Many large companies can afford to offer employees pricey perks to keep them happy. Price Waterhouse will help employees pay back their student loans. Patagonia gives employees two paid weeks off to work for the green nonprofit of their choice. One third of Fortune 500 companies offer pet health insurance. Free or subsidized food service and paid on-site daycare are common high-end benefits, and of course medical, dental and life insurance also are important. But if you’re a small or budget-conscious…
Reported by bizjournals 3 hours ago.
Perks that employees love (and don’t cost you a lot of money)
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George H.W. Bush Probably Didn't Recognize The GOP He Saw Thursday Night
Thursday’s Republican presidential debate in Houston began with a salute to George H.W. Bush, who was in attendance.
The homage to America’s 41st president, who who has battled health problems, was genuinely moving. But it was also a reminder of how much the GOP has changed since Bush’s day -- and how little today’s Republican presidential candidates have in common with him.
Trying to summarize the debate would be difficult, because it was another raucous, disjointed affair. Prior to the event, news reports suggested that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would focus on attacking each other, rather than criticizing real estate mogul Donald Trump, the clear front-runner. Those reports turned out to be wrong.
Rubio pounced on Trump early, repeatedly, and mercilessly. He brought up facts about Trump’s past that have received surprisingly little attention this campaign season -- like lawsuits over the way Trump’s companies treated immigrant labor. Cruz also attacked Trump, suggesting he was an unreliable conservative on everything from the courts to Obamacare. Trump fought back as he always has -- by launching ad hominem attacks and saying a bunch of stuff about “winning.”
In theory, Rubio and Cruz got the better of those exchanges, since Trump never really responded to their attacks. In reality? Who knows. Trump has had weak debate performances before and they don’t seem to have hurt his popularity.
But to focus on which candidate looked best is to miss the bigger picture, which is about how ideologically extreme the Republican Party has become.
All three front-runners have proposed massive tax cuts that would require either massive deficits or unprecedented cuts to social spending, all while giving the lion’s share of benefits to the rich.
All three front-runners have taken a hard line on the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., promising to rescind the protection from deportation many now enjoy from President Barack Obama’s executive orders -- and blasting those orders as unconstitutional.
And all three front-runners have called for repealing the Affordable Care Act without sketching out an alternative -- which would mean taking health insurance away from many millions of people.
In all of these cases, the contrast with Bush’s tenure is stark.
On fiscal issues, Bush famously signed a budget agreement that modestly raised taxes, in return for some modest spending cuts --, thereby reducing the deficit and laying the groundwork for the surpluses that came years later.
On immigration, Bush signed an executive order blocking deportations that would break up certain families.
On health care, Bush never got behind major expansions of coverage, but he also never tried to take away insurance that people already had from government programs.
Of course, conservatives didn’t like these decisions -- and they were particularly incensed that Bush agreed to raise taxes. It’s one reason that, today, so many Republicans take public pledges never to raise taxes, and then, in presidential campaigns, compete with one another over who can offer the largest, most audacious tax breaks to the wealthy.
For a few minutes on Thursday, it seemed as if maybe conservatives had decided it was time to move on -- and to recognize Bush for what historians increasingly view as a successful term of governance.
Then the debate began and the candidates started talking -- and it became apparent that the GOP front-runners had zero interest in governing the way Bush had.
-- 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 homage to America’s 41st president, who who has battled health problems, was genuinely moving. But it was also a reminder of how much the GOP has changed since Bush’s day -- and how little today’s Republican presidential candidates have in common with him.
Trying to summarize the debate would be difficult, because it was another raucous, disjointed affair. Prior to the event, news reports suggested that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would focus on attacking each other, rather than criticizing real estate mogul Donald Trump, the clear front-runner. Those reports turned out to be wrong.
Rubio pounced on Trump early, repeatedly, and mercilessly. He brought up facts about Trump’s past that have received surprisingly little attention this campaign season -- like lawsuits over the way Trump’s companies treated immigrant labor. Cruz also attacked Trump, suggesting he was an unreliable conservative on everything from the courts to Obamacare. Trump fought back as he always has -- by launching ad hominem attacks and saying a bunch of stuff about “winning.”
In theory, Rubio and Cruz got the better of those exchanges, since Trump never really responded to their attacks. In reality? Who knows. Trump has had weak debate performances before and they don’t seem to have hurt his popularity.
But to focus on which candidate looked best is to miss the bigger picture, which is about how ideologically extreme the Republican Party has become.
All three front-runners have proposed massive tax cuts that would require either massive deficits or unprecedented cuts to social spending, all while giving the lion’s share of benefits to the rich.
All three front-runners have taken a hard line on the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., promising to rescind the protection from deportation many now enjoy from President Barack Obama’s executive orders -- and blasting those orders as unconstitutional.
And all three front-runners have called for repealing the Affordable Care Act without sketching out an alternative -- which would mean taking health insurance away from many millions of people.
In all of these cases, the contrast with Bush’s tenure is stark.
On fiscal issues, Bush famously signed a budget agreement that modestly raised taxes, in return for some modest spending cuts --, thereby reducing the deficit and laying the groundwork for the surpluses that came years later.
On immigration, Bush signed an executive order blocking deportations that would break up certain families.
On health care, Bush never got behind major expansions of coverage, but he also never tried to take away insurance that people already had from government programs.
Of course, conservatives didn’t like these decisions -- and they were particularly incensed that Bush agreed to raise taxes. It’s one reason that, today, so many Republicans take public pledges never to raise taxes, and then, in presidential campaigns, compete with one another over who can offer the largest, most audacious tax breaks to the wealthy.
For a few minutes on Thursday, it seemed as if maybe conservatives had decided it was time to move on -- and to recognize Bush for what historians increasingly view as a successful term of governance.
Then the debate began and the candidates started talking -- and it became apparent that the GOP front-runners had zero interest in governing the way Bush had.
-- 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.
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WEDI Opens ICD-10 Post Implementation Survey for Industry Participation
Providers, health plans, vendors and clearinghouses to submit responses by April 8, 2016
RESTON, Va (PRWEB) February 26, 2016
WEDI, the nation’s leading authority on the use of health IT to create efficiencies in healthcare information exchange, announced the release of its latest ICD-10 survey to determine how well the industry has transitioned to the new coding format following the Oct. 1, 2015 implementation. The survey results will be evaluated and compiled into a report for the industry.
Providers, health plans, vendors and clearinghouses are invited to participate in this important initiative to help assess the initial impact of the transition and to identify best practices that can be leveraged for future mandates. The survey is available here. The final submission deadline is April 8, 2016.
WEDI has been conducting surveys on ICD-10 since 2009 in a direct effort to gain a broad perspective on the readiness status for different sections of the industry. “We anticipate this to be our final ICD-10 survey as a clear assessment of how the transition went following the implementation deadline, and how it may have impacted organizations,” said Jim Daley, WEDI past-chair and ICD-10 Workgroup co-chair. “We also hope to identify key factors that affected the transition and identify best practices that can be applied to implementation of future industry mandates.”
As an advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), WEDI brings to the attention of HHS issues that it believes warrant review and consideration, and continually reports the results of these periodic ICD-10 surveys to HHS. For more information on WEDI’s ICD-10 Workgroup, visit the ICD-10 Workgroup Resource Page.
About WEDI
The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) is the leading authority on the use of health IT to improve healthcare information exchange in order to enhance the quality of care, improve efficiency, and reduce costs of our nation’s healthcare system. WEDI was formed in 1991 by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and was designated in the 1996 HIPAA legislation as an advisor to HHS. WEDI’s membership includes a broad coalition of organizations, including: hospitals, providers, health plans, vendors, government agencies, consumers, not-for-profit organizations, and standards development organizations. To learn more, visit http://www.wedi.org and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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Press contact information:
Dave Anderson
678-401-2991
dave(at)andersoni(dot)com Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
RESTON, Va (PRWEB) February 26, 2016
WEDI, the nation’s leading authority on the use of health IT to create efficiencies in healthcare information exchange, announced the release of its latest ICD-10 survey to determine how well the industry has transitioned to the new coding format following the Oct. 1, 2015 implementation. The survey results will be evaluated and compiled into a report for the industry.
Providers, health plans, vendors and clearinghouses are invited to participate in this important initiative to help assess the initial impact of the transition and to identify best practices that can be leveraged for future mandates. The survey is available here. The final submission deadline is April 8, 2016.
WEDI has been conducting surveys on ICD-10 since 2009 in a direct effort to gain a broad perspective on the readiness status for different sections of the industry. “We anticipate this to be our final ICD-10 survey as a clear assessment of how the transition went following the implementation deadline, and how it may have impacted organizations,” said Jim Daley, WEDI past-chair and ICD-10 Workgroup co-chair. “We also hope to identify key factors that affected the transition and identify best practices that can be applied to implementation of future industry mandates.”
As an advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), WEDI brings to the attention of HHS issues that it believes warrant review and consideration, and continually reports the results of these periodic ICD-10 surveys to HHS. For more information on WEDI’s ICD-10 Workgroup, visit the ICD-10 Workgroup Resource Page.
About WEDI
The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) is the leading authority on the use of health IT to improve healthcare information exchange in order to enhance the quality of care, improve efficiency, and reduce costs of our nation’s healthcare system. WEDI was formed in 1991 by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and was designated in the 1996 HIPAA legislation as an advisor to HHS. WEDI’s membership includes a broad coalition of organizations, including: hospitals, providers, health plans, vendors, government agencies, consumers, not-for-profit organizations, and standards development organizations. To learn more, visit http://www.wedi.org and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
-###-
Press contact information:
Dave Anderson
678-401-2991
dave(at)andersoni(dot)com Reported by PRWeb 19 hours ago.
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Insurer warnings cast doubt on ACA exchange future
Health insurance exchanges created to help millions of people find coverage are turning into money-losing ventures for many insurers. "Sometimes I think of (the exchanges) as a little campfire that's going to grow, but right now it needs a little more oxygen or kindling," said Katherine Hempstead, director of health insurance coverage programs for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that has assisted state governments on ACA insurance expansions. Insurers have struggled in many markets because people who couldn't get coverage previously due to a condition were among the first to sign up when the exchanges opened a few years ago. CEO Jerry Dworak said he asked the exchange operator for details on whether the patient had a legitimate reason for the special enrollment. The federal government runs exchanges in most states and announced Wednesday that it will start seeking proof that customers qualify for these special enrollment periods. Some government programs that provided temporary financial support for insurers as they set up their exchange business are winding down. The co-op has since dropped an unprofitable plan and caught a break when a state Medicaid expansion took away high-cost patients. Insurers will continue to shuffle in and out of the exchanges for a few years, predicts Larry Levitt, a senior vice president for the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health care issues. [...] ultimately, he expects them to keep supporting this still-new business opportunity, which also is important to customers because the exchanges offer income-based tax credits to help buy coverage.
Reported by SeattlePI.com 17 hours ago.
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Five Countries Where $1,500 A Month Is Plenty to Live on—InternationalLiving.com
The world is full of affordable destinations, but some stand out for the good value they offer.
Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) February 26, 2016
Thousands of retirees (and younger folks, too) are benefiting from a higher quality of life and a lower cost of living in places overseas where even a little goes a long, long way—whether it be filling a tank of gas, getting the week’s groceries, paying for health insurance, or making all the other ends of a monthly budget meet.
International Living has identified five best-value retirement spots around the world where $1,200 to $1,500 a month covers a couple’s housing, healthcare, food, and fun. Singles can get by on even less. In some of these havens, it’s possible to live well off a modest Social Security check alone. Many expats have relocated to these places for this very reason—but find good weather, laidback living, and friendly locals add to the comfortable lifestyle.
Peru
Stretching from the high Andes to the vast Pacific Ocean, Peru is a country of extremes. With its colonial cities, ancient ruins stretching back to antiquity, and long stretches of pristine beach, Peru has a wide diversity of lifestyles, but the one constant you can be guaranteed anywhere there is affordability.
International Living’s well-traveled David Hammond found Peru to be the most affordable country in the region.
“The cities I visited in Peru offer the highest standard of living for the lowest price that I’ve seen, especially for singles. Several single expats I met in the cities of Cusco and Arequipa report living comfortably on $500 to $600 a month. That includes everything—all rent and utilities, Wi-Fi service at home, eating out regularly, and a local pre-pay cell phone. Expat couples can live comfortably in Peru for $1,000 to $1,200 a month, including everything.”
Cambodia
Sandwiched between Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and the Gulf of Thailand, Cambodia offers a cost of living so low that many expats report costs around $1,200 a month. In cities like Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh, fresh-cooked meals at a restaurant go for as little as $2.50. On the beaches, $3 barbecues and 50-cent beers are common.
Cities like Phnom Penh have modern conveniences and food that draws on Chinese and Khmer cuisine, as well as on Cambodia’s French colonial heritage. In Phnom Penh, a basic rental can cost less than $200 a month, but expect to spend upwards of $350 for a good option in the center of town.
As for luxury items, leather shoes can be made to order for $22, a dress tailored for not much more than that, and a weekly manicure goes for $6.
Guatemala
Guatemala is not as developed as more established expat havens in Central America such as Panama or Costa Rica. This is still very much a developing country. But warm weather and cheap, farm-fresh produce make it easy to enjoy a healthy retirement all year round. A week’s worth of fresh produce can be had for around $12.
All told, a couple can comfortably call Guatemala home for $1,500 a month, which includes rent, utilities, food, a gardener and house cleaner ($3 each an hour), regular massages ($10 each), and three-course meals for only $20, among other little luxuries.
In Antigua, one of Guatemala’s most beautiful colonial towns, rentals for one-bedroom furnished apartments in town start around $300 a month. A furnished, three-bedroom house in a quiet gated community, with a living room, two bathrooms, garden, and rooftop patio with gorgeous views, goes for $700 a month.
As with any move abroad, expats often fret that the healthcare they receive will be poor. Not so in Guatemala. Although the general healthcare infrastructure may not be as developed as that in Costa Rica or Panama, there is great care in the capital. And—as with everything here—it’s for a small fraction of the cost back home.
