Economy News: Business and World Economy News // Current

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21 minutes ago

The True Meaning of Patriotism

http://www.peacefreedomprosperity.com/?p=1840 An American Patriot Does Not Defend Land nor Government, It Defends The... more

shanklinmike
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A New Reason To Love Mondays: Free Coffee

What tastes better than a McDonald's mocha? Answer: a FREE McDonald's mocha. Starting July 13, McDonald's... more

Crenshaw_Brothers
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Local Governments Face Painful Choices

ELKHART, Ind.— After a long winter, this is high season for road repair, and the Elkhart County Highway Department has a... more

Crenshaw_Brothers
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GM Leaves Bankruptcy In Record ime

NEW YORK - The path is now clear for General Motors Corp. to leave bankruptcy protection in record time as a leaner company that... more

Crenshaw_Brothers
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Dems Look At Taxing The Rich For Health Care

WASHINGTON - House Democrats working on President Barack Obama's goal of health legislation are narrowing in on an income tax surcharge on the highest-paid wage earners to help subsidize insurance for the 50 million people who lack it.

Pushing to complete a comprehensive health care overhaul plan by Friday and bring it up for committee votes next week, House Democrats abandoned earlier money-raising proposals, including a payroll tax. They met behind closed doors Thursday to fine-tune the details.

"I promised the president that we would have legislation out of the House before we went on an August break. That is still my goal," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.

As discussed in the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, the surtax would apply to individuals with adjusted gross income of more than $200,000 and couples over $250,000, according to officials involved in the discussion. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., a member of the panel, said the panel is looking at a surtax of around 3.5 percent on income above those amounts. Other members suggested it would be closer to 3 percent.

In addition, key lawmakers are expected to call for a tax or fee equal to a percentage of a worker's salary on employers who do not offer health benefits.

Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has said his committee needs to come up with $600 billion in new taxes to deliver on Obama's goal of sweeping changes to the nation's health care system to bring down costs and cover the 50 million uninsured. Hundreds of billions of dollars more would come from cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to pay for legislation expected to cost around $1 trillion over 10 years.

Lawmakers cautioned that no final decisions have been made. Smaller tax options remained possibilities, depending on the overall cost of the legislation, including a tax on sugared soft drinks and ending a tax break that drug companies receive for advertising.

The action in the House stood in contrast to the Senate, where Democrats edged away from their goal of passing health care legislation by early August amid heightening partisan controversy over tax increases and a proposed new government role in providing insurance to consumers.WASHINGTON - House Democrats working on President Barack Obama's goal of health legislation are narrowing in on an income tax... more

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6 hours ago

Cities Lose Out On Stimulus Funds

Two-thirds of the country lives in large metropolitan areas, home to the nation’s worst traffic jams and some of its oldest roads and bridges. But cities and their surrounding regions are getting far less than two-thirds of federal transportation stimulus money.

According to an analysis by The New York Times of 5,274 transportation projects approved so far — the most complete look yet at how states plan to spend their stimulus money — the 100 largest metropolitan areas are getting less than half the money from the biggest pot of transportation stimulus money. In many cases, they have lost a tug of war with state lawmakers that urban advocates say could hurt the nation’s economic engines.

The stimulus law provided $26.6 billion for highways, bridges and other transportation projects, but left the decision on how to spend most of it to the states, which have a long history of giving short shrift to major metropolitan areas when it comes to dividing federal transportation money. Now that all 50 states have beat a June 30 deadline by winning approval for projects that will use more than half of that transportation money, worth $16.4 billion, it is clear that the stimulus program will continue that pattern of spending disproportionately on rural areas.

If we’re trying to recover the nation’s economy, we should be focusing where the economy is, which is in these large areas,” said Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, which advocates more targeted spending. “But states take this peanut-butter approach, taking the dollars and spreading them around very thinly, rather than taking the dollars and concentrating them where the most complex transportation problems are.”

