Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Are Hospitals Becoming Obsolete?

Opinion | Op-Ed Contributor

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By EZEKIEL J. EMANUELFEB. 25, 2018


Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Hospitals are disappearing. While they may never completely go away, they will continue to shrink in number and importance. That is inevitable and good.

The reputation of hospitals has had its ups and downs. Benjamin Rush, a surgeon general of the Continental Army, called the hospitals of his day the “sinks of human life.” Through the 19th century, most Americans were treated in their homes. Hospitals were a last resort, places only the very poor or those with no family went. And they went mainly to die.

Then several innovations made hospitals more attractive. Anesthesia and sterile techniques made surgery less risky and traumatic, while the discovery of X-rays in 1895 enhanced the diagnostic powers of physicians. And the understanding of germ theory reduced the spread of infectious diseases.

Middle- and upper-class Americans increasingly turned to hospitals for treatment. Americans also strongly supported the expansion of hospitals through philanthropy and legislation.

Today, hospitals house M.R.I.s, surgical robots and other technological wonders, and at $1.1 trillion they account for about a third of all medical spending. That’s nearly the size of the Spanish economy.


And yet this enormous sector of the economy has actually been in decline for some time.

Consider this: What year saw the maximum number of hospitalizations in the United States? The answer is 1981.

That might surprise you. That year, there were over 39 million hospitalizations — 171 admissions per 1,000 Americans. Thirty-five years later, the population has increased by 40 percent, but hospitalizations have decreased by more than 10 percent. There is now a lower rate of hospitalizations than in 1946. As a result, the number of hospitals has declined to 5,534 this year from 6,933 in 1981.


This is because, in a throwback to the 19th century, hospitals now seem less therapeutic and more life-threatening. In 2002, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were 1.7 million cases of hospital-acquired infections that caused nearly 100,000 deaths. Other problems — from falls to medical errors — seem too frequent. It is clear that a hospital admission is not a rejuvenating stay at a spa, but a trial to be endured. And those beeping machines and middle-of-the-night interruptions are not conducive to recovery.

The number of hospitals is also declining because more complex care can safely and effectively be provided elsewhere, and that’s good news.

When I was training to become an oncologist, most chemotherapy was administered in the hospital. Now much better anti-nausea medications and more tolerable oral instead of intravenous treatments have made a hospital admission for chemotherapy unusual. Similarly, hip and knee replacements once required days in the hospital; many can now be done overnight in ambulatory surgical centers. Births outside of hospitals are also increasing, as more women have babies at home or at birthing centers.

Studies have shown that patients with heart failure, pneumonia and some serious infections can be given intravenous antibiotics and other hospital-level treatments at home by visiting nurses. These “hospital at home” programs usually lead to more rapid recoveries, at a lower cost.

As these trends accelerate, many of today’s hospitals will downsize, merge or close. Others will convert to doctors’ offices or outpatient clinics. Those that remain will be devoted to emergency rooms, high-tech services for premature babies, patients requiring brain surgery and organ transplants, and the like. Meanwhile, the nearly one billion annual visits to physicians’ offices, imaging facilities, surgical centers, urgent-care centers and “doc in the box” clinics will grow.

Special interests in the hospital business aren’t going to like this. They will lobby for higher hospital payments from the government and insurers and for other preferential treatment, often arguing that we need to retain the “good” jobs hospitals offer. But this is disingenuous; the shift of medical services out of hospitals will create other good jobs — for home nurses, community health care workers and staff at outpatient centers.

Hospitals will also continue consolidating into huge, multihospital systems. They say that this will generate cost savings that can be passed along to patients, but in fact, the opposite happens. The mergers create local monopolies that raise prices to counter the decreased revenue from fewer occupied beds. Federal antitrust regulators must be more vigorous in opposing such mergers.

Instead of trying to forestall the inevitable, we should welcome the advances that are making hospitals less important. Any change in the health care system that saves money and makes patients healthier deserves to be celebrated.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel is a vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, the author of “Prescription for the Future” and a partner at Oak HC/FT, a health care investment company.

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Above is fromhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/opinion/hospitals-becoming-obsolete.html

A History of the Federal Gas Tax


Why Trump may usher in the biggest gas tax hike ever

February 27, 2018 6.29am EST


The Conversation

The White House aims to boost what the federal government spends on big public works projects by about US$200 billion over the next decade as a part of its plan to fix the nation’s ailing infrastructure. So far, it’s unclear how the Trump administration plans to pay for most of this spending surge at a time when revenue is about to fall due to massive tax cuts.

As the director of energy studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, I’ve studied both taxes on energy and how the government leverages what it spends on infastructure through public-private partnerships. I believe there’s a chance President Donald Trump will usher in the first federal gas tax increase in 25 years to cover the cost of new roads and bridges.

He has, after all, already said he supports a 25-cent-per-gallon increase the U.S Chamber of Commerce is backing, even if that sounds hard to sell to his own political base and other conservatives.

To explain why the government may finally adjust the 18.4-cent-a-gallon tax, here’s a historical snapshot.

The first 40 years

This resilient levy is a major source of U.S. funding for roads and transit today. It originated during the Great Depression as a “temporary” penny-per-gallon gasoline tax. At the time, a gallon cost about 18 cents, or $2.61 in 2015 dollars.

As he signed the Revenue Act of 1932 into law, President Herbert Hoover lauded “the willingness of our people to accept this added burden in these times in order impregnably to establish the credit of the federal government.”

The original gas tax, an emergency measure intended to bolster the budget and fund national defense spending, not meet transportation needs, was slated to expire in 1933. Instead, it remained in force throughout Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration over the objections of the oil, automotive and travel industries due to persistent budget deficits throughout the New Deal and World War II. It became a permanent 1.5-cent levy in 1941.

Multiple efforts to do away with the gas tax ever since have failed.

The first gas tax had been in effect for seven years before this 1939 photo of a Waco, Texas, gas station was shot. Everett Historical

For example, Congress again scheduled the tax’s repeal in 1951 when it increased it to 2 cents as source of revenue related to the Korean War. Instead, lawmakers agreed to keep the tax on the books to help pay for one of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s top priorities, the national interstate highway system.

In 1956 the levy rose once more, to 3 cents, when Americans were paying about 30 cents for a gallon of gas. At the same time, the government established the Highway Trust Fund to pay for building and maintaining the new interstates.

The tax rose to 4 cents per gallon in 1959 and froze at that level for more than two decades.

Running on empty

Gas tax revenue stopped keeping up with the expenses it was supposed to cover in the early 1970s following a severe bout of inflation and OPEC’s oil embargo. U.S. gas prices soared from about 36 cents per gallon in 1972 to $1.31 in 1981.

Responding to what members of both major political parties saw as a transportation infrastructure crisis, Congress more than doubled the tax to 9 cents per gallon as part of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982. The same law split the Highway Trust Fund and its revenue stream into two parts: The first 8 cents would finance roadwork while the other penny would finance mass transit projects.