Nicaragua
Long overshadowed by its neighbors to the south (Costa Rica and Panama), Nicaragua offers many of the same benefits (healthy lifestyle, great food, terrific beach living) for an even lower cost. This great value has seen thousands of U.S. expats pursue a retirement here in recent years. After all, in this country a complete meal with wine can cost only $16.
International Living correspondent Bonnie Hayman enjoys a home with ocean views in San Juan del Sur, which she could never have afforded back home in San Diego. “I would never have been able to live in an ocean-view home in the States. But in Nicaragua I found a beautiful two-bedroom, two-bathroom home on almost an acre, with an ocean view, for only $132,000,” she says. “I pay real estate taxes of just $151 a year.”
“If the mood takes me, I can go to a nearby restaurant for a fresh red snapper ($8) and the best mojito in town…or to another restaurant for international fare like a chicken-curry rice bowl or a fish filet with orange-chili sauce for the same price. Fish tacos for $1, veggie wraps for $5, a raw-food sandwich for $6, fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon buns, sushi…you can satisfy any craving here.”
Rentals in Nicaragua are also highly affordable, with a furnished apartment within a short walk of the beach renting for $400 a month or less.
“Many of my friends here rent furnished apartments or vacation homes at prices as low as $300 a month for a one-bedroom furnished apartment with water, electricity, and Wi-Fi is included,” says Bonnie.
All told, with $1,200 to $1,500 a month can fund a great retirement in Nicaragua.
Colombia
For decades, all that seemed to come out of Colombia was bad news. But in more recent times, peace (and the prosperity that has stemmed from it) is transforming this country into one of Latin America’s top retirement hot-spots.
In today’s Colombia, you’ll find healthcare on a par with that in North America—for pennies on the dollar. Vibrant metropolises like Medellín teem with dining options and a coffee culture, plus all the amenities a retiree would need. The highlands are home to striking colonial cities to match any in South America. Its range of elevations and equatorial location ensures a perfect climate. And all this can cost as little as $1,200 a month (for a couple), all in.
A couple could live comfortably on $1,200 a month in Pereira, a popular expat haven in Colombia’s Coffee Triangle. Lunches can be had for $3 to $5 and a three-course dinner typically costs $10 to $20. A liter of milk and loaf of bread are under $4.
The same is true for Manizales, another city within Colombia’s famed coffee-growing region.
Rents range from $130 a month for a comfortable home in a working-class neighborhood, complete with mountain views, to $430 for a modern three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in more upscale neighborhoods like Milán. And to keep it clean, housekeepers charge less than $20 a day.
The full report on these five affordable retirement havens can be read here: 5 Low Cost Countries Where You Can Live On $1500 a Month or Less.
Editor’s Note: Members of the media have full permission to reproduce the article linked above once credit is given to InternationalLiving.com.
Media Contact: For information about InternationalLiving.com content republishing, available source material or to book an interview for radio, TV or print with one of our experts, contact Associate Editor Carol Barron, 772-678-0287 (US), CBarron@InternationalLiving.com or visit the Media Center.
For 35 years, InternationalLiving.com has been the leading authority for anyone looking for global retirement or relocation opportunities. Through its monthly magazine and related e-letters, extensive website, podcasts, online bookstore, and events held around the world, InternationalLiving.com provides information and services to help its readers live better, travel farther, have more fun, save more money, and find better business opportunities when they expand their world beyond their own shores. InternationalLiving.com has more than 200 correspondents traveling the globe, investigating the best opportunities for travel, retirement, real estate, and investment. Reported by PRWeb 16 hours ago.
Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) February 26, 2016
Thousands of retirees (and younger folks, too) are benefiting from a higher quality of life and a lower cost of living in places overseas where even a little goes a long, long way—whether it be filling a tank of gas, getting the week’s groceries, paying for health insurance, or making all the other ends of a monthly budget meet.
International Living has identified five best-value retirement spots around the world where $1,200 to $1,500 a month covers a couple’s housing, healthcare, food, and fun. Singles can get by on even less. In some of these havens, it’s possible to live well off a modest Social Security check alone. Many expats have relocated to these places for this very reason—but find good weather, laidback living, and friendly locals add to the comfortable lifestyle.
Peru
Stretching from the high Andes to the vast Pacific Ocean, Peru is a country of extremes. With its colonial cities, ancient ruins stretching back to antiquity, and long stretches of pristine beach, Peru has a wide diversity of lifestyles, but the one constant you can be guaranteed anywhere there is affordability.
International Living’s well-traveled David Hammond found Peru to be the most affordable country in the region.
“The cities I visited in Peru offer the highest standard of living for the lowest price that I’ve seen, especially for singles. Several single expats I met in the cities of Cusco and Arequipa report living comfortably on $500 to $600 a month. That includes everything—all rent and utilities, Wi-Fi service at home, eating out regularly, and a local pre-pay cell phone. Expat couples can live comfortably in Peru for $1,000 to $1,200 a month, including everything.”
Cambodia
Sandwiched between Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and the Gulf of Thailand, Cambodia offers a cost of living so low that many expats report costs around $1,200 a month. In cities like Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh, fresh-cooked meals at a restaurant go for as little as $2.50. On the beaches, $3 barbecues and 50-cent beers are common.
Cities like Phnom Penh have modern conveniences and food that draws on Chinese and Khmer cuisine, as well as on Cambodia’s French colonial heritage. In Phnom Penh, a basic rental can cost less than $200 a month, but expect to spend upwards of $350 for a good option in the center of town.
As for luxury items, leather shoes can be made to order for $22, a dress tailored for not much more than that, and a weekly manicure goes for $6.
Guatemala
Guatemala is not as developed as more established expat havens in Central America such as Panama or Costa Rica. This is still very much a developing country. But warm weather and cheap, farm-fresh produce make it easy to enjoy a healthy retirement all year round. A week’s worth of fresh produce can be had for around $12.
All told, a couple can comfortably call Guatemala home for $1,500 a month, which includes rent, utilities, food, a gardener and house cleaner ($3 each an hour), regular massages ($10 each), and three-course meals for only $20, among other little luxuries.
In Antigua, one of Guatemala’s most beautiful colonial towns, rentals for one-bedroom furnished apartments in town start around $300 a month. A furnished, three-bedroom house in a quiet gated community, with a living room, two bathrooms, garden, and rooftop patio with gorgeous views, goes for $700 a month.
As with any move abroad, expats often fret that the healthcare they receive will be poor. Not so in Guatemala. Although the general healthcare infrastructure may not be as developed as that in Costa Rica or Panama, there is great care in the capital. And—as with everything here—it’s for a small fraction of the cost back home.
Nicaragua
Long overshadowed by its neighbors to the south (Costa Rica and Panama), Nicaragua offers many of the same benefits (healthy lifestyle, great food, terrific beach living) for an even lower cost. This great value has seen thousands of U.S. expats pursue a retirement here in recent years. After all, in this country a complete meal with wine can cost only $16.
International Living correspondent Bonnie Hayman enjoys a home with ocean views in San Juan del Sur, which she could never have afforded back home in San Diego. “I would never have been able to live in an ocean-view home in the States. But in Nicaragua I found a beautiful two-bedroom, two-bathroom home on almost an acre, with an ocean view, for only $132,000,” she says. “I pay real estate taxes of just $151 a year.”
“If the mood takes me, I can go to a nearby restaurant for a fresh red snapper ($8) and the best mojito in town…or to another restaurant for international fare like a chicken-curry rice bowl or a fish filet with orange-chili sauce for the same price. Fish tacos for $1, veggie wraps for $5, a raw-food sandwich for $6, fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon buns, sushi…you can satisfy any craving here.”
Rentals in Nicaragua are also highly affordable, with a furnished apartment within a short walk of the beach renting for $400 a month or less.
“Many of my friends here rent furnished apartments or vacation homes at prices as low as $300 a month for a one-bedroom furnished apartment with water, electricity, and Wi-Fi is included,” says Bonnie.
All told, with $1,200 to $1,500 a month can fund a great retirement in Nicaragua.
Colombia
For decades, all that seemed to come out of Colombia was bad news. But in more recent times, peace (and the prosperity that has stemmed from it) is transforming this country into one of Latin America’s top retirement hot-spots.
In today’s Colombia, you’ll find healthcare on a par with that in North America—for pennies on the dollar. Vibrant metropolises like Medellín teem with dining options and a coffee culture, plus all the amenities a retiree would need. The highlands are home to striking colonial cities to match any in South America. Its range of elevations and equatorial location ensures a perfect climate. And all this can cost as little as $1,200 a month (for a couple), all in.
A couple could live comfortably on $1,200 a month in Pereira, a popular expat haven in Colombia’s Coffee Triangle. Lunches can be had for $3 to $5 and a three-course dinner typically costs $10 to $20. A liter of milk and loaf of bread are under $4.
The same is true for Manizales, another city within Colombia’s famed coffee-growing region.
Rents range from $130 a month for a comfortable home in a working-class neighborhood, complete with mountain views, to $430 for a modern three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in more upscale neighborhoods like Milán. And to keep it clean, housekeepers charge less than $20 a day.
The full report on these five affordable retirement havens can be read here: 5 Low Cost Countries Where You Can Live On $1500 a Month or Less.
Editor’s Note: Members of the media have full permission to reproduce the article linked above once credit is given to InternationalLiving.com.
Media Contact: For information about InternationalLiving.com content republishing, available source material or to book an interview for radio, TV or print with one of our experts, contact Associate Editor Carol Barron, 772-678-0287 (US), CBarron@InternationalLiving.com or visit the Media Center.
For 35 years, InternationalLiving.com has been the leading authority for anyone looking for global retirement or relocation opportunities. Through its monthly magazine and related e-letters, extensive website, podcasts, online bookstore, and events held around the world, InternationalLiving.com provides information and services to help its readers live better, travel farther, have more fun, save more money, and find better business opportunities when they expand their world beyond their own shores. InternationalLiving.com has more than 200 correspondents traveling the globe, investigating the best opportunities for travel, retirement, real estate, and investment. Reported by PRWeb 16 hours ago.
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Zenefits is laying off 17% of its workforce, here's the email from new CEO David Sacks
There's more bad news from HR software startup Zenefits, once the darling of Silicon Valley. On Friday, its new CEO David Sacks announced that it would be laying off about 250 people or 17% of its workforce.Sacks is mostly cutting sales people, and in particular its enterprise sales team. He's refocusing the company to focus on serving small and medium-sized businesses.
This news tops a month that has been filled with bad news:
the sudden resignation of its founder CEO Parker Conrad, who was replaced by COO and investor David Sacks;
the revelation that the some of the company's sales people may not have been properly licensed to sell insurance (its main source of income);
the firing of executives involved in a program that may have been skirting the law when it came to training sales people for their licenses;
Sacks blasting the culture of the company and vowing that he was going to change it to focus on "integrity" along with banning alcohol – and sex – at work.
And now layoffs.
Here's the email sent to the troops by Sacks.
All --
When I became CEO of Zenefits, I promised on Day 1 to reset our culture, refocus our strategy on serving small businesses, and create a new beginning for success in the future. Today I have to make a very difficult set of decisions about how we do that. In fact, this is the most difficult decision I’ve had to make in my career, but it is necessary for Zenefits to move forward successfully.
We are reducing our headcount by roughly 250 employees, or about 17 percent of total employees. These changes are almost entirely in the Sales organization, with about a dozen employees in Recruiting. Within the Sales organization, we are eliminating the Enterprise team (although some members will be offered other roles). We are also making a large reduction in Sales Development Representatives (SDR), the organization that prospected for the largest accounts.
I want to make clear that this is a reduction in force (RIF), meaning that we are not cutting these jobs for performance reasons. We are letting go of many great people today, and it is not their fault. It is no secret that Zenefits grew too fast, stretching both our culture and our controls. This reduction enables us to refocus our strategy, rebuild in line with our new company values, and grow in a controlled way that will be strategic for our business and beneficial for our customers.
One of our core company values is to make Zenefits a great place for employees. To honor that value, we need to proceed in a way that respects our friends and colleagues. That is why we will be offering affected employees three months of severance (at their full OTE, which includes 100% of their incentive compensation), six months of COBRA, and transition assistance to help them find and move on to their next job.
We also want to make those who stay at Zenefits as successful as possible. Our sales leaders will be meeting with the team this afternoon to roll out new sales plans and quotas. By expanding the size of territories and concentrating lead flow, the sales reps who stay will be in a great position to succeed.
I believe they will be successful, and let me tell you why. Zenefits is a product that every small business needs. We have an important mission in the world, which is to make entrepreneurship easier and more accessible to everyone. We solve a universal problem for small businesses, which is to help them hire and manage their employees — onboard them, add them to payroll, enroll them in benefits, and provide their employees with health insurance coverage.
This is why Zenefits more than tripled its Annually Recurring Revenue (ARR) last year, growing from $20 million to over $60 million. As one angel investor ironically noted, he wished all of his investments could “fail" that badly. The reality is that very few start-ups have ever gotten to our position of market leadership and market opportunity. It would be an incredible waste if we did not seize it and make the most of it.
During my years in Silicon Valley, I’ve seen a number of attempted tech turn-arounds. Frankly, they don’t have a very good track record. But that’s because those companies had become obsolete technologies; they had lost their product-market fit. That is not Zenefits. Zenefits has made mistakes but it never lost its product-market fit.
I believe that the measures we are taking — self-reporting our issues to regulators, fully cooperating with their investigation, instituting new controls that bring us into compliance, naming a new exec team and Board, introducing new company values — put us on the path to fixing these problems.
I have confidence that we will turn a corner and deliver on our promise, because I know how much pride all of you have in this company. I know how much you care about what we’re building, how hard you have fought for our customers’ success, how special you believe this company is, and how great it can be.
