Kaitlyn Krasselt and Jayne O’Donnell, USA TODAY4:02 p.m. EDT June 29, 2014
Federally funded programs will add at least 2,300 new primary care practitioners by the end of 2015, but the funding for at least one of those programs is set to expire at the same time, contributing to a massive shortage of doctors available to treat patients — including those newly insured through the Affordable Care Act and Medicare.
The U.S. is expected to need 52,000 more primary care physicians by 2025, according to a study by the Robert Graham Center, which does family medicine policy research. But funding for teaching hospitals that could train thousands more of these doctors expires in late 2015.
Population growth will drive most of the need for family care doctors, accounting for 33,000 additional physicians, the study says. The aging population will require about 10,000 more. The Affordable Care Act is expected to increase the number of family doctors needed by more than 8,000, the study says.
Farzan Bharucha, a health care strategist with consulting firm Kurt Salmon, says the ACA should have focused more on the primary care shortage “because we already knew there was a problem — and we knew implementation of ACA would potentially make it worse.”
Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt says continuing to build the primary care workforce will take time, but she notes President Obama’s budget working its way through Congress has several new ways to expand the primary care workforce, which includes nurse practitioners and pediatricians. The ACA, she says, significantly increases the number of primary care providers in underserved areas and increases Medicare and Medicaid payment for services delivered by primary care practitioners.
Oil spike due to Iraq keeps prices climbing at time they usually decline
Gas prices continued to rise in most parts of the country the past week to a national average of $3.68 for a gallon of regular unleaded, the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report said Thursday. That’s just 2 cents off of 2014’s previous peak price.
In its weekly assessment of price trends, AAA said concerns over the ongoing violence in Iraq were keeping oil prices hovering around $106 a barrel, making it more expensive to produce gasoline.
Previously, AAA predicted gas prices would fall 10 to 15 cents per gallon during June, following a typical pattern for lower pump prices in early summer, but in a statement the organization said “that now appears unlikely due to higher oil costs. This means that even though the national average has only increased a few cents per gallon since the Iraq violence intensified, drivers are likely to pay substantially higher gas prices than they would have otherwise.”
Indeed, the national average for regular unleaded gasoline is 14 cents higher than a year ago, and AAA pegs it as the highest early summer average since 2008.
The national average crept up a penny the past week, and if prices continue to climb, it could soon approach the 2014 peak of $3.70, set on April 28. Diesel fuel also rose 1 cent the past week, to $3.90, which is 6 cents higher than a year ago.
Motorists in some states are paying substantially more for gas than a year ago. In Ohio, for example, the $3.68 average for regular unleaded is 25 cents higher than on June 26, 2013, even after prices fell 12 cents the past week. The $3.78 average in Pennsylvania is 28 cents higher than a year ago, and drivers in Kentucky and Michigan are paying 31 cents more per gallon this year.
Power Play: John Boehner Announces Abuse of Power Lawsuit Against Obama’s Executive Orders
IIn a closed-door meeting with House Republicans today, Speaker John Boehner announced plans to file an abuse of power lawsuit against President Obama. The plaintiff in the lawsuit would be the House of Representatives, not Boehner personally.
Republican House members have been seeking ways to restrain Obama’s use of executive orders, according to Boehner spokesman Michael Steel:
“The president has a clear record of ignoring the American people’s elected representatives and exceeding his constitutional authority, which has dangerous implications for both our system of government and our economy,” Steel said.
“The House has passed legislation to address this, but it has gone nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, so we are examining other options.”
The President announced in January that “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” and he wasn’t afraid to use them.
Since then, his executive actions have been a favored way to pursue policy changes without having to go through that pesky legislative branch. He has made unilateral changes to the ObamaCare law, halted deportations, and issued other orders regarding pay rates for federal contractors and environmental issues.
The lawsuit would need to be approved by a group of House leaders and isexpected to be filed in the next few weeks.
Not surprisingly, Nancy Pelosi decries the suit as “subterfuge” designed to “give some aura of activity.” Of course she does…
So the US economy contracts -2.9% annualised and it’s foreign policy has become incoherent. 1937 all over again? Paul Mason @paulmasonnews
US economy suffers worst decline in 5 years
By Associated Press
June 25, 2014 | 10:20am
The US economy shrank at a steep annual rate of 2.9 percent in the January-March quarter as a harsh winter contributed to the biggest contraction since the depths of the recession five years ago. But the setback is widely thought to be temporary, with growth rebounding solidly since spring.
