payer program.
But a Democratic president likely wouldn't get much farther than Obama has in making constructive changes to Obamacare, and a Republican president would seek to repeal it -- though GOP candidates haven't said much about what they'd do instead. Whatever happens in November, we may have to live with the Obamacare we've already got.
*Also on HuffPost:*
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.
The uninsured rate is the lowest ever recorded, health insurance coverage is now guaranteed to everyone regardless of their pre-existing conditions, low-income people have access to low-cost or even no-cost coverage, and national health care spending has grown at a historically low pace.
But as anyone who has paid attention to Obamacare knows, the law is far from perfect. Tens of millions of Americans remain without health coverage and the insurance policies sold on the exchange marketplaces are still unaffordable to too many people, even with subsidies. Shopping for health insurance continues to be a headache, especially in an era of high deductibles and narrow networks of providers.
These are just a few of the shortcomings of the American health care system that the Affordable Care Act either didn't address, failed to resolve or even created. There has been a lot of progress toward a more equitable, stable and accessible health care system, but more is needed.
President Barack Obama knows this, even as he brags about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. While Congress has been busy repeatedly attempting to repeal Obamacare, the White House has proposed a series of fixes that could make it work better.
Obama signed off on a bunch of small changes to Obamacare and reluctantly agreed to delaying some key provisions last year, but most of his ideas for further reforming the health care system aren't likely to get so much as a hearing in today's rancorously partisan political atmosphere.
Drawn mainly from the budget request the White House released this week and proposals from previous years, here are some of the big ways Obama would improve Obamacare if he had his way:
Expand The Medicaid Expansion
The most important part of the Affordable Care Act for low-income people was its expansion of Medicaid to anyone earning up to 133 percent of the poverty level, which is about $15,700 for a single person. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states could refuse to participate, and 19 states still haven't taken part in the expansion, which leaves their poorest residents with no access to affordable health care.
A key incentive to expand Medicaid is that the federal government pays the full cost of expansion from 2014 to 2016, then gradually decreases its share to 90 percent by 2020. Obama wants to alter this policy so that states get three free years of Medicaid expansion regardless of when they put it into place. This could go a long way to further reducing the uninsured rate.
Simplify Health Insurance Plans
In most states, the sheer number of health insurance plans available on the exchanges can be daunting for consumers, particularly since it can be really hard to tell one Bronze plan from the next. The White House has proposed to further standardize plans -- which might reduce the number of products on the exchanges, but would make it easier to differentiate one from another and make things like copayments more consistent from policy to policy. California has already done this in its successful exchange.
Fix Surprise Medical Bills
It's frustrating and all too common: You think you do everything right, picking a hospital and a doctor in your insurance network, only to get a bill later from another professional at the hospital who's not in your network.
Obamacare didn't address this, but the White House wants to change the rules so providers and insurers are tasked with working out a payment, rather than sticking patients with the cost. New York enacted strong protections against surprise bills last year, and Florida, Pennsylvania and other states are looking into it, too.
Extend Coverage For Kids
The Children's Health Insurance Program, created in 1997, is a big reason why nearly all kids in the U.S. have health coverage. When Obamacare was being written, some lawmakers wanted to eliminate the benefit and move children into Medicaid or exchange plans, but the final bill continued funding CHIP. The White House wants to keep the program funded for another three years, through fiscal year 2019.
Buff Up The Cadillac Tax
Last year, Obama signed a large government spending bill that postponed the introduction of a tax on high-priced health insurance plans from 2018 to 2020, even though he opposed the delay. The so-called "Cadillac tax" is designed to dissuade employers from offering generous health benefits that encourage the heavy use of medical care. This was supposed to cut health care spending and raise money to pay for the rest of Obamacare.
But big business and big labor hate the tax, and enough Democrats agreed with Republicans to push it back. The White House has pitched modifications to the tax that would soften the blow on lower-income workers or people whose insurance is expensive because they live in areas with higher-than-average health care costs.
Improve Insurance Provider Networks
Health insurance policies, especially on the exchanges, increasingly come with access to fewer doctors and hospitals than they used to. Excluding providers that won't accept lower payments is one way insurers try to keep premiums down. But as a result of these narrow networks, patients sometimes can't get appointments or have to travel long distances to visit a specialist or a hospital.
Washington state and others have tough standards requiring insurers to contract with more medical professionals. The Obama administration wants to take smaller steps. In a regulation proposed last fall, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it may begin scrutinizing provider lists more closely.
Rein In Prescription Drug Costs
Obama hasn't proposed radical changes to the pharmaceutical industry to lower U.S. drug prices to what people pay in other countries, but he has floated a handful of policies that could help some people.
The White House would let Medicare set prices for the most expensive drugs; force drugmakers to pay bigger rebates to the government when Medicare beneficiaries buy medicine, like they do under Medicaid; require pharmaceutical companies to disclose their justifications for the prices they charge; and crack down on deals drug companies make to delay generic drugs from reaching the market. Obama also wants to enhance Medicare's prescription drug benefit.
Tackle Health Care Costs And Quality
The Affordable Care Act includes a plethora of policies and experiments designed to change the way health care is delivered, like financial incentives for hospitals to ensure that patients don't have to be treated for the same thing twice or to better coordinate the care they provide with doctors.
Obama's budget would expand and extend some of these programs, including Accountable Care Organizations, which are alliances of doctors and hospitals that collaborate on patient care to improve quality and reduce costs.
Yet even with all these proposals, the White House hasn't directly addressed some of the significant problems Obamacare and American consumers face. Some big health insurance companies are struggling financially in the exchanges. Affordability is major concern for middle-income households. Progress in covering the uninsured may have stalled.
Looking beyond Obama's presidency, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed changes she argues would strengthen the Affordable Care Act, and her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) favors replacing the entire health care system with a single-payer program.
But a Democratic president likely wouldn't get much farther than Obama has in making constructive changes to Obamacare, and a Republican president would seek to repeal it -- though GOP candidates haven't said much about what they'd do instead. Whatever happens in November, we may have to live with the Obamacare we've already got.
*Also on HuffPost:*
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.
↧
Missouri Lawmakers Push To Punish Mizzou Because Students Protested
A committee of the Missouri legislature voted this week to penalize the University of Missouri's flagship campus financially because students there engaged in protests.
State Rep. Donna Lichtenegger (R-Jackson) cited student activism as the reason to pass a budget amendment that would exclude Mizzou from any increase in state support for higher education next year, according to local media reports.
"They are there to learn, not to protest all day long. I thought we learned that lesson in the '60s. Obviously we haven't," she said.
Lichtenegger, who chairs the House Committee for Higher Education Appropriations, had proposed the amendment. Her office told HuffPost that she was not available to comment on the budget this week.
Students protested at the University of Missouri in November over the administration's response to multiple incidents of racism on and near campus, over a confrontation between activists and then-President Tim Wolfe, and over decisions to scrap health insurance for graduate students and cut ties to Planned Parenthood.
"It seems to me that the legislature is trying to retaliate against the university for the events that happened last fall," said junior Polly Haun, a student government senator at Mizzou. She worried that if her school doesn't receive the budget increases being considered for other state-funded Missouri colleges and universities, there will be tuition increases.
"Students should feel free to express themselves about important issues on campus without the threat of rising tuition costs, and the university should be able to operate independently of the legislature," Haun said. At Wednesday's committee hearing, Lichtenegger suggested that Mizzou's board of curators, the university's governing body, should do more to prevent students from protesting.
"It would be one thing if it just made state news, but this is national," she said. "It has made our university a laughingstock, and I'm trying to make people understand that we are not going to be a laughingstock."
Her committee voted Wednesday to provide a 2 percent increase in state appropriations for public colleges except for Mizzou's flagship Columbia campus, MissouriNet reports.
In justifying that decision, Lichtenegger also pointed to the university's handling of Melissa Click, a tenured professor seen on video trying to block student journalists from an area on campus where protesters were gathered during the November demonstrations.
Click was charged with misdemeanor assault last month for her actions and agreed to do community service to avoid prosecution. She publicly apologized for a second time this week. The university has suspended Click while it determines whether to levy its own sanctions.
Had the chair of the university's communications department, where Click teaches, immediately revoked the professor's "privileges" following the confrontation, "we wouldn't be in this mess right now," Lichtenegger said at the hearing.
The American Association of University Professors has criticized Mizzou for suspending Click, which it contended violates her due process rights.
"There are University procedures in place for handling the situation," Galen Suppes, president of the association's Mizzou chapter, told HuffPost in an email. "For the legislature to expect the University to by-pass its own procedures is wrong on many levels."
He urged state lawmakers to "not act rashly (as they appear to be acting)."
The University of Missouri said it does not comment on pending legislation.
Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter covering higher education, based in New York. You can reach him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com or on Twitter: @tylerkingkade.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.
State Rep. Donna Lichtenegger (R-Jackson) cited student activism as the reason to pass a budget amendment that would exclude Mizzou from any increase in state support for higher education next year, according to local media reports.
"They are there to learn, not to protest all day long. I thought we learned that lesson in the '60s. Obviously we haven't," she said.
Lichtenegger, who chairs the House Committee for Higher Education Appropriations, had proposed the amendment. Her office told HuffPost that she was not available to comment on the budget this week.
Students protested at the University of Missouri in November over the administration's response to multiple incidents of racism on and near campus, over a confrontation between activists and then-President Tim Wolfe, and over decisions to scrap health insurance for graduate students and cut ties to Planned Parenthood.
"It seems to me that the legislature is trying to retaliate against the university for the events that happened last fall," said junior Polly Haun, a student government senator at Mizzou. She worried that if her school doesn't receive the budget increases being considered for other state-funded Missouri colleges and universities, there will be tuition increases.
"Students should feel free to express themselves about important issues on campus without the threat of rising tuition costs, and the university should be able to operate independently of the legislature," Haun said. At Wednesday's committee hearing, Lichtenegger suggested that Mizzou's board of curators, the university's governing body, should do more to prevent students from protesting.
"It would be one thing if it just made state news, but this is national," she said. "It has made our university a laughingstock, and I'm trying to make people understand that we are not going to be a laughingstock."
Her committee voted Wednesday to provide a 2 percent increase in state appropriations for public colleges except for Mizzou's flagship Columbia campus, MissouriNet reports.
In justifying that decision, Lichtenegger also pointed to the university's handling of Melissa Click, a tenured professor seen on video trying to block student journalists from an area on campus where protesters were gathered during the November demonstrations.
Click was charged with misdemeanor assault last month for her actions and agreed to do community service to avoid prosecution. She publicly apologized for a second time this week. The university has suspended Click while it determines whether to levy its own sanctions.
Had the chair of the university's communications department, where Click teaches, immediately revoked the professor's "privileges" following the confrontation, "we wouldn't be in this mess right now," Lichtenegger said at the hearing.
The American Association of University Professors has criticized Mizzou for suspending Click, which it contended violates her due process rights.
"There are University procedures in place for handling the situation," Galen Suppes, president of the association's Mizzou chapter, told HuffPost in an email. "For the legislature to expect the University to by-pass its own procedures is wrong on many levels."
He urged state lawmakers to "not act rashly (as they appear to be acting)."
The University of Missouri said it does not comment on pending legislation.
Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter covering higher education, based in New York. You can reach him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com or on Twitter: @tylerkingkade.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.
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Sanders and Trump: Strange Bedfellows Singing From the Same Hymnal
Donald Trump has his finger on the zeitgeist. Speaking to his gathered supporters after his New Hampshire victory, he observed that if the unemployment rate was really 5 percent, as suggested by official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he never would have garnered the support that he has. The real unemployment rate might not be the 28 percent that Trump suggested, but low labor force participation rates and high underemployment rates, as well as stagnant real incomes -- factors that people experience in their day-to-day lives, buttress Trump's essential point, and the BLS itself publishes an alternative unemployment rate calculation of that suggests a rate that is twice the official figure. However one views the official data, exit polls from the New Hampshire primary suggest that for Democrats and Republican voters alike, the economy is far and away the greatest problem facing the nation.
This should not come as a surprise to party leaders. After all, according to U.S. Census data, median household income today is where it was twenty years ago, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), and effectively the same as it was at the end of the Reagan administration. It is an old story. The rich are getting richer, the highly educated are doing fine, but the less educated are getting poorer and the average American family has been treading water for decades now. Notwithstanding this dichotomy, the U.S. economy has been a global success story. Since the 1990s, U.S. gross domestic product has risen consistently and shown greater resilience in the face of economic downturns than any other advanced nation, and U.S. policies supporting free trade and open markets have engendered an era of economic growth and declining rates of poverty across the globe. But if that success has had winners, it has had losers too.
Party leaders and candidates can learn a lot about the reality facing voters from primary elections. The New Hampshire primary is particularly interesting because it is an open primary, meaning that people can vote for whomever they want, as in a general election. As such, it might be a less useful gauge of the state of the competition in either party -- for example, we do not know what percentage of those who voted for Donald Trump were Democrats or independents, or for that matter how many Republicans voted for Hillary or Bernie -- but it provides an interesting snapshot of the tenor of the electorate as a whole.
In New Hampshire this week, 47 percent of the electorate voted for either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, the two candidates who were running the most direct appeals to voters who are unhappy with the economic status quo. It might seem counter-intuitive to some to look at the vote from that perspective, but the campaigns of Sanders and Trump are more similar than a cursory profile might suggest. At a time when the electorate is being described as increasingly divided and partisan, there is a remarkable degree of alignment among two campaigns that are viewed by many as representing the left and right extremes of the political spectrum.
Both the Sanders and Trump campaigns speak directly to the anxieties and anger that many working Americans feel toward a political system that has ignored their welfare. They have each focused on the corrupting influence of campaign contributions on our politics, and blame the plight of American workers and their families in part on the unholy alliance of those who give and those who receive political contributions. Sanders's most effective attack on Hillary Clinton has been that she was corrupted by the money she took from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms. Trump attacked Jeb Bush and others as puppets, whose strings would be pulled by the donors who fund their campaigns and their Super PACs.
As Trump pointed out in his victory speech in New Hampshire, he and Bernie Sanders both oppose free trade and its role in eviscerating middle class incomes. They both oppose the special tax treatment accorded to hedge fund managers and others in the finance industry. They both criticize Obamacare as being an expensive healthcare solution that was designed to protect the interests of insurance companies, big pharma, and other industries who have been massive contributors to politicians on both sides of the aisle. While Trump has disavowed his former advocacy of a single-payer healthcare system, last week he reiterated his core, distinctly non-Republican belief that no American should be without health insurance, paid for by the government if need be. Sanders and Trump both opposed the Iraq war, with Trump suggesting in a Republican debate that he would rather have seen the $4 trillion spent on military intervention in the Middle East used instead to fund roads and schools and hospitals and infrastructure, and both continue to express skepticism of deepening U.S. involvement in the turmoil in the Middle East.
In the 1996 Republican primaries, Pat Buchanan ran a nativist campaign of "peasants with pitchforks" against economic elites, immigration, free trade and military interventionism. Today, after three decades of GDP growth that has provided little benefit to the average American family and wars that have cost much but accomplished little, Trump is running on the Buchanan playbook, but in much more fertile terrain. However, unlike Buchanan -- or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz for that matter -- Trump is not a culture warrior. He gives a nod to guns and abortion, but it is a perfunctory nod at best. His campaign, like that of Bernie Sanders, is about money and politics and the economic insecurities of the American family.