That pride may be a little bruised lately by what has been written in the press. But I promise you this: if we move forward and rebuild, that will not be the last word written about this company. It will not be the last chapter. Zenefits will turn the page. And the story of Zenefits will make everyone proud.
David
*SEE ALSO: The crazy roller-coaster life of ousted Zenefits founder Parker Conrad*
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Here's the question that prompted Cam Newton to storm out of his postgame press conference Reported by Business Insider 15 hours ago.
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Why I Joined Bernie Sanders
When I was a graduate student studying African American history at Atlanta University, one of the nation's premier HBCU graduate schools, I had the opportunity to meet with James L. Farmer Jr., a founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, known better by its acronym of CORE. Farmer created the organization in Chicago in 1942, and was at the forefront of the movement to use nonviolent protest to dismantle Jim Crow segregation laws across the nation.
Farmer told me the story of his work, including being the subject of a house-to-house search by Louisiana law enforcement for his organizing activities there. He also told me about how CORE recruited idealistic young people of every ethnicity and background to fight racism across America, including James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were kidnapped and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi during the Freedom Summer activities of 1964.
My chance to sit down face-to-face with Mr. Farmer is one of the highlights of my life. That's why, when I learned about Bernie Sanders' history as the leader of the University of Chicago's CORE chapter during his time in college, I took notice. You may recall that no less an authority than Martin Luther King Jr. himself said after being hit with a rock while marching for integration in Chicago, "I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate."
The choice of a young Bernie Sanders to align himself with CORE as a college student in early 1960s Chicago says an enormous amount about his character and courage, as well as his commitment to righting the wrongs of American society. Bernie was not just a campus leader, either. We now know that he was arrested and prosecuted by Chicago authorities for protesting in favor of fair housing.
Bernie's history was my starting point in learning more about him, but what he's pushing for now is what clinched my decision to switch my endorsement for president from Hillary Clinton to him. There are three specific policy reasons I support him, and I am working as hard as I can to spread the word and win converts here in Georgia, especially in Atlanta's African American community.
First,* Bernie is the only candidate we can trust to take on Wall Street*. Much of the frustration you see in America today -- frustration that is manifesting itself in both the Democratic and Republican Presidential primaries -- arises from how we handled the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown brought to us by America's financial industry.
We were told that we had to save the banks, and that even though we were rescuing the big companies who raked in huge profits with setting the bomb that blew up the lives of so many Americans, we'd all be better off in the long run. We swallowed hard and accepted that plan, and then watched the federal government pump billions and billions of dollars into the banks that wrecked our economy.
The problem is that after we saved the banks, the bankers who blew them up were not held to account. We saw our money used to pay big bonuses to the same executives who drove our economy into the ground, and not a single one was prosecuted. We still see banks that are too big to fail and executives who are too big to prosecute. We still see the financial industry exerting enormous influence over our politicians and policy.
The big banks are using their cash to push to undermine even the modest reforms that were passed soon after President Obama took office. I know their power first-hand. In the early 2000s, I worked with then-Governor Roy Barnes here in Georgia to pass the nation's toughest law against predatory home lending -- a reform that we now know could have helped avoid many of the worst problems of the economic crisis. Instead of seeing those reforms adopted by more states, we saw Wall Street launch a major push to repeal the law. When Republicans took over Georgia, they did Wall Street's bidding and undid our reforms, setting the stage for the meltdown.
Bernie is the only candidate we can count on to not only resist Wall Street's push to undermine the regulations that control them, but to fight to break up the banks and the prosecute the bankers who deserve it.
The second big reason I decided to support Bernie is his *commitment to expanding Medicare to cover every American*. It is way past time for our nation to join the rest of the world's advanced societies and provide high quality health insurance for every American.
Here in Georgia and across the South, Republican-controlled state governments are refusing to expand Medicaid, even though the Affordable Care Act requires that the federal government pay for almost the entire cost of the expansion. Only Bernie's plan fixes that problem -- when we expand Medicare to every American, the days will be over when right wing politicians in Georgia and elsewhere can make a political point by denying healthcare to our fellow citizens.
The third big reason for I support Bernie is because *he's the only candidate for president who supports our fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage*. I am leading the "fight for $15" in the Georgia legislature, but like our push to expand Medicaid, we face a Republican-controlled state government united in opposition. If a President Sanders pushes a $15 an hour minimum wage through Congress, every working person in Georgia and nationwide will be paid a wage that lifts them out of poverty.
Some say Bernie's goals cannot be achieved. I respectfully but forcefully disagree.
Bernie is running on a clear, aggressive progressive agenda. If we elect him, that mandate will be powerful and transform the debate in Washington and nationwide. That's why I -- and I hope you -- will do everything you can to make Bernie Sanders the 45th President of the United States.
-- 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 13 hours ago.
Farmer told me the story of his work, including being the subject of a house-to-house search by Louisiana law enforcement for his organizing activities there. He also told me about how CORE recruited idealistic young people of every ethnicity and background to fight racism across America, including James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were kidnapped and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi during the Freedom Summer activities of 1964.
My chance to sit down face-to-face with Mr. Farmer is one of the highlights of my life. That's why, when I learned about Bernie Sanders' history as the leader of the University of Chicago's CORE chapter during his time in college, I took notice. You may recall that no less an authority than Martin Luther King Jr. himself said after being hit with a rock while marching for integration in Chicago, "I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate."
The choice of a young Bernie Sanders to align himself with CORE as a college student in early 1960s Chicago says an enormous amount about his character and courage, as well as his commitment to righting the wrongs of American society. Bernie was not just a campus leader, either. We now know that he was arrested and prosecuted by Chicago authorities for protesting in favor of fair housing.
Bernie's history was my starting point in learning more about him, but what he's pushing for now is what clinched my decision to switch my endorsement for president from Hillary Clinton to him. There are three specific policy reasons I support him, and I am working as hard as I can to spread the word and win converts here in Georgia, especially in Atlanta's African American community.
First,* Bernie is the only candidate we can trust to take on Wall Street*. Much of the frustration you see in America today -- frustration that is manifesting itself in both the Democratic and Republican Presidential primaries -- arises from how we handled the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown brought to us by America's financial industry.
We were told that we had to save the banks, and that even though we were rescuing the big companies who raked in huge profits with setting the bomb that blew up the lives of so many Americans, we'd all be better off in the long run. We swallowed hard and accepted that plan, and then watched the federal government pump billions and billions of dollars into the banks that wrecked our economy.
The problem is that after we saved the banks, the bankers who blew them up were not held to account. We saw our money used to pay big bonuses to the same executives who drove our economy into the ground, and not a single one was prosecuted. We still see banks that are too big to fail and executives who are too big to prosecute. We still see the financial industry exerting enormous influence over our politicians and policy.
The big banks are using their cash to push to undermine even the modest reforms that were passed soon after President Obama took office. I know their power first-hand. In the early 2000s, I worked with then-Governor Roy Barnes here in Georgia to pass the nation's toughest law against predatory home lending -- a reform that we now know could have helped avoid many of the worst problems of the economic crisis. Instead of seeing those reforms adopted by more states, we saw Wall Street launch a major push to repeal the law. When Republicans took over Georgia, they did Wall Street's bidding and undid our reforms, setting the stage for the meltdown.
Bernie is the only candidate we can count on to not only resist Wall Street's push to undermine the regulations that control them, but to fight to break up the banks and the prosecute the bankers who deserve it.
The second big reason I decided to support Bernie is his *commitment to expanding Medicare to cover every American*. It is way past time for our nation to join the rest of the world's advanced societies and provide high quality health insurance for every American.
Here in Georgia and across the South, Republican-controlled state governments are refusing to expand Medicaid, even though the Affordable Care Act requires that the federal government pay for almost the entire cost of the expansion. Only Bernie's plan fixes that problem -- when we expand Medicare to every American, the days will be over when right wing politicians in Georgia and elsewhere can make a political point by denying healthcare to our fellow citizens.
The third big reason for I support Bernie is because *he's the only candidate for president who supports our fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage*. I am leading the "fight for $15" in the Georgia legislature, but like our push to expand Medicaid, we face a Republican-controlled state government united in opposition. If a President Sanders pushes a $15 an hour minimum wage through Congress, every working person in Georgia and nationwide will be paid a wage that lifts them out of poverty.
Some say Bernie's goals cannot be achieved. I respectfully but forcefully disagree.
Bernie is running on a clear, aggressive progressive agenda. If we elect him, that mandate will be powerful and transform the debate in Washington and nationwide. That's why I -- and I hope you -- will do everything you can to make Bernie Sanders the 45th President of the United States.
-- 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 13 hours ago.
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Branding Workplace Spirit
Mindvalley's weekly Awesomeness Report, a weekly gathering where team members celebrate the accomplishments of all employees for the past week.
*By Gerald R. Wagner, PhD.*
The first time you step foot in a business, you get a feel for its spirit. A company can feel cold, stiff, and tense, or to the contrary, it can feel warm, inviting, and energetic. Like a brand, that feeling represents the organization's culture - its humanness. I like to call it "workplace spirit."
Workplace spirit is a tangible quality. By gathering data about your workplace spirit, you can use it to create highly shareable videos that inspire existing employees and attract the best new talent.
*Workplace Spirit Values *
Organizational values reflect overarching commonly-held beliefs and commitments that guide company behaviors, decisions and actions. Another set of related (but more specific) values are"workplace spirit values". These are the things that employees brag about when they talk about their job with friends and family; these are the things that inspire employees to come to work each day -- and attract the best new talent.
More common terms are Employer Branding or Employment Branding, but Workplace Spirit Branding is more intuitive and specific.
*Tangible Branding of Workplace Spirit with Videos*
Input for the Workplace Spirit Branding process can be gathered in a variety of ways. Immediately obvious is data from employee engagement surveys. This data reflects employee opinion on the workplace spirit as it is now, but doesn't usually provide insights about what they wish for in their future workplace.
In progressive workplaces, employees will insist upon participating in the design of their future workplace. "Design" here refers to anything that affects an employee's happiness with their job. We believe that data about what employees wish for is as important as -- and perhaps more important than -- data about the current workplace spirit.
With data in hand, branding videos that communicate the workplace spirit can be scripted and developed. There might be one video for presenting the current spirit and one that shows that employees help to design their future workplace; this makes both the current and the future spirits tangible and visible.
These video(s), 60 to 90 seconds in length, can be distributed in a variety of ways including through social media, newsletters, blogs, web sites, and email signatures.
*Humanness Values are Key in Workplace Spirit *
In their hearts, all employees and employers long for a positive humanistic workplace spirit. Often the factors that determine a positive workplace are emotional factors -- including love. This has been dubbed as "companionate love," which refers to the degree of affection, caring, and compassion that employees feel and express toward one another.
It is important to understand that living many of the values that create a positive workplace spirit incur little or no additional expense for an organization.
*Love in Workplace Spirit *
Articles about "love" as it applies to workplace spirit are rapidly increasing in number. When your employees participate in describing a workplace they wish for, the word love and other virtuous values such as compassion, kindness and gratitude are very likely to pop up. Just as likely, the traditional benefits such as bonuses, health insurance, 401ks, vacation time, and promotions will not likely appear in the brand script.
Love is arguably one of the most powerful human emotions, as well as a powerful leadership tool. Love motivates and inspires us. It helps us rise above our personal needs and build organizations with a higher purpose. It's a powerful emotion that prompts us to live in groups and build teams so that we can help each other survive. In terms of business, love is also a great untapped source of value -- it drives high performance and produces positive energy. It promotes collaboration, cultivates joy and happiness, and unleashes discretionary effort. Frankly, it's the smartest investment you can make as a leader. - Bob Rosen
In June 2015, 250 people gathered at the headquarters of Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency in Portland, Oregon to discuss the role of love in business. It was the debut of the nonprofit organization Dream Change's Love Summit business conference--a conference aimed at demonstrating why compassionate businesses are the most likely to thrive, while also driving global sustainable development.
*What's the ROI?*
What's in it for the company and its employees to practice positive habits and virtues? The answer again, is retaining and attracting employees. That's a huge benefit to the bottom line for the business. To replace a lost employee costs 50% or more of their annual salary, and the value of landing an outstanding candidate is immeasurable. The point is that costs are insignificant compared to value. That should answer any questions about the ROI.
Gerald R. Wagner, PhD., is CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Inspired Organizational Cultures. The non-profit Institute focuses on supporting nonprofits in their quest for progressive workplaces that embody the best practices for workplaces that employees love.
-- 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 13 hours ago.
*By Gerald R. Wagner, PhD.*
The first time you step foot in a business, you get a feel for its spirit. A company can feel cold, stiff, and tense, or to the contrary, it can feel warm, inviting, and energetic. Like a brand, that feeling represents the organization's culture - its humanness. I like to call it "workplace spirit."
Workplace spirit is a tangible quality. By gathering data about your workplace spirit, you can use it to create highly shareable videos that inspire existing employees and attract the best new talent.
*Workplace Spirit Values *
Organizational values reflect overarching commonly-held beliefs and commitments that guide company behaviors, decisions and actions. Another set of related (but more specific) values are"workplace spirit values". These are the things that employees brag about when they talk about their job with friends and family; these are the things that inspire employees to come to work each day -- and attract the best new talent.
More common terms are Employer Branding or Employment Branding, but Workplace Spirit Branding is more intuitive and specific.
*Tangible Branding of Workplace Spirit with Videos*
Input for the Workplace Spirit Branding process can be gathered in a variety of ways. Immediately obvious is data from employee engagement surveys. This data reflects employee opinion on the workplace spirit as it is now, but doesn't usually provide insights about what they wish for in their future workplace.
In progressive workplaces, employees will insist upon participating in the design of their future workplace. "Design" here refers to anything that affects an employee's happiness with their job. We believe that data about what employees wish for is as important as -- and perhaps more important than -- data about the current workplace spirit.
With data in hand, branding videos that communicate the workplace spirit can be scripted and developed. There might be one video for presenting the current spirit and one that shows that employees help to design their future workplace; this makes both the current and the future spirits tangible and visible.
