Current Events Archives - Page 2 of 10

Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

Rolling Stone: “The federal government has made it easier than ever to borrow money for higher education – saddling a generation with crushing debts and inflating a bubble that could bring down the economy. . . . But the dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal – the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008. . . . Tuition costs at public and private colleges were, are and have been rising faster than just about anything in American society – health care, energy, even housing. Between 1950 and 1970, sending a kid to a public university cost about four percent of an American family’s annual income. Forty years later, in 2010, it accounted for 11 percent. Moody’s released statistics showing tuition and fees rising 300 percent versus the Consumer Price Index between 1990 and 2011.”

What We Lose if We Give Up Privacy

Wall St. Journal: “An entrenched surveillance state will change and distort the balance that allows free government to function successfully. Broad and intrusive surveillance will, definitively, put government in charge. But a republic only works . . . if public officials know that they—and the government itself—answer to the citizens. It doesn’t work, and is distorted, if the citizens must answer to the government. And that will happen more and more if the government knows—and you know—that the government has something, or some things, on you. ‘The bad thing is you no longer have the one thing we’re supposed to have as Americans living in a self-governing republic,’ . . . . ‘The people we elect are not your bosses, they are responsible to us.’ They must answer to us. But if they increasingly control our privacy, ‘suddenly they’re in charge if they know what you’re thinking‘.”

Scottsdale’s Rural/Metro Files Bankruptcy Petition in Delaware

Rural/Metro Corp., a Scottsdale-based company that provides fire and ambulance services for hire in 21 states, filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Lenders will loan the company $75 million and it will get additional cash of $135 million during its reorganization. Rural/Metro was acquired by Warburg Pincus for approximately $438 million in 2011.

New Health Care Ruling May Not Change Tide

azcentral.com: The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of some provisions of the “Affordable Care Act” (Obamacare). At this point, however, an article in azcentral.com explains why analysts expect that the ruling will not change the tide that will cause more employees in Arizona to pay more fees for health care. Employers are choosing plans that force employees to front the first $1000 to $10,000 of their health care before their coverage begins. As a result, an increasingly well-researched population of patients will use the internet to pick and choose which procedures they can afford just as they might pick from a cafeteria line. This seems to set up patients and doctors alike for failure. Lawyers, however, should become busier drafting waivers and releases to ensure doctors are able to perform the services patients request in these isolated circumstances.

Large Sized Sugary Drinks To Be Banned In New York

New York Times: “New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity.

The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March.

The measure would not apply to diet sodas, fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages; it would not extend to beverages sold in grocery or convenience stores.”