Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Shares of Chinese Internet stocks took a nose-dive in value in New York trading after an announcement of a potential fraud investigation of some Chinese firms by the United States Justice Department.

Justice Department official Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement at the US financial services regulator, announced he was considering launching a fraud investigation. He said it was because of accounting irregularities at several Chinese firms with shares that trade publicly in the U.S.

Khuzami did not disclose the identities of the Chinese companies or auditors whom the Justice Department is considering investigating. In addition, he said that other parts of the Justice Department were actively involved, but did not name them.

News of potential investigation was disclosed by Chinese Internet firm Youku, which models itself on web video firm YouTube.

Shares of Youku plunged by 18 percent in trading. Several other Chinese Internet companies also saw share prices fall with the messaging firm Sina dropping 9.5 percent while search engine Baidu and rival Sohu slipped 9 percent and 5.3 percent respectively.

This is not the first time that accounting procedures at a Chinese company have raised red flags.

View full post on Stocks Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – A leading House Republican on transportation issues harshly criticized the Transportation Security Administration Friday for its federal workforce of airport screeners.

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said the TSA could save $1 billion over five years by switching to screeners employed by private contractors at the nation’s top 35 airports.

“Private screeners under federal supervision statistically perform better,” Mica told All Headline News. “You not only get better performance but you save money under this model.”

Mica is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the TSA’s budget and operations.

On Thursday, the House voted to cut the TSA’s budget for the next fiscal year by $270 million.

TSA officials and union leaders warned that airline security is likely to suffer but Mica said the additional funding is unnecessary if private screeners are used more widely.

Mica based his statements on a report released Friday by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. It compares the cost and performance of private screeners at San Francisco International Airport with the federal screeners at Los Angeles International Airport.

Highlights of the report show it costs an average of $2.42 to screen a passenger using private contractors but $4.22 per passenger for the federal workforce.

The private screeners in San Francisco screened an average of 16,113 passengers per year while federal screeners in Los Angeles screened an average of 9,765 passengers per year, the report says.

In addition, training costs with the private workforce were less than half the $17,652 per screener among the federal workers.

“The facts speak for themselves,” Mica said. “TSA cooked the books when conducting past cost comparisons of the two models, misleading Congress and the public by artificially inflating the costs to use private contract screeners.”

His committee’s report says private screeners are 65 percent more efficient and would save taxpayers 42 percent of the current costs compared with the federal workforce at airports.

Disputes over using private contractors have intensified since January, when the TSA announced it would stop allowing airports to “opt out” of using federal screeners.

The opt-out choice was included in the Aviation Transportation Security Act that Congress passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Sixteen airports have chosen to use private contractors. The biggest of them is San Francisco International Airport.

Previous TSA studies showed no difference in costs or effectiveness in comparisons between private screeners and federal screeners.

Mica said the TSA studies used incorrect data that did not reflect higher costs of a federal workforce from staffing redundancies and high attrition rates.

“With 63,000 employees, TSA has become a bloated bureaucracy that is too focused on managing its personnel and protecting its turf,” Mica said.

His criticisms were far different than the testimony this week from TSA Administrator John S. Pistole, who tried to assure a House Homeland Security subcommittee his agency was giving taxpayers a good deal while protecting airline passengers.

“TSA has implemented an effective and dynamic security system in the aviation domain consisting of multiple layers of risk-based measures,” Pistole said.

He asked for Congress to continue funding the TSA’s “multi-layered system of transportation security” along with new screening equipment and procedures the agency seeks.

Instead, the House voted 219 to 204 to reduce the TSA’s annual budget by $270 million.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Leaders of the Latin American and U.S. Hispanic communities continued sharp criticisms Friday against a Supreme Court decision that upholds a tough state law against illegal immigration.

They say the ruling on Thursday will lead to discrimination against Hispanic people.

The Arizona law empowers local police to shut down any business that knowingly hires illegal immigrants.

The Supreme Court ruling is expected to encourage other states to enact similar laws to ensure employees are Americans.

The Obama administration opposed the Arizona law, saying the state was authorizing itself to set immigration policy that the Constitution reserves to the federal government.