These video(s), 60 to 90 seconds in length, can be distributed in a variety of ways including through social media, newsletters, blogs, web sites, and email signatures.
*Humanness Values are Key in Workplace Spirit *
In their hearts, all employees and employers long for a positive humanistic workplace spirit. Often the factors that determine a positive workplace are emotional factors -- including love. This has been dubbed as "companionate love," which refers to the degree of affection, caring, and compassion that employees feel and express toward one another.
It is important to understand that living many of the values that create a positive workplace spirit incur little or no additional expense for an organization.
*Love in Workplace Spirit *
Articles about "love" as it applies to workplace spirit are rapidly increasing in number. When your employees participate in describing a workplace they wish for, the word love and other virtuous values such as compassion, kindness and gratitude are very likely to pop up. Just as likely, the traditional benefits such as bonuses, health insurance, 401ks, vacation time, and promotions will not likely appear in the brand script.
Love is arguably one of the most powerful human emotions, as well as a powerful leadership tool. Love motivates and inspires us. It helps us rise above our personal needs and build organizations with a higher purpose. It's a powerful emotion that prompts us to live in groups and build teams so that we can help each other survive. In terms of business, love is also a great untapped source of value -- it drives high performance and produces positive energy. It promotes collaboration, cultivates joy and happiness, and unleashes discretionary effort. Frankly, it's the smartest investment you can make as a leader. - Bob Rosen
In June 2015, 250 people gathered at the headquarters of Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency in Portland, Oregon to discuss the role of love in business. It was the debut of the nonprofit organization Dream Change's Love Summit business conference--a conference aimed at demonstrating why compassionate businesses are the most likely to thrive, while also driving global sustainable development.
*What's the ROI?*
What's in it for the company and its employees to practice positive habits and virtues? The answer again, is retaining and attracting employees. That's a huge benefit to the bottom line for the business. To replace a lost employee costs 50% or more of their annual salary, and the value of landing an outstanding candidate is immeasurable. The point is that costs are insignificant compared to value. That should answer any questions about the ROI.
Gerald R. Wagner, PhD., is CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Inspired Organizational Cultures. The non-profit Institute focuses on supporting nonprofits in their quest for progressive workplaces that embody the best practices for workplaces that employees love.
-- 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 13 hours ago.
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Pondera Solutions and LexisNexis Risk Solutions Announce National Partnership to Fight Fraud in Government Programs
Pondera’s FDaaS solution will use LexisNexis data combined with Pondera’s behavioral analytics to identify and expose bad actors in government programs
Sacramento, California (PRWEB) February 26, 2016
Pondera Solutions, a Google Enterprise partner focused on implementing fraud analytics for government agencies nationwide, announced today that it is partnering with identity analytics company LexisNexis® Risk Solutions to integrate the LexisNexis Accurint® for Government solution into Pondera Solutions’ Fraud Detection as a Service (FDaaS®) offering. FDaaS is a high-tech solution to prevent fraud and improper payments in government programs, including Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Unemployment Insurance (UI), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS), and Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), as well as federal, state and local tax administration and revenue programs.
“The LexisNexis Accurint for Government solution allows Pondera to provide a higher level of service for our government clients by accessing more data at a faster rate,” said Jon Coss, Pondera Solutions Chief Executive Officer. “By layering LexisNexis’ public records data found in Accurint for Government over the FDaaS’ rules-based system, Pondera Solutions can now offer a stronger fraud filter that helps validate applicant information, supports investigations, and identifies links and associations not otherwise known. For example, the enhanced fraud filter will help detect Medicaid providers who use family members and cohorts to set up new businesses in other cities or states after they are flagged or sanctioned by healthcare payers.”
Pondera’s FDaaS is a trademarked Google-powered analytics solution that analyzes claims and program participants, quickly sifting through massive data sets to identify and alert agencies to problems that require follow up investigation. FDaaS is seen as a super investigator that combines technical and human intelligence with department data to quickly identify potential fraud and program risk. Because FDaaS uses machine learning and geospatial technology, it also continues to learn over time, uncovering new and emerging methods of fraud.
“We are committed to identifying and preventing fraud in government programs – a pervasive problem that costs taxpayers untold billions each year,” said Haywood Talcove, CEO, Government LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “By partnering with Pondera Solutions, we know government programs now have the benefit of a powerful solution aimed at detecting and preventing identity- and behavioral rules-based fraud.”
About Pondera Solutions:
Pondera Solutions combats fraud, waste and abuse in large government assistance programs, including Medicaid, Welfare and Unemployment Insurance. Pondera delivers a comprehensive Fraud Detection as a Service (FDaaS) solution based on Googles state-of-the-art tools. FDaaS® analyzes incoming claims using Googles predictive modeling, data mining and matching, geospatial, and search engine technologies to investigate and help prevent potential fraud before it occurs.
About LexisNexis Risk Solutions:
LexisNexis Risk Solutions (http://www.lexisnexis.com/risk/) is a leader in providing essential information that helps customers across industries and government predict, assess and manage risk. Combining cutting-edge technology, unique data and advanced analytics, LexisNexis Risk Solutions provides products and services that address evolving client needs in the risk sector while upholding the highest standards of security and privacy. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries. Reported by PRWeb 11 hours ago.
Sacramento, California (PRWEB) February 26, 2016
Pondera Solutions, a Google Enterprise partner focused on implementing fraud analytics for government agencies nationwide, announced today that it is partnering with identity analytics company LexisNexis® Risk Solutions to integrate the LexisNexis Accurint® for Government solution into Pondera Solutions’ Fraud Detection as a Service (FDaaS®) offering. FDaaS is a high-tech solution to prevent fraud and improper payments in government programs, including Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Unemployment Insurance (UI), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS), and Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), as well as federal, state and local tax administration and revenue programs.
“The LexisNexis Accurint for Government solution allows Pondera to provide a higher level of service for our government clients by accessing more data at a faster rate,” said Jon Coss, Pondera Solutions Chief Executive Officer. “By layering LexisNexis’ public records data found in Accurint for Government over the FDaaS’ rules-based system, Pondera Solutions can now offer a stronger fraud filter that helps validate applicant information, supports investigations, and identifies links and associations not otherwise known. For example, the enhanced fraud filter will help detect Medicaid providers who use family members and cohorts to set up new businesses in other cities or states after they are flagged or sanctioned by healthcare payers.”
Pondera’s FDaaS is a trademarked Google-powered analytics solution that analyzes claims and program participants, quickly sifting through massive data sets to identify and alert agencies to problems that require follow up investigation. FDaaS is seen as a super investigator that combines technical and human intelligence with department data to quickly identify potential fraud and program risk. Because FDaaS uses machine learning and geospatial technology, it also continues to learn over time, uncovering new and emerging methods of fraud.
“We are committed to identifying and preventing fraud in government programs – a pervasive problem that costs taxpayers untold billions each year,” said Haywood Talcove, CEO, Government LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “By partnering with Pondera Solutions, we know government programs now have the benefit of a powerful solution aimed at detecting and preventing identity- and behavioral rules-based fraud.”
About Pondera Solutions:
Pondera Solutions combats fraud, waste and abuse in large government assistance programs, including Medicaid, Welfare and Unemployment Insurance. Pondera delivers a comprehensive Fraud Detection as a Service (FDaaS) solution based on Googles state-of-the-art tools. FDaaS® analyzes incoming claims using Googles predictive modeling, data mining and matching, geospatial, and search engine technologies to investigate and help prevent potential fraud before it occurs.
About LexisNexis Risk Solutions:
LexisNexis Risk Solutions (http://www.lexisnexis.com/risk/) is a leader in providing essential information that helps customers across industries and government predict, assess and manage risk. Combining cutting-edge technology, unique data and advanced analytics, LexisNexis Risk Solutions provides products and services that address evolving client needs in the risk sector while upholding the highest standards of security and privacy. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries. Reported by PRWeb 11 hours ago.
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↧
Business Highlights
(AP) — Apple stockholders have given the company's CEO Tim Cook a standing ovation at his first stockholder's meeting since the company began its clash with the FBI. Federal officials have said they're only asking for narrow assistance to bypass some of the security features but Apple says the order would require a program that would make other iPhones vulnerable to hacking. Health insurance exchanges created to help millions of people find coverage are turning into money-losing ventures for many insurers. German authorities, concerned about racist abuse being posted on Facebook and other social networks as the country deals with an influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants, have been pressing social media sites for months to crack down. In a separate report, the government said the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic health, grew at an annual rate of 1 percent in the fourth quarter. NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks ended a strong week on a flat note as lower oil prices and utility stocks offset encouraging economic news. DETROIT (AP) — Evenflo is recalling over 56,000 child safety seats because curious children can loosen the internal harness, increasing the risk of injury in a crash. Dow Chemical said Friday it will pay $835 million to settle a long-standing class action lawsuit, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia decreased its chances of prevailing at the Supreme Court. NEW YORK (AP) — Hilton plans to spin off its timeshare business and most of its real estate business in a move to boost shareholder value. The lodging company said Friday that the real estate business will be spun off into a publicly traded real estate investment trust with 70 properties. The results were a bright spot in an otherwise dismal holiday quarter, where department store rivals like Macy's and Kohl's offered disappointing outlooks after struggling with weak sales. Wholesale gasoline futures fell 3.9
Reported by SeattlePI.com 8 hours ago.
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David Brooks Is Wrong Again -- Trump's Rise Is Not 'Anti-Politics' but the Cancer of Big Money
In his latest column, "The Governing Cancer of Our Times," New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks tries to explain Donald Trump's rise as a presidential candidate.
The cancer Brooks refers to is not Trump himself but what he calls "anti-politics." Brooks didn't invent this term but he uses it to advance ideas he's been pushing for many years, and some of those ideas have merit. Brooks observes that in a diverse society, "[t]here are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society -- politics or some form of dictatorship. Either through compromise or brute force." Politics, he correctly points out, involves compromise among interests that respect each other's right to exist and agree to play by the same rules. It involves debate and dialogue.
Brooks laments that in American politics, we no longer seem to be able to engage in rational debate, engage in compromise, and agree to disagree by following the same rules. In frustration, Brooks notes:
We're now at a point where the Senate says it won't even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We're now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We're now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys conversation.
How did we get to this point? Here is Brooks' explanation:
Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means.
Brooks is correct that Trumpism is a symptom of long-term trends, but he's identified the wrong trends.
He fails to mention that Trump's rise was preceded by decades of government-bashing by big business and the extreme right, seeking to weaken the ability of government to promote the common good and protect Americans from abusive corporations. Their key goal, as famously expressed in 2001 by corporate lobbyist and conservative ideologue Grover Norquist, was to reduce government "to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Brooks claims that a symptom of "anti politics" is the rise of "outsider" politicians like Trump. But Trump has hardly been an "outsider" in American politics. He's a total insider, playing the game by using his money and the mainstream media to take advantage of the political system that has been rigged by decades of corporate lobbying and crony capitalism.
Brooks has nothing to say about obscene amount of money contributed to candidates by the super-rich and corporate lobby groups as our campaign finance laws have been tilted -- by business-friendly politicians and, in Citizens United and other rulings, by the Supreme Court -- to favor the wealthy. He doesn't discuss how a majority of the Supreme Court, appointed by Republican presidents, has become an arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with ruling-after-ruling that favors big business over the concerns of consumers and workers. He ignores the rise of the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber who have used their influence to shift our political conversation to the right and often drowned out more moderate forces within the Republican Party and among the media.
These forces laid the foundation for Trump's emergence by moving the GOP to the extreme right, scapegoating immigrants, attacking Planned Parenthood and the gains of the women's movement, supporting mass incarceration of African Americans, and adopting laws to suppress the votes of American Americans and Latinos in order to help elect conservative, pro-business, Republican politicians.
This is not "anti" politics. This is class politics.
It was this form of class politics -- led by the class at the very top, the .01 percent -- that has led to 40 years of government-bashing and deregulation, including weakening protections for consumers, the environment and workers.
Starting in the 1970s, America's biggest corporations reorganized their political operations -- coordinating their campaign donations, lobbying, creating new think tanks, policy organizations, and front groups -- to be more effective at influencing government policy at all levels. All this is well-documented in Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's 2011 book, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
It was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and other corporate groups that led this battle. It was all done through the regular avenues of mainstream politics -- campaign contributions, lobbying, expensive litigation (leading to decisions like Citizens United), and other means. It is their political activities and the policies that resulted -- in particular their deregulation of Wall Street -- that crashed the economy in 2008 and caused so much misery and suffering. And it has been their political activities and lobbying that thwarted much of what President Obama sought to do (admittedly, often too little, too late) to address the suffering -- for example, by raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits to the long-term jobless, and providing relief to homeowners facing foreclosure.
Since the 1970s, ordinary Americans have increasingly been burdened by private debt -- mortgages, student loans, consumer borrowing -- because of stagnant wages and incomes. But the mainstream media, including Brooks' regular columns, have failed to point out the hypocrisy of allowing big corporations and the super-rich (including Donald Trump) to use bankruptcy laws to walk away from their debts, while homeowners, consumers, and college students don't get similar treatment.
Key to the success of these right-wing politics -- brought to us by the corporate establishment, not the Tea Party -- has been four decades of outrageous union-busting, that begin in the 1970s, was given credibility by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and has accelerated ever since. More than any other factor -- as reports by the Economic Policy Institute and others have documented -- this has led to three decades of declining wages and living standards for the majority of Americans.
It is this growing economic insecurity, persistent poverty, and downward mobility that has triggered much of the anger among Americans that we see expressed at Trump rallies and in his GOP primary victories so far. Much of his rhetoric involves scapegoating and racism. It is not, as Brooks argues, an increase in the number of people with "authoritarian" personalities that explains Trump's appeal. It is simply everyday people rightly angry that they are losing their homes, can't send their kids to college, don't know if their jobs will be there in a few years, can't afford to take a vacation, aren't sure that their health insurance will cover their costs if an emergency comes along, and don't know if they'll be able to retire without falling into dire poverty.