Even though their messages are clear, establishment Democrats and Republicans alike are at a loss as to how to deal with the winners in New Hampshire. Republicans, who have been waiting for months for Trump to crash and burn, crossed their fingers and hoped that the Trump insurgency had died in Iowa and that their prayers had been answered with the ascendancy of Marco Rubio. But after Rubio's debate debacle a week later, Trump outperformed even his lofty poll numbers in New Hampshire and establishment Republicans are once again letting the possibility of a Trump nomination sink in.
If anything, the Democrat establishment is worse off, facing the prospect of the farthest left member of the U.S. Senate -- not even a Democrat actually -- toppling Hillary Clinton and becoming the standard bearer for the party in the fall. For all the enthusiasm Bernie Sanders engenders, and a platform that is not as extreme as his rhetoric over the years might suggest, a Sanders candidacy leaves visions of George McGovern dancing in their heads. And that is not even fair to McGovern, who was a traditional, pro-market Democrat who was castigated for oppositing the Vietnam War and proposing a negative income tax plan (that turned out to be a precursor to the now-wildly popular earned income tax credit). Establishment Democrats are acutely aware that a loss in November will leave the party without the White House, the Senate, or the House -- to say nothing of the Supreme Court -- and are loath to cast their lot with Sanders.
Republican candidates who decried Trump's bigotry and xenophobia early on have come to realize that he has his finger on the pulse of the electorate and now mimic his views on a number of issues. On the Democrat side, the oddest aspect of the campaign has been Hillary Clinton's determination to prove that she is as progressive as Bernie Sanders. Like Republicans trying to be as nativist or bigoted as Trump, it is a futile effort. After all, Bernie Sanders is a socialist running as a Democrat -- a democratic socialist to use the new, softer language -- and therefore she is simply not going to be able to flank him on his left. But more puzzling is why she would want to. The more Hillary tries to be who Bernie is and not who she is -- a center-left politician who is comfortable traversing the halls of power -- the more she exacerbates her deeper problems of trust and authenticity. Hillary has been among the most visible members of the Democratic Party establishment for decades now. It does not matter if this is an anti-establishment year, Hillary has to run as herself.
It may well be that by the end of the summer the Trump and Sanders challenges to the establishment will recede. After all, Hillary remains the overwhelming favorite on the Democrat side and Trump is, well, Trump. He really can't be the nominee of a major political party. But the issues they are pointing to are real. For years now, the system has been rigged in favor of people with money. Working class voters of both parties have seen their livelihoods undermined by free trade deals that shipped jobs overseas, bankruptcy reforms that have made it nearly impossible for them to dig themselves out of difficult circumstances, and intellectual property laws that have increased the costs of prescription drugs, just to name a few. One piece of legislation after another -- each bought and paid for by major industries -- has tilted the playing field against them.
That is the dirty secret of the corruption of our democracy. While all the hoopla has been generated around Citizens United and the hundreds of millions of dollars funneled into presidential campaigns and Super PACs, the real action has always been on the legislative side, where lobbying expenditures and political contributions -- now approaching $5 billion a year -- have delivered real results, year after year, all tracked and available for anyone who cares to look at OpenSecrets.org.
Nearly half of the voters in the New Hampshire primary cast their ballots for two very different candidates with surprisingly similar messages. If establishment Democrats and Republicans don't understand why, they haven't been paying attention. For decades now, each of the political parties have been paying more attention to those who fund their political campaigns than to the plight of those who cast the ballots, and now they are reaping the whirlwind. This year, voters flocking to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are declaring, in the famous words of Howard Beale -- the news anchor who rails against the establishment in Network -- that they are mad as hell and aren't going to take it any more.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump might go away, and if they do, the political establishment will breath a sigh of relief. But it is also possible that they aren't going to go away. Instead of their near-50 percent of the vote waning away, it might just continue to rise, and one of them might actually be elected president this year.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.
This should not come as a surprise to party leaders. After all, according to U.S. Census data, median household income today is where it was twenty years ago, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), and effectively the same as it was at the end of the Reagan administration. It is an old story. The rich are getting richer, the highly educated are doing fine, but the less educated are getting poorer and the average American family has been treading water for decades now. Notwithstanding this dichotomy, the U.S. economy has been a global success story. Since the 1990s, U.S. gross domestic product has risen consistently and shown greater resilience in the face of economic downturns than any other advanced nation, and U.S. policies supporting free trade and open markets have engendered an era of economic growth and declining rates of poverty across the globe. But if that success has had winners, it has had losers too.
Party leaders and candidates can learn a lot about the reality facing voters from primary elections. The New Hampshire primary is particularly interesting because it is an open primary, meaning that people can vote for whomever they want, as in a general election. As such, it might be a less useful gauge of the state of the competition in either party -- for example, we do not know what percentage of those who voted for Donald Trump were Democrats or independents, or for that matter how many Republicans voted for Hillary or Bernie -- but it provides an interesting snapshot of the tenor of the electorate as a whole.
In New Hampshire this week, 47 percent of the electorate voted for either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, the two candidates who were running the most direct appeals to voters who are unhappy with the economic status quo. It might seem counter-intuitive to some to look at the vote from that perspective, but the campaigns of Sanders and Trump are more similar than a cursory profile might suggest. At a time when the electorate is being described as increasingly divided and partisan, there is a remarkable degree of alignment among two campaigns that are viewed by many as representing the left and right extremes of the political spectrum.
Both the Sanders and Trump campaigns speak directly to the anxieties and anger that many working Americans feel toward a political system that has ignored their welfare. They have each focused on the corrupting influence of campaign contributions on our politics, and blame the plight of American workers and their families in part on the unholy alliance of those who give and those who receive political contributions. Sanders's most effective attack on Hillary Clinton has been that she was corrupted by the money she took from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms. Trump attacked Jeb Bush and others as puppets, whose strings would be pulled by the donors who fund their campaigns and their Super PACs.
As Trump pointed out in his victory speech in New Hampshire, he and Bernie Sanders both oppose free trade and its role in eviscerating middle class incomes. They both oppose the special tax treatment accorded to hedge fund managers and others in the finance industry. They both criticize Obamacare as being an expensive healthcare solution that was designed to protect the interests of insurance companies, big pharma, and other industries who have been massive contributors to politicians on both sides of the aisle. While Trump has disavowed his former advocacy of a single-payer healthcare system, last week he reiterated his core, distinctly non-Republican belief that no American should be without health insurance, paid for by the government if need be. Sanders and Trump both opposed the Iraq war, with Trump suggesting in a Republican debate that he would rather have seen the $4 trillion spent on military intervention in the Middle East used instead to fund roads and schools and hospitals and infrastructure, and both continue to express skepticism of deepening U.S. involvement in the turmoil in the Middle East.
In the 1996 Republican primaries, Pat Buchanan ran a nativist campaign of "peasants with pitchforks" against economic elites, immigration, free trade and military interventionism. Today, after three decades of GDP growth that has provided little benefit to the average American family and wars that have cost much but accomplished little, Trump is running on the Buchanan playbook, but in much more fertile terrain. However, unlike Buchanan -- or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz for that matter -- Trump is not a culture warrior. He gives a nod to guns and abortion, but it is a perfunctory nod at best. His campaign, like that of Bernie Sanders, is about money and politics and the economic insecurities of the American family.
Even though their messages are clear, establishment Democrats and Republicans alike are at a loss as to how to deal with the winners in New Hampshire. Republicans, who have been waiting for months for Trump to crash and burn, crossed their fingers and hoped that the Trump insurgency had died in Iowa and that their prayers had been answered with the ascendancy of Marco Rubio. But after Rubio's debate debacle a week later, Trump outperformed even his lofty poll numbers in New Hampshire and establishment Republicans are once again letting the possibility of a Trump nomination sink in.
If anything, the Democrat establishment is worse off, facing the prospect of the farthest left member of the U.S. Senate -- not even a Democrat actually -- toppling Hillary Clinton and becoming the standard bearer for the party in the fall. For all the enthusiasm Bernie Sanders engenders, and a platform that is not as extreme as his rhetoric over the years might suggest, a Sanders candidacy leaves visions of George McGovern dancing in their heads. And that is not even fair to McGovern, who was a traditional, pro-market Democrat who was castigated for oppositing the Vietnam War and proposing a negative income tax plan (that turned out to be a precursor to the now-wildly popular earned income tax credit). Establishment Democrats are acutely aware that a loss in November will leave the party without the White House, the Senate, or the House -- to say nothing of the Supreme Court -- and are loath to cast their lot with Sanders.
Republican candidates who decried Trump's bigotry and xenophobia early on have come to realize that he has his finger on the pulse of the electorate and now mimic his views on a number of issues. On the Democrat side, the oddest aspect of the campaign has been Hillary Clinton's determination to prove that she is as progressive as Bernie Sanders. Like Republicans trying to be as nativist or bigoted as Trump, it is a futile effort. After all, Bernie Sanders is a socialist running as a Democrat -- a democratic socialist to use the new, softer language -- and therefore she is simply not going to be able to flank him on his left. But more puzzling is why she would want to. The more Hillary tries to be who Bernie is and not who she is -- a center-left politician who is comfortable traversing the halls of power -- the more she exacerbates her deeper problems of trust and authenticity. Hillary has been among the most visible members of the Democratic Party establishment for decades now. It does not matter if this is an anti-establishment year, Hillary has to run as herself.
It may well be that by the end of the summer the Trump and Sanders challenges to the establishment will recede. After all, Hillary remains the overwhelming favorite on the Democrat side and Trump is, well, Trump. He really can't be the nominee of a major political party. But the issues they are pointing to are real. For years now, the system has been rigged in favor of people with money. Working class voters of both parties have seen their livelihoods undermined by free trade deals that shipped jobs overseas, bankruptcy reforms that have made it nearly impossible for them to dig themselves out of difficult circumstances, and intellectual property laws that have increased the costs of prescription drugs, just to name a few. One piece of legislation after another -- each bought and paid for by major industries -- has tilted the playing field against them.
That is the dirty secret of the corruption of our democracy. While all the hoopla has been generated around Citizens United and the hundreds of millions of dollars funneled into presidential campaigns and Super PACs, the real action has always been on the legislative side, where lobbying expenditures and political contributions -- now approaching $5 billion a year -- have delivered real results, year after year, all tracked and available for anyone who cares to look at OpenSecrets.org.
Nearly half of the voters in the New Hampshire primary cast their ballots for two very different candidates with surprisingly similar messages. If establishment Democrats and Republicans don't understand why, they haven't been paying attention. For decades now, each of the political parties have been paying more attention to those who fund their political campaigns than to the plight of those who cast the ballots, and now they are reaping the whirlwind. This year, voters flocking to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are declaring, in the famous words of Howard Beale -- the news anchor who rails against the establishment in Network -- that they are mad as hell and aren't going to take it any more.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump might go away, and if they do, the political establishment will breath a sigh of relief. But it is also possible that they aren't going to go away. Instead of their near-50 percent of the vote waning away, it might just continue to rise, and one of them might actually be elected president this year.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.
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Hillary Clinton Sugarcoating Her Disastrous Record
Bernie Sanders is far too easy on Hillary Clinton in their debates. Clinton flaunts her record and experience in ways that Sanders could use to expose her serious vulnerabilities and disqualifications for becoming president. Sanders responds to Clinton's points, but without the precision that could demolish her arrogance.
For example, she repeatedly says that Sanders has not levelled with people about the cost of full Medicare for all, or single-payer. Really? In other countries, single-payer is far simpler and more efficient than our present profiteering, wasteful, corporatized healthcare industry. Canada covers all of its citizens, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, for about $4,500 per capita, compared to the over $9,000 per capita cost in the U.S. system that still leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured.
Detailed studies in the New England Journal of Medicine show big savings from a single-payer system in our country.
It is Hillary Clinton who is not levelling with the people about the costs of maintaining the spiraling U.S. costs of drugs, hospital stays and insurance premiums that are the highest in the world. The costs include: 1) the waste of well over $1 trillion a year; 2) daily denials of coverage by the Aetnas of the corporate world; 3) about forty thousand Americans dying each year, according to a peer-reviewed Harvard Medical School study, because they cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time; and 4) daily agonizing negotiations over insurance company denials, exclusions and bureaucratic paperwork that drive physicians up the wall.
Clinton hasn't explained why she was once for single-payer until she defined her "being practical" as refusing to take on big pharma, commercial hospital chains and the giant insurance companies. She is very "practical" about taking political contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street and the health care industry.
As one 18 year-old student told the New York Times recently about Clinton, "sometimes you get this feeling that all of her sentences are owned by someone."
This protector of the status quo and the gross imbalance of power between the few and the many expresses perfectly why Wall Street financiers like her so much and prove it with their large continuing monetary contributions.
Hillary Clinton is not "levelling with the American people," when she keeps the transcripts (which she requested at the time) of her secret speeches (at $5,000 a minute!) before large Wall Street and trade association conventions. Her speaking contract mandated secrecy. Clinton still hasn't told voters what she was telling big bankers and many other industries from automotive to drugs to real estate developers behind closed doors.
She has the gall to accuse Bernie Sanders of not being transparent. Sanders is a presidential candidate who doesn't take big fee speeches or big donations from fat cat influence-peddlers, and his record is as clean as the Clintons' political entanglements are sordid. (See Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.)
But it is in the area of foreign and military affairs that "Hillary the hawk" is most vulnerable. As Secretary of State her aggressiveness and poor judgement led her to persuade the White House where, sweeping aside the strong objections of Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, she persuaded President Obama to bomb Libya and topple its dictatorial regime.
Gates had warned about the aftermath. He was right. Libya has descended into a ghastly state of chaotic violence that has spilled into neighboring African nations, such as Mali, and that opened the way for ISIS to establish an expanding base in central Libya. Her fellow hawks in Washington are now calling for U.S. special forces to go to Libya.
Whether as Senator on the Armed Services Committee or as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton has never met a war or raid she didn't like, or a redundant, wasteful weapons system she was willing to aggressively challenge. As president, Hillary Clinton would mean more wars, more raids, more blowbacks, more military spending and more profits for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so prophetically warned about in his farewell address.
So when Bernie Sanders properly chided her for having as an advisor, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, she bridled and tried to escape by asking Sanders to name his foreign policy advisors.
In fact, Kissinger and Clinton do have much in common about projecting the American Empire to brutal levels. Kissinger was the "butcher of Cambodia," launching an illegal assault that destabilized that peaceful country into the Pol Pot slaughter of millions of innocents. She was the illegal "butcher of Libya," an ongoing, unfolding tragedy whose blowbacks of "unintended consequences" are building by the week.
In a devastating recounting of Hillary Clinton's disastrous war-making, Professor of Sustainable Economies at Columbia University, Jeffrey D. Sachs concludes that Clinton "is the candidate of the War Machine." In a widely noted article on Huffington Post Professor Sachs, an advisor to the United Nations on millennium development goals, called her record a "disaster," adding that "Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens U.S. security."
The transformation of Hillary Clinton from a progressive young lawyer to a committed corporatist and militarist brings shame on the recent endorsement of her candidacy by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC.
