This Sunday, October 31, 2010 at 12:30PM on KERA, Channel 13, the McCuistion Program focuses on the final episode of a six-part series – 20 Years of McCuistion: Healthcare and Wellness.
In the last 20 years, healthcare has gone from being a personal issue to a public policy debate that has Americans divided.
This 20 year retrospective features various controversial views: liberal, conservative and libertarian. You’ll want to tune in to get a rational perspective on a national furor that impacts 17% of our GDP.
We encourage you to view all McCuistion TV episodes, where you can both watch the videos and interact with the McCuistion team and other viewers. You can also follow McCuistion TV on Twitter.
Join us this Sunday as we talk about things that matter… with people who care.
Justices to Hear Suit of Ashcroft Over Detention
WASHINGTON — Abdullah al-Kidd, born in Kansas and once a star running back at the University of Idaho, spent 16 days in federal detention in three states in 2003, sometimes naked and sometimes shackled hand and foot, but was never charged with a crime.
On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether he may sue John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, for what Mr. Kidd contends was an unconstitutional use of a law meant to hold “material witnesses.” Mr. Kidd says the law was used as a pretext for detaining him because he was suspected of terrorist activities.
“The iPad,” writes Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore in a note to clients issued Monday, “is driving a rapid, unprecedented shift in the structure of the computing industry.”
To illustrate that point, Whitmore has taken a chart of domestic PC market shares over the past seven quarters as measured by IDC, which doesn’t consider tablets to be personal computers, and redrawn it with the iPad added in (see table on right).
Citigroup’s Profit Soars As Credit-Loss Provisions Decline
Citigroup Inc. managed to grow its core businesses broadly in the third quarter. Revenue and profits rose from the year-earlier period despite wobbly capital markets as Chief Executive Vikram Pandit appeared to turn the ship in a new direction.
Today’s news update includes the faces of the tea party movement, social security benefits update and retail sales.
Social Security benefits will remain flat for 2nd straight year, government says
For the second year in a row, the nearly 54 million retirees and other Americans who receive Social Security benefits will not get any cost-of-living increase in 2011 in their monthly checks, government officials announced Friday morning.
Faces of the Tea Party Movement
While a few issues like smaller government bind most Tea Party candidates together, there are loose factions within the movement. Click the above title to see a few of the groups and a sampling of candidates in each.
Retail Sales in U.S. Climbed More Than Forecast in September
Retail sales in the U.S. climbed more than forecast in September, easing concern consumer spending will weaken and endanger the recovery.
Purchases rose 0.6 percent following a 0.7 percent gain in August that was larger than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Other reports showed inflation cooled even further last month and manufacturing in the New York region accelerated.
Join us this Sunday, October 17th, at our new time slot on KERA, Channel 13, 12:30 PM with the third of a six-part series – 20 Years of McCuistion: Motivation and Leadership.
This retrospective look at our last 20 years of programming focuses on motivation: often defined as that which gives purpose; action toward a desired goal. We’ll hear the stories of several of the top motivational speakers in the country, including:
- The late, Rosita Perez, CPAE
- Ed Foreman, CPAE, Founder of the Successful Life Program
- Vinnie Roazzi, successful businessman and the author of The Spirituality of Success
- Margo Chisholm, mountaineer and author of To The Summit
And the leadership section features corporate governance and leadership experts:
- Sharon Allen, Chairman of Deloitte and Touche, LLP
- Bill George, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and former Medtronic CEO
- Todd Bluedorn, CEO of Lennox International
We encourage you to view all McCuistion TV episodes, where you can both watch the videos and interact with the McCuistion team and other viewers. You can also follow McCuistion TV on Twitter.
For further details on the series, please contact Niki Nicastro McCuistion at (214) 750-5158 or email her at nikin@nikimccuistion.com.
Join us this Sunday as we talk about things that matter with people who care…
This Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 12:30 pm on KERA, Channel 13, the McCuistion program focuses on: Federal Government Debt, Credit Issues and Foreign Policy.