Trump's genius is to exploit these fears and frustrations rather than point the finger at the real cause, which would require him to point at himself and his fellow billionaires. If he were being honest (not one of his strongest traits), he'd acknowledge, like another billionaire plutocrat, Nick Hanauer, that Trump and his class have made out like bandits and that the best way to fix the economy and reduce all that anger is to reduce inequality and increase the pay of the majority of American workers.
It is hardly surprising that Brooks doesn't even mention unions. But it was the labor movement that created the post-World War 2 middle class. It was the union movement -- which at its height in the 1960s represented about one-third of all American workers -- that pushed for government policies that improved living standards for a majority of Americans, pushed for expansion of higher education, strengthened laws protecting Americans from unsafe workplaces, and lobbied for laws to ban employer discrimination against women and minorities in hiring, pay, and promotion. And it has been the four-decade-long war on unions that has decimated the middle class. All public opinion polls show that the majority of Americans are pro-union, but our labor laws are so skewed toward business that it has become extremely difficult for workers to organize unions at work without the fear of reprisal, including firing, while extremely easy for business to break the law without significant financial penalties. Brooks mentions none of this.
According to Brooks, the blame for our political dysfunction is a bi-partisan affair. But as Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein point out in their 2012 book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, our current political stalemate in Washington isn't the result of some generic problem with Congress or the lack of civility in our political culture. It is mostly due, very specifically, to the GOP's dramatic rightward shift. In their book, these two middle-of-the-road political analysts document that the GOP has moved much further to the right than the Democrats have moved to the left.
Donald Trump's ascent as a business person, a media personality, and now a political candidate can be traced to these trends, particularly the growing influence of big money in American politics. He is a good example of how the super rich and corporate America have used their political influence to create the new Gilded Age of enormous wealth and income disparities that we're now experiencing, and which has led to the anger, frustration and cynicism of many American voters, reflected in the debased dialogue coming from the candidates in the Republican primaries. where even right-wingers like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich are now described as "moderates."
Few Americans can identify the names of the CEOs of Americans largest corporations because they rarely get the media attention that sports figures, TV and movie stars, and other celebrities get, even though their influence on American life is much greater. Until recently, the Koch brothers have hidden in the shadows. Although a vast majority of Americans think that Wall Street banks have too much political and economic influence, most can't name the head of Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan Chase. But Trump is an exception. Like Henry Ford and Walt Disney before him, he's not only turned his business, but also his personality, into a brand.
Donald Trump inherited his fortune from his father, a racist real estate developer in New York whose business practices involved discrimination against minority tenants -- practices that his son continued. Trump also fanned the flames of racism beyond his business activities. For example, in 1989, after New York police had arrested five minority teenagers for raping a middle class white woman who was jogging in Central Park, Trump took out a full-page ad in four New York newspapers calling to "bring back the death penalty," which in that political climate was clearly an appeal to racism. Trump was using his fortune to draw attention to himself and pollute the political environment.
The five teens didn't get the death penalty, as Trump would have preferred. Instead, they were convicted and spent years in jail. But had Trump got his way, justice would hardly have been served. Eventually, someone else confessed to the crime. The so-called Central Park Five sued the city for their wrongful prosecution and got a $40 million settlement in 2014 -- $1 million for every year they wrongfully spent behind bars. How did Trump respond to this miscarriage of justice against five low-income minority men for whom the money could hardly compensate for their shattered lives? Trump published an op-ed in the New York Daily News calling the settlement "a disgrace."
Trump expanded his father's real estate empire in part -- as he readily admits -- by contributing big bucks to both Democrats and Republicans (at all levels of government) to win favors to help his business. These not only included things like building permits and casino licenses but also credibility. Trump had proudly explained: "Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding, and she came to my wedding. She had no choice because I gave to a foundation," referring to the Clinton Foundation. While she was in the U.S. Senate representing New York, Hillary Clinton attended Trump's 2005 wedding to model Melania Knauss. She and Bill Clinton attended the reception together. All this media attention not only made Trump an increasingly visible celebrity but also helped his business dealings.
Trump took full advantage of the nation's pro-business tax and bankruptcy laws to accumulate billions. To do so, he frequently shafted his business partners and his employees, and broke the law, but paid minimal fines for his law-breaking business practices. He used his money and aggressive style to first become a business "brand" (his casinos, hotels, apartment buildings, and line of clothing), then a media celebrity (whose sex life, marriages and other activities were routinely reported as though they were "news"), and then a TV host of his own, gaining even greater fame by humiliating and firing people on his televised "reality" show.
David Brooks doesn't mention any of this. Like a good conservative, Brooks puts more emphasis on the importance of "order" -- on civil discourse and compromise -- than on social justice. But in a wonderful irony, he ends his column with a quote by late British political scientist Harold Laski: "We shall make the basis of our state consent to disagreement." Brooks also doesn't mention that Laski was democratic socialist.
*Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. *
-- 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.
The cancer Brooks refers to is not Trump himself but what he calls "anti-politics." Brooks didn't invent this term but he uses it to advance ideas he's been pushing for many years, and some of those ideas have merit. Brooks observes that in a diverse society, "[t]here are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society -- politics or some form of dictatorship. Either through compromise or brute force." Politics, he correctly points out, involves compromise among interests that respect each other's right to exist and agree to play by the same rules. It involves debate and dialogue.
Brooks laments that in American politics, we no longer seem to be able to engage in rational debate, engage in compromise, and agree to disagree by following the same rules. In frustration, Brooks notes:
We're now at a point where the Senate says it won't even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We're now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We're now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys conversation.
How did we get to this point? Here is Brooks' explanation:
Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means.
Brooks is correct that Trumpism is a symptom of long-term trends, but he's identified the wrong trends.
He fails to mention that Trump's rise was preceded by decades of government-bashing by big business and the extreme right, seeking to weaken the ability of government to promote the common good and protect Americans from abusive corporations. Their key goal, as famously expressed in 2001 by corporate lobbyist and conservative ideologue Grover Norquist, was to reduce government "to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Brooks claims that a symptom of "anti politics" is the rise of "outsider" politicians like Trump. But Trump has hardly been an "outsider" in American politics. He's a total insider, playing the game by using his money and the mainstream media to take advantage of the political system that has been rigged by decades of corporate lobbying and crony capitalism.
Brooks has nothing to say about obscene amount of money contributed to candidates by the super-rich and corporate lobby groups as our campaign finance laws have been tilted -- by business-friendly politicians and, in Citizens United and other rulings, by the Supreme Court -- to favor the wealthy. He doesn't discuss how a majority of the Supreme Court, appointed by Republican presidents, has become an arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with ruling-after-ruling that favors big business over the concerns of consumers and workers. He ignores the rise of the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber who have used their influence to shift our political conversation to the right and often drowned out more moderate forces within the Republican Party and among the media.
These forces laid the foundation for Trump's emergence by moving the GOP to the extreme right, scapegoating immigrants, attacking Planned Parenthood and the gains of the women's movement, supporting mass incarceration of African Americans, and adopting laws to suppress the votes of American Americans and Latinos in order to help elect conservative, pro-business, Republican politicians.
This is not "anti" politics. This is class politics.
It was this form of class politics -- led by the class at the very top, the .01 percent -- that has led to 40 years of government-bashing and deregulation, including weakening protections for consumers, the environment and workers.
Starting in the 1970s, America's biggest corporations reorganized their political operations -- coordinating their campaign donations, lobbying, creating new think tanks, policy organizations, and front groups -- to be more effective at influencing government policy at all levels. All this is well-documented in Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's 2011 book, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
It was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and other corporate groups that led this battle. It was all done through the regular avenues of mainstream politics -- campaign contributions, lobbying, expensive litigation (leading to decisions like Citizens United), and other means. It is their political activities and the policies that resulted -- in particular their deregulation of Wall Street -- that crashed the economy in 2008 and caused so much misery and suffering. And it has been their political activities and lobbying that thwarted much of what President Obama sought to do (admittedly, often too little, too late) to address the suffering -- for example, by raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits to the long-term jobless, and providing relief to homeowners facing foreclosure.
Since the 1970s, ordinary Americans have increasingly been burdened by private debt -- mortgages, student loans, consumer borrowing -- because of stagnant wages and incomes. But the mainstream media, including Brooks' regular columns, have failed to point out the hypocrisy of allowing big corporations and the super-rich (including Donald Trump) to use bankruptcy laws to walk away from their debts, while homeowners, consumers, and college students don't get similar treatment.
Key to the success of these right-wing politics -- brought to us by the corporate establishment, not the Tea Party -- has been four decades of outrageous union-busting, that begin in the 1970s, was given credibility by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and has accelerated ever since. More than any other factor -- as reports by the Economic Policy Institute and others have documented -- this has led to three decades of declining wages and living standards for the majority of Americans.
It is this growing economic insecurity, persistent poverty, and downward mobility that has triggered much of the anger among Americans that we see expressed at Trump rallies and in his GOP primary victories so far. Much of his rhetoric involves scapegoating and racism. It is not, as Brooks argues, an increase in the number of people with "authoritarian" personalities that explains Trump's appeal. It is simply everyday people rightly angry that they are losing their homes, can't send their kids to college, don't know if their jobs will be there in a few years, can't afford to take a vacation, aren't sure that their health insurance will cover their costs if an emergency comes along, and don't know if they'll be able to retire without falling into dire poverty.
Trump's genius is to exploit these fears and frustrations rather than point the finger at the real cause, which would require him to point at himself and his fellow billionaires. If he were being honest (not one of his strongest traits), he'd acknowledge, like another billionaire plutocrat, Nick Hanauer, that Trump and his class have made out like bandits and that the best way to fix the economy and reduce all that anger is to reduce inequality and increase the pay of the majority of American workers.
It is hardly surprising that Brooks doesn't even mention unions. But it was the labor movement that created the post-World War 2 middle class. It was the union movement -- which at its height in the 1960s represented about one-third of all American workers -- that pushed for government policies that improved living standards for a majority of Americans, pushed for expansion of higher education, strengthened laws protecting Americans from unsafe workplaces, and lobbied for laws to ban employer discrimination against women and minorities in hiring, pay, and promotion. And it has been the four-decade-long war on unions that has decimated the middle class. All public opinion polls show that the majority of Americans are pro-union, but our labor laws are so skewed toward business that it has become extremely difficult for workers to organize unions at work without the fear of reprisal, including firing, while extremely easy for business to break the law without significant financial penalties. Brooks mentions none of this.
According to Brooks, the blame for our political dysfunction is a bi-partisan affair. But as Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein point out in their 2012 book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, our current political stalemate in Washington isn't the result of some generic problem with Congress or the lack of civility in our political culture. It is mostly due, very specifically, to the GOP's dramatic rightward shift. In their book, these two middle-of-the-road political analysts document that the GOP has moved much further to the right than the Democrats have moved to the left.
Donald Trump's ascent as a business person, a media personality, and now a political candidate can be traced to these trends, particularly the growing influence of big money in American politics. He is a good example of how the super rich and corporate America have used their political influence to create the new Gilded Age of enormous wealth and income disparities that we're now experiencing, and which has led to the anger, frustration and cynicism of many American voters, reflected in the debased dialogue coming from the candidates in the Republican primaries. where even right-wingers like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich are now described as "moderates."
Few Americans can identify the names of the CEOs of Americans largest corporations because they rarely get the media attention that sports figures, TV and movie stars, and other celebrities get, even though their influence on American life is much greater. Until recently, the Koch brothers have hidden in the shadows. Although a vast majority of Americans think that Wall Street banks have too much political and economic influence, most can't name the head of Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan Chase. But Trump is an exception. Like Henry Ford and Walt Disney before him, he's not only turned his business, but also his personality, into a brand.
Donald Trump inherited his fortune from his father, a racist real estate developer in New York whose business practices involved discrimination against minority tenants -- practices that his son continued. Trump also fanned the flames of racism beyond his business activities. For example, in 1989, after New York police had arrested five minority teenagers for raping a middle class white woman who was jogging in Central Park, Trump took out a full-page ad in four New York newspapers calling to "bring back the death penalty," which in that political climate was clearly an appeal to racism. Trump was using his fortune to draw attention to himself and pollute the political environment.
The five teens didn't get the death penalty, as Trump would have preferred. Instead, they were convicted and spent years in jail. But had Trump got his way, justice would hardly have been served. Eventually, someone else confessed to the crime. The so-called Central Park Five sued the city for their wrongful prosecution and got a $40 million settlement in 2014 -- $1 million for every year they wrongfully spent behind bars. How did Trump respond to this miscarriage of justice against five low-income minority men for whom the money could hardly compensate for their shattered lives? Trump published an op-ed in the New York Daily News calling the settlement "a disgrace."
Trump expanded his father's real estate empire in part -- as he readily admits -- by contributing big bucks to both Democrats and Republicans (at all levels of government) to win favors to help his business. These not only included things like building permits and casino licenses but also credibility. Trump had proudly explained: "Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding, and she came to my wedding. She had no choice because I gave to a foundation," referring to the Clinton Foundation. While she was in the U.S. Senate representing New York, Hillary Clinton attended Trump's 2005 wedding to model Melania Knauss. She and Bill Clinton attended the reception together. All this media attention not only made Trump an increasingly visible celebrity but also helped his business dealings.
Trump took full advantage of the nation's pro-business tax and bankruptcy laws to accumulate billions. To do so, he frequently shafted his business partners and his employees, and broke the law, but paid minimal fines for his law-breaking business practices. He used his money and aggressive style to first become a business "brand" (his casinos, hotels, apartment buildings, and line of clothing), then a media celebrity (whose sex life, marriages and other activities were routinely reported as though they were "news"), and then a TV host of his own, gaining even greater fame by humiliating and firing people on his televised "reality" show.
David Brooks doesn't mention any of this. Like a good conservative, Brooks puts more emphasis on the importance of "order" -- on civil discourse and compromise -- than on social justice. But in a wonderful irony, he ends his column with a quote by late British political scientist Harold Laski: "We shall make the basis of our state consent to disagreement." Brooks also doesn't mention that Laski was democratic socialist.
*Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. *
-- 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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Dear Unknown Author
Dear Unknown Author:
I read your article that has been published and shared around the internet: *This Student Was Ashamed Of Her Republican Father Until He Said This. * It does not have a title per say, but rather a sensational headline. It's catchy, really. Imagine the hope it gives to the Republican parents of "unenlightened" college students; all they have to do is get their kids to read your article and their previous political views will dissolve like sugar in hot coffee.
The daughter in the story is challenging her father's opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The father basically responds by suggesting these taxes are the equivalent of his daughter handing over one point of her 4.0 GPA to her irresponsible, lazy friend who only has a 2.0 GPA. In an aha moment, the daughter gets it. She earned her 4.0 GPA. Why should she give some of it up to her undeserving friend so that they can be equal?
The most obvious flaws I see in this analogy are these:
* You are making the damaging and sweeping assumption that all public assistance recipients are lazy, irresponsible members of society whose plan in life is to mooch off of others, namely you.* This is simply not true.
Don't get me wrong. I know that there are people who abuse the system. I get it. There are flaws in the system. There are people who should be looking for jobs and aren't. And they spend money they don't have on things like cigarettes and smart phones and *gasp* seafood. They are spending your hard earned tax dollars on things they don't need when they should be earning their own money!
But what about all the recipients that need some help to survive and support their families? What about the injured, the ill, the handicapped, or the single mother with a deadbeat ex who is trying to feed her children and put herself through school? The majority of public assistance recipients are trying to make ends meet.
And public assistance isn't just about food stamps and welfare checks, you know. If you get laid off tomorrow because, you know, shit happens, should you be denied the unemployment check while you seek a new job? What about health insurance? You might need that as well. Will you stand staunchly behind your beliefs then, Unknown Author?
The second flaw in the analogy is this assuption:* that our taxes are too hig*h. By historical or any other assessment, this is wrong. Do the research. Stop with the fearful mindset that tells you the government is trying to rob you of your money just so others can get a leg up. That attitude will get you nowhere in life, I promise. In fact, it will hold you back from all the wealth that could be yours if you just shifted your perception.
But believe it or not, I think we may have some common ground here, dear Author. Just as I think it is an uninformed attitude that puts all welfare recipients into one category, I also think it is ignorance that leads people to believe all rich people are somehow undeserving of all that money.
I believe that most wealthy people have earned their wealth, through effort and study and habits and passion and a belief in themselves. We should not begrudge them, but rather we should study them. They know something.
In addition to knowing how to accumulate wealth, and how to be successful, here is something else that many intelligent, wealthy and reasonable individuals know: it is fair and equitable to pay higher taxes than they are paying. Warren Buffet is surely not the only one with this attitude.
But here's something else we may agree on: I don't think handouts are the only way to lift people up from their position in life. In fact, without an actual shift in mindset, or paradigm, people will keep getting the same results, over and over. If your underlying belief is that you will never have enough, then you won't. That is why, if your belief is that you will always be poor (or fat or unsuccessful or fearful or bad at such and such) then you will be. You will keep getting what you believe you deserve or are capable of.
For someone to make a permanent leap out of poverty, they have to change their psychological paradigm. Chances are, they grew up poor and their parents grew up poor, and this belief of lack has been absorbed through the years and is not an easy one to change.
It takes work to change a mindset. It also takes consistency and education and courage and role models. Transformation, even of the non-dramatic variety, requires spending less time with people who live in undesirable circumstances and more time with those who have what you are after. It requires taking in a different and more empowering message, from yourself and preferably from other people too.
I know what will not help lift people out of poverty.
Telling them they are lazy.
Shaming them.
Treating them like outcasts.
Telling them they are weak for needing assistance.
But in closing, since you prefer to speak in analogies, or stories, Unknown Author, here is mine:
Father asks his daughter how she is doing in school. She says great. She is working hard, believes she is smart and knows has her parents' praise, support and approval. Then he asks how her friend is doing. Poorly, is the answer. Her friend is not doing well at all. She's working two part time jobs, is struggling with some courses and worried she will have to drop out. Father says: How about if you tell her about the tutoring services offered , and remind her to apply for financial aid. Encourage her. Tell her you know she can get through school, that she is capable and you will offer help when you can. Ask her what her passions and dreams are. She might have forgotten, or not allowed herself to have them. And the daughter does. And the friend starts to see the light. Not immediately. It takes time. And support. And kindness. But eventually, she graduates. She is a productive member of society. She pays her taxes. She encourages someone else to do the same.
Won't you consider this scenario?
Sincerely,
Dana
-- 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.
I read your article that has been published and shared around the internet: *This Student Was Ashamed Of Her Republican Father Until He Said This. * It does not have a title per say, but rather a sensational headline. It's catchy, really. Imagine the hope it gives to the Republican parents of "unenlightened" college students; all they have to do is get their kids to read your article and their previous political views will dissolve like sugar in hot coffee.
The daughter in the story is challenging her father's opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The father basically responds by suggesting these taxes are the equivalent of his daughter handing over one point of her 4.0 GPA to her irresponsible, lazy friend who only has a 2.0 GPA. In an aha moment, the daughter gets it. She earned her 4.0 GPA. Why should she give some of it up to her undeserving friend so that they can be equal?
The most obvious flaws I see in this analogy are these:
* You are making the damaging and sweeping assumption that all public assistance recipients are lazy, irresponsible members of society whose plan in life is to mooch off of others, namely you.* This is simply not true.
Don't get me wrong. I know that there are people who abuse the system. I get it. There are flaws in the system. There are people who should be looking for jobs and aren't. And they spend money they don't have on things like cigarettes and smart phones and *gasp* seafood. They are spending your hard earned tax dollars on things they don't need when they should be earning their own money!
But what about all the recipients that need some help to survive and support their families? What about the injured, the ill, the handicapped, or the single mother with a deadbeat ex who is trying to feed her children and put herself through school? The majority of public assistance recipients are trying to make ends meet.
And public assistance isn't just about food stamps and welfare checks, you know. If you get laid off tomorrow because, you know, shit happens, should you be denied the unemployment check while you seek a new job? What about health insurance? You might need that as well. Will you stand staunchly behind your beliefs then, Unknown Author?
The second flaw in the analogy is this assuption:* that our taxes are too hig*h. By historical or any other assessment, this is wrong. Do the research. Stop with the fearful mindset that tells you the government is trying to rob you of your money just so others can get a leg up. That attitude will get you nowhere in life, I promise. In fact, it will hold you back from all the wealth that could be yours if you just shifted your perception.
But believe it or not, I think we may have some common ground here, dear Author. Just as I think it is an uninformed attitude that puts all welfare recipients into one category, I also think it is ignorance that leads people to believe all rich people are somehow undeserving of all that money.
I believe that most wealthy people have earned their wealth, through effort and study and habits and passion and a belief in themselves. We should not begrudge them, but rather we should study them. They know something.
In addition to knowing how to accumulate wealth, and how to be successful, here is something else that many intelligent, wealthy and reasonable individuals know: it is fair and equitable to pay higher taxes than they are paying. Warren Buffet is surely not the only one with this attitude.
But here's something else we may agree on: I don't think handouts are the only way to lift people up from their position in life. In fact, without an actual shift in mindset, or paradigm, people will keep getting the same results, over and over. If your underlying belief is that you will never have enough, then you won't. That is why, if your belief is that you will always be poor (or fat or unsuccessful or fearful or bad at such and such) then you will be. You will keep getting what you believe you deserve or are capable of.
For someone to make a permanent leap out of poverty, they have to change their psychological paradigm. Chances are, they grew up poor and their parents grew up poor, and this belief of lack has been absorbed through the years and is not an easy one to change.
It takes work to change a mindset. It also takes consistency and education and courage and role models. Transformation, even of the non-dramatic variety, requires spending less time with people who live in undesirable circumstances and more time with those who have what you are after. It requires taking in a different and more empowering message, from yourself and preferably from other people too.
I know what will not help lift people out of poverty.
Telling them they are lazy.
Shaming them.
Treating them like outcasts.
Telling them they are weak for needing assistance.
But in closing, since you prefer to speak in analogies, or stories, Unknown Author, here is mine:
Father asks his daughter how she is doing in school. She says great. She is working hard, believes she is smart and knows has her parents' praise, support and approval. Then he asks how her friend is doing. Poorly, is the answer. Her friend is not doing well at all. She's working two part time jobs, is struggling with some courses and worried she will have to drop out. Father says: How about if you tell her about the tutoring services offered , and remind her to apply for financial aid. Encourage her. Tell her you know she can get through school, that she is capable and you will offer help when you can. Ask her what her passions and dreams are. She might have forgotten, or not allowed herself to have them. And the daughter does. And the friend starts to see the light. Not immediately. It takes time. And support. And kindness. But eventually, she graduates. She is a productive member of society. She pays her taxes. She encourages someone else to do the same.
Won't you consider this scenario?
Sincerely,
Dana
-- 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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The Republicans' Big Health Care 'Idea' Is Complete Nonsense
If you watched the Republican debate on Thursday, you probably noticed the candidates agreeing that insurance companies should be allowed to sell policies across state lines.
"We have to get rid of the lines around the states," said Donald Trump, making vigorous circles with his hands for emphasis, "so that there's serious, serious competition." It would, he promised, "be a beautiful thing."
This is often presented as the Republicans' Big Idea on health care -- in fact, as with Trump, it's often the only idea they can come up with. But it isn't a serious plan for improving our nation's health care system. In fact, it's absolute nonsense.
For starters, we don't need to pass a federal law to allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. We don't have to repeal Obamacare. We don't have to do anything. Nothing in federal law prohibits states from allowing out-of-state insurance companies to sell policies to their citizens. In fact, six states have already tried it. And guess what? It doesn't work.
Let me back up. Individual states are responsible for administering and regulating their own health insurance markets. They decide which insurers receive licenses to sell policies within their borders, and establish standards for what benefits those policies must provide to their citizens.
States were free to allow insurers from other states to sell to their citizens before Obamacare, and they are still free to do so today. What Obamacare did was establish an "essential benefits package" -- basic minimum standards that all individual policies must meet, no matter where they're sold.
Indeed, many states have explored the idea of allowing insurance companies from other states to sell within their borders; 18 looked into allowing out-of-state insurance sales before Obamacare became law, and 13 have considered it since. But very few have actually decided to do so. And the ones that have report unanimously that it has accomplished nothing.
Why? Because a license to sell insurance in a given state isn't the only thing insurance companies need in order to be able to actually sell insurance. They need to learn the state, analyze the health care needs of its population, recruit participants, build a network of providers, negotiate rates, and more.
If you're a huge insurance company like Blue Cross, you might have the resources to replicate this effort in states across the country, which is why you can get Blue Cross insurance in multiple states. But smaller insurance companies based in a single state have found again and again that, even when offered the opportunity to sell across state lines, it simply isn't worth the hassle.
And that's why allowing cross-border insurance sales has failed miserably in every state where it's been tried.
Wyoming tried it. Their deputy insurance commissioner told POLITICO, "There has not been any interest."
Rhode Island tried it. Their former health insurance commissioner reported that "no one even inquired."
Georgia tried it. Their insurance commissioner said, "Nobody has even asked to be approved to sell across state lines. We're dumbfounded. We are absolutely dumbfounded."
The same proved to be true in Kentucky, and Maine, and Washington: insurance companies simply aren't interested in selling policies across state lines. That's why most of the states that have considered making it possible for insurance companies to do so have decided not to bother. And that's why this "idea" as the Republicans' big solution on health care is absurd.
Which, by the way, is not news to anyone who's actually studied it. "I've tried for 10 years to explain this to Republicans; it is a big problem," sighed Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation (a conservative think tank founded by former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey and funded by, among others, the pharmaceutical industry and the Koch brothers) in an interview with the New York Times. "Just because a good affordable policy is available in another state doesn't mean that I would be able to get the network of physicians and the good prices that are available in that other state."
It would be bad enough if this were just an inane bit of gobbledygook that Republicans use to disguise the fact that, beyond repealing the law that has extended coverage to tens of millions of Americans, they really have no ideas at all when it comes to health care.
But it's actually worse. Because what Republicans are really interested in isn't simply increasing the number of players in each state's insurance market, but getting rid of the essential benefits package established to protect consumers under Obamacare.
Indeed, when they talk about "increasing competition," Republicans are envisioning a scenario in which states compete to see who can allow insurance companies to offer the most worthless policies to their citizens -- a race to the bottom in which the losers will be patients who discover too late that the garbage insurance they bought doesn't cover the care they need.
For example: In my home state of Minnesota, we have pretty stringent consumer safeguards, even tougher than what Obamacare requires. But under the Republican plan, without Obamacare's minimum standards in place, another state could allow some fly-by-night company to set up shop and start offering my constituents lousy policies that would leave them helpless if they got sick. This would effectively pre-empt Minnesota's laws -- as long as just one state were willing to drop its standards, no state would be able to protect its citizens from these scams.
You don't often hear Republicans calling for the federal government to interfere with the constitutional rights of states to manage their affairs, but I guess they're willing to make an exception when it would help unscrupulous insurance companies rip people off.
Anyway: Obamacare isn't the end of the work we have to do to make our health care system work better. There are plenty of things we can do to build on its successes and improve on its shortcomings. But allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines isn't an answer to the question of how Republicans would replace Obamacare if they ever succeeded in repealing it.
In fact, given that allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines is already permitted under federal law, that dozens of states have already considered trying it, and that it has already been proven not to work in literally every one of the few states that has implemented it, I'd say it doesn't even count as an actual "idea" at all. It's just a political talking point, and a pretty ridiculous one, at that.
So the next time you hear it in a Republican debate, remember that it isn't an example of them taking a rare break from insulting women, immigrants, Muslim-Americans, and each other to focus on substance. It's just further proof that, when it comes to health care, Republicans still have absolutely nothing to offer the American people.