The Supreme Court said Arizona was not setting a new immigration policy, merely enforcing the federal laws that already exist.

“Arizona hopes that its law will result in more effective enforcement of the prohibition on employing unauthorized aliens,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote for the 5-3 majority.

As a result, “the Arizona regulation does not otherwise conflict with federal law,” he wrote.

Among the first Latin American leaders to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision was Wilbert Bendezu, president of Peru’s Parliament.

He said the Supreme Court’s decision set a “dangerous precedent” that will lead to other laws against immigrants.

Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Utah, Mississippi, Ohio and Florida all have either enacted or are considering laws against illegal immigration that closely follow the “Legal Arizona Workers Act.”

Bendezu said the Arizona law gives employers no other choice than to fire workers who lack U.S. government work permits.

He estimated that about 600,000 Peruvians live illegally in the United States.

Other criticism came from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), a civil rights organization for Hispanics.

“Today’s regrettable decision in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting is a tortured product of judicial activism responding to perceived political views of the moment,” said Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF’s president.

He hinted that the Supreme Court’s decision could lead to approval of Arizona’s S.B. 1070.

The state law authorizes local police to question and arrest anyone if the officers have “probable cause” evidence they are illegally in the United States. The law is awaiting an appeal to the Supreme Court before it can be enforced.

“Laws that encroach on exclusive federal immigration enforcement by mandating or permitting untrained local police officers to engage in racial profiling will find little refuge in today’s decision,” Saenz said. “Wise state and local lawmakers must continue to tread carefully in areas touching on immigration. As has been the case for well over 200 years, federal action remains the sole legitimate avenue to address immigration issues.”

Dissenters on the Supreme Court largely agreed that Arizona lawmakers overstepped their authority with the Legal Arizona Workers Act.

“Either directly or through the uncertainty that it creates, the Arizona statute will impose additional burdens upon lawful employers,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in dissent.

The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

Breyer wrote that employers now are likely to “erect ever stronger safeguards against the hiring of unauthorized aliens, without counterbalancing protections against unlawful discrimination.”

The Arizona law also requires employers to check the immigration status of all job applicants using an online federal background check program called E-Verify.

The Supreme Court ruling said E-Verify was “entirely consistent” with federal law.

About 215,000 employers nationwide have enrolled voluntarily in the E-Verify program. South Carolina and Mississippi also require employers to do E-Verify background checks.

Some members of Congress have said recently they plan to introduce bills requiring E-Verify checks nationally.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, DC, United States (KaiserHealth) – Legendary crooner Pat Boone, the national spokesman for 60 Plus Association, a self-described conservative seniors group, announced in early May that GOP congressional candidate Jane Corwin had won the group’s “Honorary Guardian of Seniors’ Rights” award. She could be counted on, he said, “to protect Social Security and Medicare while also working to reduce the federal budget deficit.”

Corwin, who was running for an open House seat in western New York, received the award at a recent campaign appearance at a nursing home with Jim Martin, the chairman of 60 Plus.