Nine cents may have struck drivers as a sharp increase, but public spending on transportation infrastructure would continue to fall as a percentage of all outlays.

In 1984, Congress increased spending on highways by funneling proceeds from fines and other penalties that businesses pay for safety violations, such as failing to label hazardous materials or forcing drivers to work too many hours in a row.

Congress boosted the tax twice more in the 1990s but primarily to reduce the then-ballooning federal deficit. Only half of a 5-cent increase in 1990 went to highways and transit, while a 4.3-cent lift three years later went entirely to lowering the deficit.

Newt Gingrich, right, in 1996. The then-House speaker was predicting incorrectly that Congress might repeal a gasoline tax hike that took effect three years earlier. AP Photo/Tammy Lechner

By 1997, the government had redirected all gas tax revenue reserved for deficit reduction to the Highway Trust Fund, where it still flows today.

Along the way, other federal fuel taxes arose, including a 24.4 cent-per-gallon diesel tax and taxes on methanol and compressed natural gas. And state fuel taxes, which in most cases began before the federal gas tax, range from as low as 8.95 cents per gallon in Alaska to as high as 57.6 cents per gallon in Pennsylvania.

Making do

Since 1993, when the federal gas tax was first parked at 18.4 cents, inflation and rising construction costs have eroded its effectiveness as a transportation-related revenue source. In addition, U.S. vehicles have grown more fuel-efficient overall – which means Americans use less fuel for every mile they drive.

As a result, highway and transit spending have significantly outpaced the revenue collected from the gas tax and other sources. Since 2008, the government has spent $80 billion on highways that it had to take from other sources.

But it’s still not enough. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives U.S. infrastructure a D+, is calling on the government and private sector to increase spending on roads and bridges by at least $1 trillion within a decade.

Unusual politics

Like the sharp gas tax increase during the Reagan administration, a 25-cent hike that Trump might sign into law would come at a time when the tax is relatively low as a percentage of the retail price of gasoline.

And like that early 1980s precedent, it would come at a politically surprising moment. Anti-tax conservatives were ascendant then. Now, Republicans, who say they believe in keeping taxes low, control the White House and Congress.

However, Trump has pledged to spend billions of federal dollars on new roads and bridges when there’s no money in the Highway Trust Fund for that. The money has to come from somewhere, and the Chamber of Commerce projects that raising the tax by a quarter could generate more than $375 billion in new revenue over a decade.

Above is from:  https://theconversation.com/why-trump-may-usher-in-the-biggest-gas-tax-hike-ever-92007?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20February%2028%202018%20-%2095718225&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20February%2028%202018%20-%2095718225+CID_b06f3972c1ad24b69c7a521f9e96fcea&utm_source=campaign_monitor_us&utm_term=Why%20Trump%20may%20usher%20in%20the%20biggest%20gas%20tax%20hike%20ever

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Legal status of Melania Trump's parents raises questions about 'chain migration'


Good Morning America KATHERINE FAULDERS and DEVIN DWYER,Good Morning America 4 hours ago


  • Legal status of Melania Trump's parents raises questions about 'chain migration' (ABC News)

As President Donald Trump calls for an end to immigration to the U.S. based on extended family ties, the legal status of his mother and father-in-law faces new scrutiny as they move closer toward naturalization and U.S. citizenship.

First Lady Melania Trump's parents Viktor and Amalija Knavs are permanent residents of the United States after emigrating from Slovenia, according to their lawyer Michael Wildes.

“I can confirm that Mrs. Trump’s parents are both lawfully admitted to the United States as permanent residents,” Wildes said in a statement to ABC News. “The family, as they are not part of the administration, has asked that their privacy be respected so I will not comment further on this matter.”

PHOTO: Viktor and Amalija Knavs, the parents of Melania Trump, step off Air Force One upon arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Fla., March 17, 2017. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Wildes would not say how the Knavses received green cards to live and work in the U.S.

Immigration experts say the most likely way the Knavses could have become permanent residents is through their daughter’s citizenship — a process the president has referred to as "chain migration".

“The most obvious way that they would have become green card holders is by being the parents of a U.S. citizen – i.e. Melania Trump,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration professor at Cornell Law School.

The Knavses theoretically could have applied for green cards through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program or through an employee sponsorship, but that is unlikely Yale-Loehr says, as they are retired and 65 percent of green cards are given out through various family programs.

According to public records, Melania's sister Ines Knauss lives in New York City, but it's not clear whether she was sponsored by her sister and Wildes declined to comment on the matter.

The likelihood that the Knavses received legal status based on their family ties cuts against President Trump's desire to end the practice in favor of immigration by merit and skill basis.

“Restricting family migration in certain ways, including to prohibit parents of U.S. citizens from emigrating to the U.S. – if that had been law, Melania Trump’s parents would not be able to emigrate to the United States,” Yale Loehr said.

Trump has long said one of the goals of the administration's proposed immigration reform plan is to "end chain migration," the term critics of the current system use to describe the process by which American citizens sponsor their relatives for immigration to the U.S.

PHOTO: Melania Trump listens to President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks while hosting a reception in honor of National African American History Month, in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 13, 2018. (Michael Reynolds/EPA via Shutterstock)

"Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited number of distant relatives," Trump claimed during his State of the Union address last month.

This claim isn't accurate, however. Citizens and green card holders can petition for certain immediate family members, but it's not feasible to admit an unlimited number of family members, according to an ABC News fact check of those comments.

Wildes declined to comment further on the matter. A spokesperson for the First Lady declined to comment to ABC News.

The news was first reported by the Washington Post

Above is from: https://www.yahoo.com/gma/legal-status-melania-trumps-parents-raises-questions-chain-184403264--abc-news-topstories.html

Fire District 2’s referenda heats up

Below is a sign in neighboring McHenry County regarding Boone County’s Fire District employees.  Needless to say the sign is  (correction “was”) outside Stark’s Trucking.  Mr. Stark is an appointed trustee for Fire District 2 and his son is a elected member of the Boone County Board.

REMEMBER TO VOTE on March 20, 2018

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Remember to Vote .  Early voting is occurring at the Boone County Administrative Building,

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Mr. Stark resigns from Fire District #2 Board

Susan Vela‏ @susanvela

Boone County Fire District 2 trustees have have accepted the resignation of fellow trustee Kevin Stark. @rrstar

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Go to twitter to see the Fire District #2 acceptance of resignation:  https://twitter.com/susanvela/status/968315535606894597



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Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180227/boone-county-fire-district-trustee-resigns-amid-fallout-over-profane-sign




Boone County Fire Protection trustee resigns over insensitive private sign

By WIFR Newsroom |

Posted: Tue 9:31 AM, Feb 27, 2018  |


BOONE COUNTY, Ill. (WIFR) -- A sign posted on private property in McHenry County leads to the resignation of a Boone County Fire Protection trustee.