-- 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 7 hours ago.
"We have to get rid of the lines around the states," said Donald Trump, making vigorous circles with his hands for emphasis, "so that there's serious, serious competition." It would, he promised, "be a beautiful thing."
This is often presented as the Republicans' Big Idea on health care -- in fact, as with Trump, it's often the only idea they can come up with. But it isn't a serious plan for improving our nation's health care system. In fact, it's absolute nonsense.
For starters, we don't need to pass a federal law to allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. We don't have to repeal Obamacare. We don't have to do anything. Nothing in federal law prohibits states from allowing out-of-state insurance companies to sell policies to their citizens. In fact, six states have already tried it. And guess what? It doesn't work.
Let me back up. Individual states are responsible for administering and regulating their own health insurance markets. They decide which insurers receive licenses to sell policies within their borders, and establish standards for what benefits those policies must provide to their citizens.
States were free to allow insurers from other states to sell to their citizens before Obamacare, and they are still free to do so today. What Obamacare did was establish an "essential benefits package" -- basic minimum standards that all individual policies must meet, no matter where they're sold.
Indeed, many states have explored the idea of allowing insurance companies from other states to sell within their borders; 18 looked into allowing out-of-state insurance sales before Obamacare became law, and 13 have considered it since. But very few have actually decided to do so. And the ones that have report unanimously that it has accomplished nothing.
Why? Because a license to sell insurance in a given state isn't the only thing insurance companies need in order to be able to actually sell insurance. They need to learn the state, analyze the health care needs of its population, recruit participants, build a network of providers, negotiate rates, and more.
If you're a huge insurance company like Blue Cross, you might have the resources to replicate this effort in states across the country, which is why you can get Blue Cross insurance in multiple states. But smaller insurance companies based in a single state have found again and again that, even when offered the opportunity to sell across state lines, it simply isn't worth the hassle.
And that's why allowing cross-border insurance sales has failed miserably in every state where it's been tried.
Wyoming tried it. Their deputy insurance commissioner told POLITICO, "There has not been any interest."
Rhode Island tried it. Their former health insurance commissioner reported that "no one even inquired."
Georgia tried it. Their insurance commissioner said, "Nobody has even asked to be approved to sell across state lines. We're dumbfounded. We are absolutely dumbfounded."
The same proved to be true in Kentucky, and Maine, and Washington: insurance companies simply aren't interested in selling policies across state lines. That's why most of the states that have considered making it possible for insurance companies to do so have decided not to bother. And that's why this "idea" as the Republicans' big solution on health care is absurd.
Which, by the way, is not news to anyone who's actually studied it. "I've tried for 10 years to explain this to Republicans; it is a big problem," sighed Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation (a conservative think tank founded by former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey and funded by, among others, the pharmaceutical industry and the Koch brothers) in an interview with the New York Times. "Just because a good affordable policy is available in another state doesn't mean that I would be able to get the network of physicians and the good prices that are available in that other state."
It would be bad enough if this were just an inane bit of gobbledygook that Republicans use to disguise the fact that, beyond repealing the law that has extended coverage to tens of millions of Americans, they really have no ideas at all when it comes to health care.
But it's actually worse. Because what Republicans are really interested in isn't simply increasing the number of players in each state's insurance market, but getting rid of the essential benefits package established to protect consumers under Obamacare.
Indeed, when they talk about "increasing competition," Republicans are envisioning a scenario in which states compete to see who can allow insurance companies to offer the most worthless policies to their citizens -- a race to the bottom in which the losers will be patients who discover too late that the garbage insurance they bought doesn't cover the care they need.
For example: In my home state of Minnesota, we have pretty stringent consumer safeguards, even tougher than what Obamacare requires. But under the Republican plan, without Obamacare's minimum standards in place, another state could allow some fly-by-night company to set up shop and start offering my constituents lousy policies that would leave them helpless if they got sick. This would effectively pre-empt Minnesota's laws -- as long as just one state were willing to drop its standards, no state would be able to protect its citizens from these scams.
You don't often hear Republicans calling for the federal government to interfere with the constitutional rights of states to manage their affairs, but I guess they're willing to make an exception when it would help unscrupulous insurance companies rip people off.
Anyway: Obamacare isn't the end of the work we have to do to make our health care system work better. There are plenty of things we can do to build on its successes and improve on its shortcomings. But allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines isn't an answer to the question of how Republicans would replace Obamacare if they ever succeeded in repealing it.
In fact, given that allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines is already permitted under federal law, that dozens of states have already considered trying it, and that it has already been proven not to work in literally every one of the few states that has implemented it, I'd say it doesn't even count as an actual "idea" at all. It's just a political talking point, and a pretty ridiculous one, at that.
So the next time you hear it in a Republican debate, remember that it isn't an example of them taking a rare break from insulting women, immigrants, Muslim-Americans, and each other to focus on substance. It's just further proof that, when it comes to health care, Republicans still have absolutely nothing to offer the American people.
-- 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 7 hours ago.
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Take a bite out of dental bills, retirees
A majority of those age 50 to 64 either believe that — or are unsure whether — a Medicare health insurance plan will cover routine dental care.
Reported by USATODAY.com 15 hours ago.
Reported by USATODAY.com 15 hours ago.
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7 Surprising Things About Medicare
Medicare, designed to offer health insurance for those 65 or older, is clearly a big part of many Americans' lives -- but there are still lots of things about it that plenty of people don't know. See how much of this article surprises you.
Reported by Motley Fool 21 hours ago.
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The Need for More Like Bernie Sanders: Alternative to Government Of, By and For the Corporations
Unlimited money in politics and the corporate control over our government that it buys have totally subverted U.S. democracy. Too many candidates who take corporate money are in thrall to corporate influence, resulting in government of, by and for big business. Public disillusionment with the political establishment grows out of a deep visceral sense that government no longer works for the people. That government primarily serves corporations is obvious in looking at health care policy, energy policy, so-called "free trade" deals, and many industry-authored preemption laws that bypass the will of the people. A failed two-party political system, through its super-delegate and rule-making systems, etc., primarily reinforces dominance of the parties over the people.
The health insurance and pharmaceutical industries have positioned themselves in the middle of health care reform to benefit their bottom lines. Corporatist advocates of "free-market" health care see no contradiction in a health care model built around for-profit commercial insurance middlemen and the profiteering pharmaceutical industry, both subsidized by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars annually. The savings by elimination of the subsidization of these industries and the 31 percent higher administrative costs generated by multiple for-profit insurances, is enough to provide health care for all - insure the uninsured and improve coverage of the underinsured.
The mocking of Sen. Bernie Sanders' intent for true universal single payer health care by corporate media and the political establishment -- Hillary Clinton and her surrogates calling Sanders "unrealistic," Marco Rubio calling for "free enterprise, not socialism" -- is a mark of their loyalty to maintaining the status quo subsidization of their corporate funders/allies, and the unquestioning elevation of profits over health care. Some corporate media outlets holding sizable investments in private health care also have financial conflicts of interest when reporting health care reform. Media often scorns social welfare programs that benefit working people, while blatant corporate welfare goes unquestioned as wealthy elites feed from the Treasury trough.
Taxpayers already fund 64 percent of U.S. health care, more public dollars per capita than the citizens of other nations that have universal health programs. Thus, U.S. taxpayers already pay for universal health care, but we don't receive it. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program, observes, "....billions are squandered on paperwork, and insurers and drug companies pocket huge profits at taxpayer expense."
Signed into law in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson, Medicare was enacted within 11 months, able to reach its target population without computers. Opponents' characterization of Medicare-for-All as "socialized medicine" is a misnomer. It is, rather "socialized insurance," which describes the way insurance is supposed to work - everyone pays into an insurance pool, and receives health care as needed. With Medicare already in place, it could now be improved and expanded to all. The only obstacle is lack of political will to do what is right for the people.
Political right establishment types like Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour reflexively parrot Ronald Reagan's mantra "government is not the solution...government is the problem." He attributes dissatisfaction with establishment politics in 2016 to disgust with "big government." To the contrary, many identify corporate control of government as the core problem of corrupted Washington politics. The exponential expansion of money in politics and the upward transfer of wealth by policies established over several decades has increased the powerful hold of corporate elites over government, crushing democracy.
In the area of trade, candidateBarack Obama voiced opposition to NAFTA, whereas, he has now doubled down to promote the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) - called "NAFTA on steroids." The trade treaty was negotiated in secret almost entirely by hundreds of corporate lobbyists, and would surrender power to multinational corporations to bypass U.S. laws and courts in order to overturn our laws and regulations. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton proclaimed the benefits of the TPP, though as a candidate in 2016 she has hardly mentioned it. Bernie Sanders has never wavered from his opposition to yet another trade deal that primarily serves the corporate bottom line instead of working families, and is certain to offshore still more jobs.
Corporatists in Congress, the judiciary and the executive branch serve their corporate allies, not the people. It is a source of profound dissatisfaction to many that our two-party political structure does not work for the people, that Washington serves the corporatocracy, subsidizing an entrenched health-insurance-pharmaceutical industrial complex; a fossil fuel industrial behemoth; the military-weapons-war labyrinth that propagates Cheney's endless middle east war, and has unleashed the curse of the National Rifle Association that elevates the rule of gun over rule of law.
The profound sense of betrayal surrounding a failed political system that does not serve the people has prompted the turn to perceived non-insiders in the 2016 election year, even propelling a raving demagogue to the forefront of Republican presidential politics.
Common wisdom among the corporate establishment is that Bernie Sanders is "unrealistic," promising people the impossible. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe scorns the notion of "free college education" and "free health care" (actually people pay according to ability). Why not reorganize our priorities to put the people first, instead of big payouts to greedy corporatists?
-- 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 days ago.
The health insurance and pharmaceutical industries have positioned themselves in the middle of health care reform to benefit their bottom lines. Corporatist advocates of "free-market" health care see no contradiction in a health care model built around for-profit commercial insurance middlemen and the profiteering pharmaceutical industry, both subsidized by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars annually. The savings by elimination of the subsidization of these industries and the 31 percent higher administrative costs generated by multiple for-profit insurances, is enough to provide health care for all - insure the uninsured and improve coverage of the underinsured.
The mocking of Sen. Bernie Sanders' intent for true universal single payer health care by corporate media and the political establishment -- Hillary Clinton and her surrogates calling Sanders "unrealistic," Marco Rubio calling for "free enterprise, not socialism" -- is a mark of their loyalty to maintaining the status quo subsidization of their corporate funders/allies, and the unquestioning elevation of profits over health care. Some corporate media outlets holding sizable investments in private health care also have financial conflicts of interest when reporting health care reform. Media often scorns social welfare programs that benefit working people, while blatant corporate welfare goes unquestioned as wealthy elites feed from the Treasury trough.
Taxpayers already fund 64 percent of U.S. health care, more public dollars per capita than the citizens of other nations that have universal health programs. Thus, U.S. taxpayers already pay for universal health care, but we don't receive it. Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Program, observes, "....billions are squandered on paperwork, and insurers and drug companies pocket huge profits at taxpayer expense."
Signed into law in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson, Medicare was enacted within 11 months, able to reach its target population without computers. Opponents' characterization of Medicare-for-All as "socialized medicine" is a misnomer. It is, rather "socialized insurance," which describes the way insurance is supposed to work - everyone pays into an insurance pool, and receives health care as needed. With Medicare already in place, it could now be improved and expanded to all. The only obstacle is lack of political will to do what is right for the people.
Political right establishment types like Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour reflexively parrot Ronald Reagan's mantra "government is not the solution...government is the problem." He attributes dissatisfaction with establishment politics in 2016 to disgust with "big government." To the contrary, many identify corporate control of government as the core problem of corrupted Washington politics. The exponential expansion of money in politics and the upward transfer of wealth by policies established over several decades has increased the powerful hold of corporate elites over government, crushing democracy.
In the area of trade, candidateBarack Obama voiced opposition to NAFTA, whereas, he has now doubled down to promote the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) - called "NAFTA on steroids." The trade treaty was negotiated in secret almost entirely by hundreds of corporate lobbyists, and would surrender power to multinational corporations to bypass U.S. laws and courts in order to overturn our laws and regulations. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton proclaimed the benefits of the TPP, though as a candidate in 2016 she has hardly mentioned it. Bernie Sanders has never wavered from his opposition to yet another trade deal that primarily serves the corporate bottom line instead of working families, and is certain to offshore still more jobs.
Corporatists in Congress, the judiciary and the executive branch serve their corporate allies, not the people. It is a source of profound dissatisfaction to many that our two-party political structure does not work for the people, that Washington serves the corporatocracy, subsidizing an entrenched health-insurance-pharmaceutical industrial complex; a fossil fuel industrial behemoth; the military-weapons-war labyrinth that propagates Cheney's endless middle east war, and has unleashed the curse of the National Rifle Association that elevates the rule of gun over rule of law.
The profound sense of betrayal surrounding a failed political system that does not serve the people has prompted the turn to perceived non-insiders in the 2016 election year, even propelling a raving demagogue to the forefront of Republican presidential politics.
Common wisdom among the corporate establishment is that Bernie Sanders is "unrealistic," promising people the impossible. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe scorns the notion of "free college education" and "free health care" (actually people pay according to ability). Why not reorganize our priorities to put the people first, instead of big payouts to greedy corporatists?
-- 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 days ago.
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OIC fines Regence $40,000 for denying health insurance to Medicaid-eligible customers
The Washington Office of the Insurance Commission Monday fined Regence BlueShield$40,000 for denying heath insurance to people who were eligible for Medicaid or who had been enrolled in Medicaid previously. Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler became aware of the issue in January 2015 after someone complained. After further investigation, the commission found that 65 Washington customers had been denied coverage during the 2014 and 2015 enrollment periods. “We take these matters seriously and…
Reported by bizjournals 2 days ago.