​ But if 60 Plus’ goal was to inoculate Corwin from attacks on the Medicare issue, the effort failed badly. Corwin was beaten soundly by Democratic opponent Kathy Hochul, partly because of voter fears about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal to sharply transform Medicare. That raises questions about whether 60 Plus, a’-year-old organization that over the last year has become increasingly active in pushing Republican candidates and causes, will be effective in next year’s elections. The Alexandria, Va.- based group — which says it’s a nonpartisan advocate for “free enterprise, less government, less taxes” and an alternative to the AARP – staunchly backs the Ryan plan. The proposal, said Martin in an e-mail, is a first step “to save Medicare for future retirees because clearly the status quo is leading Medicare down the road to ruin, not the path to prosperity.”He says 60 Plus didn’t fail in the case of Corwin. “Our efforts worked, but it was too little too late,” he wrote. “The candidate herself admitted that the charge that she was wrecking Medicare went unanswered too long.”For years, 60 Plus played a low-key role in elections, but that changed last year, when the group spent $7 million on ads to help Republicans in tossup races, according to Federal Election Commission records. The ads denounced Democrats for backing $500 billion in Medicare cuts over 10 years in the health care law and portrayed Republicans as the protectors of seniors. Almost all the Republican candidates won. The group reportedly spent another $800,000 in April in a series of “thank you” broadcast ads for 39 Republicans who voted for the Ryan proposal. Television host Pat Boone is presented the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by Jim Martin of the 60 Plus Association, at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C., in February. (Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr)But the controversy surrounding the Ryan plan could complicate 60 Plus’ efforts to promote GOP candidates and provide cover to House Republicans who voted for the proposal. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, says the group could have a harder time selling a positive message about Ryan than it did attacking the health law. “It’s always easier to tear something down than to build something up,” she said. “Now the tables are turned. We get to say, ‘Don’t be fooled. This is what it really does.’”For next year’s elections, Republicans are hoping to consolidate and expand their gains with seniors, always one of the most important voting blocs. In the 2010 election, people over 60 voted Republican by the largest margin since the early’80s, according to Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard. Exit polls showed that seniors favored Republicans by 21 percentage points, Lake said. The fight leading up to 2012 will focus intensively on the Ryan plan, which would raise the eligibility age of Medicare to 67 and convert it from a traditional fee-for-service system, under which most seniors get health care, to one in which seniors get a set amount of money to buy private health insurance. Polls show that the public, including seniors, generally oppose cutting the growth of spending on Medicare payments to balance the budget. The changes wouldn’t apply to those now 55 and older, but everyone else would pay more once they become eligible, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Ryan would also keep the $500 billion in Medicare savings that were included in the health law, a point that Democrats have seized on to argue that Republicans and 60 Plus are hypocritical for criticizing the cuts in the health care law. Since the House passed Ryan’s budget, the GOP’s lead with grey America has narrowed to 10 percentage points. “60 Plus will be a pretty big player in helping to defend Republican freshmen,” said Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist and former spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Republicans are realizing their vote to end Medicare as we know it will be very problematic for the party so they will have to figure out how to defend it and GOP strategists will dispatch 60 Plus to do a lot of their dirty work.”Republicans say 60 Plus, launched with help from direct-mail veteran Richard Viguerie, is a welcome political ally that will continue to come up with effective ways to push its agenda. Martin, they say, has proved himself to be a savvy public-relations operative. “Jim Martin would give away awards to members of Congress [and then the] member of Congress would say he was endorsed by a major seniors association,” said Rob Hartwell, president of the lobbying firm Hartwell Capitol Consulting and a former consultant to 60 Plus. The group has only two lobbyists, rarely testifies at hearings and isn’t a key source of policy advice, say congressional staffers. Still, aides say, 60 Plus is adept at getting attention at town hall meetings, sending letters and making phone calls on issues key to seniors. “They’ve always been good at turning folks out for press conferences and things like that,” said Kyle Downey, spokesman for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. The organization is also helpful in disseminating Republican messages, the staffers say. The April ads that thanked House members for voting for the Ryan budget praised them for backing a plan that “protects and preserves Medicare for years to come.” A radio ad that ran on behalf of Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, for example, said, “Elected officials actually did what they promised they would.”The source of 60 Plus’s recent largesse is unclear. Martin told Kaiser Health News that his group has 300,000 “voluntary” members, none of whom pay dues. The group has been in the red most years since 2003, according to Internal Revenue Service documents. In mid-2009, 60 Plus reported that its assets were a negative $713,271 on revenue of $1.82 million. The group’s big increase in campaign spending last fall came in the wake of a January 2010 Supreme Court decision that held corporations and unions could anonymously spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. Martin said that his group gets donations from corporations and individuals but declined to name them. Blendon worries about anonymous contributions which, he said, allows companies that want to elect a candidate “to go to a broker of sorts, who directs money to groups like 60 Plus.” He added, “It is possible that contributions to groups are unrelated to the group’s mission. The only connection could be that the organization wants to elect members of the same party as does the donor.”Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., who survived 60 Plus attacks in the 2010 election, suspects that the group’s effort was part of a coordinated strategy to ensure a stream of negative ads. “It had to have been coordinated,” he said. “One ad buy from one group ended, and another picked up immediately. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Koch brothers were financing 60 Plus.”Martin joined Americans for Prosperity, a conservative think tank founded by David Koch, the CEO of oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, for several events in 2010. A Koch spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment. In the end, Lake said, 60 Plus’ influence will depend on how much money it spends next year and whether it encourages others to spend on similar issues. In 2010, she said the group’s $7 million in spending was part of a much bigger drive by several organizations – that spent a combined total of $55 million – to attack the health law’s Medicare provisions.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

