President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect noninfected patients.
Click on the following for more details: Obama declares swine flu a national emergency - Yahoo! News
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Stimulus plans of ARRP bonds for McHenry County criticized by NY Times.
Under the recovery act, McHenry County has the authority to issue $27 million in low-interest bonds for private projects. Mr. Houser put a plan to the county board to issue $15 million in low-interest bonds to build a ballpark for a minor league baseball team.
A problem with stimulus funding, experts say, is that dubious projects too often jump to the head of the line. Projects with political backing win funding, regardless of merit, while more worthwhile projects languish for decades.
Click on the following: Special Report - Rebuilding the global economy - Lots of Stimulus Money — and Concerns About Where to Put It to Work - NYTimes.com
Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Provena billed patients in a manner that “concealed the availability of charity care” and sent poor patients to debt collectors. “These practices undoubtedly prevented needy patients from even applying for charitable care, much less receiving it.
.New Cook COunty Ordinance…Hospitals subject to the Ordinance must provide financial assistance at least equal to 4.5% of total hospital expenses. Hospitals not meeting this standard are required to pay the County a fee equal to the difference between the cost of financial assistance provided and 4.5% of the hospital’s total expenses.”
Click on the following for more details: A Push To Strengthen Charity Care In Cook County | Progress Illinois
$6 billion stimulus program to clean up the toxic legacy of the arms race, which is one of the biggest sources of direct federal contracts in the $787 billion stimulus act
team of workers is using $212 million in federal stimulus money to clean up the 65-year-old, six-acre dump, which was used by the scientists who built the world’s first atomic bomb
More than $1.9 billion is being spent at the Hanford site in Washington, the home of the nuclear reactor that made the plutonium for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.
Nearly 73,000 people have applied for stimulus jobs cleaning up nuclear sites since the program was announced, the Department of Energy says, and more than 10,800 positions have been saved or created with the money
Click on the following for more details: Carefully Cleaning Up the Garbage at Los Alamos - NYTimes.com
Illinois will likely lose one of its 19 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives if noncitizens continue to be included in the reapportionment process based on the decennial Census. Currently, reapportionment of House seats is based on the total number of residents counted in the Census, whether citizens or noncitizens
"It is critical that Illinois's two senators demand that Majority Leader Reid allow a vote on the Vitter-Bennett amendment, making it possible to ensure that everyone is counted, but that only citizens determine
how political representation is apportioned."
Click on the following for more details: 2010 Census May Reduce Illinois's Representation in Congress | Reuters
Glen Carbon is near St. Louis.
[they] want the state to essentially forgive all sales taxes there so the revenue could pay off bonds to build it.
A bill creating that unprecedented "STAR" (sales tax revenue) bond arrangement passed the Legislature earlier this year, but Quinn, citing an estimated $15 million annual loss in revenue to the state, issued an amendatory veto to cut the tax break in half.
Click on the following for the rest of the story: Legoland interested in development seeking tax breaks at Glen Carbon - STLtoday.com