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How to Handle Your Books When Your Money Is Off the Books: Financial Planning in a Freelance World
Freelancing and being self-employed are the new frontier in the American economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of self-employed workers in the U.S. increased from 14.5 to 15.5 million from 2014 to 2015, and is expected to increase substantially over the next few years. As Fast Co. recently reported, corporate downsizing and technology that makes it easy to work from home are fueling this trend.
When you add in professionals that have traditionally been compensated with no record of the financial transaction - such as performers, dancers, DJ's, musicians, etc. - and people who bring home a substantial amount of revenue in tips - such as bartenders, waiters, hair stylists, colorists, etc. - then you have a lot of professionals making a lot of money off the books.
This is a brave new world that requires brave new financial planning. After all, when you make a lot of money off the books you don't have an employer and a salary doing your basic financial planning for you, such as budgeting a regular income over a month or a year; paying into savings; taking money out for health insurance; reporting to the IRS; providing compensation for vacation and personal time, the list goes on. In other words you have to do the planning yourself.
Herewith the financial planning 411's when you make your money off the books:
*Build a system for leveling out peaks and valleys in revenue:*
Salaries naturally level out revenue. And if there is one thing that unites freelancers, people who live on tips, and the self-employed it's uncertain income. For freelancers and the self-employed revenue comes in waves - you may be incredibly busy for 2 months and hardly work for the next 2 months. And people who make a lot of money in tips can see wild fluctuations based on shifts at the restaurant or bar, number of clients in their chair, or even if they had a cold and missed a couple of day's work.
The plan is to build a system designed for leveling out these peaks and valleys. The first step toward managing this is to clearly separate your cost of living money from your spending money.
The way to do this is to have a primary account in which you deposit all of your money and from which you have all of your bills - rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. -- automatically deducted. (This is especially important for people who bring home money in cash from tips. Keeping tons of cash in your wallet encourages splurging. Depositing the cash helps prevents this because people on the whole are much more likely to splurge using cash already on them than to go to the ATM and pull the money out. Depositing your cash in a financial institution gives it a longer shelf life.)
Then every 2 to 4 weeks you transfer money into a separate account for everything else - ie. eating out, shopping, going out, etc. etc. So your living expenses are already budgeted, and your lifestyle expenses are determined and withdrawn based on your current financial landscape.
The difference between the two goes into building a financial bridge to get you through the valleys in revenue. You do this by taking this difference and stashing it in your primary account to cover your basic bills anywhere from 6 weeks to 9 months...whatever you can achieve. That way if you have a dip in income you don't have to go into debt to make it through until the money starts flowing again.
*Take out money for taxes with every deposit:*
Nothing gives the self-employed a sense of artificial wealth like depositing money without taxes taken out. And nothing hurts more than facing your quarterly tax bill - or, worse, an end-of-the-year tax bill with penalties - without having put money away for it.
The way to bypass both is to address your taxes with every deposit. One option is to consider allocating anywhere from 15% to 30% of every deposit into a third account specifically for your quarterly IRS and state taxes. If you feel you lack the financial discipline to do so, you can take a more tough-love approach by going on to the IRS website and your state's website and paying your taxes as you go with every deposit.
*Know what safety-net and long-term planning benefits to prioritize first:*
With most salaried jobs there is a system for benefits which cover everything from health insurance and sick leave to 401Ks and retirement. Freelancers and the self-employed have no such system. Although today many people in the service industry such as bartenders and waiters do have benefits that go along with the job, many do not. And even a bartender who does have, say, sick pay will only be paid their hourly wage while on leave, which may only be a micro fraction of their take-home income with tips.
In terms of priority, the first benefit that you should address is health insurance. Not only are you fined by the IRS for not having it, any kind of health issue could wipe you out and put you in serious debt. So the first order of business when it comes to benefits is to get health insurance.
The next order of business after health insurance is to create your own short-term disability and paid-leave infrastructure by building a cash reserve to use as paid personal leave, vacation, sick leave, etc. The rule of thumb is to have 2 to 3 months of basic living expenses stashed away in a no fee financial institution where there is no minimum requirement and no penalty for withdrawal. There's no set rule about how much you put in every month - even if it's a dollar then it's one dollar more than you had - the point is to create the habit of depositing money into the cash reserve and to build the reserve up over time. Like having money put away in advance to level out peaks and valleys in revenue, this will help prevent you from going into debt should you be unable to work for any period of time. It will also give you the resources to handle an emergency - such as needing to buy a new car - and to be able to follow through on a financial opportunity such as a potentially good investment that comes your way.
After that emergency safety net infrastructure is built then it's time to look into longer term savings and investments, such as a qualified retirement account like a Traditional or SEP IRA. To learn more about these and other retirement plan options, click here.
From there you can also begin to set up a goal-specific savings account for things like buying a home or educating children. How you go about it will depend on the dollar amount needed and the time frame. One of the ways to find an effective means of goal-specific savings would be to consult a financial advisor.
If you have dependents then life insurance - including Whole, Universal, Variable, and Term -- should be on the to-do list. To explore life insurance options speak to a financial advisor who is licensed to sell insurance or an insurance agent.
*No matter how great the temptation, report all of your income to the IRS:*
Nobody can deny the temptation of being paid with no record of the money changing hands and not reporting. After all, who wants to give away a substantial part of their check or the hard cash in their wallet?
But there are way more reasons today to report than to not. To begin with, the IRS now assumes an average tip rate of 8% of gross sales, and if you don't report will levy substantial fines.
Next, freelancers and the self-employed might not receive a W-2 from an employer or client and assume that the payments were not reported to the IRS, only to find out, after the fact, that they were. This reminds me of a story I recently heard of a successful DJ in New York who was certain that the nightclub that paid him handsomely in cash every Saturday was not reporting it to the IRS. The DJ wasn't reporting the income, but the nightclub was. This individual wound up being audited and paying huge sums in back taxes and penalties.
In addition, in today's economic environment showing a high income on your tax return is a must for basics like signing a lease, getting a mortgage, securing credit or buying a car. So by not reporting you may think you saved money in taxes, only to find out that you can't get a lease for an apartment or buy a car because your tax return income isn't high enough. Not reporting will also limit the contributions you can make to any retirement accounts because they are based on earned income. And reporting, say, 10 thousand dollars in income and having 40 thousand in credit card debt can trigger IRS tracking programs...something you really don't want to happen.
The brave new financial planning required when your money is off the books is, ultimately, simply about developing brave new habits.*To learn more about Michael*, as well as access resources including videos and newsletters to help with basic financial planning, go to Michael's website here. You can also download Michael's app through Google Play or via the App Store which you can use to contact him with questions; connect with Michael on LinkedIn; and email him directly at Michael.Most@LPL.com.
-- 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 days ago.
When you add in professionals that have traditionally been compensated with no record of the financial transaction - such as performers, dancers, DJ's, musicians, etc. - and people who bring home a substantial amount of revenue in tips - such as bartenders, waiters, hair stylists, colorists, etc. - then you have a lot of professionals making a lot of money off the books.
This is a brave new world that requires brave new financial planning. After all, when you make a lot of money off the books you don't have an employer and a salary doing your basic financial planning for you, such as budgeting a regular income over a month or a year; paying into savings; taking money out for health insurance; reporting to the IRS; providing compensation for vacation and personal time, the list goes on. In other words you have to do the planning yourself.
Herewith the financial planning 411's when you make your money off the books:
*Build a system for leveling out peaks and valleys in revenue:*
Salaries naturally level out revenue. And if there is one thing that unites freelancers, people who live on tips, and the self-employed it's uncertain income. For freelancers and the self-employed revenue comes in waves - you may be incredibly busy for 2 months and hardly work for the next 2 months. And people who make a lot of money in tips can see wild fluctuations based on shifts at the restaurant or bar, number of clients in their chair, or even if they had a cold and missed a couple of day's work.
The plan is to build a system designed for leveling out these peaks and valleys. The first step toward managing this is to clearly separate your cost of living money from your spending money.
The way to do this is to have a primary account in which you deposit all of your money and from which you have all of your bills - rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. -- automatically deducted. (This is especially important for people who bring home money in cash from tips. Keeping tons of cash in your wallet encourages splurging. Depositing the cash helps prevents this because people on the whole are much more likely to splurge using cash already on them than to go to the ATM and pull the money out. Depositing your cash in a financial institution gives it a longer shelf life.)
Then every 2 to 4 weeks you transfer money into a separate account for everything else - ie. eating out, shopping, going out, etc. etc. So your living expenses are already budgeted, and your lifestyle expenses are determined and withdrawn based on your current financial landscape.
The difference between the two goes into building a financial bridge to get you through the valleys in revenue. You do this by taking this difference and stashing it in your primary account to cover your basic bills anywhere from 6 weeks to 9 months...whatever you can achieve. That way if you have a dip in income you don't have to go into debt to make it through until the money starts flowing again.
*Take out money for taxes with every deposit:*
Nothing gives the self-employed a sense of artificial wealth like depositing money without taxes taken out. And nothing hurts more than facing your quarterly tax bill - or, worse, an end-of-the-year tax bill with penalties - without having put money away for it.
The way to bypass both is to address your taxes with every deposit. One option is to consider allocating anywhere from 15% to 30% of every deposit into a third account specifically for your quarterly IRS and state taxes. If you feel you lack the financial discipline to do so, you can take a more tough-love approach by going on to the IRS website and your state's website and paying your taxes as you go with every deposit.
*Know what safety-net and long-term planning benefits to prioritize first:*
With most salaried jobs there is a system for benefits which cover everything from health insurance and sick leave to 401Ks and retirement. Freelancers and the self-employed have no such system. Although today many people in the service industry such as bartenders and waiters do have benefits that go along with the job, many do not. And even a bartender who does have, say, sick pay will only be paid their hourly wage while on leave, which may only be a micro fraction of their take-home income with tips.
In terms of priority, the first benefit that you should address is health insurance. Not only are you fined by the IRS for not having it, any kind of health issue could wipe you out and put you in serious debt. So the first order of business when it comes to benefits is to get health insurance.
The next order of business after health insurance is to create your own short-term disability and paid-leave infrastructure by building a cash reserve to use as paid personal leave, vacation, sick leave, etc. The rule of thumb is to have 2 to 3 months of basic living expenses stashed away in a no fee financial institution where there is no minimum requirement and no penalty for withdrawal. There's no set rule about how much you put in every month - even if it's a dollar then it's one dollar more than you had - the point is to create the habit of depositing money into the cash reserve and to build the reserve up over time. Like having money put away in advance to level out peaks and valleys in revenue, this will help prevent you from going into debt should you be unable to work for any period of time. It will also give you the resources to handle an emergency - such as needing to buy a new car - and to be able to follow through on a financial opportunity such as a potentially good investment that comes your way.
After that emergency safety net infrastructure is built then it's time to look into longer term savings and investments, such as a qualified retirement account like a Traditional or SEP IRA. To learn more about these and other retirement plan options, click here.
From there you can also begin to set up a goal-specific savings account for things like buying a home or educating children. How you go about it will depend on the dollar amount needed and the time frame. One of the ways to find an effective means of goal-specific savings would be to consult a financial advisor.
If you have dependents then life insurance - including Whole, Universal, Variable, and Term -- should be on the to-do list. To explore life insurance options speak to a financial advisor who is licensed to sell insurance or an insurance agent.
*No matter how great the temptation, report all of your income to the IRS:*
Nobody can deny the temptation of being paid with no record of the money changing hands and not reporting. After all, who wants to give away a substantial part of their check or the hard cash in their wallet?
But there are way more reasons today to report than to not. To begin with, the IRS now assumes an average tip rate of 8% of gross sales, and if you don't report will levy substantial fines.
Next, freelancers and the self-employed might not receive a W-2 from an employer or client and assume that the payments were not reported to the IRS, only to find out, after the fact, that they were. This reminds me of a story I recently heard of a successful DJ in New York who was certain that the nightclub that paid him handsomely in cash every Saturday was not reporting it to the IRS. The DJ wasn't reporting the income, but the nightclub was. This individual wound up being audited and paying huge sums in back taxes and penalties.
In addition, in today's economic environment showing a high income on your tax return is a must for basics like signing a lease, getting a mortgage, securing credit or buying a car. So by not reporting you may think you saved money in taxes, only to find out that you can't get a lease for an apartment or buy a car because your tax return income isn't high enough. Not reporting will also limit the contributions you can make to any retirement accounts because they are based on earned income. And reporting, say, 10 thousand dollars in income and having 40 thousand in credit card debt can trigger IRS tracking programs...something you really don't want to happen.
The brave new financial planning required when your money is off the books is, ultimately, simply about developing brave new habits.*To learn more about Michael*, as well as access resources including videos and newsletters to help with basic financial planning, go to Michael's website here. You can also download Michael's app through Google Play or via the App Store which you can use to contact him with questions; connect with Michael on LinkedIn; and email him directly at Michael.Most@LPL.com.
-- 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 days ago.
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A.M. Best Affirms Ratings of Unum Group and Its Core U.S. Subsidiaries
OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A.M. Best has affirmed the financial strength rating (FSR) of A (Excellent) and the issuer credit ratings (ICR) of “a” of the core U.S. life/health insurance subsidiaries of Unum Group (Unum) (headquartered in Chattanooga, TN) [NYSE:UNM]. Concurrently, A.M. Best has affirmed the ICR of “bbb” of Unum, as well as all existing debt securities issued by the organization. The outlook for all ratings is stable. (See below for a complete listing of the companies and rat
Reported by Business Wire 2 days ago.
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Mercy Health affiliate to exit insurance business
HealthSpan Partners, an insurance company and medical provider affiliated with Cincinnati-based Mercy Health, will cease to exist at the end of this year. Medical Mutual of Ohio is acquiring the group and individual health insurance business of HealthSpan Partners, which covers 105,000 people ¬– including about 32,000 people who work for Mercy Health, the fourth-largest employer in Ohio. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Among those affected are about 11,000 employees of Mercy…
Reported by bizjournals 1 day ago.
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