View full post on All Stories

United States (KaiserHealth) – Fed up with the unpredictable cost of health insurance for his small business, Mike Sarafolean last year made a dramatic change: Instead of picking a plan to offer workers, he now sends them to a “private exchange” or marketplace where they compare and choose their own insurance. And the amount his company pays toward coverage is capped.

The move puts his St. Paul, Minn.-based company on the leading edge of a nascent trend that could shape how more employers offer and pay for their health benefits in the coming years. It is part of an ongoing evolution in job-based health benefits that is gradually shifting cost and responsibility to workers.

The private exchanges, mainly run by former insurance executives and employee benefit consulting firms, operate in more than 20 states.

While representing only a tiny fraction of workplaces, the movement may be about to grow: One of the nation’s largest employer-benefits consulting firms — Aon Hewitt — said Wednesday it will launch of an exchange aimed at large companies. It hopes to have at least 100,000 workers enrolled by early next year.

Proponents say the effort shields employers from unpredictable premium hikes because they will choose how much to increase their contribution each year and those amounts may be less than premiums actually increase. If that happens, workers would make up the difference.

Tempering such increases, proponents say, would be competition among insurers because workers would have a wider choice of plans, rather than just the one or two currently offered by many employers.

“We’re trying to create a retail marketplace that is competitive,” says Ken Sperling, who is overseeing the Aon Hewitt effort. Employees would get be able to choose among several carriers. “Insurers would have to compete for their business.”

The exchanges, which have some similarities to state-based programs mandated by the federal health overhaul law, also save employers money partly because workers, when given a variety of choices, are likely to choose less generous benefit plans, which will carry lower premiums, say proponents.

“Most companies are over-insuring their employees right now. We want to right-size that,” says Curtiss Butler, chief marketing officer at Liazon, which also operates a private exchange.

Others, including Carmen Balber of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, caution that private exchanges potentially could be used by insurers to “cherry pick” employers with younger and healthier workforces. Balber also said private exchanges potentially could steer workers toward policies that have low premiums, but also high annual deductibles and other charges. Such policies are more profitable for insurers, but can leave unprepared consumers on the hook for thousands in medical costs each year.

Private exchanges “absolve the employer from having any responsibility for providing benefits or getting a good deal for consumers,” says Balber.

Frustrated By Double-Digit Premium Hikes

Sarafolean, CEO of Orion Corp. of Minnesota, which provides services for people with disabilities, doesn’t see it that way.

Before he made the switch, Sarafolean said he had a limited number of insurance choices to offer his 70 workers: “I had to buy a plan that would make sense and fit for most people. Now they make choices that fit for them.”

For the past few years, his company faced “double-digit premium increases every renewal.” To slow those increases, Sarafolean said he had switched to a policy with large annual deductibles: payments of $4,500 by individuals or $9,000 by families before insurance began paying most medical costs. His employees also paid about $90 a month toward their premium.

A little more than a year ago, Orion received a 40 percent renewal increase, prompting him to move to Minneapolis-based Bloom Health, which set up private exchanges in Michigan, Minneapolis and Indiana.

Now, his company makes contributions ranging $125 a month for younger workers to $350 for older ones to special health reimbursement accounts, which workers then use to buy an insurance policy.

By making the change to a flat contribution and a private exchange, the company is saving 10 percent over its previous year’s cost of insurance, he says. Many of his workers also spend less, he says.

Gabrielle Smith, an employee of Orion Corporation of Minnesota, changed her benefit plan with the small company (Photo by Andy King).

He’s not sure what he will choose in 2014, when the state-based insurance exchanges are set to open as part of the health care law approved by Congress last year. Initially, those exchanges are aimed at individuals and small companies that are shopping for insurance. States can decide later in the decade whether to open them to large businesses.