The 100 largest metropolitan areas also contribute three-quarters of the nation’s economic activity, and one consequence of that is monumental traffic jams. A study of congestion in urban areas released Wednesday by the Texas Transportation Institute found that traffic jams in 2007 cost urban Americans 2.8 billion gallons of wasted gas and 4.2 billion hours of lost time.

The Times analysis shows that a little more than half of the stimulus money will be spent on “pavement improvement” projects, mostly repaving rutted and potholed roads. Nearly one-tenth of it will be spent to fix or replace bridges. More than a quarter of the money will be spent to widen roads or build new roads or bridges.

But the projects also offered vivid evidence that metropolitan areas are losing the struggle for stimulus money. Seattle found itself shut out when lawmakers in the State of Washington divided the first pot of stimulus money. Missouri has directed nearly half its money to 89 small counties which, together, make up only a quarter of the state’s population. The United States Conference of Mayors, which did its own analysis of different data last month, concluded that the nation’s metropolitan areas were being “shortchanged.”

Pat McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., said his city “did pretty terrible” when it came to getting money. Of the $423 million in projects approved so far in North Carolina, only $7.8 million is going to Mecklenburg County, the state’s most populous county and the home of Charlotte.

leveland was initially promised $200 million of Ohio’s stimulus money to help build a five-lane bridge to replace the 50-year-old Innerbelt Bridge, which is so deteriorated that officials banned heavy truck traffic on it last fall. But state officials, worried about meeting federal deadlines, took back $115 million in stimulus money and decided to use it on shovel-ready projects elsewhere.

The state promised to find another source of money for the bridge project, but now Ohio’s largest stimulus project is the $150 million it is spending to build the Nelsonville Bypass in southeastern Ohio, which officials say will alleviate a bottleneck and improve transportation to Appalachia.Two-thirds of the country lives in large metropolitan areas, home to the nation’s worst traffic jams and some of its oldest... more

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6 hours ago

$ 8.5 Billion For Flu Shots

WASHINGTON - Vaccinations against swine flu are likely and probably will begin in mid-October, assuming soon-to-start studies go well.

The government will fully pay for any autumn vaccination program against the new H1N1 swine flu, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Thursday.

"We have already appropriated about a billion dollars to buy the bulk ingredients," Sebelius told a swine flu "summit" of state and local leaders at the National Institutes of Health.

She said another $7.5 billion was available from emergency preparedness funds.

President Barack Obama telephoned the NIH all the way from Italy Thursday to tell a meeting of 500 flu officials not to promote panic — but to make sure "we are promoting vigilance and preparation."

Saying the potential for a significant fall outbreak is looming, Obama said steps taken now to prepare are crucial to protect "our neighbors and our friends and co-workers."

Swine flu may have faded from the headlines but it's still sickening people here and abroad and is certain to worsen when influenza-friendly fall temperatures arrive. The federal government called together health and education officials from every state to check their preparations for the likely prospect of vaccinations and determine how they'll handle flu-riddled schools.

"I want to be clear: This summit is not about raising alarms or stoking fears. It is about being prepared," Sebelius said. "We must avoid complacency."

Sebelius says no final decision has been made. But she says first in line for shots likely will be school-age children, young adults with conditions such as asthma, pregnant women and health workers.

Studies of the brand-new vaccine are set to start in early August, and the government will make its final decision once results are available. But Sebelius told officials from all 50 states Thursday to figure out now how they would deliver the shots to people who need them.

The government estimates that 1 million Americans so far have been infected with the never-before-seen virus known formally by its scientific family name, H1N1.WASHINGTON - Vaccinations against swine flu are likely and probably will begin in mid-October, assuming soon-to-start studies go... more