The first-quarter contraction reported Wednesday by the Commerce Department was even more severe than the 1 percent annual decline it had estimated a month ago. Besides the harsh winter, much of the downward revision reflected a drop in health care spending. Another factor was a bigger trade deficit than initially estimated.
Though such a sharp decline would typically stoke fears of another recession, analysts see it as a short-lived result of winter storms that shut factories, disrupted shipping and kept Americans away from shopping malls and auto dealerships. They say the economy is rebounding in the April-June quarter. Many expect growth to reach a robust annual rate of at least 3.5 percent this quarter.
Are You Dumb Enough to Trade $10 Billion for $560 Million? Jun. 25 s By Irwin M. Fletcher | The Save Jersey Blog
Author’s Note: I’m not THAT dumb, Save Jerseyans.
Why do we ALWAYS have the same argument over a millionaires tax?
Scratch that, Save Jerseyans. Why do Democrats and newspaper editors, aka Harry & Lloyd, our friends from Dumb and Dumber, ALWAYS ignore the facts of this argument? I’m getting sick and tired of the facts staring them right in the face and then, instead of responding to logic and reason, they lie to our faces. When they say that people do not leave, that people do not flee a state when they institute a millionaires tax, grab a fire extinguisher, aim it at their pants and get ready to pull the pin.
Wealth flees, Save Jerseyans. Wealth flees. And here is what the FACTS tell us what happens when a state, any state, raises its millionaires tax.
In the first fiscal year they are enacted, taxes generally raise anywhere from 90 to 95% of the publicly estimated revenue to be raised. Sometimes it is more, sometimes it is less. This occurs for 3 main reasons: 1) They are usually retroactive for the current fiscal year, and since DeLoreans don’t come standard with flux capacitors, taxpayers can’t do much about avoiding taxes in June on income already earned 6 months ago in January; 2) Moving/fleeing doesn’t happen overnight. While millionaires have the resources to leave the state due to taxes, it takes some time. So while they cut through the red tape, their income stays and is taxed at the new higher rate; 3) The projections employed are usually the rosy best case scenario ones to make the TV sound bite better. $600 million sounds better than $500 million when you’re trying to close a budget gap. But the best case scenario is hardly ever the real case scenario.
It is also a fact that after the fiscal year of implementation, tax revenues come nowhere near projections. Nowhere near. The first years collections are a one-time windfall. Revenues fall drastically in year two. The funds that the millionaires tax was supposed to raise aren’t materializing. Not there. Year three, the gap between projected tax revenues and collected revenues is even bigger! Heck, sometimes it’s BELOW then where they started three years ago! States are collecting less income taxes than before their millionaires tax! By year four and year five, the tax revenue situation is so bad that Harry & Lloyd start up the same argument again.
– See more at: https://savejersey.com/2014/06/millionaire-tax-state-budget-analysis/#sthash.1Mv0P16u.dpuf
“Great opinion piece in USA TODAY about how unnecessary regulation and government overreach destroys jobs, raises unemployment and hurts your ability to get better goods and services for a decent price. The author, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, uses taxis as an example, but you can apply this scenario to virtually every U.S. industry.” Rep Scott Garrett
Ride-share services benefit consumers, but the taxi commission doesn’t want to give us a good deal.
The regulatory knives are out for Uber and Lyft, two ride-sharing services that make life easier for consumers and provide employment opportunities in a stagnant economy. Why are regulatorsunhappy? Basically, because these new services offer insufficient opportunity for graft.
Services like Uber and Lyft disrupt the current regulatory environment. I have the Uber app on my phone. If I need a car in areas where Uber operates, it looks up where I am using GPS, matches me with participating drivers nearby, and in my experience gets me a Town Car in just a few minutes. It’s the comfort of a limo service, with the convenience of a taxicab. I get a better service, the driver gets a job, but now there’s competition for those entrenched companies.
In most cities, traditional taxi services are regulated by some sort of taxi commission. Similarly, limo services — the ones that provide the black Town Cars favored by big shots (and used by many Uber drivers) — are regulated by some sort of livery office. The rules strictly forbid the two sectors of the market from competing with one another. And, generally, entry is limited so that neither faces too much competition in general. In holding down competition, these regulators act on behalf of the entities they supposedly regulate for the benefit of consumers.