Sperling, who is overseeing Aon Hewitt’s private exchange, compares the flat-payment change to one that gained speed in the early’90s: Employers abandoning pensions in favor of offering workers 401(k) plans for retirement savings.

But just as 401(k) plans transferred the risk of market downturns to workers, the flat-payment model would shift risk to workers if rapidly rising health costs outpace increases in employer contributions.

“From a consumer point of view, it makes me nervous because as premiums go up, it’s simply a mechanism to cost-shift,” says Sabrina Corlette, research professor at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. “That said, if it allows a small employer to continue to offer insurance … it’s not a terrible compromise.”

The model has been compared to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal to cap government payments for future Medicare enrollees, giving them a set amount to buy coverage from private insurers. Under Ryan’s plan, the government contribution would grow with general inflation, which is less than medical inflation, saving taxpayer dollars, but substantially increasing beneficiaries’ costs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Sperling says he expects most employers will annually set increases in their health insurance contributions to an amount approximating wage increases – about 2 to 3 percent annually – which are generally well below medical inflation. But he says the competition created by the exchanges will help slow medical premium growth.

Rejection For Health Conditions

Unlike most of the private exchanges, the Bloom Health model, which serves about 25,000 people, sends workers to buy their own policies on the so-called individual market, rather than through a group health policy.

However, insurers selling individual policies in most states can reject applicants with medical problems, a practice that will end in 2014 under rules in the health care law.

Bloom CEO Abir Sen says his company offers its services only in states where rejected applicants can qualify for special state-run, high-risk insurance programs, which generally cost at least 25 percent more.

Gabrielle Smith, a 16-year employee of Orion who has an auto-immune disease, worried that under Bloom she would be unable to get insurance “or it would be so in excess of what I could afford.”

Smith, 48, did get coverage – through Minnesota’s high-risk pool – and found that she still was able to lower her deductible by $1,500 a year compared with the former $4,500 deductible plan offered at Orion. She now pays $45 a month for her premium.

“I haven’t heard anyone who is unhappy with the current insurance because it was all individualized,” says Smith. “Some of the younger employees with no medical conditions (found low-cost plans that) don’t require any money out of their paychecks.”

Other private exchanges, including Buffalo-N.Y.-based Liazon, which serves about 25,000 employees in 23 states, and the new Aon Hewitt model send workers to group policies, which cannot reject applicants with health problems. The exchanges vary in other ways, too: While Bloom and Aon Hewitt offer a variety of insurers, for example, Liazon contracts primarily with one main health insurer in each region.

Aon Hewitt’s model would offer only five different types of policies, ranging from high-deductible “bronze” and “silver” level plans to a high-end “platinum” plan with a broad network of doctors and hospitals and minimal consumer spending on deductibles or co-payments.

All the exchanges plan to collect revenue by charging employers a monthly fee, receiving commissions from insurers, or both.

It’s unclear how the advent of state-based exchanges will affect programs such as Bloom, Liazon and Aon Hewitt, or whether there will still be a demand for their services by small businesses.

“As of 2014, why will the private exchanges be needed?” asks Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonprofit research group based in Washington.

On their websites, the private exchanges say what sets them apart from future state exchanges will be their level of customer service. By opening now, private exchanges also could be in a position to bid for contracts to run state exchanges, a move Sperling says Aon Hewitt would consider.

But Balber at Consumer Watchdog counters that the state exchanges may be better for consumers than private ones because states can choose to actively monitor the quality and cost of the insurers allowed to participate. In theory, private exchanges could do the same, but Balber is skeptical.

“To presume a private exchange is going to examine trends in premium increases and pressure insurers to lower prices is unlikely,” she says.

Benefit experts say there is growing interest in the move to a flat payment model, dubbed “defined contribution.” A March survey of very large employers by the HR Policy Association found that 36 percent are considering capping contributions for workers’ insurance over the next 10 years.

Some firms already set a cap on contributions for retirees, Fronstin says. But he predicts that most employers will take a wait-and-see approach before changing their health coverage for current employees.