But then, considering all the years of Clintonite double talk and corporate contributions going to the Black Caucus PAC (according to FEC Reports January through December, 2015), and the Black Caucus conventions, why should anybody be surprised that Black Lives Matter and a growing surge of young African Americans are looking for someone in the White House who is not known for the Clintons' sweet talking betrayals?
See Michelle Alexander's recent article in The Nation, "Hillary Clinton Does Not Deserve Black People's Votes" for more information on this subject.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.
For example, she repeatedly says that Sanders has not levelled with people about the cost of full Medicare for all, or single-payer. Really? In other countries, single-payer is far simpler and more efficient than our present profiteering, wasteful, corporatized healthcare industry. Canada covers all of its citizens, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, for about $4,500 per capita, compared to the over $9,000 per capita cost in the U.S. system that still leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured.
Detailed studies in the New England Journal of Medicine show big savings from a single-payer system in our country.
It is Hillary Clinton who is not levelling with the people about the costs of maintaining the spiraling U.S. costs of drugs, hospital stays and insurance premiums that are the highest in the world. The costs include: 1) the waste of well over $1 trillion a year; 2) daily denials of coverage by the Aetnas of the corporate world; 3) about forty thousand Americans dying each year, according to a peer-reviewed Harvard Medical School study, because they cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time; and 4) daily agonizing negotiations over insurance company denials, exclusions and bureaucratic paperwork that drive physicians up the wall.
Clinton hasn't explained why she was once for single-payer until she defined her "being practical" as refusing to take on big pharma, commercial hospital chains and the giant insurance companies. She is very "practical" about taking political contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street and the health care industry.
As one 18 year-old student told the New York Times recently about Clinton, "sometimes you get this feeling that all of her sentences are owned by someone."
This protector of the status quo and the gross imbalance of power between the few and the many expresses perfectly why Wall Street financiers like her so much and prove it with their large continuing monetary contributions.
Hillary Clinton is not "levelling with the American people," when she keeps the transcripts (which she requested at the time) of her secret speeches (at $5,000 a minute!) before large Wall Street and trade association conventions. Her speaking contract mandated secrecy. Clinton still hasn't told voters what she was telling big bankers and many other industries from automotive to drugs to real estate developers behind closed doors.
She has the gall to accuse Bernie Sanders of not being transparent. Sanders is a presidential candidate who doesn't take big fee speeches or big donations from fat cat influence-peddlers, and his record is as clean as the Clintons' political entanglements are sordid. (See Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.)
But it is in the area of foreign and military affairs that "Hillary the hawk" is most vulnerable. As Secretary of State her aggressiveness and poor judgement led her to persuade the White House where, sweeping aside the strong objections of Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, she persuaded President Obama to bomb Libya and topple its dictatorial regime.
Gates had warned about the aftermath. He was right. Libya has descended into a ghastly state of chaotic violence that has spilled into neighboring African nations, such as Mali, and that opened the way for ISIS to establish an expanding base in central Libya. Her fellow hawks in Washington are now calling for U.S. special forces to go to Libya.
Whether as Senator on the Armed Services Committee or as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton has never met a war or raid she didn't like, or a redundant, wasteful weapons system she was willing to aggressively challenge. As president, Hillary Clinton would mean more wars, more raids, more blowbacks, more military spending and more profits for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so prophetically warned about in his farewell address.
So when Bernie Sanders properly chided her for having as an advisor, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, she bridled and tried to escape by asking Sanders to name his foreign policy advisors.
In fact, Kissinger and Clinton do have much in common about projecting the American Empire to brutal levels. Kissinger was the "butcher of Cambodia," launching an illegal assault that destabilized that peaceful country into the Pol Pot slaughter of millions of innocents. She was the illegal "butcher of Libya," an ongoing, unfolding tragedy whose blowbacks of "unintended consequences" are building by the week.
In a devastating recounting of Hillary Clinton's disastrous war-making, Professor of Sustainable Economies at Columbia University, Jeffrey D. Sachs concludes that Clinton "is the candidate of the War Machine." In a widely noted article on Huffington Post Professor Sachs, an advisor to the United Nations on millennium development goals, called her record a "disaster," adding that "Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens U.S. security."
The transformation of Hillary Clinton from a progressive young lawyer to a committed corporatist and militarist brings shame on the recent endorsement of her candidacy by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC.
But then, considering all the years of Clintonite double talk and corporate contributions going to the Black Caucus PAC (according to FEC Reports January through December, 2015), and the Black Caucus conventions, why should anybody be surprised that Black Lives Matter and a growing surge of young African Americans are looking for someone in the White House who is not known for the Clintons' sweet talking betrayals?
See Michelle Alexander's recent article in The Nation, "Hillary Clinton Does Not Deserve Black People's Votes" for more information on this subject.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.
↧
↧
3 common tax mistakes made by millennials
If your parents claim you as a dependent on their tax return, you cannot claim your personal exemption on your return. Health-insurance coverage and student-loan interest are among other considerations for many younger taxpayers.
Reported by Seattle Times 13 hours ago.
↧
The Deepening Economic Crash and the 2016 Election
If this bizarre election year needed one thing twist, it is now likely to play out against a deepening economic crisis. Advantage: Trump and Sanders.
The global economy is weakening, due to a perfect storm of a cratering economy in China, a crash of oil prices, slower growth in the Third World and a realization by central banks that they can't fix what's broken. There is a lot of whistling past the graveyard that the U.S. can somehow continue our (rather tepid) recovery, but in a global economy, no country is an island.
Fears of a recession push the stock market downward; then the wipeout of stock values helps bring that recession nearer. (Who said markets were rational?)
Consumers benefit for now from the cheaper gas prices at the pump. But with wage growth minimal, and real careers giving way to a succession of on-demand "gig" jobs, that's small comfort.
As the election year wears on, you can expect Republicans to blame the economic slide on the Obama Administration and the Democrats. You can expect Hillary Clinton to intensify her attacks on Bernie Sanders as the candidate of tax increases and big government. And you can expect the economic anxiety that drives the Trump and Sanders campaigns only to grow.
On the GOP side, why are Republican elites so terrified of Trump? Let us count the ways.
First, he doesn't need their money. So all the billions that were set to buy the election are suddenly like the worthless Marks of Weimar Germany. And if Trump doesn't need either their money or the votes of their political toadies, then the GOP elites have no leverage on him and no IOU's to call in. Uh-oh.
Second, it becomes clearer every day that Trump isn't a conservative. He's an anti-Wall Street, anti-foreign populist. And anti-foreign doesn't necessarily mean more interventionist. At the most recent Republican debate, he actually said that he would have voted to impeach George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq.
That comment set pundit tongues wagging: this time, Trump finally overreached. W is popular in South Carolina, isn't he? Well, maybe among the swells, but not so much among the white working class good old boys who are Trump's constituents. It is their sons, fathers, brothers (and some daughters and wives) who got killed in W's pointless war in Iraq.
And all Jebby could do was pitifully blather about what great man his dad was, and how much he admired his mother. Maybe she should have run, Trump shot back. This man is crazy like a fox.
Third, unlike GOP conservatives, Trump doesn't hate government. In a severe economic turndown, you could imagine a President Trump sponsoring, say, a massive public works program to Make American Great Again.
And fourth, the Trump phenomenon suggests that the supposedly ultra-conservative Republican base isn't all that conservative either. Yes, the Evangelicals are religious conservatives, and the base doesn't like foreigners, and a dwindling number hate gays, but that doesn't make them economic conservatives.
Until Trump, there was an awkward alliance of convenience in the GOP between social conservatives and Wall Street conservatives (who have little in common), in which each one did the other's bidding. Trump unmasks and blows up that alliance.
That fracture, over the long run, is even more serious than the oft-stated risk of Trump somehow destroying the Republican Party entirely. What he really does is to weaken the party as the instrument of Wall Street conservatives.
And what Trump is doing to the GOP is mirrored on the Democratic side by Sanders' impact on the Democrats. Hillary Clinton, at the most recent Democratic debate, double down on her attacks on Sanders as a big-government Democrat.
Sorry, but a dose of higher taxes and more social investment is just what the economy and the disaffected people who are flocking to Sanders need right now.
Take the case of tax-financed debt relief for college grads. That's not a case of building a big government bureaucracy. On the contrary, money would flow in, via more tax dollars collected from the rich, and it would flow out for debt-free higher education. Does Hillary really want bash Bernie over that?
Or take Medicare for All. That's less bureaucracy, not more. Medicare is an exemplar of the efficiency of government. It spends 98 cents of the premium dollar on medical care. Most private insurers are down in the 80s. If you want to see bureaucracy in action, take a good look at private medical and health insurance bureaucracies. (And you have, if you've been to the doctor or filed a claim lately.)
Hillary's biggest blunder was to try to tag Bernie as a one-issue candidate. If that issue is the economy, bring it on.
What Trump and Sanders are forcing is a debate about the declining prospects of most Americans. For all of its power, Wall Street, in the driver's seat on both parties for at least three decades, suddenly has the weaker horse in both parties. Amazing!
Of course, Hillary Clinton is still the more likely Democratic nominee. And in a head-to-head with Trump, she is probably the favorite barring some new horrendous disclosure about Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest or emails.
Clinton, presumably, is a good enough reader of public opinion and of sources of political energy, that she would be a more progressive president that one might have expected. But Wall Street would still have a good friend in the Oval Office -- too good a friend.
****Coda: McConnell's Misstep*
Here I have to violate the cardinal rule of journalism that a column is about one thing.
It seems to me that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, echoed by the Republican presidential field, blundered when he declared that the Republican Senate would not vote in an election year to confirm an Obama nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Scalia.
The Republicans would be a lot shrewder if they bargained with Obama to nominate a center-right nominee who could be confirmed. That would deprive Obama's successor, quite possibly a Democrat, of the chance to name a real progressive and would extend the conservative sway over the court.
With a court divided 4-4 for the next year, liberals will likely prevail because of several lower court decisions that will now be upheld, most notably the Freidrichs case allowing public sector unions to broadly organize and collect dues. Other key cases, including affirmative action, voting rights, and abortion rights, are in the same category.
If Republicans are sly, they will play to Obama's vanity and begin bargaining with the White House about naming a moderate conservative who they will confirm.
I would not be surprised if such back-channel bargaining has already begun.
And if Obama is shrewd, he will appoint a distinguished liberal and let Republicans be the party of negativity, and let the chips fall.
--
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility.
Like Robert Kuttner on Facebook.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 2 hours ago.
The global economy is weakening, due to a perfect storm of a cratering economy in China, a crash of oil prices, slower growth in the Third World and a realization by central banks that they can't fix what's broken. There is a lot of whistling past the graveyard that the U.S. can somehow continue our (rather tepid) recovery, but in a global economy, no country is an island.
Fears of a recession push the stock market downward; then the wipeout of stock values helps bring that recession nearer. (Who said markets were rational?)
Consumers benefit for now from the cheaper gas prices at the pump. But with wage growth minimal, and real careers giving way to a succession of on-demand "gig" jobs, that's small comfort.
As the election year wears on, you can expect Republicans to blame the economic slide on the Obama Administration and the Democrats. You can expect Hillary Clinton to intensify her attacks on Bernie Sanders as the candidate of tax increases and big government. And you can expect the economic anxiety that drives the Trump and Sanders campaigns only to grow.
On the GOP side, why are Republican elites so terrified of Trump? Let us count the ways.
First, he doesn't need their money. So all the billions that were set to buy the election are suddenly like the worthless Marks of Weimar Germany. And if Trump doesn't need either their money or the votes of their political toadies, then the GOP elites have no leverage on him and no IOU's to call in. Uh-oh.
Second, it becomes clearer every day that Trump isn't a conservative. He's an anti-Wall Street, anti-foreign populist. And anti-foreign doesn't necessarily mean more interventionist. At the most recent Republican debate, he actually said that he would have voted to impeach George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq.
That comment set pundit tongues wagging: this time, Trump finally overreached. W is popular in South Carolina, isn't he? Well, maybe among the swells, but not so much among the white working class good old boys who are Trump's constituents. It is their sons, fathers, brothers (and some daughters and wives) who got killed in W's pointless war in Iraq.
And all Jebby could do was pitifully blather about what great man his dad was, and how much he admired his mother. Maybe she should have run, Trump shot back. This man is crazy like a fox.
Third, unlike GOP conservatives, Trump doesn't hate government. In a severe economic turndown, you could imagine a President Trump sponsoring, say, a massive public works program to Make American Great Again.
And fourth, the Trump phenomenon suggests that the supposedly ultra-conservative Republican base isn't all that conservative either. Yes, the Evangelicals are religious conservatives, and the base doesn't like foreigners, and a dwindling number hate gays, but that doesn't make them economic conservatives.
Until Trump, there was an awkward alliance of convenience in the GOP between social conservatives and Wall Street conservatives (who have little in common), in which each one did the other's bidding. Trump unmasks and blows up that alliance.
That fracture, over the long run, is even more serious than the oft-stated risk of Trump somehow destroying the Republican Party entirely. What he really does is to weaken the party as the instrument of Wall Street conservatives.
And what Trump is doing to the GOP is mirrored on the Democratic side by Sanders' impact on the Democrats. Hillary Clinton, at the most recent Democratic debate, double down on her attacks on Sanders as a big-government Democrat.
Sorry, but a dose of higher taxes and more social investment is just what the economy and the disaffected people who are flocking to Sanders need right now.
Take the case of tax-financed debt relief for college grads. That's not a case of building a big government bureaucracy. On the contrary, money would flow in, via more tax dollars collected from the rich, and it would flow out for debt-free higher education. Does Hillary really want bash Bernie over that?
Or take Medicare for All. That's less bureaucracy, not more. Medicare is an exemplar of the efficiency of government. It spends 98 cents of the premium dollar on medical care. Most private insurers are down in the 80s. If you want to see bureaucracy in action, take a good look at private medical and health insurance bureaucracies. (And you have, if you've been to the doctor or filed a claim lately.)
Hillary's biggest blunder was to try to tag Bernie as a one-issue candidate. If that issue is the economy, bring it on.
What Trump and Sanders are forcing is a debate about the declining prospects of most Americans. For all of its power, Wall Street, in the driver's seat on both parties for at least three decades, suddenly has the weaker horse in both parties. Amazing!
Of course, Hillary Clinton is still the more likely Democratic nominee. And in a head-to-head with Trump, she is probably the favorite barring some new horrendous disclosure about Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest or emails.
Clinton, presumably, is a good enough reader of public opinion and of sources of political energy, that she would be a more progressive president that one might have expected. But Wall Street would still have a good friend in the Oval Office -- too good a friend.
****Coda: McConnell's Misstep*
Here I have to violate the cardinal rule of journalism that a column is about one thing.
It seems to me that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, echoed by the Republican presidential field, blundered when he declared that the Republican Senate would not vote in an election year to confirm an Obama nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Scalia.
The Republicans would be a lot shrewder if they bargained with Obama to nominate a center-right nominee who could be confirmed. That would deprive Obama's successor, quite possibly a Democrat, of the chance to name a real progressive and would extend the conservative sway over the court.
With a court divided 4-4 for the next year, liberals will likely prevail because of several lower court decisions that will now be upheld, most notably the Freidrichs case allowing public sector unions to broadly organize and collect dues. Other key cases, including affirmative action, voting rights, and abortion rights, are in the same category.