They do this because consumers typically pay very little attention to taxi and limo regulations while the regulated industries, unsurprisingly, pay very close attention. They express their gratitude in a variety of ways, some legal, and the regulators in turn look after the interests of the regulated. Consumer well-being is a far less significant concern.
Reader says we are in some serious trouble if this generation, the Millennial Generation, is our future.
Folks, we are in some serious trouble if this generation, the Millennial Generation, is our future. Yes, they are lovely, bright kids. However, they are just not like any previous generation of young adults who needed a little prodding into adulthood. There’s plenty of blame to go around as to why they are the way they are. You can blame growing up in the era of decadence, social media, everyone-gets-a-prize education, celebrity culture, helicopter parents, etc. Bottom line, they are narcissistic, entitled, lazy, and see absolutely nothing wrong with continuing their childhoods into their late 20s living off mom and dad. Yes, they’ll tell you that they are looking for work, but their concept of looking for work is a little web searching, emailing copies of their resumes, and then getting on with far more serious projects like updating their social media status. They aren’t really looking for work because they don’t want/need to. They don’t have the scary crap to deal with that real grown ups have when dealing with unemployment. Don’t you know that they are special? In college, they were convinced that they were going to graduate and get rich running their own blog, or starting up the equivalent of Google. For God’s sake, you really don’t expect them to get up at 6am like the rest of us and get a bus into NYC to work all day in an office do you? Having gotten into bed at 3am, such a daily schedule would simply not be a good fit.
Why Are So Many Young Adults Not Looking for Jobs? Stephen Moore
June 21, 2014
Stephen Moore, who formerly wrote on the economy and public policy for The Wall Street Journal, is chief economist at The Heritage Foundation.
Economists are scratching their heads trying to figure out a puzzle in this recovery: Why are young people not working? People retiring at age 60 or even 55 in a weak economy is easy to understand. But at 25?
The percentage of adult Americans who are working or looking for work now stands at 62.8%, a 36-year low and down more than 3 percentage points since late 2007, according to the Labor Department’s May employment report.
This is fairly well-known. What isn’t so well-known is that a major reason for the decline is that fewer and fewer young people are holding jobs. This exit from the workforce by the young is counter to the conventional wisdom or the Obama administration’s official line.
The White House claims the workforce is contracting because more baby boomers are retiring. There’s some truth to that. About 10,000 boomers retire every day of the workweek, so that’s clearly depressing the labor market. Since 2009, 7 million Americans have reached official retirement age. The problem will get worse in the years to come as nearly 80 million boomers hit age 65.
But that trend tells only part of the story. The chart above shows the real problem: The largest decline in workforce participation has been those under 25.
Idle Youth
The percentage of young Americans earning a paycheck or looking for work has fallen by 4 percentage points over the course of the recovery, and those between 16 and 25 have experienced the largest decline.
Those over 65, by the way, are more likely to be working today than five years ago. This shift has cushioned the blow of young people not working.
Why is this trend so troubling? Studies show that teens who start working at a job at a young age have higher earnings later in life. One study found that those who work as teenagers have earnings that are about 10% higher at age 27 than those who did not work.
“When we hold young Americans out of jobs,” explains Michael Saltsman of the Employment Policies Institute, “that makes it more difficult for them to get higher-paying jobs later.”
The federal minimum-wage hikes that started in 2007 didn’t help. Teens were priced out of the job market. The overall teen jobless rate skyrocketed. For black males, it topped 40%.
The teen unemployment rate remains at 19.2% — even with the participation rate down sharply — so it would be hard to imagine a worse time to raise the minimum wage again.
Minimum Wage Impact
Saltsman’s research shows that a 10% rise in the minimum wage could mean a 2% or 3% decline in young Americans working. Seattle is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour. A $10.10 federal minimum wage is being pushed by the White House. The current minimum wage is $7.25.
“When wages are held artificially high,” says Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder, “jobs are a lot more scarce. Unemployment is negatively associated with the wage rate.”
High teen unemployment is a big problem in Europe, where wage floors are very high. In nations such as France and Spain, the young delay their entry into the workforce until their mid- or even late 20s. These workers’ wages rarely catch up to those who start working earlier. Europe has traditionally had a much smaller share of young adults in jobs.