Over the last 20 years the McCuistion Program has looked at various public policy issues that impact the United States and the world. This 20 year retrospective focuses on several key areas presently at the core of American society. Experts discuss the history of these core issues, what has led to our present credit crisis, and the government boondoggle that has resulted.
We encourage you to view all McCuistion TV episodes, where you can both watch the videos and interact with the McCuistion team and other viewers. You can also follow McCuistion TV on Twitter.
Join us this Sunday as we talk about things that matter… with people who care.
Following this week’s airing “Does Our Constitution Still Matter” we found this report from The Heritage Foundation to be of interest. We welcome your comments. Titled The Obama Experts vs. the Rule of Law, the report reads:
Last week President Barack Obama’s most recently minted czar, Special Advisor to the President for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Elizabeth Warren, spoke to 400 bankers at the swanky Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, DC. Her message, according to The Washington Post: “Behave, play nice, and we’ll get along just fine.” Specifically, Warren promised to take a more “principles-based approach” to regulation, rather than clearly articulating “thou shalt not” rules that banks could rely on. For this Progressive White House, an enlightened expert, like Warren, given broad new powers by an unaccountably vague statute is exactly what the federal government needs to enforce order on our complex modern world. For our Founding Fathers, however, everything about Warren, from the way she attained her new powers to the way she plans to use them, is antithetical to our nation’s First Principles and the United States Constitution.
Look again at Warren’s title. She is not the director of the CFPB nor does she even work for it. For her to actually head the agency, President Obama would have to submit her name to the Senate to meet the Constitution’s “advice and consent” requirement. But President Obama did not want that transparency. Instead he decided to subvert the Constitution by making her his “special advisor” that would lead a team of “about 30 or 40 people at the Department of Treasury” to set up the CFPB. Yale Constitutional law professor Bruce Ackerman described Obama’s Warren chicanery as “another milestone down the path toward an imperial presidency.”
But Warren’s appointment is just the beginning of her assault on the Constitution. Her rejection of rules-based governing, cited above, is also a rejection of our nation’s First Principles. Hillsdale College Ronald Pestritto explains:
‘The Founders understood that there are two fundamental ways in which government can exercise its authority. The first is a system of arbitrary rule, where the government decides how to act on an ad hoc basis, leaving decisions up to the whim of whatever official or officials happen to be in charge; the second way is to implement a system grounded in the rule of law, where legal rules are made in advance and published, binding both government and citizens and allowing the latter to know exactly what they have to do or not to do in order to avoid the coercive authority of the former.’
To be fair, Warren is hardly the only example of the Obama administration’s assault on the Rule of Law in favor of the arbitrary rule of government experts. In fact, the entire progressive movement is based on discarding the separation of powers at the core of the U.S. Constitution in favor of empowering the Administrative State. Progressive movement founder President Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1891: “Give us administrative elasticity and discretion, free us from the idea that checks and balances are to be carried down through all stages of organization.”
Freeing themselves from the “checks and balances” supplied in the Constitution is exactly what the Obama administration has been doing since day one. Just consider the “outrageous and illegal” takeover of Chrysler, the shakedown of BP, the assertion that President Obama can rewrite our nation’s immigration laws simply by not enforcing them, the refusal to enforce anti-voting fraud laws, and Obamacare czar Kathleen Sebelius’ threats insurance companies. The pattern is clear: this administration audaciously believes that their experts are always right and that the Constitution is just a barrier to their effective administration of the country. This is not what our Founders intended. This must be stopped.
For more from The Heritage Foundation, visit their website at: http://www.heritage.org.
Japan issues Europe travel alert, joining US
Japan on Monday issued a travel alert for visitors to Europe, reflecting widening concerns over terror strikes in Europe by militants trained in Pakistan, some of them possibly European citizens.
Tokyo’s alert followed a similar one from the United States on Sunday, which drew support from the United Kingdom and France. The UK raised its terror warning to “high” for its nationals in France and Germany after the US announcement. But Germany has said it sees no danger of imminent terror attacks, and German intelligence is skeptical of the warnings, reports Agence-France Presse today.