Aon Hewitt’s Sperling says as the health system overhaul takes effect, most employers will continue to offer coverage to workers: “They’re either going to stay in the game and be more requiring of their employees (around healthy behavior) or will look for a realistic exit strategy, which could be a corporate exchange.”

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Sen. John Ensign’s (R-NV) retirement next month may give the campaign of Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), a Republican favorite, a boost with an appointment to the Senate.

According to some pundits, Heller is likely to be chosen to serve out the remaining months in Ensign’s term, which ends in 2013. The congressman was the first official entrant in the race when Ensign announced last month that he would not seek re-election. He remains the top GOP contender a day after Ensign said he would step down while the Senate continues its probe of his actions related to an extramarital affair.

Ensign was considered a potential 2012 presidential contender before controversy erupted over his affair with an aide and his alleged attempts to land the aide’s husband, who was also a member of his staff, lobbying work, in violation of federal laws. The Justice Department did not prosecute him after conducting a probe. However, he is now the focus of a Senate Ethics Committee investigation.

The Silver State last November elected a new governor, Republican Brian Sandoval, who is required to fill the Senate seat with an appointee after Ensign resigns on May 3. Sandoval quickly endorsed Heller last month together with Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki after the congressman launched his campaign.

The governor is expected to appoint Heller, a move that could help or hurt the congressman’s chances of winning the seat. Observers say the appointment would prevent the congressman from having to cast more votes in a chamber embroiled in a budget battle with the White House. Heller would also strengthen his fundraising ability.

But the lawmaker may see more scrutiny on his voting record as a senator, other pundits argue. In addition, the Senate will eventually have to vote on issues he escaped in the House. ” It’s not clear that would be much more difficult than voting in the House, but sometimes the chambers vote on different things, and there may be more focus on his votes once he is appointed,” the Washington Posts’s Chris Cillizza wrote. Heller, a former Assemblyman and secretary of state, would also have to contend with historical probability of a Senate appointee winning the seat they were chosen to fill, which according to the New York Times’ Nate Silver is 50 percent.

Whoever is appointed, the race for the seat is a key opportunity for Democrats to pick up a seat in a state that will play a role in the presidential elections next year. Nevada has a significant Tea Party presence, one that nearly toppled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last year.

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) is the Democratic favorite in the race. The veteran lawmaker has the full backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee but will still have to face off with businessman Byron Gergiou, who has made clear he will not bow to his party’s wishes.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Millions of users hooked to the virtual world on Wednesday got a taste of incumbent U.S. President Barack Obama’s upcoming campaign for 2012 presidential elections as he was hosted by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg live on the White House’s Facebook page.

Calling the ongoing economic recovery fragile, President Obama cautioned, “We could slip back into a recession,” in the absence of a serious plan to handle the deficit.

“The Republican budget put forward is fairly radical, but I would not call it courageous,” said Obama.

With Zuckerberg wearing a jacket and tie instead of his customary hoodie, President Obama told his audience at Facebook’s headquarters, “My name is Barack Obama and I’m the first guy to get Mark Zuckerberg to wear a jacket and tie.”

There was a thunderous applause as Obama called for “high-skilled immigrants” to stay, saying, “They are job generators. We don’t want them starting an Intel in China or France. We want them starting companies here.”

“Our education system has to do a better job of math and science education for women, blacks and Hispanics,” he said, adding, “I want people to think of the next big Internet breakthrough as the next moon launch.”

Obama used his oratory skills and tuned his answers for the technology-savvy youngsters asking them not to “get frustrated and cynical about our democracy.”

“If you don’t give the system a push, it’s just not going to change and you’re going to be the ones who suffer the consequences,” Obama warned the young Americans.

Without announcing the events at the Facebook and an earlier one in Virginia, as official campaign calls, Obama stayed focussed on the election subjects of economy and deficit reduction talks. He’s also scheduled to appear Thursday at a town-hall meeting in Reno, Nevada.

Although Democrat Obama and Republican Congress agree on need for significant fiscal reforms, Obama’s deficit reduction plan, is diametrically opposite to proposals floated by congressional Republicans. The former has vowed to keep Medicare and Medicaid alive and healthy while the opposition is striving to dilute these health-care programs.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – A congressional committee heard impassioned testimony Tuesday from farmers in California who are trying to hang on to their livelihoods while dealing with Environmental Protection Agency rules they describe as an economic burden.