“Where have the workers been going in the U.S.?” asks Louis Woodhill, an economist in Houston. “They have been fleeing into the arms of the welfare state.” Since 2007, 2 million more Americans have started receiving Social Security disability payments, and food-stamp rolls have increased by 20 million. This has substituted for jobs.
Student Loans
One possible reason that the young are staying away from the labor force is student loans. Since 2007, student loans have risen by more than $500 billion, a subsidy that may be giving college-age students an incentive to take aid instead of look for work to become financially self-sufficient and acquire marketable skills.
We do no favors to the young by teaching them that they can consume or have a good time without first earning the money they spend. The decline in young workers couldn’t come at a worse time. At the other end of the spectrum, as the 80 million boomers move swiftly out of the workforce in the decade ahead, who will support them? Mick Jagger isn’t going to be playing forever.
Student Accuses High School Of Blocking Conservative Websites June 18, 2014 9:52 AM
WOODBURY, Conn. (CBS Hartford) – A high school student claims that a firewall is blocking conservative websites at his school.
Andrew Lampart, a senior at Nonnewaug High School, discovered that he couldn’t get on the National Rifle Association’s website while on campus as he was doing research for a classroom debate on gun control in May.
“So, I went over to the other side,” Lampart told WTIC. “And I went over on sites such as Moms Demand Action or Newtown Action Alliance and I could get on these websites but not the others.”
The 18-year-old decided to investigate further by broadening his search terms to political parties in Connecticut.
“I immediately found out that the State Democrat website was unblocked but the State GOP website was blocked,” Lampart said.
The student took it a step further and looked at websits focusing on abortion issues and religion. He discovered that “right-to-life” groups were blocked by the firewall but that Planned Parenthood and Pro-Choice America weren’t.
ABC Revives Soros-Funded Attacks on Johns Hopkins and Coal Companies
By Sean Long | June 6, 2014 | 13:37
Building on a long week of anti-coal attacks by the media and the Environmental Protection Agency, ABC’s June 5 “World News” revived another attack on the coal industry. ABC hyped a 2013 investigation that it conducted in partnership with the Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity (CPI). It alleged that the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions had essentially been bought off by coal companies to ignore cases of black lung disease in miners.
ABC’s David Muir declared a “victory a long time in the making,” Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Paul Wheeler for allegedly “working for the coal company.”
On October 30, 2013, ABCNews.com posted an extensive investigation by ABC’s Chief Investigative Correspondent, Brian Ross, ABC’s Investigative Producer Matthew Mosk and CPI’s Investigative Report Chris Hamby. This report alleged that Wheeler, the leader of a unit that analyzes potential black lung cases, was either incompetent or had ignored cases of black lung in coal miners.
photos surfaced from Texas and Arizona showing Border Patrol processing centers
US struggles with surge in illegal immigrant children By Geoff Dyer in Washington
Federal officials were scrambling at the weekend to provide medical and other supplies to an emergency shelter in Arizona to help house a surge of illegal child immigrants into the country that President Barack Obama has called “an urgent humanitarian situation”.
More than 750 children from Central America spent the weekend in an unused warehouse in Nogales, Arizona, which the border patrol agency has turned into a temporary “way-station” for the children, a state official said.
The improvised shelter is one of the by-products of a jump in illegal immigration from Central America this year, including 47,000 children who entered the country on their own – almost double the number from the year before.
The difficulties in coping with such large numbers of unaccompanied children are stoking the already tortuous debates about reforming the country’s immigration system..
Jan Brewer, the conservative Republican governor of Arizona, described the conditions at the shelter in Nogales as “dire”. She urged people to ask the Obama administration “the reason for this massive influx of illegal crossings and the cost to taxpayers for having to deal with the crisis created by the President”.
Although the overall trend of illegal immigration has dropped in recent years, the authorities have been overwhelmed in recent months by the surge in children trying to cross the border. The federal government is establishing facilities at military bases in Texas and California to help house the children while their cases are being examined. The administration estimates that the influx of immigrant children could cost the federal government $2.28bn this year.
If you think of the United States of America as a store, its recent decisions and scandals resemble a sale, perhaps a fire sale. Or maybe even a “Going Out of Business” sale.