If Republicans are sly, they will play to Obama's vanity and begin bargaining with the White House about naming a moderate conservative who they will confirm.
I would not be surprised if such back-channel bargaining has already begun.
And if Obama is shrewd, he will appoint a distinguished liberal and let Republicans be the party of negativity, and let the chips fall.
--
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University's Heller School. His latest book is Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility.
Like Robert Kuttner on Facebook.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 2 hours ago.
↧
ez1095 ACA Software Offers Specialized Customer Support For New Form Filing Ease Of Use
ez1095 Affordable Care Act form software gives employers customized customer support for peace of mind in filing 1095 & 1094 forms. Download and try it at no obligation by visiting http://www.halfpricesoft.com.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) February 15, 2016
Client support is extremely important when it comes to new software applications. By customizing to each individual’s ACA form filing requirements, Halfpricesoft.com (http://www.halfpricesoft.com) helps new ez1095 ACA (Affordable Care Act) users gain peace of mind. With each trial version, customers are happy to know there are both quick start guides and unlimited customer support included.
“ez1095 software makes it easy to file 1095-C, 1094-C, 1095-B and 1094-B forms. ez1095 ACA software application comes with unlimited customized support for new employers.” said Dr. Ge, the founder of Halfpricesoft.com.
ez1095 software is compatible Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP and other Windows systems. Potential customers can download and try this software at no obligation by visiting http://www.halfpricesoft.com/aca-1095/form-1095-software-free-download.asp
ez1095 ACA software application offers print and mail as well as an efile version. (Efile version is an additional cost). With the latest ACA guidelines for the healthcare law, employers with 50 or more full-time employees or equivalents to file an annual return in 2016 reporting health insurance they offered employees.
The new ez1095 ACA form filing software offers business owners the ability to:
-Prepare form 1095-B, 1094-B, 1095-C & 1094-C
-Print 1095-C or 1095-B paper forms for recipients
-Print paper form 1095-C & 1094-C or 1095-B & 1094-B forms for IRS
-PDF Print forms for recipients in digital format
-Efile feature: Generate XML document that customers can upload to IRS site. (This efile feature is -approved by the IRS.)
-Efile 1095B/C Correction using the same process of regular Efile
-Support unlimited accounts, recipients and ACA forms
-Free specialized customer Support
Priced at just $195 for a single user version, ($295 for new efile version) this ACA forms filing software saves employers time and money by processing forms, in-house. To learn more about ez1095 ACA software, customers can visit http://www.halfpricesoft.com/aca-1095/aca-1095-software.asp
About halfpricesoft.com
Founded in 2003, Halfpricesoft.com has established itself as a leader in meeting the software needs of small businesses around the world with its payroll software, employee attendance tracking software, check printing software, W2 software, 1099 software and barcode generating software. It continues to grow with its philosophy that small business owners need affordable, user friendly, super simple, and totally risk-free software. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) February 15, 2016
Client support is extremely important when it comes to new software applications. By customizing to each individual’s ACA form filing requirements, Halfpricesoft.com (http://www.halfpricesoft.com) helps new ez1095 ACA (Affordable Care Act) users gain peace of mind. With each trial version, customers are happy to know there are both quick start guides and unlimited customer support included.
“ez1095 software makes it easy to file 1095-C, 1094-C, 1095-B and 1094-B forms. ez1095 ACA software application comes with unlimited customized support for new employers.” said Dr. Ge, the founder of Halfpricesoft.com.
ez1095 software is compatible Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP and other Windows systems. Potential customers can download and try this software at no obligation by visiting http://www.halfpricesoft.com/aca-1095/form-1095-software-free-download.asp
ez1095 ACA software application offers print and mail as well as an efile version. (Efile version is an additional cost). With the latest ACA guidelines for the healthcare law, employers with 50 or more full-time employees or equivalents to file an annual return in 2016 reporting health insurance they offered employees.
The new ez1095 ACA form filing software offers business owners the ability to:
-Prepare form 1095-B, 1094-B, 1095-C & 1094-C
-Print 1095-C or 1095-B paper forms for recipients
-Print paper form 1095-C & 1094-C or 1095-B & 1094-B forms for IRS
-PDF Print forms for recipients in digital format
-Efile feature: Generate XML document that customers can upload to IRS site. (This efile feature is -approved by the IRS.)
-Efile 1095B/C Correction using the same process of regular Efile
-Support unlimited accounts, recipients and ACA forms
-Free specialized customer Support
Priced at just $195 for a single user version, ($295 for new efile version) this ACA forms filing software saves employers time and money by processing forms, in-house. To learn more about ez1095 ACA software, customers can visit http://www.halfpricesoft.com/aca-1095/aca-1095-software.asp
About halfpricesoft.com
Founded in 2003, Halfpricesoft.com has established itself as a leader in meeting the software needs of small businesses around the world with its payroll software, employee attendance tracking software, check printing software, W2 software, 1099 software and barcode generating software. It continues to grow with its philosophy that small business owners need affordable, user friendly, super simple, and totally risk-free software. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
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ProVest Insurance Group Continues Community Enrichment Program by Collaborating with Local Family Battling Rare Form of Childhood Leukemia
ProVest Insurance Group introduces another charity campaign in their remarkable ongoing community involvement program. Local toddler Liam Smith had been fighting Neurofibromatosis since the age of 7 months, when he was then diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. The agency has initiated a fundraiser to help this young family with escalating medical bills and other vital expenses.
Fort Worth, TX (PRWEB) February 15, 2016
The caring team at ProVest Insurance Group announces the latest campaign in their ongoing community involvement program, through which they hope to further their commitment to better the local community. Local two-year-old Liam Smith, who has battled neurofibromatosis since the age of 7 months, was additionally diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia just four months ago. Donations to help this young family cover medical bills, their mortgage and other vital expenses are now being accepted at: https://www.gofundme.com/fightwithliam.
Liam Smith developed as a normal, healthy baby until the age of 4 months, when a dramatic shift occurred. After several months of testing, doctors were finally able to diagnose Neurofibromatosis (NF), a condition which causes tumors to grow both internally and externally at the ends of nerve cells throughout the body. Although there is no cure, doctors closely monitor Liam’s condition to verify tumors aren’t developing in critical areas. Unfortunately, along with NF come other health risks, one of which is a rare form of leukemia called Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia (JMML). Since being diagnosed this past October with JMML, Liam’s health has rapidly deteriorated, requiring hospitalization, chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. Liam’s doting mother has been put on unpaid leave from her job, where she carried health insurance for the family, while his devoted father strives to continue working and providing care and a sense of normalcy for Liam’s sisters.
“We hope to rally the whole community around this young family,” said Jay Adkins, owner of ProVest Insurance Group. “After all, neighbors helping neighbors is what it’s all about, and this strong and loving family deserves the support of their community. We’re honored to help in whatever way we can.”
Putting their money where their mouth is, the agency itself has pledged to donate $10 to the Smith family for each and every person recommended to the agency for a quote. Anyone willing to help spread the word about the cause for Liam may recommend someone they know for a new insurance evaluation for their home, car, life, or more, with no purchase necessary. Readers may visit the campaign’s webpage to refer a friend or to make a donation themselves here: http://www.provestinsurance.com/Fighting-Leukemia-With-Liam_29_community_cause
From its four locations in Texas, North Carolina and Florida, the caring team at ProVest is hard at work promoting the campaign through social media and other avenues, and has dedicated a full page of their monthly magazine to feature all the details of the fundraiser for Liam. Our Hometown is delivered to thousands of households in the surrounding areas. The electronic version of the current issue may be viewed here: http://www.provestinsurance.com/Our-Hometown-Magazine_10.
ProVest Insurance Group will continue working for deserving local causes as part of their commitment to operate as Agents of Change in the community. Anyone who would like to submit information on a group, family or person in need of a helping hand to be considered for future campaigns, may do so through this link: http://www.provestinsurance.com/Submit-A-Community-Cause_25. Selected entries will be contacted by a representative of the agency’s Community Program. Readers interested in viewing past campaigns may visit: http://www.provestinsurance.com/community-cause. More information on the agency may be found at: http://www.provestinsurance.com/.
About ProVest Insurance Group
Award-winning ProVest Insurance Group is a full service firm with agencies serving families in North Carolina, Florida and Texas. Their mission is simple: to provide the best insurance and financial services in the industry, while delivering consistently superior service. Jay Adkins and his team of caring professionals believe in protecting all the things which are most important to their customers (their families, homes, cars and more), and in helping to prepare long-term strategies to enable their financial success. The dedicated experts at ProVest may be reached by calling 1-855-298-7427. Reported by PRWeb 16 hours ago.
Fort Worth, TX (PRWEB) February 15, 2016
The caring team at ProVest Insurance Group announces the latest campaign in their ongoing community involvement program, through which they hope to further their commitment to better the local community. Local two-year-old Liam Smith, who has battled neurofibromatosis since the age of 7 months, was additionally diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia just four months ago. Donations to help this young family cover medical bills, their mortgage and other vital expenses are now being accepted at: https://www.gofundme.com/fightwithliam.
Liam Smith developed as a normal, healthy baby until the age of 4 months, when a dramatic shift occurred. After several months of testing, doctors were finally able to diagnose Neurofibromatosis (NF), a condition which causes tumors to grow both internally and externally at the ends of nerve cells throughout the body. Although there is no cure, doctors closely monitor Liam’s condition to verify tumors aren’t developing in critical areas. Unfortunately, along with NF come other health risks, one of which is a rare form of leukemia called Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia (JMML). Since being diagnosed this past October with JMML, Liam’s health has rapidly deteriorated, requiring hospitalization, chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. Liam’s doting mother has been put on unpaid leave from her job, where she carried health insurance for the family, while his devoted father strives to continue working and providing care and a sense of normalcy for Liam’s sisters.
“We hope to rally the whole community around this young family,” said Jay Adkins, owner of ProVest Insurance Group. “After all, neighbors helping neighbors is what it’s all about, and this strong and loving family deserves the support of their community. We’re honored to help in whatever way we can.”
Putting their money where their mouth is, the agency itself has pledged to donate $10 to the Smith family for each and every person recommended to the agency for a quote. Anyone willing to help spread the word about the cause for Liam may recommend someone they know for a new insurance evaluation for their home, car, life, or more, with no purchase necessary. Readers may visit the campaign’s webpage to refer a friend or to make a donation themselves here: http://www.provestinsurance.com/Fighting-Leukemia-With-Liam_29_community_cause
From its four locations in Texas, North Carolina and Florida, the caring team at ProVest is hard at work promoting the campaign through social media and other avenues, and has dedicated a full page of their monthly magazine to feature all the details of the fundraiser for Liam. Our Hometown is delivered to thousands of households in the surrounding areas. The electronic version of the current issue may be viewed here: http://www.provestinsurance.com/Our-Hometown-Magazine_10.
ProVest Insurance Group will continue working for deserving local causes as part of their commitment to operate as Agents of Change in the community. Anyone who would like to submit information on a group, family or person in need of a helping hand to be considered for future campaigns, may do so through this link: http://www.provestinsurance.com/Submit-A-Community-Cause_25. Selected entries will be contacted by a representative of the agency’s Community Program. Readers interested in viewing past campaigns may visit: http://www.provestinsurance.com/community-cause. More information on the agency may be found at: http://www.provestinsurance.com/.
About ProVest Insurance Group
Award-winning ProVest Insurance Group is a full service firm with agencies serving families in North Carolina, Florida and Texas. Their mission is simple: to provide the best insurance and financial services in the industry, while delivering consistently superior service. Jay Adkins and his team of caring professionals believe in protecting all the things which are most important to their customers (their families, homes, cars and more), and in helping to prepare long-term strategies to enable their financial success. The dedicated experts at ProVest may be reached by calling 1-855-298-7427. Reported by PRWeb 16 hours ago.
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America, Stop Watching the Sideshow and Feel the Bern
In 1985 American Author and cultural critic Neil Postman published a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. In the book Postman explored the influence of technology, particularly television, on American culture. He framed the entire discourse in the context of two classic books, George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. His opinion was that it is Huxley whose chilling vision of the future was becoming reality and not Orwell's. According to Postman it is not that truth is withheld as Orwell predicted -- it is instead buried beneath an avalanche of pointless information as Huxley suggested. Surveillance and policing are no longer the primary tools of controlling populations.
The public is effectively subdued by wrapping them in the cocoon of technology, narcissism and self-indulgence. Exacting toil no longer requires the "reform through labor" of Mao (which Orwell's society was modeled on) or the Gulag of Stalin. The proletariat can merely be overworked and underpaid -- and most of what they earn can be siphoned back through the necessary illusions staring from the billboard and shouting from the television screen. Conformity, Postman believed, is no longer exacted, it is offered feverishly. In his opinion television and mass media were the primary instruments in effecting these outcomes.
As the title of the book suggests, Postman believed that it was through turning everything including politics and the news into entertainment, the media had created a "peek a boo" world where opinions had been replaced by emotions that could shift with each news poll and each new bit of information that was presented to the viewer. Its power too, according to Postman, was the sort that peek a boo has over a child -- it could endlessly entertain.
Three decades after Amusing Ourselves to Death was published it seems, ironically, that Neil Postman himself made the most important prophecies about the postmodern world. Never before has his vision been as relevant as it is now, in the post-Internet, post-smartphone world of today. And what better example of how the media influences perceptions and changes outcomes than the current political landscape of America. Take the Republican debate at Greenville, South Carolina this past Saturday night. It is hard to imagine speakers more intellectually vapid and disconnected from the issues that affect the everyday lives of ordinary Americans. Most of the discussion revolved around ascribing blame, accusations of dishonesty and the legacy of George W. Bush. Throughout the debate tempers flared and the candidates persisted in the strategy of attacking the player rather than the ball, probably because they had nothing of substance on offer. This burlesque tragicomedy of course makes for great prime time entertainment -- which may explain why Republican Debates have brought in almost twice as many viewers than the Democratic ones.
Speaking of which, much has been made about the specter of Barack Obama at Thursday night's Democratic Presidential debate. Here is an excellent example of the misrepresentation and distortion of information-of actual events-that Postman warned about. If one is to believe the scribes of the major liberal publications (as seen here in The New York Times, here in the Washington Post and here in the Boston Globe ), it was Hillary Clinton. Supposedly, closely aligning herself with the president and presenting herself as his rightful inheritor gave her some sort of ascendancy over Sanders in the debate. The fact of the matter is, the entire Bernie Sanders campaign is centered around the twin slogans of rejecting the establishment and starting a political revolution. By aligning herself with President Obama, Hillary Clinton is drawing even more clearly the lines between those who favor a continuation of the current status quo and those who want an end to campaign financiers and lobbyists dictating administrative policy. In other words, she has done a favor to Bernie by clarifying that she is not going to be a candidate of change. The liberal dream had turned sour before Obama's first term even ended. He was voted in for a second term primarily to keep Mitt Romney and the Republican Party out of the Oval Office -- because they were clearly far worse. Like Obama, Hillary is unlikely to fight for universal healthcare. Her ties with the banking industry and the massive amounts of monies she has received from the banking and health insurance industries make it very difficult to imagine her taking on Wall Street for lower and middle class Americans. This arbitrary stance that Hillary benefits by making the Obama legacy a campaign issue is a red herring-yet a powerful one since it comes from "respected" and widely-read liberal journals. And this is not a rare exception; this is how mainstream media has always operated.