The sign was displayed outside a McHenry County business owned by Boone County Fire Protection District #2 trustee Kevin Stark. The sign, which was critical of the fire association, contained what many would consider an offensive remark concerning the sexual orientation of the firemen.

"We may or may not have people on this department who may be gay. It's not right to offend them or make fun of anybody", said Frank Perez, a firefighter with the Boone County Fire Protection District #2. "It's certainly not fun to bring the whole department into something like that".

A packed house filled the fire station Monday night with some passionate statements made by Boone county firefighters and the general public.

"This is not behavior that I've ever seen with this fire department, so that is what I think is really disheartening", said Charmain Cornwell, who lives in Boone County. "I mean this is almost an embarrassment to Boone County. I mean this just doesn't need to happen".

By the end of the meeting, Boone County Fire Protection District #2 Board President Jim Marrs read a statement on behalf of the board, saying that they have accepted Stark's resignation.

"The board expressly disavows the language expressed on the sign and in no way does the board agree with the crude and politically incorrect remarks on the sign", said Marrs.

Kevin Stark did not attend Monday night's meeting, instead, his son appeared and spoke on his behalf.

Above is fromhttp://www.wifr.com/content/news/Boone-County-Fire-Protection-trustee-resigns-over-insensitive-private-sign-475285873.html

Remember to Vote .  Early voting is occurring at the Boone County Administrative Building,

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Trump Reneging on Budget Compromise?



Trump's budget will ask Congress not to spend all the money from cap-busting spending deal

Gregory Korte, USA TODAY Published 2:17 p.m. ET Feb. 11, 2018 | Updated 5:17 p.m. ET Feb. 11, 2018

The House has narrowly passed a sweeping bipartisan budget accord, ending an hours-long government shutdown and clearing a path for huge spending increases for both the Pentagon and domestic programs. The Senate passed the measure earlier Friday. (Feb. 9) AP

AP TRUMP BUDGET BATTLE A USA DC

(Photo: Alex Brandon, AP)

CONNECTTWEETLINKEDIN 16 COMMENTEMAILMORE

WASHINGTON — The 2019 budget that President Trump will send to Congress Monday will attempt to "bend the trajectory down" on trillion-dollar budget deficits — even after Trump agreed to eliminate the spending caps in a budget deal last week, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Sunday.

"Just because this deal was signed does not mean the future is written in stone. We do have a chance still to change this trajectory and that's what the budget will show," Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday.

Trump's second budget proposal, to be released Monday, could be among the most important policy blueprints of his administration. His first budget proposal, coming just weeks into his administration, was portrayed largely as a placeholder — despite its proposals for deep cuts in domestic spending.

But now, Trump's 2019 budget has been overtaken by events even before it's off the printing press. 

Mulvaney's office has been working for months based on the assumption that spending caps first imposed in the 2011 Budget Control Act would remain intact. With those assumptions now blown up, budget drafters scrambled over the weekend to update to its budget requests for this year and the next.


The budget deal Trump signed on Friday aborted an overnight shutdown by authorizing nearly $400 billion in additional spending over the next 19 months: $163 billion Republicans wanted for the military, $130 billion Democrats wanted for domestic spending, and $100 billion for emergencies.

Trump said Friday he was forced to agree to those terms "in order to finally, after many years of depletion, take care of our military."

Mulvaney's comments Sunday could be seen as a White House attempt to reneg on that compromise, but the budget director emphasized that the compromise doesn't directly spend any money beyond the next six weeks.

Congress has already passed five short-term spending bills in the 2018 fiscal year. It will have to pass another by March 23 to keep the government open through Sept. 30.

"What we're doing is, is saying, look, you don't have to spend all of this money. These are spending caps. They're not spending floors. So, you don't have to spend all that," Mulvaney said.

Last year, Trump proposed the elimination of 62 specific government programs. But the inability of Congress to agree on a long-term spending bill resulted in short-term measures that largely put spending on auto-pilot.

Trump will also include a number of policy proposals in the budget, including:

Infrastructure: The budget will lay out details of how Trump wants to spend his proposed $200 billion infrastructure package. Trump will highlight that proposal Monday in a meeting at the White House with state and local officials.

Civil Service: Trump wants to overhaul the federal workforce by giving Cabinet secretaries the power to fire poor performers and reward their best employees with bonuses.

Drug prices: The administration will make several modest proposals to curb prescription drug prices. A report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers Friday recommends changing some Medicaid rules on rebates for low-income patients, reclassifying drug therapies administered in the doctor's office, increasing the leverage insurance companies have to negotiate drug prices, and enhancing competition.

Above is from:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/11/despite-busting-spending-caps-trumps-budget-ask-congress-not-spend-all-money-deal-broke-spending-cap/324620002/

Thursday, February 8, 2018

VOX Exclusive: Trump’s draft plan to punish legal immigrants for sending US-born kids to Head Start Or getting insured through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or getting assistance to heat their homes.



Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Trump administration is working on new rules that would allow the government to keep immigrants from settling in the US, or even force them to leave, if their families had used a broad swath of local, state, or federal social services to which they’re legally entitled — even enrolling their US-born children in Head Start or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

A draft of the new regulation, posted first by Vox, can be found at the bottom of this article or on DocumentCloud. (If the DocumentCloud link does not work for you, here is a direct link to the PDF.) Reuters originally reported on the existence of the draft regulation Thursday.

The rule wouldn’t make it illegal for immigrants to use public services that are open to everyone regardless of immigration status, or that are available to their US-born children. But it would make it possible for the government to deny their applications for a new type of visa, or a green card, if they’d used those services. In other words, it could force them to choose between taking advantage of available social services, and their family’s future ability to stay in the United States permanently.

If approved and finalized, the regulation would vastly expand the federal government’s power to bar an immigrant from entering the United States, obtaining a new visa, or becoming a lawful permanent resident (green-card holder) by labeling the immigrant a likely “public charge.”

Right now, the government can only consider use of cash benefits, like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, in “public charge” determinations. The Trump administration wants to give officials the power to look at use of other benefits as well, including:

  • some “educational benefits,” including use of Head Start for children
  • Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
  • use of any subsidies, or purchase of subsidized insurance, under the Affordable Care Act
  • food stamps
  • Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) assistance
  • Housing benefits, like Section 8
  • Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
  • transit vouchers

Using any of these for more than six months in the last two years (before applying for a different visa or a green card) would be considered a “heavily weighted” strike against the immigrant. (That strike could be canceled out if an immigrant was making more than 250 percent of the federal poverty level when applying for the new visa or green card — which, for a family of 4 in 2017, was $60,750.)