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6 hours ago

As recession puts men ot of work women feel the impact

This article has me wondering if the recession could be a great thing for the feminist movement ... About 1.4 million women... more

nazbags
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9 hours ago

My Debate With A Socialist (Argument #2)

http://www.peacefreedomprosperity.com/?p=1748 by Jim Anderson Interestingly enough, he agreed by saying that I was... more

polochick85
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7 responses

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10 hours ago

Ron Paul Is Right! We Should Audit the Fed: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

http://finance.yahoo.com/techticker/article/275761/Ron-Paul-Is-Right!-We-Should-Audit-the-Fed Yahoo! Ticker Posted Jul 08,... more

shanklinmike
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17 responses

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18 hours ago

The California Way - July 8, 2009

Carl Kasell gives the news on NPR about a new TV advertisement being launched by a marijuana advocacy group in support of Assembly... more

stephenthomson
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5 responses

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12 hours ago

The Secret Plan for Citigroup

Why won’t the government put Citi out of its misery and let it fail? Sources tell Charlie Gasparino the feds have a new... more

atomiclegion
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13 hours ago

Recession leads to less rush hour congestion

Drivers are spending less time stuck in rush-hour traffic for a second straight year, the first-ever two-year decline in... more

ebindelglass
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7 responses

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18 hours ago

EVE Online: Banker's virtual theft causes real life panic

Recently when a player simply known as "Ricdic" in EVE Online stole sever billion dollars of in-game currency from one... more

stumbl3r
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21 hours ago

House Dems eye surtax on wealthy for health bill

An income tax surcharge on highly paid Americans emerged as the leading option Wednesday night as House Democrats sought ways to... more

ashcatash
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21 hours ago

NEW CURRENCY OF THE FUTURE PRESENTED TO THE G8 LEADERS

'The sample of the first “test” currency from the international project for a new virtual global currency, given... more

sespian
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1 response

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1 day ago

An American Fairy Tale

http://www.peacefreedomprosperity.com/?p=1818 Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and... more

polochick85
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7 responses

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1 day ago

Parents (Financially) Support Tween Phenomenon at the Box Office

"In Hollywood the recent news that Miley Cyrus is to star in a remake of The Bodyguard and that Zac Efron will headline a new version of Saturday Night Fever seems particularly poignant. For it represents a passing of sorts, an axis shift between generations. It is the tacit acknowledgement that a movie industry once built upon the solid efforts of John Travolta dramas and Kevin Costner thrillers is now utterly in thrall to the glamour and the power of the new tween superstars.

Selling the dream of ordinary kids in ordinary high schools doing extraordinary things (putting on musicals, becoming handsome vampires), these inviolably wholesome and family-friendly entertainers are fuelling merchandising bonanzas and breaking box-office records. Ticket sales, for instance, for the three recent movies from Cyrus, Efron and Pattinson have already reached $750 million (£456 million) on exceedingly modest budgets — the High School Musical movie cost only $11 million to produce. In the current cash-strapped climate, says Ali Jaafar, international editor of Variety, this is regarded as the pre-eminent business model. “These guys are being offered everything right now,” he says. “They are seen as the next generation of stars, and producers want them attached to their projects because they know the studios will immediately say ‘Yes!”

And yet, tween success is not simply the result of giant corporations such as Disney cynically exploiting gullible children, says Barry Rosenbush, producer of the three-part High School Musical series. “The interesting thing about the tween audience is that they’re still connected to their parents,” he says. “Parents still need to give their permission to buy things, to download off iTunes, to buy DVDs. So an interesting dynamic develops between the parents and the children, where the parents want the children to go to High School Musical because it’s empowering, and to Twilight because it’s about romanticism. All good clean family entertainment that makes parents feel safe.

Indeed it is the parents of tween consumers who are the silent drivers of this boom, says Greg Livingston, co-author of The Great Tween Buying Machine: Marketing to Today’s Tweens, and the chief development officer at WonderGroup, a tween marketing agency in the US whose clients include Disney and Hasbro. “The former Generation X and Y kids who are parents now have this entirely inclusive family philosophy — they include their children in all decisions, from what food they’re going to eat to what car they’re going to buy,” he points out. “The dynamic between parents and young children really changed [in the past decade] and they became what we call a superconsumer: a mom and a kid together.”""In Hollywood the recent news that Miley Cyrus is to star in a remake of The Bodyguard and that Zac Efron will headline a new... more