This is the challenge before the Sanders campaign and its supporters. But this is also something even more profound and greater. In many ways Bernie Sanders represents the spectrum of opinion that makes the human factor central to government policy. By his unquestionable consistency on major political issues and his focus on the most underprivileged and vulnerable within American society he stands apart from those who utilize non-issues to scare and inflame people into voting for them. Sanders is the only candidate who represents the section of society that has had enough of being lied to, that has had enough of being hoodwinked by successive administrations that have promised much but done nothing but make life harder for the common man and woman.
On one side is a clear message of much needed changes in wages, taxes, climate change policy and healthcare. Of changes needed in the American body politic that removes the vested interest that stands in the way of those changes coming to fruition. On the other side is either more of the same in the form of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush or worse, the vaudevillian sideshow of Trump and Cruz with its fascistic and constitution-threatening halo.
One hopes voters will see through those who continue their attempts to impose the culture Postman observed where truth is irrelevant and illusion is all.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 14 hours ago.
The public is effectively subdued by wrapping them in the cocoon of technology, narcissism and self-indulgence. Exacting toil no longer requires the "reform through labor" of Mao (which Orwell's society was modeled on) or the Gulag of Stalin. The proletariat can merely be overworked and underpaid -- and most of what they earn can be siphoned back through the necessary illusions staring from the billboard and shouting from the television screen. Conformity, Postman believed, is no longer exacted, it is offered feverishly. In his opinion television and mass media were the primary instruments in effecting these outcomes.
As the title of the book suggests, Postman believed that it was through turning everything including politics and the news into entertainment, the media had created a "peek a boo" world where opinions had been replaced by emotions that could shift with each news poll and each new bit of information that was presented to the viewer. Its power too, according to Postman, was the sort that peek a boo has over a child -- it could endlessly entertain.
Three decades after Amusing Ourselves to Death was published it seems, ironically, that Neil Postman himself made the most important prophecies about the postmodern world. Never before has his vision been as relevant as it is now, in the post-Internet, post-smartphone world of today. And what better example of how the media influences perceptions and changes outcomes than the current political landscape of America. Take the Republican debate at Greenville, South Carolina this past Saturday night. It is hard to imagine speakers more intellectually vapid and disconnected from the issues that affect the everyday lives of ordinary Americans. Most of the discussion revolved around ascribing blame, accusations of dishonesty and the legacy of George W. Bush. Throughout the debate tempers flared and the candidates persisted in the strategy of attacking the player rather than the ball, probably because they had nothing of substance on offer. This burlesque tragicomedy of course makes for great prime time entertainment -- which may explain why Republican Debates have brought in almost twice as many viewers than the Democratic ones.
Speaking of which, much has been made about the specter of Barack Obama at Thursday night's Democratic Presidential debate. Here is an excellent example of the misrepresentation and distortion of information-of actual events-that Postman warned about. If one is to believe the scribes of the major liberal publications (as seen here in The New York Times, here in the Washington Post and here in the Boston Globe ), it was Hillary Clinton. Supposedly, closely aligning herself with the president and presenting herself as his rightful inheritor gave her some sort of ascendancy over Sanders in the debate. The fact of the matter is, the entire Bernie Sanders campaign is centered around the twin slogans of rejecting the establishment and starting a political revolution. By aligning herself with President Obama, Hillary Clinton is drawing even more clearly the lines between those who favor a continuation of the current status quo and those who want an end to campaign financiers and lobbyists dictating administrative policy. In other words, she has done a favor to Bernie by clarifying that she is not going to be a candidate of change. The liberal dream had turned sour before Obama's first term even ended. He was voted in for a second term primarily to keep Mitt Romney and the Republican Party out of the Oval Office -- because they were clearly far worse. Like Obama, Hillary is unlikely to fight for universal healthcare. Her ties with the banking industry and the massive amounts of monies she has received from the banking and health insurance industries make it very difficult to imagine her taking on Wall Street for lower and middle class Americans. This arbitrary stance that Hillary benefits by making the Obama legacy a campaign issue is a red herring-yet a powerful one since it comes from "respected" and widely-read liberal journals. And this is not a rare exception; this is how mainstream media has always operated.
This is the challenge before the Sanders campaign and its supporters. But this is also something even more profound and greater. In many ways Bernie Sanders represents the spectrum of opinion that makes the human factor central to government policy. By his unquestionable consistency on major political issues and his focus on the most underprivileged and vulnerable within American society he stands apart from those who utilize non-issues to scare and inflame people into voting for them. Sanders is the only candidate who represents the section of society that has had enough of being lied to, that has had enough of being hoodwinked by successive administrations that have promised much but done nothing but make life harder for the common man and woman.
On one side is a clear message of much needed changes in wages, taxes, climate change policy and healthcare. Of changes needed in the American body politic that removes the vested interest that stands in the way of those changes coming to fruition. On the other side is either more of the same in the form of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush or worse, the vaudevillian sideshow of Trump and Cruz with its fascistic and constitution-threatening halo.
One hopes voters will see through those who continue their attempts to impose the culture Postman observed where truth is irrelevant and illusion is all.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 14 hours ago.
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Employers can expect health insurance premiums to rise 5% a year over the next decade
Premiums for employer-provided health insurance will increase around 5 percent a year over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This year, the average premium for employment-based insurance will be $6,400 for single coverage and $15,500, according to CBO. By 2025, that will increase to $10,000 for single coverage and $24,500 for family coverage. The cost of insurance in the individual market is expected to increase at an annual rate of 6 percent over the next decade, according…
Reported by bizjournals 13 hours ago.
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The Entrepreneur's Toolkit: 41 Tools to Get Up and Running
One new business is started every minute in the United States. Some economists predict that more than 40% of Americans will be self-employed by 2020.
Eighty-eight percent of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1955 no longer exist today. Fifty percent of new businesses close within 4 years. Only a third of those new businesses survive 10 years or more. Forbes contributor Eric Wagner says 8 out of 10 new businesses fail within the first 18 months of initiation.
A recent Entrepeneur.com article lists decision-making as one of the 8 biggest challenges for new entrepreneurs, stating "new entrepreneurs are forced to make hundreds of decisions a day, from big, company-impacting decisions, to tiny, hour-affecting ones."
This list of 41 resources is designed to make some of the decision-making a little less stressful. Used as a starting point, this list might inform new entrepreneurs of a few resources they never even knew they needed.
*Business Planning*
A business plan is necessary if an entrepreneur plans to borrow money from a financial institution. Funders want to know you have a solid business strategy that includes an exit plan. But, business planning is important for other reasons as well.
Business plans also help entrepreneurs decide if and when they will
*#1. **Entrepreneur.com*: This business plan template gallery is powered by SeamlessDocs. It includes an executive summary, a non-disclosure agreement, a marketing plan, and a business plan overview.
*#2. **Score*: The Score business plan walks entrepreneurs through writing their plan with a series of 150 questions, all divided into sections. Entrepreneurs can work through sections in any order and skip sections that do not apply to them.
*#3. **SBA*: This business planning tool provides a step-by-step guide to creating a business plan. Business plans are saved in PDF format and can be accessed and updated at any time.
*#4. **Bplans SWOT Analysis*: A SWOT analysis helps an entrepreneur analyze her business's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the business's potential opportunities and threats.
*#5. **Harvard SWOT Analysis*: This is a one-page SWOT analysis sheet that asks simple questions that guides users through the analysis process. This one-page sheet simplifies the process and makes it less daunting.
*#6. **MPlans Competitive Analysis*: This article is a great resource for entrepreneurs who need to perform a competitive analysis. Author Tim Berry, of Palo Alto Software, provides simple digestible tips to help maneuver entrepreneurs through the process.
*Financing *
The SBA states it costs an average of $30,000 to start a new business. Because no two businesses are alike, many micro-businesses can start with as little as $3000 funding.
When estimating the cost of running a business, entrepreneurs should consider their expenses, capital expenditures, and current assets.
Before applying for a business loan, it's important for entrepreneurs to decide if they can afford to borrow the money. Elizabeth Palermo, contributor at Business News Daily, offers tips to help figure that out.
*#7. **SBA Loans and Grants*: Small businesses have access to a wide range of financing options through federal, state and local governments. These programs include low-interest loans, venture capital, and scientific and economic development grants.
*#8. **US Treasure Small Business Lending Fund*: The US Treasury gives funds to qualified community banks and community development loan funds (CDLFs) in order to encourage small business lending. The purpose of this program is to encourage Main Street banks and small businesses to work together to create jobs and promote economic growth.
*#9. **USA Access Financing Wizard*: Entrepreneurs can use this questionnaire to help them find government resources to access financing for their business.
*#10. Angel investors: *An angel investor is typically an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt - debt that's converted to equity at some later date - or ownership equity.
Short-term loans:
*#12. **PayPal Working Capital*: PayPal Working Capital allows business owners to borrow up to 15% of their last 12 months of sales. Businesses can borrow up to $85000 and pay zero interest. This loan is useful for entrepreneurs who have been in business at least a year and need short-term financing for an emergency situation.
*#13. **Kabbage*: Businesses that have been in business for at least 1 year and have at least $50,000 per year in revenue might qualify for a credit line with Kabbage. Payment terms are for a term of 6 months or less. Businesses can receive a credit line between $2,000 and $100,000.
*#14. **OnDeck Capital*: Businesses that have been in business for at least 1 year and have over $100,000 in revenue might qualify for a loan from OnDeck. One of the owners must have a credit score of at least 500. Short term and long term financing is available and Ondeck even offers a line of credit.
*Marketing *
Unfortunately, building it does not mean they will come.
Twenty-eight percent of venture capitalists said the most frequent mistake they saw in business plans was a lack of a marketing strategy. Many entrepreneurs fail to clearly specify who their customers will be and how they will reach them.
Poor marketing, or lack of marketing, is listed as one of the top 6 reasons businesses fail.
*#15. **BizStats*: Use this marketing research tool to gain valuable insights about customers, competitors and market trends. BizStats can help determine the revenue potential for startups. It can also help entrepreneurs determine their advertising budget.
*#16. **Free Lunch*: This handy research tool provides entrepreneurs with economic, demographic and financial data. Entrepreneurs gain valuable insight into economic and population trends from the consumer and labor marker data collected, in addition to the gross domestic product and inventory ratios data available.
*#17. **MadMimi*: Mad Mimi is a simple email marketing service that enables users to create, send and track email campaigns without using templates. Customization options are available and tips for template design are available, if users choose to design them.
*#18. **AWeber*: This email marketing program includes broadcast messages, reporting, and subscriber management. Over 700 templates are available and users can easily customize those templates to fit their needs.
*#19. **Open Site Explorer*: Entrepreneurs use Open Site Explorer the same way they would use Google or Bing. Use it to explore a website to collect a vast amount of competitor information. This tool can be used to analyze your own website as well.
*#20. **WordPress Landing Pages*: Landing pages are a critical component of a company's lead generation strategy. This WordPress plugin helps entrepreneurs create landing pages quickly and easily. Users can also monitor and improve conversion rates, run A/B split tests, and customize templates.
*Sales*
Sales planning is crucial for the success of any business. Entrepreneurs should clearly identify their ideal customer profile and a list of prospects. In addition, before launching a business, it's important to do some research to identify your company's forecasted sales cycle. Be sure to set clear financial goals and share those goals with every member of your leadership team.
*#21. **OnePageCRM*: This online CRM software is designed exclusively for small businesses. It keeps core CRM functions on one page. OnePage CRM is focused on sales activity. This tool helps users move prospects and customers through the sales funnel.
*#22. **SalesExec*: This CRM tool helps users capture leads, route leads and reduce the time it takes to close more deals. SalesExec can be deployed in a much shorter timeframe than other CRM solutions.
*#23. **You Don't Need a CRM*: This lead management tool is designed with one goal in mind: turning prospects into paying customers. The tool is simple web-based software built to help sales teams close sales without dealing with a lot of paperwork.
*#24. **Unbxd*: This tool is a website search and personalization platform which helps ecommerce companies engage customers on their websites. Unbxd helps customers find what they're looking for while they shop.
*#25: **SellerRepublic*: Entrepreneurs who use Amazon as part of their sales strategy will find SellerRepublic's repricing software very useful. The tool is fast and easy to use and it gives sellers maximum competitive advantage. The various features are designed to help increase sales and profits.
*Payment Processing*
Reliable and secure payment processing is critical to the success of any business. There are differences between merchant accounts and internet merchants who accept payments on your behalf without the need for you to open a merchant account.
Before choosing a merchant account or an internet merchant, learn more about keeping your credit card fees low.
*#26. **Basecommerce*: This is an API driven payment platform that can be used to accept payments on websites, mobile websites, and apps. The platform can be used by businesses of all sizes to accept a one-time payment - or recurring payments - on physical or digital goods and services.
*#27. **WorldPay*: This merchant service provides secure payment services for small and large businesses, including payments online, card machines and telephone payments.
*#28. **Authorize.Net*: This is a payment gateway service provider that allows merchants to accept credit card and electronic check payments through their website and over an IP connection.
*#29. **Square*: This mobile payment processor is one payment solution that meets the needs of the entire business. Square offers secure credit card processing - including Apple Pay & EMV - to point of sale solutions.
*Employees*
Productivity, time management, scheduling and team building are just a few of the many employee-related issues new entrepreneurs will address. Here are a few resources to get started.
*#30. **Pingboard*: This Org chart software builds interactive organizational charts designed to share within the company. This software makes it easy to keep the organizational chart updated. Team members can view the org chart from anywhere on their mobile device.
*#31. **Producteev*: This task management app is designed for teams. Invite and collaborate with an unlimited amount of people. Set up unlimited projects and tasks and add due dates and times to those tasks. Tag other team members in conversations and assign tasks to team members as needed.
*#32. **MyMail*: This free email app manages all your email accounts in one place. MyMail supports all major mail providers and any other IMAP or POP3-enabled mailbox.
*#33. **Hive Desk*: This software is designed to manage virtual teams or remote workforces. The software's features include time tracking, screenshots, activity levels and productivity reports.
*#34. **MicroMain*: Any company or organization that has a lot of routine maintenance tasks can use the MicroMain software to streamline their maintenance operations. Some of the software's features include: work order scheduling, labor tracking, work order tracking, preventive maintenance, asset management and asset tracking.
*#35. **HipChat*: This useful tool is team chat built for business. HipChat includes group and private chat, file sharing, video calling and screen sharing. The content is searchable and the software runs on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux. The mobile app is available for Android and iPhone users.
*#36. **When I Work*: This employee scheduling software is ideal for small businesses. The software allows you to make shift changes and fill shifts in seconds. The app lets employees conveniently request shift trades and time off.
*Insurance *
*#37: **eHealth*: This is a web-based private health insurance exchange. Entrepreneurs can find health, dental and vision insurance for their employees. eHealth also provides individual and family health coverage.
*#38: **HealthCare.gov**: *This is the health insurance exchange website operated under the United States federal government. Through HealthCare.gov, businesses with 50 employees or fewer can offer the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) plans to their employees, starting any month of the year.
*#39: **Net Quote**: *Get insurance coverage for your business through Net Quote. Entrepreneurs can secure property, liability, commercial, business interruption, disability, health, life, and worker's compensation insurance through this website.
