The News that Matters
Bank of the West Chief Economist Scott Anderson released today the Bank’s 2019 Economic Outlook Report: An Aging Expansion, projecting a United States and global economic forecast for the year ahead. The report covers a wide range of key economic issues including the anticipated slowing of U.S. job growth, the housing cycle’s peak across the country and in California, the…
Every year consumers flock to stores with one goal in mind: finding the perfect presents for their family, friends and colleagues. This year, holiday shoppers are eager to find the best deals, with 60 percent planning to compare prices online before purchasing. However, 66 percent don’t plan to finance any of their holiday spending, missing…
According to a recent survey, the American Family Survey, what constitutes sexual harassment depends on one’s age and gender. The survey found that younger people and men were less likely than women and older Americans to view actions as sexual harassment. The survey found large gaps between women and men’s experiences. For example, 28% of…
By the Price of Business show, Media Partner of The Times USA. Recently Kevin Price, Host of the nationally syndicated Price of Business show, interviewed Hessam Parzivand, who practices Employment Law in the Houston area. Parzivand is a show regular and has is an important source of information on the law as it deal with…
UCLA Anderson Forecast’s final quarterly report for 2018 indicates that the economy is in the process of downshifting from 3% growth in real GDP this year to 2% in 2019, and 1% in 2020. Recognizing that the nation and California are experiencing full employment, the Forecast asserts that 3% quarterly growth is not sustainable. With the Federal…
President Trump has said from the beginning that his tariffs were designed to get trading partners back to the table and to hammer out deals that benefits all parties. One of the first areas of focus was with Canada and Mexico. We are now seeing the fruit of that labor. House Ways and Means Committee…
FlyersRights.org has released 20 detailed passenger complaints of in-flight sexual assaults made to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), obtained pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests, and posted them on its website at: https://flyersrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DOT-Sexual-Assault-Records.pdf. Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org and a former counsel to the NYS Crime Victims Board, noted, “These complaints show in…
Arkansas and Missouri will increase their minimum wage as a result of midterm election initiatives, and additional ballot measures are in the works in other states for 2020. By studying minimum wage increases in a global context, more can be learned about the health implications minimum wage increases pose for low-income populations in the…
Access to bank loans for small businesses climbed last quarter signaling strength and optimism in the economy, according to the latest Private Capital Access Index (PCA Index) from Dun & Bradstreet and Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. Fifty-five percent (55%) of surveyed businesses reported successful financing with a business bank loan, a record high since the…
For many Americans, Thanksgiving weekend is a time to anticipate and look forward to the gift giving of the holiday season. For approximately 14,000 employees of GM and their families (and the many businesses that derive their income from them), that gift planning was dampened by the news that the auto maker were making numerous…
By the Price of Business show, Media Partner of The Times USA. Kevin Price, host of the Price of Business show, recently interviewed New York Times best selling author, Peter Schweitzer, about a new report released by the Government Accountability Institute. The Institute’s mission is to hold government agencies accountable. According to its website, the…
Today the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a landmark case brought by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) challenging an unfair class action settlement in which lawyers and their hand-picked universities and pet causes got millions while class members got nothing. “The Supreme Court has an opportunity to stop…
The New Center—an organization focused on creating the space for a political center in America – today launched its website and an accompanying policy paper entitled “The Immigration Debate: The Poison Affecting Our Politics.” The New Center grew out of an unlikely partnership between Brookings Institute Scholar Bill Galston and Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol….
According to a new survey from CompareCards.com, nothing stresses Americans out during the holiday season like shopping. Nearly two-thirds of Americans agreed with the following statement: Shopping is the most stressful part of the holiday season. That doesn’t mean that Americans hate to shop, though. In a wide-ranging series of questions about their views on…
Kevin Price, Editor at The Times USA, considers new ways to commemorate Veterans Day in a recent article for Medium…
Meredith Corporationtoday announced an agreement to sell the FORTUNE media brand for $150 million cash to Fortune Media Group Holdings Limited, wholly owned by Chatchaval Jiaravanon. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in 2018. Mr. Jiaravanon is affiliated with the Charoen Pokphand Group (www.cpgroupglobal.com), an international conglomerate with businesses…
AAA projects 54.3 million Americans will journey 50 miles or more away from home this Thanksgiving, a 4.8 percent increase over last year. The 2018 holiday weekend will see the highest Thanksgiving travel volume in more than a dozen years (since 2005), with 2.5 million more people taking to the nation’s roads, skies, rails and…
The first book in its genre, Genius Weapons: Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Weaponry, and the Future of Warfare (Prometheus Books, November 6, 2018) by Louis A. Del Monte, delineates the new arms race between the United States, China, and Russia to develop genius weapons, weapons whose artificial intelligence greatly exceeds human intelligence and the destructive force…
Most professionals feel confident testing the employment waters, even from their current office, research suggests. In a survey from global staffing firm Accountemps, 78 percent of workers said they would feel at least somewhat comfortable looking for a new job while with their present company. More than six in 10 respondents (64 percent) indicated they’d…
On Monday, Bernie Sanders showed why he has avoided debating Lawrence Zupan, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. Sanders also refused Zupan’s request for an additional debate. Sanders was frustrated and bewildered during much of the debate, unable to answer directly most of the questions asked, according to sources. The contrasts between the two Senate…
Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants are among the fast growing fields in the healthcare industry. Increasingly, both of these professionals are doing roles that were exclusively for MDs and ODs. This has been due to many factors, including: There’s a need for more medical professional access, particularly with our aging population in the US. NP…
ADP has released a reports that points to continued job growth in the United States. This, in spite of concerns about stock market volatility and the problem of protectionist trade policies. Private sector employment increased by 227,000 jobs from September to October according to the October ADP National Employment Report®. Broadly distributed to the public…
Adding radiation therapy or surgery to systemic therapy for stage IV lung cancer patients whose cancer has spread to a limited number of sites can extend overall survival time significantly, according to new results from a multicenter, randomized, controlled phase II study. The findings were presented last week at the 60th Annual Meeting of the…
Many Americans are afraid that they won’t be able to get health insurance if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is repealed because they have a pre-existing condition. They forget that millions of Americans had their insurance cancelled for not meeting ACA requirements. Whatever condition they had went instantly from being covered to being “pre-existing,” states…
Several groups have decried the mass killing at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council (MJAC) is shocked and outraged by the horrendous act of terror committed inside the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Saturday. The attacker, who was apprehended by law enforcement, killed at least eleven people and injured six…
Cyberlitica, Inc, a provider of Dark Web monitoring and cyber awareness services, announced today that its research team has discovered that at least 25 states’ confidential voter registration databases (including those from Florida, Georgia, Texas, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania) are openly for sale on the Dark Web. Additional states…
President Trump must urge lawmakers to return from the campaign trail and address the glaring loopholes in our asylum and immigration laws that are being used to promote an organized assault on our nation’s border, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Ignoring the current crisis to focus on reelection would amount to a…
A new report released today by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) shows that the cost and compensation paid in the U.S. tort system totaled $429 billion—or 2.3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)—in 2016. Despite those numbers, the study shows that the system delivered only 57 cents of every dollar…
The following statement is from the Alzheimer’s Association: Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor continues to demonstrate her leadership in the face of adversity, today bravely announcing her diagnosis of dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s. In all aspects of her life Justice O’Connor has been a transparent leader, and being forthcoming about her diagnosis is another…
According to a new survey from Ally Invest, the online trading and automated investing arm of Ally Financial Inc., nearly two-thirds of survey respondents (65%) say they find investing in the stock market to be scary and/or intimidating, up from 61% in a similar survey during the same period last year. Fear is highest among…
A new report from personal finance website GOBankingRates revealed that 32 percent of Americans – nearly a third of respondents – have no money in their savings accounts. GOBankingRates conducts this survey each year to better understand Americans’ personal financial standing. Since 2015, the results have shown that the majority of Americans have less than…
By Michael Maloney, Special for The Times USA. Short of execution, life in prison without a chance of parole is the harshest punishment in our judicial system. According to the ACLU approximately 79 percent of the 3,278 prisoners serving life without parole in the United States were sentenced to die in prison for non-violent crimes….
People tend to use social media – particularly YouTube and Instagram – more in 2018 compared to 2017, according to a new survey from The Manifest, a business news and how-to website. Nearly two-thirds of social media users report they use YouTube (63%) and Instagram (61%) more in 2018 than 2017, compared to 52% who…
New survey results find that a strong majority of Americans from three generations say the country is headed in the wrong direction and say they are “fearful” about the future of democracy in America. The poll from AARP and the Association for Young Americans (AYA) also found that Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers agree…
The Concord Coalition today warned that the rapidly rising federal budget deficit — totaling nearly $779 billion in Fiscal Year 2018 — reflects a structural gap between spending and revenues that is largely ignored in Washington even as it grows worse. The Treasury Department this afternoon released the figure, which is $113 billion higher than…
Ford Motor Company just announced layoffs in the midst of a reported $1 billion in tariff-related losses. Auto sales are down due to trade tariffs that President Trump imposed on metal and other car-related materials. Competitive Enterprise Institute trade policy expert Ryan Young says this sort of economic calamity is not surprising. “President Trump’s push…
Hurricane Michael is a monster storm. It is the largest to hit the Florida panhandle in decades. AccuWeather predicted a terrifying storm earlier today, noting: “Catastrophic Hurricane Michael continues to intensify as it approaches the Florida Panhandle. It is the strongest storm to hit the U.S., in terms of wind, since Hurricane Charley in…
The Washington State Patrol Troopers Association has announced its opposition to Initiative 1639, bringing a solid line of law enforcement professionals standing with Evergreen State rights activists against the extremist gun control measure, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has learned. WSPTA joins the Washington State Sheriffs Association, Washington Council…
In a new study just released by Upgraded Points, data compiled from 2007 through 2017 highlights spikes in growth as well as sharp declines in some of America’s most iconic airports. Though the numbers revealed some obvious names on the list, there were some surprising downward trends in a few of the biggest airports. Upgraded…