The hearing was part of an “effort to identify and resolve regulatory impediments to job creation,” a committee staff member told All Headline News.

The Republican chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa of California, called some federal regulations “problematic” as the nation struggles with high unemployment.

“We know that the private sector is going to have to lead this nation’s economic recovery effort and it’s important for us to hear what is holding back efforts to create new jobs,” Issa said.

The nation’s unemployment rate stands at 8.8 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The hearing Tuesday is one of series of hearings the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is conducting with leaders of several industries on the impact of federal regulations.

The hearing in Salinas came during a rough week for the EPA.

On Monday, 170 members of Congress accused the agency of acting without congressional authority in expanding Clean Water Act regulations.

“In difficult economic times throughout our country, it is critical that we do not unilaterally make decisions that will disenfranchise farmers and American workers while we are making efforts necessary to protect clean water,” Rep. Tim Holden (D-Pa.) said in a letter to the EPA signed by the congressmen.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard a case in which attorneys for six states argued a federal court should have authority to order utilities to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, rather than leaving the regulation to the EPA.

During the hearing in Salinas, Calif., representatives of agricultural groups described farmers as becoming desperate during the economic recession of the past three years.

“American farmers are at crossroads,” said Tom Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association, in his testimony. “With a regulatory environment that is stifling job creation and economic opportunity, the majority of us must rely on off-farm income to support our families, an increasing number of us are moving our production off-shore, and some of us are simply shutting down our operations.”

Often, farmers and other industries have rules imposed on them “without the benefit of the best available science and experience, without public review of data and modeling and without serious stakeholder engagement,” Nassif said. “The resulting regulatory requirements are often inflexible and impractical.”

The hearing in Salinas follows a recent Oversight and Government Reform Committee report that found federal regulations fall harder on small businesses than large corporations.

The report said “small firms bear a regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee whereas large firms with more than 500 employees incur a cost of $7,755 per employee to comply with federal regulations.”

Even large industries are struggling under tough EPA regulations, the report said.

Utilities face 35 deadlines on emissions control between 2009 and 2017. Two utilities were forced to shut down after being unable to meet EPA regulatory standards.

Financial industry regulations are expected to reduce the industry’s economic growth by 4 percent, the report said.

“Uncertainty of future regulation chills capital formation and can leave U.S. businesses with less investment capital if the money is diverted to foreign markets,” the report said.

James Bogart, president of the Grower-Shippers Association of Central California, said the EPA often seeks to protect the environment without fully considering the economic consequences.

“It is vitally important from a public policy perspective to have EPA thoroughly explain the costs, as well as any potential benefits, of their proposed regulatory actions, before they take them,” Bogart said.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – President Barack Obama is scheduled to undertake domestic travel in the coming week according to a White House communique.

Obama is planning to hold town hall meetings in “Northern Virginia, Palo Alto, California and Reno, Nevada to speak directly to the American people about his vision for reducing our debt and bringing down our deficit, based on the values of shared responsibility and shared prosperity,” the White House said.

On the return flight from Chicago on Friday, Jay Carney, presidential spokesman called Obama’s two urgent tasks as one to pursue Congress to immediately raise the ceiling on U.S. debt and the other to move with urgency towards deficit reduction.

On the first task, Carney said, “That shouldn’t be linked or held hostage to any other action because the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling — those consequences would be catastrophic to the American economy, to the global economy and to America’s creditworthiness internationally.”

About efforts towards deficit reduction, Carney said the president, “asked the Vice President to oversee and leaders of Congress to appoint members to participate in where they can come together and begin to negotiate areas where we can agree to bring about further deficit reduction in a balanced way that can achieve the kind of results that we think are what America needs economically and for our future.”

Citing both as “urgent … but … not linked,” Carney reiterated, “With regards to the debt ceiling, it cannot be linked or held hostage to something that wouldn’t pass — couldn’t reach consensus. It has to be done. All the leaders of Congress of both parties have said that, and we obviously share that sentiment.”