Government officials already have a lot of discretion in who gets labeled a public charge, and use of public services is supposed to be only one factor among many. But the Trump administration’s desire to expand it so radically indicates that they do, in fact, plan to reject visa or green card applications based on use of non-cash services and health insurance subsidies.

Immigrants can get out of being considered a “public charge” if they have someone willing to sign an “affidavit of support” promising to support them at 125 percent of the federal poverty level. But the government doesn’t have to agree to admit someone, or give them a green card, based on that affidavit.

The draft would allow an immigrant one other way to get out of a “public charge” bar: paying at least $10,000 in bond. But the Department of Homeland Security would have the power to decide whether to allow an immigrant to post bond. And if the immigrant used any public benefits in the five years after posting the bond, they’d forfeit the whole $10,000.

Not every immigrant has to pass the “public charge” test — refugees and asylees, for example, are exempt both when they come to the US and if they apply for green cards after that. But most immigrants who get green cards do have to pass. According to calculations from Reuters, nearly 383,000 of the immigrants who got green cards in 2016 were subject to the test.

The version Vox obtained, dated February 6, was circulated to Department of Homeland Security employees. The document as obtained by Vox includes pages 1-2 of the document, and the regulatory text (starting at page 228); it does not include the 225-page preamble originally included with the draft.

It has not yet been approved by L. Francis Cissna, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (which regulates legal immigration to the United States). Sources believe that the regulation is being drafted quickly and could be sent to the Office of Management and Budget for validation as soon as March.

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See the rest of this document by clicking on the following:  https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10188201/DRAFT_NPRM_public_charge.0.pdf

Sunday, February 4, 2018

U.S. department store chain Bon-Ton files for bankruptcy


Bergner’s and Carson’s parent in bankruptcy.  In additional to the local store in Cherry Valley there is a distribution center in Rockford.

Reuters Staff


  • (Reuters) - Bon-Ton Stores Inc said on Sunday it filed for bankruptcy protection to restructure its debt and explore a potential sale, making it the first major U.S. brick-and-mortar retailer to do so this year.

    The York, Pennsylvania-based department store operator, which has about 260 stores, listed assets in the range of $50,001 to $100,000 and liabilities in the range of $500 million to $1 million, according to a Chapter 11 filing with the Delaware bankruptcy court.

    Department store operators have been struggling to fend off online sellers like Amazon.com Inc as shoppers increasingly choose to shop over the internet and mall foot traffic declines.

    Last year, more than 15 U.S. retailers filed for bankruptcy, the most in six years, as consumers moved more of their shopping online.

    During the court-supervised process, Bon-Ton plans to continue operating in the normal course, it said.

    Bon-Ton said it received a commitment of up to $725 million in debtor-in-possession financing from its existing ABL lenders to support its operations.

    The company reiterated it would shutter 47 stores across the country, with the bulk concentrated in Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

    “We are currently engaged in discussions with potential investors and our debtholders on a financial restructuring plan,” Chief Executive Bill Tracy said in a statement.

    Bon-Ton said its stores, e-commerce and mobile platforms under the Bon-Ton, Bergner‘s, Boston Store, Carson‘s, Elder-Beerman, Herberger’s and Younkers nameplates are open and operating as usual.

    AlixPartners LLP is serving as restructuring adviser and PJT Partners Inc is acting as financial adviser, the company said.

    Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier


    Above is from:  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bon-ton-stores-bankruptcy/u-s-department-store-chain-bon-ton-files-for-bankruptcy-idUSKBN1FP0AR


    Department store chain Bon-Ton files for bankruptcy protection

    • Bon-Ton Stores files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
    • The retailer will explore strategic alternatives, which include a sale of the company.
    • Bon-Ton is in the midst of closing more than 40 stores across the U.S.

    Lauren Thomas | @laurenthomasx3

    Published 5 Hours Ago Updated 2 Hours Ago CNBC.com

    A Bon-Ton store in South Portland, Maine.

    Derek Davis | Portland Press Herald | Getty Images

    A Bon-Ton store in South Portland, Maine.

    Bon-Ton Stores has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the largest retailer to do so this year.

    The regional department store chain, which has dual headquarters in Milwaukee and York, Pennsylvania, has been burdened with massive debt as it struggles to grow sales and move operations online in the face of Amazon.

    Bon-Ton said Sunday it received a commitment of as much as $725 million in financing from existing lenders to support its operations.

    "During this court-supervised process, we plan to continue operating in the normal course and executing on our key initiatives to drive improved performance," CEO Bill Tracy said in a statement.

    The company, which operates about 260 retail locations, recently laid out plans to shutter more than 40 stores across the U.S. under its various banners (i.e. Carson's, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers).

    "We are currently engaged in discussions with potential investors and our debtholders on a financial restructuring plan," Tracy said.

    While under bankruptcy protection, Bon-Ton said it will also explore strategic alternatives, including a sale of the company or assets as a part of the reorganization plan. The process will also make it easier for Bon-Ton to renegotiate its leases or ask for rent reductions.

    The department store chain recently reported a dismal holiday season, despite many of its peers, including J.C. Penney, Kohl's and Macy's, doing well against a strong economic backdrop.

    Bon-Ton has said it plans to invest more in private-label brands, refreshing the overall store layout, ditching excess inventory and strengthening its e-commerce business.

    "The harsh reality is that while Bon-Ton's management put in great effort to make the business sustainable, they were always running up a down escalator," GlobalData Retail managing director Neil Saunders said.

    "A scaled-down business may have a chance of survival," Saunders said. But Bon-Ton must resolve the fact that its products are "undifferentiated, unclear and have become increasingly irrelevant to consumers."

    More than 20 retailers, including Toys R Us, Hhgregg, Gymboree and RadioShack, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017. And with another load of retail debt coming due this year, several others could do so.

    Lauren Thomas

    Lauren ThomasRetail Reporter

    Above is from:  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/05/department-store-chain-bon-ton-files-for-bankruptcy-protection.html



    China launches dumping probe into U.S. sorghum imports amid rising trade tension


    Reuters Reuters 17 hours ago


    By Dominique Patton

    BEIJING (Reuters) - China has launched an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into imports of sorghum from the United States, the Ministry of Commerce said on Sunday, less than a fortnight after U.S. President Donald Trump slapped steep tariffs on imports of solar panels and washing machines.

    Beijing's action is expected to immediately hit demand for the upcoming U.S. sorghum crop, exports of which are largely used to feed China's huge livestock sector, and send shivers through the entire U.S. farm sector.

    China is the top buyer of U.S. sorghum as well as soybeans, the United States' most valuable export to the world's No. 2 economy.

    "I personally believe this is China's response to Trump's action on washing machines," said Li Qiang, chief analyst at agriculture consultancy Shanghai JC Intelligence Co Ltd.

    "If he takes any further measures, they will consider soybeans," he added.