Pink tips: How to prevent breast cancer
During this breast cancer Awareness Month or the pink month, we offer the following for those who are interested in knowing some tips on how to really prevent breast cancer. Remember, breast cancer in many cases is preventable – preventing it in the first place is preferable over being diagnosed through screening beginning at age 40, then having to be subjected to traditional chemotherapy and radiation once the disease develops.
Pioneer of In Vitro Fertilization Wins Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded this year to Robert G. Edwards, an English biologist who, with a physician colleague, Patrick Steptoe, developed the in vitro fertilization procedure for treating human infertility.
Obama Advocates Longer School Year, Higher Teacher Pay
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama said Monday that he would like to extend the school year and raise teacher pay to help improve the U.S. education system.
Mr. Obama, in an interview on NBC’s “Today,” said students around the world usually go to school for a month longer each year than children in the U.S. Such a difference, he said, gives those students an advantage and gives their countries an economic edge.
Mr. Obama said part of the economic challenge is related to “whether we can do something about these schools.”
Southwest Airlines To Buy Discount Rival AirTran
Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) on Monday announced plans to buy discount rival AirTran Holdings Inc. (AAI) for $1.4 billion in a move that would revive its growth strategy and intensify pressure on network carriers on the U.S. East Coast.
The agreed plan promises to be transformative for Southwest, the nation’s largest domestic carrier, by taking it into Atlanta, smaller cities and international destinations for the first time.
“This absolutely changes things,” said Gary Kelly, Southwest’s chairman and chief executive officer on a call with analysts.
The definitive agreement marks the first combination between major U.S. low-cost carriers and is only the second large acquisition by Southwest after it failed to capture Frontier out of bankruptcy protection last year.
Implications of cyber attack affect all
An apparent cyber attack on Iran shows the vulnerability of critical national infrastructure systems to attack through widely used computer programs and imported technology.
US Stocks Climb Broadly, Led By Industrials; DJIA Up 168
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–U.S. stocks rallied Friday, capping their fourth-straight positive week with a broad climb as readings on housing and capital spending by businesses pointed toward a stabilizing economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 168 points, or 1.6%, to 10830, in recent trading. All 30 of the measure’s components rose, led by a 3.7% rise in Alcoa, a 3.6% advance in Caterpillar and a 2.9% climb in Boeing. The Dow is up more than 2% for the week, on track to extend its winning streak to a fourth week. In addition, it is up 8.2% for the month, on pace for its biggest September gain since 1939.
The Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.9% to 2372. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 1.9% to 1146, with all sectors in positive territory. The industrial and consumer-discretionary sectors led the gains.
Facebook CEO unveils education foundation
As expected, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled today the creation of “Startup: Education” a charitable foundation to “improve educational opportunities for young people in America.” Its first project, to be announced later today on The Oprah Winfrey Show, is a $100 million donation to support the public school system in the troubled city of Newark, N.J.
Will my company health insurance be taxable next year?
My company pays $1,200 per month for my health care benefits. I was told that this will be real income and taxed as such in 2011. Is this true?
Since the health care reform bill was enacted this question has come up often. In fact, the rumor that your health insurance will now be taxable is not true.
It is true that beginning next year employers will report the amount that they pay for your health insurance on your W-2. Employer-paid health insurance will be a line item, just like other line items you may be familiar with such as the amount you contribute to your 401(k). However this amount will not be included in taxable income. The figure is there for reporting purposes only to the IRS.
So rest easy, your will not be taxed on your company-paid health insurance.
The recession is over! So where’s the party?
WASHINGTON — It turns out the recession ended more than a year ago.
Feeling better now?
The panel that determines the timing of recessions concluded Monday that this one ended — technically, anyway — in June 2009, and lasted 18 months. The duration makes it the longest since World War II.
Disappointed Supporters Question Obama
WASHINGTON — It was billed as “Investing In America,” a live televised conversation between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees on the state of the economy, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check.
Stocks surge as NBER announces recession ended in June 2009. FOMC gathers Tuesday.
Wall Street seesawed through a choppy summer on concerns that the U.S. economy could be slipping toward a double-dip recession, but the National Bureau of Economic Research has good news: the last recession ended 15 months ago.