The list of dramatic markdowns is breathtaking. They include trading away five murderous terrorists for a likely Army deserter, an open invitation to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to cross the Mexican border, and a decision to recognize the terrorist group Hamas as part of the Palestinian government.
On the home front, environmental regulations will cost thousands of coal miners their jobs and drive up the cost of electricity for millions. The ObamaCare mess is hardly resolved, and the Veterans Affairs scandal keeps getting worse. The acting agency head reported the deaths of 18 more vets who were kept off the official waiting list in Phoenix.
Ticking quietly in the background is the mother of all threats — an Iranian nuclear bomb. That ticking grew louder last week as the ayatollah mocked our nation by standing in front of a banner that proclaimed, “America cannot do a damn thing.”
37.2%: Percentage Not in Labor Force Remains at 36-Year High June 6, 2014 – 8:05 AM
(CNSNews.com) – The percentage of American civilians 16 or older who do not have a job and are not actively seeking one remained at a 36-year high in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In December, April, and now May, the labor force participation rate has been 62.8 percent. That means that 37.2 percent were not participating in the labor force during those months.
Before December, the last time the labor force participation rate sunk as low as 62.8 percent was February 1978, when it was also 62.8 percent. At that time, Jimmy Carter was president.
In April, the number of those not in the labor force hit a record high of 92,018,000. In May, that number declined by 9,000 to 92,009,000. Yet, the participation rate remained the same from April to May at 62.8 percent.
The labor force, according to BLS, is that part of the civilian noninstitutional population that either has a job or has actively sought one in the last four weeks. The civilian noninstitutional population consists of people 16 or older, who are not on active duty in the military or in an institution such as a prison, nursing home, or mental hospital.
The American Dream is impossible to achieve in this country.
So say nearly 6 in 10 people who responded to CNNMoney’s American Dream Poll, conducted by ORC International. They feel the dream — however they define it — is out of reach.
Young adults, age 18 to 34, are most likely to feel the dream is unattainable, with 63% saying it’s impossible. This age group has suffered in the wake of the Great Recession, finding it hard to get good jobs.
Younger Americans are a cause of great concern. Many respondents said they are worried about the next generation’s ability to prosper.
Some 63% of all Americans said most children in the U.S. won’t be better off than their parents. This dour view comes despite most respondents, 54%, feeling they are better off than their own parents.
The downbeat mood is not surprising, say economic mobility experts.
“The pessimism is reflective of the financial realities a lot of families are facing,” said Erin Currier, the director of the Economic Mobility Project at Pew Charitable Trusts. “They are treading water, but their income is not translating into solid financial security.”
It’s income mobility that matters, not income inequality
By John Stossel
Published June 04, 2014 FoxNews.com
“Young people are exploited!” “Income mobility is down!” “Poor people are locked into poverty!”
Those are samples of popular nonsense peddled today.
Leftist economist Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has been No. 1 on best-seller lists for weeks (with 400 pages of statistics, I assume “Capital” is bought more often than it is read). Piketty argues that investments grow faster than wages and so the rich get richer far faster than everyone else. He says we should impose a wealth tax and 80 percent taxes on rich people’s incomes.
When markets are free, poor people can move out of their income group. In America, income mobility, which matters more than income inequality, has not really diminished.
But Piketty’s numbers mislead. It’s true that today the rich are richer than ever. And the wealth gap between rich and poor has grown. Now the top 1 percent own more assets than the bottom 90 percent!
But focusing on this disparity ignores the fact that over time, the rich and poor are not the same people. Oprah Winfrey once was on welfare. Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton was a farmhand.
When markets are free, poor people can move out of their income group. In America, income mobility, which matters more than income inequality, has not really diminished.
Economists at Harvard and Berkeley crunched the numbers on 40 million tax returns from 1971-2012 and discovered that mobility is pretty much what The Pew Charitable Trusts reported it was 30 years ago.
Today, 64 percent of the people born to the poorest fifth of society rise out of that quintile — 11 percent rise all the way into the top quintile. Meanwhile, 8 percent born to the richest fifth fall all the way to the bottom fifth. Sometimes great wealth makes kids lazy and self-indulgent, and wrecks their lives.
Also, the rich don’t get rich at the expense of the poor (unless they steal or collude with government).
The poor got richer, too. Yes, over the last 30 years, incomes of rich people grew by more than 200 percent, but according to the Congressional Budget Office, poor people gained 50 percent.