    The U.S. shipped 4.76 million tonnes of sorghum to China in 2017, the bulk of China's roughly 5 million tonnes of imports of the grain that year, and worth around $1.1 billion, according to Chinese customs data.

    That makes it almost twice as valuable as exports of Chinese aluminium alloy sheet to the U.S., also subject to recent trade action by Washington, which is being seen as another possible trigger for Beijing's move.

    Like the U.S. aluminium investigation, China's commerce ministry investigation into sorghum was self-initiated.

    The ministry said it had initiated the investigation because the local industry included a large number of small growers who were unable to prepare the necessary documentation.

    Preliminary evidence and information found that imported sorghum from the U.S. had been exported at a lower than normal value, it said, damaging local producers.

    The trade action comes a year after Beijing slapped hefty anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on imports of distillers dried grains (DDGS) from the U.S., another product used as a feed ingredient, although it recently reduced VAT on DDGS imports.

    Exports of U.S. soybeans to China are also under pressure from stiff competition from rival exporter Brazil, with export sales hitting a seven-month low last week.

    The investigation into sorghum dumping will be carried out for the period from Nov. 1, 2016 until Oct. 31, 2017, while an investigation of industrial injury will be from Jan. 1, 2013 until Oct. 31, 2017, said the commerce ministry statement.

    The investigation should be complete by Feb. 4, 2019, it said, but can be extended until Aug. 4, 2019.

    Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/china-launch-anti-dumping-investigation-081415570.html

    Saturday, February 3, 2018

    The U.S. government is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, an 84 percent jump from last year

    The U.S. government is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, an 84 percent jump from last year

    By Heather Long

    February 3, 2018 at 7:00 AM

    The National Debt Clock in New York City is shown last November. The total is about $100 billion higher now. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters).

    It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — Trump's first full year in charge of the budget.

    That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

    Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.

    Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the “fiscal outlook.” The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt. In a report this week, the CBO said tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law.

    President Trump said during a Jan. 18 speech in Coraopolis, Pa., that Republicans’ tax overhaul is already benefiting the U.S. economy. Here are his full remarks. (The Washington Post)

    The uptick in borrowing is yet another complication in the heated debates in Congress over whether to spend more money on infrastructure, the military, disaster relief and other domestic programs. The deficit is already up significantly, even before Congress allots more money to any of these areas.

    “We're addicted to debt,” says Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He blames both parties for the situation.

    What's particularly jarring is this is the first time borrowing has jumped this much (as a share of GDP) in a non-recession time since Ronald Reagan was president, says Ernie Tedeschi, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury who is now head of fiscal analysis at Evercore ISI. Under Reagan, borrowing spiked because of a buildup in the military, something Trump is advocating again.

    Trump didn't mention the debt — or the ongoing budget deficits — in his State of the Union address. The absence of any mention of the national debt was frustrating for Goldwein and others who warn that America has a major economic problem looming.

    “It is terrible. Those deficits and the debt that keeps rising is a serious problem, not only in the long run, but right now,” Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, a former Reagan adviser, told Bloomberg.

    A strong jobs report and disappointing earnings slammed Wall Street on Feb. 2. The Dow suffered its worst percentage drop since June 2016. (Reuters)

    The White House got a taste of just how problematic this debt situation could get this week. Investors are concerned about all the additional borrowing and the likelihood of higher inflation, which is why the interest rates on U.S. government bonds hit the highest level since 2014. That, in turn, partly drove the worst weekly sell-off in the stock market in two years.

    The belief in Washington and on Wall Street has long been that the U.S. government could just keep issuing debt because people around the world are eager to buy up this safe-haven asset. But there may be a limit to how much the market wants, especially if inflation starts rising and investors prefer to ditch bonds for higher-returning stocks.

    “Some of my Wall Street clients are starting to talk recession in 2019 because of these issues. Fiscal policy is just out of control,” says Peter Davis, a former tax economist in Congress who now runs Davis Capital Investment Ideas.

    The Federal Reserve was also buying a lot of U.S. Treasury debt since the crisis, helping to beef up demand. But the Fed recently decided to stop doing that now that the economy has improved. It's another wrinkle as Treasury has to look for new buyers.

    Tedeschi, the former Treasury adviser to the Obama administration, calls it “concerning, but not a crisis.” Still, he says it's a “big risk” to plan on borrowing so much in the coming years.

    Trump's Treasury forecasts borrowing over $1 trillion in 2019 and over $1.1 trillion in 2020. Before taking office, Trump described himself as the “king of debt,” although he campaigned on reducing the national debt.

    The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget predicts the U.S. deficit will hit $1 trillion by 2019 and stay there for a while. The latest borrowing figure — $955 billion — released this week was determined from a survey of bond market participants, who tend to be even faster to react to the changing policy landscape and change their forecasts.

    Both parties claim they want to be “fiscally responsible,” but Goldwein says they both pass legislation that adds to the debt. Politicians argue this is the last time they'll pass a bill that makes the deficit worse, but so far, they just keep going.

    The latest example of largesse is the GOP tax bill. It's expected to add $1 trillion or more to the debt, according to nonpartisan analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation (and yes, that's after accounting for some increased economic growth).

    But even before that, Goldwein points to the 2015 extension of many tax cuts and the 2014 delays in Medicare reimbursement cuts.

    “Every time you feed your addiction, you grow your addiction,” says Goldwein.

    There doesn't seem to be any appetite for budgetary restraint in Washington, but the market may force Congress' hand.

    Above is from:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/03/the-u-s-government-is-set-to-borrow-nearly-1-trillion-this-year/

    My Great-Grandparents Weren’t ‘Illegal’ When They Came To The U.S. They Would Be Now.

    My Great-Grandparents Weren’t ‘Illegal’ When They Came To The U.S. They Would Be Now.

    HuffPost Kari Hong,HuffPost Fri, Feb 2 4:59 AM CST


    Descendants of Norwegian immigrants pose at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds by the sloop on which their ancestors came to America in 1925. 

    Around 1905, when Norway would have been considered a “shithole,” my great-grandmother sailed to the United States. She was 16 years old, without family and money, and found work as a house cleaner. My great-grandfather was a Norwegian sailor who jumped ship and just started living in Chicago.

    Fortunately for me, the immigration laws we had then let them get green cards and earn citizenship. My mother recounts her grandparents as kind and decent, suffering humiliation and enduring hardship to provide opportunities for their children. They were frugal and bought a house. Both of their sons served in WWII; one was shot down and was a POW. Their granddaughter, my mother, was the first in their family to attend college.

    Their story, an immigrant story, exemplifies the American dream.

    Our immigration laws have been a bit more complicated. We have a restrictionist past, having excluded people based on race and nationality, including people from China, Japan and Italy. The country moved to rectify these exclusionary policies with the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

    We have also had important chapters in our immigration story when we calculated “merit” properly: not by measuring a person’s worth based on what they lacked upon their arrival, but by valuing the future contributions that arise from their hopes, grit and gratitude.