*#40: **Gadget Cover**: *Cover all your company's mobile devices and gadgets with Gadget Cover. This mobile device and gadget insurance covers theft, accidental damage, liquid damage, worldwide cover, unauthorized usage, loss and breakdown.
*#41. **Esurance Cell Phone Insurance*: This insurance coverage is available for most phones, regardless of when the phone was purchased. The policy also provides coverage for lost, stolen, or damaged phones. In addition, the policy provides coverage for mechanical and electrical failure after the manufacturer's warranty has expired.
There are hundreds of additional resources that can help make life a little less stressful for new entrepreneurs. If you know of any resources that should be on this list, please share your suggestions in the comments.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.
Eighty-eight percent of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1955 no longer exist today. Fifty percent of new businesses close within 4 years. Only a third of those new businesses survive 10 years or more. Forbes contributor Eric Wagner says 8 out of 10 new businesses fail within the first 18 months of initiation.
A recent Entrepeneur.com article lists decision-making as one of the 8 biggest challenges for new entrepreneurs, stating "new entrepreneurs are forced to make hundreds of decisions a day, from big, company-impacting decisions, to tiny, hour-affecting ones."
This list of 41 resources is designed to make some of the decision-making a little less stressful. Used as a starting point, this list might inform new entrepreneurs of a few resources they never even knew they needed.
*Business Planning*
A business plan is necessary if an entrepreneur plans to borrow money from a financial institution. Funders want to know you have a solid business strategy that includes an exit plan. But, business planning is important for other reasons as well.
Business plans also help entrepreneurs decide if and when they will
*#1. **Entrepreneur.com*: This business plan template gallery is powered by SeamlessDocs. It includes an executive summary, a non-disclosure agreement, a marketing plan, and a business plan overview.
*#2. **Score*: The Score business plan walks entrepreneurs through writing their plan with a series of 150 questions, all divided into sections. Entrepreneurs can work through sections in any order and skip sections that do not apply to them.
*#3. **SBA*: This business planning tool provides a step-by-step guide to creating a business plan. Business plans are saved in PDF format and can be accessed and updated at any time.
*#4. **Bplans SWOT Analysis*: A SWOT analysis helps an entrepreneur analyze her business's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the business's potential opportunities and threats.
*#5. **Harvard SWOT Analysis*: This is a one-page SWOT analysis sheet that asks simple questions that guides users through the analysis process. This one-page sheet simplifies the process and makes it less daunting.
*#6. **MPlans Competitive Analysis*: This article is a great resource for entrepreneurs who need to perform a competitive analysis. Author Tim Berry, of Palo Alto Software, provides simple digestible tips to help maneuver entrepreneurs through the process.
*Financing *
The SBA states it costs an average of $30,000 to start a new business. Because no two businesses are alike, many micro-businesses can start with as little as $3000 funding.
When estimating the cost of running a business, entrepreneurs should consider their expenses, capital expenditures, and current assets.
Before applying for a business loan, it's important for entrepreneurs to decide if they can afford to borrow the money. Elizabeth Palermo, contributor at Business News Daily, offers tips to help figure that out.
*#7. **SBA Loans and Grants*: Small businesses have access to a wide range of financing options through federal, state and local governments. These programs include low-interest loans, venture capital, and scientific and economic development grants.
*#8. **US Treasure Small Business Lending Fund*: The US Treasury gives funds to qualified community banks and community development loan funds (CDLFs) in order to encourage small business lending. The purpose of this program is to encourage Main Street banks and small businesses to work together to create jobs and promote economic growth.
*#9. **USA Access Financing Wizard*: Entrepreneurs can use this questionnaire to help them find government resources to access financing for their business.
*#10. Angel investors: *An angel investor is typically an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt - debt that's converted to equity at some later date - or ownership equity.
Short-term loans:
*#12. **PayPal Working Capital*: PayPal Working Capital allows business owners to borrow up to 15% of their last 12 months of sales. Businesses can borrow up to $85000 and pay zero interest. This loan is useful for entrepreneurs who have been in business at least a year and need short-term financing for an emergency situation.
*#13. **Kabbage*: Businesses that have been in business for at least 1 year and have at least $50,000 per year in revenue might qualify for a credit line with Kabbage. Payment terms are for a term of 6 months or less. Businesses can receive a credit line between $2,000 and $100,000.
*#14. **OnDeck Capital*: Businesses that have been in business for at least 1 year and have over $100,000 in revenue might qualify for a loan from OnDeck. One of the owners must have a credit score of at least 500. Short term and long term financing is available and Ondeck even offers a line of credit.
*Marketing *
Unfortunately, building it does not mean they will come.
Twenty-eight percent of venture capitalists said the most frequent mistake they saw in business plans was a lack of a marketing strategy. Many entrepreneurs fail to clearly specify who their customers will be and how they will reach them.
Poor marketing, or lack of marketing, is listed as one of the top 6 reasons businesses fail.
*#15. **BizStats*: Use this marketing research tool to gain valuable insights about customers, competitors and market trends. BizStats can help determine the revenue potential for startups. It can also help entrepreneurs determine their advertising budget.
*#16. **Free Lunch*: This handy research tool provides entrepreneurs with economic, demographic and financial data. Entrepreneurs gain valuable insight into economic and population trends from the consumer and labor marker data collected, in addition to the gross domestic product and inventory ratios data available.
*#17. **MadMimi*: Mad Mimi is a simple email marketing service that enables users to create, send and track email campaigns without using templates. Customization options are available and tips for template design are available, if users choose to design them.
*#18. **AWeber*: This email marketing program includes broadcast messages, reporting, and subscriber management. Over 700 templates are available and users can easily customize those templates to fit their needs.
*#19. **Open Site Explorer*: Entrepreneurs use Open Site Explorer the same way they would use Google or Bing. Use it to explore a website to collect a vast amount of competitor information. This tool can be used to analyze your own website as well.
*#20. **WordPress Landing Pages*: Landing pages are a critical component of a company's lead generation strategy. This WordPress plugin helps entrepreneurs create landing pages quickly and easily. Users can also monitor and improve conversion rates, run A/B split tests, and customize templates.
*Sales*
Sales planning is crucial for the success of any business. Entrepreneurs should clearly identify their ideal customer profile and a list of prospects. In addition, before launching a business, it's important to do some research to identify your company's forecasted sales cycle. Be sure to set clear financial goals and share those goals with every member of your leadership team.
*#21. **OnePageCRM*: This online CRM software is designed exclusively for small businesses. It keeps core CRM functions on one page. OnePage CRM is focused on sales activity. This tool helps users move prospects and customers through the sales funnel.
*#22. **SalesExec*: This CRM tool helps users capture leads, route leads and reduce the time it takes to close more deals. SalesExec can be deployed in a much shorter timeframe than other CRM solutions.
*#23. **You Don't Need a CRM*: This lead management tool is designed with one goal in mind: turning prospects into paying customers. The tool is simple web-based software built to help sales teams close sales without dealing with a lot of paperwork.
*#24. **Unbxd*: This tool is a website search and personalization platform which helps ecommerce companies engage customers on their websites. Unbxd helps customers find what they're looking for while they shop.
*#25: **SellerRepublic*: Entrepreneurs who use Amazon as part of their sales strategy will find SellerRepublic's repricing software very useful. The tool is fast and easy to use and it gives sellers maximum competitive advantage. The various features are designed to help increase sales and profits.
*Payment Processing*
Reliable and secure payment processing is critical to the success of any business. There are differences between merchant accounts and internet merchants who accept payments on your behalf without the need for you to open a merchant account.
Before choosing a merchant account or an internet merchant, learn more about keeping your credit card fees low.
*#26. **Basecommerce*: This is an API driven payment platform that can be used to accept payments on websites, mobile websites, and apps. The platform can be used by businesses of all sizes to accept a one-time payment - or recurring payments - on physical or digital goods and services.
*#27. **WorldPay*: This merchant service provides secure payment services for small and large businesses, including payments online, card machines and telephone payments.
*#28. **Authorize.Net*: This is a payment gateway service provider that allows merchants to accept credit card and electronic check payments through their website and over an IP connection.
*#29. **Square*: This mobile payment processor is one payment solution that meets the needs of the entire business. Square offers secure credit card processing - including Apple Pay & EMV - to point of sale solutions.
*Employees*
Productivity, time management, scheduling and team building are just a few of the many employee-related issues new entrepreneurs will address. Here are a few resources to get started.
*#30. **Pingboard*: This Org chart software builds interactive organizational charts designed to share within the company. This software makes it easy to keep the organizational chart updated. Team members can view the org chart from anywhere on their mobile device.
*#31. **Producteev*: This task management app is designed for teams. Invite and collaborate with an unlimited amount of people. Set up unlimited projects and tasks and add due dates and times to those tasks. Tag other team members in conversations and assign tasks to team members as needed.
*#32. **MyMail*: This free email app manages all your email accounts in one place. MyMail supports all major mail providers and any other IMAP or POP3-enabled mailbox.
*#33. **Hive Desk*: This software is designed to manage virtual teams or remote workforces. The software's features include time tracking, screenshots, activity levels and productivity reports.
*#34. **MicroMain*: Any company or organization that has a lot of routine maintenance tasks can use the MicroMain software to streamline their maintenance operations. Some of the software's features include: work order scheduling, labor tracking, work order tracking, preventive maintenance, asset management and asset tracking.
*#35. **HipChat*: This useful tool is team chat built for business. HipChat includes group and private chat, file sharing, video calling and screen sharing. The content is searchable and the software runs on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux. The mobile app is available for Android and iPhone users.
*#36. **When I Work*: This employee scheduling software is ideal for small businesses. The software allows you to make shift changes and fill shifts in seconds. The app lets employees conveniently request shift trades and time off.
*Insurance *
*#37: **eHealth*: This is a web-based private health insurance exchange. Entrepreneurs can find health, dental and vision insurance for their employees. eHealth also provides individual and family health coverage.
*#38: **HealthCare.gov**: *This is the health insurance exchange website operated under the United States federal government. Through HealthCare.gov, businesses with 50 employees or fewer can offer the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) plans to their employees, starting any month of the year.
*#39: **Net Quote**: *Get insurance coverage for your business through Net Quote. Entrepreneurs can secure property, liability, commercial, business interruption, disability, health, life, and worker's compensation insurance through this website.
*#40: **Gadget Cover**: *Cover all your company's mobile devices and gadgets with Gadget Cover. This mobile device and gadget insurance covers theft, accidental damage, liquid damage, worldwide cover, unauthorized usage, loss and breakdown.
*#41. **Esurance Cell Phone Insurance*: This insurance coverage is available for most phones, regardless of when the phone was purchased. The policy also provides coverage for lost, stolen, or damaged phones. In addition, the policy provides coverage for mechanical and electrical failure after the manufacturer's warranty has expired.
There are hundreds of additional resources that can help make life a little less stressful for new entrepreneurs. If you know of any resources that should be on this list, please share your suggestions in the comments.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.
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Zenefits made software to circumvent Calif.'s broker-licensing process
Zenefits, which recently replaced its CEO, developed a software tool that let aspiring health insurance brokers in California -More-
Reported by SmartBrief 10 hours ago.
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The Deepening Economic Crash and the 2016 Election
AP Photo/Paul Sancya
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign stop Monday, February 15, 2016, in Greenville, South Carolina.
A version of this article originally appeared at The Huffington Post.
If this bizarre election year needed one more twist, it is now likely to play out against a deepening economic crisis. Advantage: Trump and Sanders.
The global economy is weakening, due to a perfect storm of a cratering economy in China, a crash of oil prices, slower growth in the Third World and a realization by central banks that they can't fix what's broken. There is a lot of whistling past the graveyard that the U.S. can somehow continue our (rather tepid) recovery, but in a global economy, no country is an island.
Fears of a recession push the stock market downward; then the wipeout of stock values helps bring that recession nearer. (Who said markets were rational?)
Consumers benefit for now from the cheaper gas prices at the pump. But with wage growth minimal, and real careers giving way to a succession of on-demand "gig" jobs, that's small comfort.
As the election year wears on, you can expect Republicans to blame the economic slide on the Obama administration and the Democrats. You can expect Hillary Clinton to intensify her attacks on Bernie Sanders as the candidate of tax increases and big government. And you can expect the economic anxiety that drives the Trump and Sanders campaigns only to grow.
On the GOP side, why are Republican elites so terrified of Trump? Let us count the ways.
First, he doesn't need their money. So all the billions that were set to buy the election are suddenly like the worthless marks of Weimar Germany. And if Trump doesn't need either their money or the votes of their political toadies, then the GOP elites have no leverage on him and no IOU's to call in. Uh-oh.
Second, it becomes clearer every day that Trump isn't a conservative. He's an anti-Wall Street, anti-foreign populist. And anti-foreign doesn't necessarily mean more interventionist. At the most recent Republican debate, he actually said that he would have voted to impeach George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq.
That comment set pundit tongues wagging: This time, Trump finally overreached. W. is popular in South Carolina, isn't he? Well, maybe among the swells, but not so much among the white working class good old boys who are Trump's constituents. It is their sons, fathers, brothers (and some daughters and wives) who got killed in W.'s pointless war in Iraq.
And all Jebby could do was pitifully blather about what a great man his dad was, and how much he admired his mother. Maybe she should have run, Trump shot back. This man is crazy like a fox.
Third, unlike GOP conservatives, Trump doesn't hate government. In a severe economic turndown, you could imagine a President Trump sponsoring, say, a massive public works program to Make American Great Again.
And fourth, the Trump phenomenon suggests that the supposedly ultra-conservative Republican base isn't all that conservative either. Yes, the Evangelicals are religious conservatives, and the base doesn't like foreigners, and a dwindling number hate gays, but that doesn't make them economic conservatives.
Until Trump, there was an awkward alliance of convenience in the GOP between social conservatives and Wall Street conservatives (who have little in common), in which each one did the other's bidding. Trump unmasks and blows up that alliance.
That fracture, over the long run, is even more serious than the oft-stated risk of Trump somehow destroying the Republican Party entirely. What he really does is to weaken the party as the instrument of Wall Street conservatives.
And what Trump is doing to the GOP is mirrored on the Democratic side by Sanders's impact on the Democrats. Hillary Clinton, at the most recent Democratic debate, doubled down on her attacks on Sanders as a big-government Democrat.
Sorry, but a dose of higher taxes and more social investment is just what the economy and the disaffected people who are flocking to Sanders need right now.
Take the case of tax-financed debt relief for college grads. That's not a case of building a big government bureaucracy. On the contrary: Money would flow in, via more tax dollars collected from the rich, and it would flow out for debt-free higher education. Does Hillary really want to bash Bernie over that?
Or take Medicare for All. That's less bureaucracy, not more. Medicare is an exemplar of the efficiency of government. It spends 98 cents of the premium dollar on medical care. Most private insurers are down in the 80s. If you want to see bureaucracy in action, take a good look at private medical and health insurance bureaucracies. (And you have, if you've been to the doctor or filed a claim lately.)
Hillary's biggest blunder was to try to tag Bernie as a one-issue candidate. If that issue is the economy, bring it on.
What Trump and Sanders are forcing is a debate about the declining prospects of most Americans. For all of its power, Wall Street, in the driver's seat on both parties for at least three decades, suddenly has the weaker horse in both parties. Amazing!