Carney hinted that the president was ready for compromise on his targets while negotiating with Republicans, saying, “He recognizes he’s not going to get 100 percent of what he wants or that it’s not going to be his way only, and Republicans need to recognize that, which is how we ended up with an agreement last week on the funding for the 2011 budget.”

Carney noted that the president Obama believed Congressman Paul Ryan of the budget committee “is absolutely sincere and that he believes that this is the right — that that’s the right path, the one he put forward is the right path for America.”

On the disagreement part, Carney said, “He (Obama) doesn’t think that it’s (Ryan’s budget proposal) balanced.”

Explaining the disparities, Carney said, “He doesn’t think that we need to — that the price of deficit reduction needs to be ending the guarantee, the health benefits that Medicare has provided our seniors, cutting energy — clean energy investment by 70 percent, cutting education by 25 percent, cutting infrastructure by 30 percent — and all so that we can not just reduce the deficit but so that we can extend tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans and give new tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

With the count-down to 2012 presidential election ticking and Obama already an official candidate, the incumbent needs to sell his policies to voters who are not diehard rock star Obama fans.

View full post on All Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Some members of Congress are saying the suspension of a Washington, D.C., air traffic controller who fell asleep on the job early Wednesday is only the beginning of the changes that are coming.

Possible new safety measures could include a high-tech air traffic control system that automates most operations done by humans now.

Transportation leaders in Congress are using the incident Wednesday to illustrate broader safety problems at the nation’s airports.

“This incident and other recent performance failures, including near miss incidents, are matters of serious concern,” said Rep. John L. Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Mica (R-Fla.) ordered his staff to collect more evidence of airline safety violations as part of a congressional investigation.

During the incident minutes after midnight, the lone air traffic controller at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport fell asleep while he was supposed to be directing airliners onto and off of the runway.

He told investigators it was his fourth night in a row of working the late shift from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Two pilots from approaching airliners radioed the control tower for permission to land but received no response.

After failed communications by radio and by telephone, the pilots landed on their own without getting clearance.

The airplanes were an American Airlines 737 that touched down at 12:12 a.m. and a United Airbus A320 that landed at 12:26 a.m.

The air traffic controller resumed radio flight operations at 12:28 a.m.

He has 20 years of experience as an air traffic controller, 17 of them at Reagan National Airport. He also is a Federal Aviation Administration manager.

The FAA announced Thursday that the controller, whose name was not given, had been suspended pending an investigation.

“I’m outraged,” said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. “We will get to the bottom of this.”

So far, the FAA’s response has been to ban control tower operations with less than two controllers directing aircraft.

Thirty-one major U.S. airports operate throughout the night with a single air traffic controller.

Mica, the congressional committee leader, said the ban on lone controllers was inadequate.

“Unfortunately the [Obama] Administration’s call for increased staffing at Reagan National, when there are no flights during the early morning hours, is a typical bureaucratic response,” he said.

The controversy could push Congress and the FAA to look more closely at the “NextGen” air traffic control system, a congressional staff member told All Headline News.

“Whether or not these safety incidents lead to more scrutiny of NextGen development remains to be seen,” said Justin Harclerode, spokesman for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

NexGen is the short name for the planned Next Generation Air Transportation System.

Work started on the automated air traffic control system in 1993 but was halted amid technological hurdles and budget shortfalls.

Originally, the FAA planned to install the system by 2001.

Installation of the system now is scheduled to begin next year and continue in stages through 2025.

NexGen is designed to move air traffic control away from ground-based technology to satellite communications. The role of human air traffic controllers would be reduced by the technologies, which are intended to make airline operations safer and more efficient.

Safety hazards the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is examining as it considers new safety options include a near miss in January between an American Airlines jet and two Air Force C-17 cargo planes, Harclerode said.

They missed each other by less than a mile while being guided by a New York City air traffic controller. 

Others involve an air traffic controller who was distracted while talking on the phone to his girlfriend. He failed to to keep an eye on a plane that ran into a helicopter over the Hudson River in New York.

Another incident in New York involved an air traffic controller who allowed his child to issue commands to pilots on Feb. 17, 2010.

 

View full post on All Stories