    Over two decades ago, Congress passed a law that changed that calculus. In the same month that he cravenly appealed to the right by “reforming” welfare and signing DOMA, former President Bill Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

    IIRIRA was neither a solution to an existing problem nor a pragmatic compromise. Rather, the Republicans wanted to look tough on immigration, and the Democrats were afraid to look soft, despite knowing the law was bad policy. The law closed many doors that used to let people stay. Previously, someone who crossed the border earned a green card if they had spent seven years paying taxes, demonstrated good character and proved a citizen needed them here. For those who married citizens, they got status if they paid a $1,000 fine. IIRIRA instead elevated a border crossing into an unforgivable sin, deporting the same people who used to get green cards.

    If that law had been in place in 1905, both my great-grandparents would be “illegal” — one overstayed her visa, the other crossed a border without one. My great-grandparents would be placed in detention and scheduled for immediate deportation, likely without a hearing. The old immigrants did not have superior character; our laws just were not captured by right-wing talking points.  

    The old immigrants did not have superior character; our laws just were not captured by right-wing talking points.

    With his “shithole” comments earlier this month, President Donald Trump exposed the moral deficiency and logical fallacy of IIRIRA’s restrictionism. But Republicans defend it with politer language ― think “merit,” “chain-migration,” and “self-deportation” ― and Democrats continue to acquiesce with spineless silence.

    What the immigration hard-liners get wrong is that it is this heightened, senseless immigration enforcement, not legal or “illegal” immigrants, that is hurting our country.

    Immigration violations often involve minor and unintentional conduct, and are intended to be forgiven. When someone breaks a criminal law, they are convicted, punished and could face a lifetime of collateral consequences arising from being a felon. But when someone violates immigration law, they appear before an immigration judge, and will sometimes be given (or restored with) a green card or asylum status.

    Half of the people who get immigration hearings are granted legal status. For those with attorneys, that number is much higher: in 2017, in one courthouse that found a lawyer for every detained case, the grant rate went from 4 percent to 24 percent, and is predicted to be 77 percent when all pending cases are counted. A national study of 1.2 million cases showed that, for those outside of detention, grant rates went from 13 percent to 63 percent if the non-citizen had an attorney. The more accurate term would be “pre-legal” not “illegal,” immigrants.

    The term “illegal immigrant,” however, serves to justify billions of dollars spent on arresting, detaining and deporting people who sound dangerous. Under former President Barack Obama, the federal government spent $18 billion each year on immigration enforcement.  By contrast, the agencies targeting actual criminals — the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, and ATF — got only $14 billion

    Trump wants to spend billions more — each year — on more arrests ($1.3 billion more on new officers), more detention centers ($1.5 billion increase over the $2 billion currently spent), and more wall (starts at $21.5 billion and estimates are as high as $67 billion). There simply is no justification for this amount of wasted money. 

    While Trump’s crackdown that has resulted in a 40 percent increase in immigration arrests, fewer than 6 percent have any criminal conviction. And among those with convictions is the Polish doctor with a green card whose misdemeanor offenses were decades old.

    Across all sectors, our economy will not thrive or grow without immigrants: rural hospitals face a shortage without foreign-born doctors. Up to 50 to 70 percent of farmworkers are undocumented. Society Security will be insolvent unless more immigrants live in our country. And Trump’s current immigration crackdown is proving that immigrant deportations do not create a single American job.

    The term 'illegal immigrant' serves to justify billions of dollars spent on arresting, detaining and deporting people who sound dangerous.

    To the contrary, it is costing tens of thousands of Americans their livelihood: a labor shortage is “choking” Idaho’s dairy industry, lost tourism has resulted in 40,000 layoffs, and a decline in foreign students is forcing numerous colleges to cut programs and faculty. Immigration hard-liners wish to spend $400 billion to $600 billion to deport a population that is expected to contribute over $5 trillion to our economy in the next 10 years. That’s the party of fiscal responsibility?

    What Trump’s rhetoric, and IIRIRA’s deeds, miss most with their attack on immigrants is that being American is both a noun and a verb. I first became patriotic when, as an immigration lawyer, I saw my own country through the eyes of my clients: A Yemeni Muslim shared with me how much fun he and his wife had attending their first gay pride parade. A Salvadoran teenager who was granted asylum after fleeing gangs asked how he could enlist in the U.S. military. A Mexican man and his wife raised a child as their own after the biological parents had left the child for an intended temporary period that became 15 years.

    People who want to curb legal immigration based on “merit” fail to understand that immigrants — skilled and unskilled — contribute character, values, and economic growth that our country needs as much today as it did in 1905.

    If a state stopped issuing driver licenses, there would be a sudden glut in “illegal drivers.” A state then could either try to arrest and jail all of them, blow up the highway for all drivers, or just start re-issuing licenses as they had in the past. These are the same choices we have in immigration. Waves of “illegal immigrants” did not and are not scrambling over the border.  The undocumented population more than doubled when IIRIRA irrationally cut off all means for people who were already in this country a chance to get status. 

    We now can continue to spend billions each year to deport those who are contributing to our communities, families and taxes. Or, we can work to repeal IIRIRA and let those who are contributing continue to do so. The latter choice is not radical. To the contrary, it has been proven to work and is the common sense that our country needs.

    Kari Hong, an assistant professor at Boston College Law School, teaches immigration and criminal law. She founded a clinic representing non-citizens with criminal convictions in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    This piece has been updated with additional information on the history of U.S. immigration laws.

    What did Boone County promise in the 1999 Tax Referendum


    Here is what was published by Boone County Government in 1999 regarding the referendum.

    See “What will it cost me”. It leads the reader believe funds will only be used for bond payments and ( if possible) the tax will sunset before the 20 years?

    Image may contain: text

    Here is the advertising handout regarding the 1999 Referendum

    It clearly states the tax will sunset.  See the third page below regarding will the tax end.  The answer is: “ YES YES YES  The tax will end after 20 years or an earlier date by a vote of the county board”

    [PSB%2520tax%25201%2520of%25203%255B4%255D.png]

    1PSB tax 3 of 3

    PSB tax 2 of 3

    How many dollars has been received and how were they used?

    This ad by Greg Kelm in the February 1, 2018 SHOPPER gives some of the numbers. Just under half of all the taxes went towards items other than the mortgage and interest payment.

    image


    Friday, February 2, 2018

    Nunes’ MEMO

    Illinois expected to file for REAL ID compliance



    Illinois expected to file for REAL ID compliance

    • Illinois News Network
    • 16 hrs ago

    FILE- Illinois driver's license, REAL ID

    Image from Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White's YouTube channel


    Officials in Illinois said the state is expected to apply to join the federal government’s REAL ID law later this year.