Of course, Hillary Clinton is still the more likely Democratic nominee. And in a head-to-head with Trump, she is probably the favorite barring some new horrendous disclosure about Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest or emails.
Clinton, presumably, is a good enough reader of public opinion and of sources of political energy, that she would be a more progressive president that one might have expected. But Wall Street would still have a good friend in the Oval Office—too good a friend. Reported by The American Prospect 20 hours ago.
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New Report from AIS Prescription Benefit Database Finds HMO Plan Type Increased 8.7% Over First Three Years of Exchanges
A new report from the editors of Atlantic Information Services’ Rx Benefit Design Data offers comparative analysis of the drug benefits on exchange plans.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) February 16, 2016
Atlantic Information Services, Inc. (AIS) is pleased to announce the release of a new report, Year-Over-Year Analysis of Prescription Drug Benefits of Health Plans: 2014-2016. Prepared by the editors of AIS’s online subscription database Rx Benefit Design Data, the report contains comprehensive charts and tables that can be used to compare every exchange plan on the market, including breakdowns of plans by metal level and plan type. The report also offers analysis of average medical deductibles, average copays and coinsurance by formulary tier for both retail and mail-order drugs, and average out-of-pocket limits for all exchange plans.
Findings from Year-Over-Year Analysis of Prescription Drug Benefits of Health Plans: 2014-2016 include:· Insurers on exchanges have steadily increased HMO (up 8.7% from 2014) and EPO (up 3.6% from 2014) offerings while offering fewer PPO products (down 9.1% from 2014).
· Silver HMO plans comprised the greatest percentage of all plans in 2016, compared with all other metal level and plan type combinations. 48.1% of silver plans offered in 2016 were HMOs.
· The average out-of-network annual overall deductible for an individual increased the most on the catastrophic level, from $10,675.93 in 2014 to $13,474.06 in 2016. Plans at the catastrophic level out of network also experienced the largest increase in out-of-pocket maximum, up 26.9% in 2016 from an average of $15,961.83 in 2014.
· The average retail copay for in-network specialty drugs rose 57.1% from $62.30 in 2015 to $97.88 in 2016, mirroring the general trend of rising specialty drug costs from 2015 into 2016.
A free copy of the analysis may be downloaded from the RxB demo website in the site’s In-App Downloads section. For more information, and to access the demo, visit https://aishealthdata.com/rxb.
About AIS
Atlantic Information Services, Inc. (AIS) is a publishing and information company that has been serving the health care industry for nearly 30 years. It develops highly targeted news, data and strategic information for managers in hospitals and health systems, health insurance companies, medical group practices, purchasers of health insurance, pharmaceutical companies and other health care organizations. AIS products include print and electronic newsletters, databases, websites, looseleafs, strategic reports, directories, webinars and virtual conferences. Learn more at http://AISHealth.com. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) February 16, 2016
Atlantic Information Services, Inc. (AIS) is pleased to announce the release of a new report, Year-Over-Year Analysis of Prescription Drug Benefits of Health Plans: 2014-2016. Prepared by the editors of AIS’s online subscription database Rx Benefit Design Data, the report contains comprehensive charts and tables that can be used to compare every exchange plan on the market, including breakdowns of plans by metal level and plan type. The report also offers analysis of average medical deductibles, average copays and coinsurance by formulary tier for both retail and mail-order drugs, and average out-of-pocket limits for all exchange plans.
Findings from Year-Over-Year Analysis of Prescription Drug Benefits of Health Plans: 2014-2016 include:· Insurers on exchanges have steadily increased HMO (up 8.7% from 2014) and EPO (up 3.6% from 2014) offerings while offering fewer PPO products (down 9.1% from 2014).
· Silver HMO plans comprised the greatest percentage of all plans in 2016, compared with all other metal level and plan type combinations. 48.1% of silver plans offered in 2016 were HMOs.
· The average out-of-network annual overall deductible for an individual increased the most on the catastrophic level, from $10,675.93 in 2014 to $13,474.06 in 2016. Plans at the catastrophic level out of network also experienced the largest increase in out-of-pocket maximum, up 26.9% in 2016 from an average of $15,961.83 in 2014.
· The average retail copay for in-network specialty drugs rose 57.1% from $62.30 in 2015 to $97.88 in 2016, mirroring the general trend of rising specialty drug costs from 2015 into 2016.
A free copy of the analysis may be downloaded from the RxB demo website in the site’s In-App Downloads section. For more information, and to access the demo, visit https://aishealthdata.com/rxb.
About AIS
Atlantic Information Services, Inc. (AIS) is a publishing and information company that has been serving the health care industry for nearly 30 years. It develops highly targeted news, data and strategic information for managers in hospitals and health systems, health insurance companies, medical group practices, purchasers of health insurance, pharmaceutical companies and other health care organizations. AIS products include print and electronic newsletters, databases, websites, looseleafs, strategic reports, directories, webinars and virtual conferences. Learn more at http://AISHealth.com. Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
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Larry Thompson to Be Inducted Into Personal Managers Hall of Fame
Hollywood talent manager Larry A. Thompson will be inducted into the Personal Managers Hall of Fame.The film and Broadway producer, attorney, book packager, author and motivational speaker will join other previously inaugurated members, including Bernie Brillstein, Shep Gordon, Charles H. Joffe, Ken Kragen and Jack Rollins, among others. Clinton Ford Billups Jr. is the president of the National Conference of Personal Managers (NCOPM), which recognizes outstanding careers in personal management and awards the highest recognition bestowed upon a personal manager.
Other members of the 2016 class are Rushion McDonald, Doc McGhee, Edie Robb, Jerry Solomon and Jeff Wald. New posthumous inductees include George “Bullets” Durgom, Brian Epstein, Albert Grossman, William “Bill” Loeb, Patricia “Pat” McQueeney and Jack Segal.
*Also Read:* Shannen Doherty Seeks Sanctions Against Ex-Manager in Health Insurance Lawsuit
Thompson (pictured above) is founder and president of the Larry A. Thompson Organization, a next-generation, Los Angeles-based talent management, motion picture, television, Broadway and new media production studio.
He and his team of managers have guided the careers of over 200 stars including William Shatner, Drew Barrymore, Cicely Tyson, Joan Rivers, Iman, Mariska Hargitay, Jason Bateman, Scott Hamilton, David Hasselhoff, Cindy Crawford, Shannen Doherty, Linda Evans, Barry White, Tatum O’Neal, Donna Mills, Melissa Rivers, Linda Blair, Bruce Boxleitner, Justine Bateman, Alan Thicke, Donna Dixon, William Devane, Richard Pryor, Tori Spelling, Robert Blake, Merle Haggard, Steve Guttenberg, Sally Kellerman, Delta Burke, Jim Nabors, and Sonny & Cher.
Thompson still currently manages Shatner, who just recently released a book about his friendship with “Star Trek” co-star Leonard Nimoy.
*Also Read:* Eagles Manager Irving Azoff Mourns Glenn Frey: 'He's Gone Way Too Soon'
As a filmmaker, Thompson has produced 20 movies for television, including the Lindsay Lohan-starring “Liz & Dick.” He also produced five theatrical motion pictures, two television series, and 12 television specials.
Thompson has previously received the Talent Managers Association (TMA) prestigious Heller Award for Lifetime Achievement in Talent Management, as well as the entertainment industry’s Vision Award. He was voted “Showman of the Year” in 1999 by the U.S. Television Fan Association.
Thompson’s productions have won two Accolade Awards, two Imagen Awards, the Epiphany Prize, the Wilbur Award and the Christopher Award, and have received nominations for eight Emmys, six Imagen Awards, two Prism Awards, the Humanitas Prize and a Golden Globe.
*Related stories from TheWrap:*
Glenn Frey's Medication Contributed to His Death, Manager Says (Exclusive)
Rene Angelil, Celine Dion's Ex Manager and Husband, Dies at 73
Charlie Sheen Is 'Guinea Pig' for HIV Research, Manager Says
Robert Stigwood, Former Bee Gees Manager, Dead at 81 Reported by The Wrap 14 hours ago.
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Benefitfocus Study Uncovers over Half of Large Employers Now Offer High-Deductible Health Insurance Plans (HDHPs); Millennials Top Takers
CHARLESTON, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Benefitfocus, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNFT), a leading provider of cloud-based benefits management software, today released its inaugural “Benefitfocus State of Employee Benefits 2016,” a snapshot of real, but anonymous, benefit selection data from more than 700,000 people at 500 large employers. The in-depth study, which used actual behavioral data rather than self-reported data analyzed in typical surveys, shows that 52 percent of large employers on the BENEFITFOCUS®
Reported by Business Wire 16 hours ago.
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You Can't Earn a Living on the Minimum Wage
*Nickel and Dimed in 2016*
*Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com*
When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about?
Whether they know it or not, it’s something like this.
*My Working Life Then*
A few years ago, I wrote about my experience enmeshed in the minimum-wage economy, chronicling the collapse of good people who could not earn enough money, often working 60-plus hours a week at multiple jobs, to feed their families. I saw that, in this country, people trying to make ends meet in such a fashion still had to resort to food benefit programs and charity. I saw an employee fired for stealing lunches from the break room refrigerator to feed himself. I watched as a co-worker secretly brought her two kids into the store and left them to wander alone for hours because she couldn’t afford childcare. (As it happens, 29% of low-wage employees are single parents.)
At that point, having worked at the State Department for 24 years, I had been booted out for being a whistleblower. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me next and so took a series of minimum wage jobs. Finding myself plunged into the low-wage economy was a sobering, even frightening, experience that made me realize just how ignorant I had been about the lives of the people who rang me up at stores or served me food in restaurants. Though millions of adults work for minimum wage, until I did it myself I knew nothing about what that involved, which meant I knew next to nothing about twenty-first-century America.
I was lucky. I didn’t become one of those millions of people trapped as the “working poor.” I made it out. But with all the election talk about the economy, I decided it was time to go back and take another look at where I had been, and where too many others still are.
*My Working Life Now*
I found things were pretty much the same in 2016 as they were in 2012, which meant -- because there was no real improvement -- that things were actually worse.
This time around, I worked for a month and a half at a national retail chain in New York City. While mine was hardly a scientific experiment, I'd be willing to bet an hour of my minimum-wage salary ($9 before taxes) that what follows is pretty typical of the New Economy.
Just getting hired wasn't easy for this 56-year-old guy. To become a sales clerk, peddling items that were generally well under $50 a pop, I needed two previous employment references and I had to pass a credit check. Unlike some low-wage jobs, a mandatory drug test wasn’t part of the process, but there was a criminal background check and I was told drug offenses would disqualify me. I was given an exam twice, by two different managers, designed to see how I'd respond to various customer situations. In other words, anyone without some education, good English, a decent work history, and a clean record wouldn't even qualify for minimum-wage money at this chain.
And believe me, I earned that money. Any shift under six hours involved only a 15-minute break (which cost the company just $2.25). Trust me, at my age, after hours standing, I needed that break and I wasn't even the oldest or least fit employee. After six hours, you did get a 45-minute break, but were only paid for 15 minutes of it.
The hardest part of the job remained dealing with... well, some of you. Customers felt entitled to raise their voices, use profanity, and commit Trumpian acts of rudeness toward my fellow employees and me. Most of our “valued guests” would never act that way in other public situations or with their own coworkers, no less friends. But inside that store, shoppers seemed to interpret “the customer is always right” to mean that they could do any damn thing they wished. It often felt as if we were penned animals who could be poked with a stick for sport, and without penalty. No matter what was said or done, store management tolerated no response from us other than a smile and a “Yes, sir” (or ma'am).
The store showed no more mercy in its treatment of workers than did the customers. My schedule, for instance, changed constantly. There was simply no way to plan things more than a week in advance. (Forget accepting a party invitation. I'm talking about childcare and medical appointments.) If you were on the closing shift, you stayed until the manager agreed that the store was clean enough for you to go home. You never quite knew when work was going to be over and no cell phone calls were allowed to alert babysitters of any delay.
And keep in mind that I was lucky. I was holding down only one job in one store. Most of my fellow workers were trying to juggle two or three jobs, each with constantly changing schedules, in order to stitch together something like a half-decent paycheck.
In New York City, that store was required to give us sick leave only after we'd worked there for a full year -- and that was generous compared to practices in many other locales. Until then, you either went to work sick or stayed home unpaid. Unlike New York, most states do not require such a store to offer any sick leave, ever, to employees who work less than 40 hours a week. Think about that the next time your waitress coughs.
*Minimum Wages and Minimum Hours*
Much is said these days about raising the minimum wage (and it should be raised), and indeed, on January 1, 2016, 13 states did raise theirs. But what sounds like good news is unlikely to have much effect on the working poor.
In New York, for instance, the minimum went from $8.75 an hour to the $9.00 I was making. New York is relatively generous. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and 21 states require only that federal standard. Presumably to prove some grim point or other, Georgia and Wyoming officially mandate an even lower minimum wage and then unofficially require the payment of $7.25 to avoid Department of Labor penalties. Some Southern states set no basement figure, presumably for similar reasons.
Don’t forget: any minimum wage figure mentioned is before taxes. Brackets vary, but let's knock an even 10% off that hourly wage just as a reasonable guess about what is taken out of a minimum-wage worker's salary. And there are expenses to consider, too. My round-trip bus fare every day, for instance, was $5.50. That meant I worked most of my first hour for bus fare and taxes. Keep in mind that some workers have to pay for childcare as well, which means that it’s not impossible to imagine a scenario in which someone could actually come close to losing money by going to work for short shifts at minimum wage.
In addition to the fundamental problem of simply not paying people enough, there’s the additional problem of not giving them enough hours to work. The two unfortunately go together, which means that raising the minimum rate is only part of any solution to improving life in the low-wage world.
At the store where I worked for minimum wage a few years ago, for instance, hours were capped at 39 a week. The company did that as a way to avoid providing the benefits that would kick in once one became a “full time” employee. Things have changed since 2012 -- and not for the better.
Four years later, the hours of most minimum-wage workers are capped at 29. That's the threshold after which most companies with 50 or more employees are required to pay into the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) fund on behalf of their workers. Of course, some minimum wage workers get fewer than 29 hours for reasons specific to the businesses they work for.
*It's Math Time*
While a lot of numbers follow, remember that they all add up to a picture of how people around us are living every day.
In New York, under the old minimum wage system, $8.75 multiplied by 39 hours equaled $341.25 a week before taxes. Under the new minimum wage, $9.00 times 29 hours equals $261 a week. At a cap of 29 hours, the minimum wage would have to be raised to $11.77 just to get many workers back to the same level of take-home pay that I got in 2012, given the drop in hours due to the Affordable Care Act. Health insurance is important, but so is food.
In other words, a rise in the minimum wage is only half the battle; employees need enough hours of work to make a living.
About food: if a minimum wage worker in New York manages to work two jobs (to reach 40 hours a week) without missing any days due to illness, his or her yearly salary would be $18,720. In other words, it would fall well below the Federal Poverty Line of $21,775. That's food stamp territory. To get above the poverty line with a 40-hour week, the minimum wage would need to go above $10. At 29 hours a week, it would need to make it to $15 an hour. Right now, the highest minimum wage at a state level is in the District of Columbia at $11.50. As of now, no state is slated to go higher than that before 2018. (Some cities do set their own higher minimum wages.)