    The federal REAL ID Act was enacted in 2005 after the 9/11 Commission recommended creating minimum security standards for state identification cards. The license allows access into federal buildings and commercial flights.

    Illinois currently has an extension in place, so residents still can board domestic flights with their current forms of ID.

    Nathan Maddox, senior legal adviser at the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, said the state has been working toward implementation of REAL ID for several years

    After the state joins the REAL ID program, Illinois residents will have a grace period to obtain a new license. There will be no increase in the license fee, Maddox said.

    “You can either apply for a standard driver’s license, renew your current driver’s license and get that, or you can apply for a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license,” Maddox said.

    Maddox said the state will apply for the program in October.

    “Once we become fully compliant, we expect to start issuing REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses and identification cards in January of 2019,” Maddox said.

    Maddox said if residents do not want a REAL ID license, they still can opt to obtain a traditional identification card and driver’s license.

    “If you do not travel in the air, you do not go to federal facilities, or you have a passport and do not want to bother getting a REAL ID, you can certainly get by with just a standard driver’s license or identification card,” Maddox said.

    Maddox said it is important for residents to remember they will need to bring in proof of identity, proof of Social Security number and proof of address in order to receive the new license.

    “You will have to bring in certain documents again to get the license, but as long as you have those documents, there should not be any more effort involved than a normal renewal,” Maddox said.

    Above is from:  https://www.ilnews.org/news/statewide/illinois-expected-to-file-for-real-id-compliance/article_829c163c-076b-11e8-a95a-4f681df47767.html

    Thursday, February 1, 2018

    Trump aide, SJU alum quits over resume lies


    Trump aide, SJU alum quits over resume lies 1

    LINKEDIN PHOTO / TAYLOR WEYENETH

    Trump aide, SJU alum quits over resume lies 1

    Taylor Weyeneth and President Trump in the Oval Office.


    Posted: Thursday, February 1, 2018 10:30 am

    Trump aide, SJU alum quits over resume lies by Christopher Barca, Editor Queens Chronicle | 0 comments

    Taylor Weyeneth, a 24-year-old St. John’s University alum, resigned Wednesday from President Trump’s administration after the Washington Post reported the resume of the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s deputy chief of staff was full of falsehoods.

    According to the newspaper, the class of 2016 graduate said on his resume that he worked for Manhattan law firm O’Dwyer and Bernstien from late 2014 until April 2016, shortly before taking a paid position on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

    But Brian O’Dwyer, the firm’s partner, told the Post that Weyeneth was actually fired in August 2015 for repeatedly not showing up to work.

    Weyeneth resubmitted his resume to the administration last year, while also amending the number of hours he volunteered at a Queens monastary during his time at St. John’s from 275 to 150.

    But when he sent in yet another revised resume shortly after, he had removed the section about volunteering entirely.

    Fordham University officials said Weyeneth did not have a master’s degree from that school as he claimed. A Kappa Sigma fraternity spokesman also said the Trump aide was only vice president of SJU’s branch for 18 months, not three years as listed on his resume.

    Last month, 10 Democratic senators wrote to Trump to express their “extreme concern” over the 24-year-old’s meteoric rise from low-level staffer to deputy chief of staff.

    The Office of National Drug Control Policy has been tasked with battling the country’s opioid addiction epidemic.


  • Posted in Queenswide, South Queens News, Eastern/Southeast Queens News, Central/Mid Queens News, North/Northeast Queens News, Western Queens News on Thursday, February 1, 2018 10:30 am. Government





    The Republicans’ deficit scam is exposed for all to see

    The National Debt Clock, a billboard-size digital display showing the increasing US debt, on Sixth Avenue August 1, 2011 in New York.

    The National Debt Clock, a billboard-size digital display showing the increasing US debt, on Sixth Avenue August 1, 2011 in New York.

    Stan Honda / AFP / Getty Images

    The Republicans’ deficit scam is exposed for all to see

    02/01/18 10:03 AM

    By Steve Benen

    Up until fairly recently, federal officials believed the nation would have to raise the debt ceiling by late March or early April. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office said action will be required even sooner – because the Republican’s $1.5 trillion tax cut is already starting to affect U.S. finances.

    According to the budget office, the borrowing limit will most likely need to be raised in early March after the “extraordinary measures” to extend borrowing employed by the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, are exhausted. The budget office previously projected that the debt limit would need to be raised beyond its current level of $20.5 trillion in late March or early April.

    The reason for the change stems from the tax cuts, which went into effect in January and are expected to translate into less revenue for the federal government.

    A separate New York Times report added this week that annual budget deficits “are creeping up to $1 trillion and the national debt has topped $20 trillion.” The Treasury Department “will need to borrow $441 billion in privately held debt this quarter,” which is the largest sum in eight years.

    And yet, Republicans – ostensibly, the nation’s fiscal hawks and stalwarts of fiscal responsibility – have nothing to say about this. The issue has largely disappeared.

    Consider this: in Barack Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress in early 2009, the Democratic president mentioned the budget deficit eight times. A year later, in his 2010 State of the Union, Obama went further, mentioning the deficit 13 times.

    Donald Trump, meanwhile, delivered his first speech to a joint session last year, and while he briefly referenced the “trade deficit,” he made no mention of the budget deficit. This week, in his State of the Union address, the Republican mentioned the “infrastructure deficit,” but again, when it came to the annual budget shortfall, Trump was literally silent.

    The underlying issue here is one of the most cynical political scams Americans have ever seen or will ever see.

    As regular readers probably know, it’s one of the few constants in American politics. When George W. Bush was president, Republicans put two wars, two tax cuts, Medicare expansion, and a Wall Street bailout on the national credit card – and made no effort to pay for any of it. Dick Cheney declared that “deficits don’t matter” and Orrin Hatch said it was “standard practice not to pay for things” in the Bush era.

    Then Barack Obama was elected and many of those same Republicans decided the fate of Western civilization was dependent on balancing the budget.

    Remember the Tea Party movement? According to many of its leaders, one of its principal goals was deficit reduction: annual budget shortfalls, they said several years ago, threatened the future of the nation, its families, and its security.

    And because Republicans have an amazing ability to dictate the public conversation, everyone played along, taking the deficit seriously throughout the Obama era. To reject the fiscal argument was to condemn our children and grandchildren to future misery.

    Under Obama, however, the deficit shrunk in his first seven years by a trillion dollars – that’s “trillion” with a “t” – at which point the issue quietly lost its potency.

    At least in theory, for those who care about the deficit, the issue should be back with a vengeance. But it’s not: even as the deficit gets significantly larger, due entirely to deliberate Republican choices, the public conversation largely ignores the issue. Recent polling from the Pew Research Center found that the deficit is steadily fading as a priority.

    But we know from recent history those attitudes will shift back the moment Democrats have some power again, because this cynical game is nothing if not cyclical.

    Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/m/b2bab837-3955-3c13-877e-4637415fe085/ss_the-republicans%27-deficit-scam.html

    Shown below some figures from:  https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp

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    While Trump Blames Immigrants for Low Wages, An Alternative Theory Gains Traction Among Economists



      Hal Singer Hal Singer , Contributor

      WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2018 -- U.S. President Donald Trump(L) delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States, Jan. 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu via Getty Images)

      “Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.”

      ---Donald Trump, State of the Union, January 30, 2018

      The President’s rising-wages claim from his State of the Union (SOTU) address sent the fact-checkers into overdrive, with the Washington Post’s Heather Long noting that average hourly earnings grew at the same rate (2.5 percent) as the end of Obama’s presidency, and the Post’s Glenn Kessler observing that real annual wage growth rose at a slower rate in 2017 relative to 2015 and 2016.

      Not only are wage levels going sideways, but wages are falling when expressed as a percentage of national income. The share of national income captured by labor (“labor share”) has declined sharply since the early 2000s, falling from 66 percent in 2000 to 58 percent in 2017 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The decline in the labor share over the past 30 years reflects the gap between labor productivity (which has continued to grow) and compensation (which has stagnated).

      Notwithstanding Trump’s misdirection on the wage trajectory, the relevant economic questions are: What is causing wage growth to be so anemic? And what can be done from a policy perspective to accelerate it? The answer to the first question informs the policy implications.

      The President is quick to advance an immigration-based hypothesis for sluggish wage growth, suggesting that open borders are to blame (and closed borders are the elixir). To wit, in his SOTU, Trump asserted that “For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities. They have allowed millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans” (emphasis added). To say that there is lack of economic support for this claim is an understatement. Indeed, the economic literature reveals that immigration does not reduce wages for native-born workers. Ottaviano and Peri (2012) and Borjas (2014) find that foreign-born workers (that is, earlier immigrants) bore the brunt of the wage impact from immigration, with native-born workers actually experiencing a slight increase in wages owing to immigration.

      Even if it were true that undocumented immigration had a noticeable effect on the wages of native-born workers, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that the decline in these inflows has actually been quite modest under Trump. As in so many other areas (think unemployment), the President is taking credit for the culmination of trends that unfolded under his predecessors, years or even decades before he took office.

      So if open borders aren’t to blame, as Trump asserts, what is a plausible alternative for stagnating wage growth? Several recent studies have focused on the role of industry concentration. The working theory is that as firms gain control in product markets, the opportunities for job mobility within a given industry are restricted, which permits these firms to exercise buying (or “monopsony”) power in the labor markets.

      In Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share (2017), MIT economist David Autor and his co-authors use regression models to explain variation in the share of firms’ revenues captured by workers (a variant of the “labor share” mentioned above). They find that concentration of sales of the largest firms in an industry (and of employment) has risen from 1982 to 2012 in each of the six major sectors covered by the U.S. economic census. Controlling for other factors that move the labor share, they find a negative and significant relationship between concentration and the labor share—each percentage point rise in an industry’s concentration index (as measured by the share of shares accruing to the 20 largest firms) predicts a 0.4 percentage point fall in its labor share. In an effort to determine the causes of industry concentration, the authors further find that the fall in labor share is mainly due to a reallocation of labor toward larger and more productive (“superstar”) firms with “lower (and declining) labor shares, rather than due to declining labor shares within most firms.” Why their workers aren’t sharing the productivity gains of these “superstar” firms is an open question that deserves further research.

      In Declining Labor and Capital Shares (2016), London Business School economist Simcha Barkai also estimates labor share regressions, with the aim of isolating the impact of industry concentration (a proxy for industry markups above cost). Barkai attributes most of the decline in the labor share to decreased competition, which has allowed firms to spend less on both labor and capital, and thus to keep more profit. He estimates that if competition increased to levels last observed in 1984, wages would increase by 24 percent. With respect to policy implications, he notes that “[it] may well be the case that the forces of technological change and globalization favor dominant firms and are causing the decline in competition. The causes of the decline in competition are left as an open question for future research.”

      In The Decline of the U.S. Labor Share (2013), University of Edinburgh economist Michael Elsby and his co-authors study the determinants of payroll shares in a regression model. The authors find that the labor share declines the most in U.S. industries strongly affected by import shocks, which suggests that “offshoring of the labor-intensive component of the U.S. supply chain” (but not immigration) is putting downward pressure on wages. One of the key explanatory variables in their model is unionization-coverage rates. The authors find that “cross-industry variation in changes in unionization rates explains less than 5 percent of the variation in changes in payroll shares across industries.” Although the estimate is not statistically significant at conventional levels, the finding is consistent with the notion that greater worker bargaining power vis-à-vis employers would lead to higher wages.

      Most recently, in Labor Market Concentration (2017), Roosevelt Institute economist Marshall Steinbaum and his co-authors analyzed the movements in wage levels (as opposed to wage shares) using a database of job listings in CareerBuilder.com. (I asked Steinbaum why he assessed wage levels as opposed to wage shares, and he told me that he lacked revenue data for the employers in his sample.) The authors find that America’s local labor markets are highly concentrated, and that employers also tended to advertise lower pay in cities and towns, as well as in occupations, where fewer businesses were posting jobs. Controlling for other factors such as “market tightness” (equal to the ratio of vacancies to applications), they estimate that moving from the 25th percentile of labor market concentration to the 75th percentile would lower (advertised) pay level in a metro area by 17 percent. Reflecting its import in policy circles, the one-month-old article already has been reviewed in the Economist, Slate, and the New York Times.

      If these researchers are onto something—namely, that industry concentration dictates wage shares and wage levels—it could have important implications for how we think about antitrust enforcement and other labor policies (such as minimum wage, unionization, and state-based occupational licensing).

      A bill proposed by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) in September 2017 would require the Government Accountability Office to assess wage impacts of mergers. Senator Corey Booker (D-New Jersey) recently called on the antitrust agencies to consider employment impacts in merger reviews. Perversely, the squeezing of input prices, including for labor, is considered a merger synergy under current antitrust doctrine. Beyond mergers, the antitrust agencies (or state attorneys general or private enforcers) could bring monopsony cases when a dominant firm unilaterally erects artificial restrictions to labor mobility (such as non-competes), or when a group of firms jointly agree not to compete for labor.

      So far it seems the industry-concentration hypothesis has not shown up on Trump’s radar. But if the President is seriously concerned about the distribution of income between employers and labor, as opposed to merely increasing the size of the pie via short-term stimulus (think corporate tax cut), he might consider abandoning (or at least supplementing) his immigration-based theories in favor of something with a real basis in economics.

      Twitter: @HalSinger

      Above is from:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2018/02/01/while-trump-blames-immigrants/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix&yptr=yahoo#711b5b1c41ed