So add it up: The idea of raising the minimum wage (“the fight for $15”) is great, but even with that $15 in such hours-restrictive circumstances, you can't make a loaf of bread out of a small handful of crumbs. In short, no matter how you do the math, it’s nearly impossible to feed yourself, never mind a family, on the minimum wage. It's like being trapped on an M.C. Escher staircase.
The federal minimum wage hit its high point in 1968 at $8.54 in today's dollars and while this country has been a paradise in the ensuing decades for what we now call the “One Percent,” it’s been downhill for low-wage workers ever since. In fact, since it was last raised in 2009 at the federal level to $7.25 per hour, the minimum has lost about 8.1% of its purchasing power to inflation. In other words, minimum-wage workers actually make less now than they did in 1968, when most of them were probably kids earning pocket money and not adults feeding their own children.
In adjusted dollars, the minimum wage peaked when the Beatles were still together and the Vietnam War raged.
*Who Pays?*
Many of the arguments against raising the minimum wage focus on the possibility that doing so would put small businesses in the red. This is disingenuous indeed, since 20 mega-companies dominate the minimum-wage world. Walmart alone employs 1.4 million minimum-wage workers; Yum Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) is in second place; and McDonald's takes third. Overall, 60% of minimum-wage workers are employed by businesses not officially considered “small” by government standards, and of course carve-outs for really small businesses are possible, as was done with Obamacare.
Keep in mind that not raising wages costs you money.
Those minimum wage workers who can't make enough and need to go on food assistance? Well, Walmart isn't paying for those food stamps (now called SNAP), you are. The annual bill that states and the federal government foot for working families making poverty-level wages is $153 billion. A single Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year in public assistance money, and Walmart employees account for 18% of all food stamps issued. In other words, those everyday low prices at the chain are, in part, subsidized by your tax money.
If the minimum wage goes up, will spending on food benefits programs go down? Almost certainly. But won't stores raise prices to compensate for the extra money they will be shelling out for wages? Possibly. But don't worry -- raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would mean a Big Mac would cost all of 17 cents more.
*Time Theft*
My retail job ended a little earlier than I had planned, because I committed time theft.
You probably don’t even know what time theft is. It may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, but minimum-wage employers take time theft seriously. The basic idea is simple enough: if they’re paying you, you’d better be working. While the concept is not invalid per se, the way it’s used by the mega-companies reveals much about how the lowest wage workers are seen by their employers in 2016.
The problem at my chain store was that its in-store cafe was a lot closer to my work area than the time clock where I had to punch out whenever I was going on a scheduled break. One day, when break time on my shift came around, I only had 15 minutes. So I decided to walk over to that cafe, order a cup of coffee, and then head for the place where I could punch out and sit down (on a different floor at the other end of the store).
We’re talking an extra minute or two, no more, but in such operations every minute is tabulated and accounted for. As it happened, a manager saw me and stepped in to tell the cafe clerk to cancel my order. Then, in front of whoever happened to be around, she accused me of committing time theft -- that is, of ordering on the clock. We’re talking about the time it takes to say, “Grande, milk, no sugar, please.” But no matter, and getting chastised on company time was considered part of the job, so the five minutes we stood there counted as paid work.
At $9 an hour, my per-minute pay rate was 15 cents, which meant that I had time-stolen perhaps 30 cents. I was, that is, being nickel and dimed to death.
*Economics Is About People*
It seems wrong in a society as wealthy as ours that a person working full-time can't get above the poverty line. It seems no less wrong that someone who is willing to work for the lowest wage legally payable must also give up so much of his or her self-respect and dignity as a kind of tariff. Holding a job should not be a test of how to manage life as one of the working poor.
I didn't actually get fired for my time theft. Instead, I quit on the spot. Whatever the price is for my sense of self-worth, it isn’t 30 cents. Unlike most of this country’s working poor, I could afford to make such a decision. My life didn't depend on it. When the manager told a handful of my coworkers watching the scene to get back to work, they did. They couldn't afford not to.
Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the “reconstruction” of Iraq in his book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hooper's War.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 15 hours ago.
*Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com*
When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about?
Whether they know it or not, it’s something like this.
*My Working Life Then*
A few years ago, I wrote about my experience enmeshed in the minimum-wage economy, chronicling the collapse of good people who could not earn enough money, often working 60-plus hours a week at multiple jobs, to feed their families. I saw that, in this country, people trying to make ends meet in such a fashion still had to resort to food benefit programs and charity. I saw an employee fired for stealing lunches from the break room refrigerator to feed himself. I watched as a co-worker secretly brought her two kids into the store and left them to wander alone for hours because she couldn’t afford childcare. (As it happens, 29% of low-wage employees are single parents.)
At that point, having worked at the State Department for 24 years, I had been booted out for being a whistleblower. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me next and so took a series of minimum wage jobs. Finding myself plunged into the low-wage economy was a sobering, even frightening, experience that made me realize just how ignorant I had been about the lives of the people who rang me up at stores or served me food in restaurants. Though millions of adults work for minimum wage, until I did it myself I knew nothing about what that involved, which meant I knew next to nothing about twenty-first-century America.
I was lucky. I didn’t become one of those millions of people trapped as the “working poor.” I made it out. But with all the election talk about the economy, I decided it was time to go back and take another look at where I had been, and where too many others still are.
*My Working Life Now*
I found things were pretty much the same in 2016 as they were in 2012, which meant -- because there was no real improvement -- that things were actually worse.
This time around, I worked for a month and a half at a national retail chain in New York City. While mine was hardly a scientific experiment, I'd be willing to bet an hour of my minimum-wage salary ($9 before taxes) that what follows is pretty typical of the New Economy.
Just getting hired wasn't easy for this 56-year-old guy. To become a sales clerk, peddling items that were generally well under $50 a pop, I needed two previous employment references and I had to pass a credit check. Unlike some low-wage jobs, a mandatory drug test wasn’t part of the process, but there was a criminal background check and I was told drug offenses would disqualify me. I was given an exam twice, by two different managers, designed to see how I'd respond to various customer situations. In other words, anyone without some education, good English, a decent work history, and a clean record wouldn't even qualify for minimum-wage money at this chain.
And believe me, I earned that money. Any shift under six hours involved only a 15-minute break (which cost the company just $2.25). Trust me, at my age, after hours standing, I needed that break and I wasn't even the oldest or least fit employee. After six hours, you did get a 45-minute break, but were only paid for 15 minutes of it.
The hardest part of the job remained dealing with... well, some of you. Customers felt entitled to raise their voices, use profanity, and commit Trumpian acts of rudeness toward my fellow employees and me. Most of our “valued guests” would never act that way in other public situations or with their own coworkers, no less friends. But inside that store, shoppers seemed to interpret “the customer is always right” to mean that they could do any damn thing they wished. It often felt as if we were penned animals who could be poked with a stick for sport, and without penalty. No matter what was said or done, store management tolerated no response from us other than a smile and a “Yes, sir” (or ma'am).
The store showed no more mercy in its treatment of workers than did the customers. My schedule, for instance, changed constantly. There was simply no way to plan things more than a week in advance. (Forget accepting a party invitation. I'm talking about childcare and medical appointments.) If you were on the closing shift, you stayed until the manager agreed that the store was clean enough for you to go home. You never quite knew when work was going to be over and no cell phone calls were allowed to alert babysitters of any delay.
And keep in mind that I was lucky. I was holding down only one job in one store. Most of my fellow workers were trying to juggle two or three jobs, each with constantly changing schedules, in order to stitch together something like a half-decent paycheck.
In New York City, that store was required to give us sick leave only after we'd worked there for a full year -- and that was generous compared to practices in many other locales. Until then, you either went to work sick or stayed home unpaid. Unlike New York, most states do not require such a store to offer any sick leave, ever, to employees who work less than 40 hours a week. Think about that the next time your waitress coughs.
*Minimum Wages and Minimum Hours*
Much is said these days about raising the minimum wage (and it should be raised), and indeed, on January 1, 2016, 13 states did raise theirs. But what sounds like good news is unlikely to have much effect on the working poor.
In New York, for instance, the minimum went from $8.75 an hour to the $9.00 I was making. New York is relatively generous. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and 21 states require only that federal standard. Presumably to prove some grim point or other, Georgia and Wyoming officially mandate an even lower minimum wage and then unofficially require the payment of $7.25 to avoid Department of Labor penalties. Some Southern states set no basement figure, presumably for similar reasons.
Don’t forget: any minimum wage figure mentioned is before taxes. Brackets vary, but let's knock an even 10% off that hourly wage just as a reasonable guess about what is taken out of a minimum-wage worker's salary. And there are expenses to consider, too. My round-trip bus fare every day, for instance, was $5.50. That meant I worked most of my first hour for bus fare and taxes. Keep in mind that some workers have to pay for childcare as well, which means that it’s not impossible to imagine a scenario in which someone could actually come close to losing money by going to work for short shifts at minimum wage.
In addition to the fundamental problem of simply not paying people enough, there’s the additional problem of not giving them enough hours to work. The two unfortunately go together, which means that raising the minimum rate is only part of any solution to improving life in the low-wage world.
At the store where I worked for minimum wage a few years ago, for instance, hours were capped at 39 a week. The company did that as a way to avoid providing the benefits that would kick in once one became a “full time” employee. Things have changed since 2012 -- and not for the better.
Four years later, the hours of most minimum-wage workers are capped at 29. That's the threshold after which most companies with 50 or more employees are required to pay into the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) fund on behalf of their workers. Of course, some minimum wage workers get fewer than 29 hours for reasons specific to the businesses they work for.
*It's Math Time*
While a lot of numbers follow, remember that they all add up to a picture of how people around us are living every day.
In New York, under the old minimum wage system, $8.75 multiplied by 39 hours equaled $341.25 a week before taxes. Under the new minimum wage, $9.00 times 29 hours equals $261 a week. At a cap of 29 hours, the minimum wage would have to be raised to $11.77 just to get many workers back to the same level of take-home pay that I got in 2012, given the drop in hours due to the Affordable Care Act. Health insurance is important, but so is food.
In other words, a rise in the minimum wage is only half the battle; employees need enough hours of work to make a living.
About food: if a minimum wage worker in New York manages to work two jobs (to reach 40 hours a week) without missing any days due to illness, his or her yearly salary would be $18,720. In other words, it would fall well below the Federal Poverty Line of $21,775. That's food stamp territory. To get above the poverty line with a 40-hour week, the minimum wage would need to go above $10. At 29 hours a week, it would need to make it to $15 an hour. Right now, the highest minimum wage at a state level is in the District of Columbia at $11.50. As of now, no state is slated to go higher than that before 2018. (Some cities do set their own higher minimum wages.)
So add it up: The idea of raising the minimum wage (“the fight for $15”) is great, but even with that $15 in such hours-restrictive circumstances, you can't make a loaf of bread out of a small handful of crumbs. In short, no matter how you do the math, it’s nearly impossible to feed yourself, never mind a family, on the minimum wage. It's like being trapped on an M.C. Escher staircase.
The federal minimum wage hit its high point in 1968 at $8.54 in today's dollars and while this country has been a paradise in the ensuing decades for what we now call the “One Percent,” it’s been downhill for low-wage workers ever since. In fact, since it was last raised in 2009 at the federal level to $7.25 per hour, the minimum has lost about 8.1% of its purchasing power to inflation. In other words, minimum-wage workers actually make less now than they did in 1968, when most of them were probably kids earning pocket money and not adults feeding their own children.
In adjusted dollars, the minimum wage peaked when the Beatles were still together and the Vietnam War raged.
*Who Pays?*
Many of the arguments against raising the minimum wage focus on the possibility that doing so would put small businesses in the red. This is disingenuous indeed, since 20 mega-companies dominate the minimum-wage world. Walmart alone employs 1.4 million minimum-wage workers; Yum Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) is in second place; and McDonald's takes third. Overall, 60% of minimum-wage workers are employed by businesses not officially considered “small” by government standards, and of course carve-outs for really small businesses are possible, as was done with Obamacare.
Keep in mind that not raising wages costs you money.
Those minimum wage workers who can't make enough and need to go on food assistance? Well, Walmart isn't paying for those food stamps (now called SNAP), you are. The annual bill that states and the federal government foot for working families making poverty-level wages is $153 billion. A single Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year in public assistance money, and Walmart employees account for 18% of all food stamps issued. In other words, those everyday low prices at the chain are, in part, subsidized by your tax money.
If the minimum wage goes up, will spending on food benefits programs go down? Almost certainly. But won't stores raise prices to compensate for the extra money they will be shelling out for wages? Possibly. But don't worry -- raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would mean a Big Mac would cost all of 17 cents more.
*Time Theft*
My retail job ended a little earlier than I had planned, because I committed time theft.
You probably don’t even know what time theft is. It may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, but minimum-wage employers take time theft seriously. The basic idea is simple enough: if they’re paying you, you’d better be working. While the concept is not invalid per se, the way it’s used by the mega-companies reveals much about how the lowest wage workers are seen by their employers in 2016.
The problem at my chain store was that its in-store cafe was a lot closer to my work area than the time clock where I had to punch out whenever I was going on a scheduled break. One day, when break time on my shift came around, I only had 15 minutes. So I decided to walk over to that cafe, order a cup of coffee, and then head for the place where I could punch out and sit down (on a different floor at the other end of the store).
We’re talking an extra minute or two, no more, but in such operations every minute is tabulated and accounted for. As it happened, a manager saw me and stepped in to tell the cafe clerk to cancel my order. Then, in front of whoever happened to be around, she accused me of committing time theft -- that is, of ordering on the clock. We’re talking about the time it takes to say, “Grande, milk, no sugar, please.” But no matter, and getting chastised on company time was considered part of the job, so the five minutes we stood there counted as paid work.
At $9 an hour, my per-minute pay rate was 15 cents, which meant that I had time-stolen perhaps 30 cents. I was, that is, being nickel and dimed to death.
*Economics Is About People*
It seems wrong in a society as wealthy as ours that a person working full-time can't get above the poverty line. It seems no less wrong that someone who is willing to work for the lowest wage legally payable must also give up so much of his or her self-respect and dignity as a kind of tariff. Holding a job should not be a test of how to manage life as one of the working poor.
I didn't actually get fired for my time theft. Instead, I quit on the spot. Whatever the price is for my sense of self-worth, it isn’t 30 cents. Unlike most of this country’s working poor, I could afford to make such a decision. My life didn't depend on it. When the manager told a handful of my coworkers watching the scene to get back to work, they did. They couldn't afford not to.
Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the “reconstruction” of Iraq in his book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hooper's War.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 15 hours ago.
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Aetna gets OK to acquire Humana's Florida-based affiliates
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation on Monday issued a consent order approving Aetna Inc.'s application to acquire Humana's Florida-based affiliates that include Humana Health Insurance Co. of Florida Inc., Humana Medical Plan Inc., Careplus Health Plans Inc. and CompBenefits Co. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation held a public hearing on Dec. 7, 2015, that included testimony from Aetna and public comments regarding the acquisition. FOIR also conducted a survey of the market segments…
Reported by bizjournals 13 hours ago.
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This is what your health insurance looks like this year
Reported by MarketWatch 12 hours ago.
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