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Bedbug Insurance Helps Businesses Sleep Tight - Fox Business
Like some creepy B-movie sequel, bedbugs returned with a vengeance this summer to many of America's prime tourist destinations, lending new dimension to the term "blood-sucking hotel rates." "The Dallas area is seeing their worst year by far. Most other areas are getting a lot more calls than they did last year," says Jeff White, research entomologist with Bedbug Central, a New Jersey-based bedbug information site.
The Web went buggy last summer when complaints spiked in New York City over the sudden re-emergence of a pest last seen en masse during the Roosevelt administration. Bedbugs took Manhattan, creeping into hotels, apartments and condominiums, college dorms and summer camps. They even shut down Niketown, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret outlets during eradication.
The Web went buggy last summer when complaints spiked in New York City over the sudden re-emergence of a pest last seen en masse during the Roosevelt administration. Bedbugs took Manhattan, creeping into hotels, apartments and condominiums, college dorms and summer camps. They even shut down Niketown, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret outlets during eradication. "We use New York as a barometer for what we think is going to happen across the entire country in the next five to 10 years," says White.
The bugs are definitely bustin' a move far beyond New York's five boroughs. According to a survey released earlier this year by the National Pest Management Association, 1 in 5 Americans has had a bedbug infestation in his or her home or knows someone who has encountered bedbugs at home or in a hotel.
Bedbug Insurance Helps Businesses Sleep Tight - Fox Business
2 North Texans guilty of setting house on fire for insurance money - Fort Worth Star Telegram
Two North Texas men have pleaded guilty to conspiring to obtain money from an insurance company by filing a false claim for a house fire that was arson.
Blaise Hancock, 43, of Arlington, and Clint Allen, 50, of Lewisville entered their pleas Friday just days before their federal trial on the charge was scheduled to start.
Hancock purchased a home in the 1400 block of Rowan Avenue in Dallas in July 2007, using $50,000 that Allen had given him to purchase the residence.
That same month, Hancock obtained insurance from SAFECO Insurance Company in the amount of $811,000 for the home. Three months later, Hancock increased the coverage to $861,000.
2 North Texans guilty of setting house on fire for insurance money - Fort Worth Star Telegram
11th Circuit Strikes Down Obamacare Individual Mandate - Forbes
I am a senior editor at Forbes, covering legal affairs, corporate finance, macroeconomics and the occasional sailing story. I was the Southwest Bureau manager for Forbes in Houston from 1999 to 2003, when I returned home to Connecticut for a Knight fellowship at Yale Law School. Before that I worked for Bloomberg Business News in Houston and the late, great Dallas Times Herald and Houston Post. While I am a Chartered Financial Analyst and have a year of law school under my belt, most of what I know about financial journalism, I learned in Texas.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta today struck down the individual mandate central to Obamacare, setting up the split between federal districts that is considered necessary to advance the question to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 207-page decision, Judge Joel Dubina, a President George H.W. Bush nominee, and Judge Frank Hull, a Clinton nominee, found that Congress exceeded its powers by requiring every adult citizen to buy insurance. Judge Stanley Marcus, nominated to the federal bench by Bush but advanced to the appeals court by Clinton, wrote a lengthy dissent arguing the majority had overstepped its authority by striking down part of a law that Congress had enacted after a thorough investigation of the economic questions surrounding the healthcare market.
Both sides cited U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy at length, perhaps trying out arguments that will be made before the court’s swing vote. While Obamacare in general and the individual mandate in particular are repugnant to many conservatives, so is the idea of unelected judges second-guessing the wisdom of an elected representatives. The 11th Circuit split the baby in this regard, overruling a lower-court judge who struck down the entire law as unconstitutional because the health reform program couldn’t work, economically, without everyone buying insurance. The majority in today’s decision said there were enough holes in the law, from small penalties to noncompliance to a blanket prohibition against using the IRS to enforce it, that the economic argument didn’t make sense.
11th Circuit Strikes Down Obamacare Individual Mandate - Forbes
Local Job Alert: Aug. 8 - Patch.com
Partly sunny with a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the mid 90s. Heat Index readings 100 to 104. West winds 5 to 15 mph.
Run queries. You run searches on everything else, from your high school sweetheart to low-fat recipes, so why not jobs? Enter a query that describes the exact kind of job you're seeking and you may find more resources you wouldn't find otherwise (but be prepared to do some sorting)," according to careerbuilder.com .
7 Fold Management LLC is looking for experienced drivers to assist wheelchair accessible individuals. Clean-up and maintenance of vehicles is required as well as transporting individuals to and from doctor visits. Candidates must be available weekends. Applicants must be at least 21 years old and have reliable transportation. Learn more about this driving opportunity online .
Walmart in Dallas is looking for a Co-Manager with two years of supervisory experience. Candidates should have two years experience with financial accountability. Learn more about this full-time job opening online .
Local Job Alert: Aug. 8 - Patch.com
Mary Kenny: From ‘Dallas’ to debt — American dream fades as money runs out - Irish Independent
Surely one of the most dramatic changes we have seen in recent times has been the image of America, from the land of opportunity where everyone had a chance to grow mega-rich, to a country apparently on the edge of collapsing in its own debt.
That America could go bankrupt and be unable to pay its debts -- triggering a tsunami of economic woes throughout the world -- is an almost unthinkable notion to anyone who grew up in the golden American age that followed the end of World War Two. Yet that was what loomed into view this week as Congress battled over President Obama's proposal to raise the national borrowing limit, or "debt ceiling".
American millionaires like the Guggenheims and the Mellons endowed the greatest art museums in the world, and America often acquired the most highly prized art and artefacts in the world. The Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts had been legends for generations, and the fabulous Kennedys came to be right in the same bracket.
Money and its acquisition was a central theme in American narratives in a brasher, more open way than it had ever been in Europe, where tradition advocated a more discreet approach to fortune. The American way was "if you got it, flaunt it", as illustrated by the stretch limo, a vehicle invented purely for flaunting. And it wasn't just a chimera: Irish emigrants often did well in America, sent vast amounts of remittances back home; in the 1950s and 1960s families also often received parcels from America with glitzy clothes and real 'Yanky' accessories.
Mary Kenny: From 'Dallas' to debt -- American dream fades as money runs out - Irish Independent
North Texas group creates non-profit for service industry workers in need - WFAA
DALLAS - Service with a smile, it's a motto we've all heard. But, for waiters and waitresses who get sick, financial disaster often looms. That could soon change for those in the industry in North Texas.
Like many musicians and artists, Julia Troute makes her money waiting tables. Now, from her East Dallas home, she's also starting a non-profit to benefit others in the arts and service industry, like waitress Kaati Brehm.
Brehm works at the Dragonfly restaurant at Hotel ZaZa while fighting stage IV cervical cancer. "I told my doctor that I wanted to hear the bad news and she said I could be dead in six weeks," she said.
She's beating the odds, but saddled with $15,000 in medical debt. Yet, Brehm is one of the lucky ones. The hotel offers insurance. For many in the service industry, there are no benefits or sick leave.
North Texas group creates non-profit for service industry workers in need - WFAA
BancorpSouth and Federal Home Loan Bank Provide $175000 Grant for Affordable … - PR Newswire (press release)
Tupelo , community coordinator at NDC, works to facilitate the grant funding and manage the homebuyer program. She said NDC has helped approximately 30 families move into their first home since the program's inception.
Tupelo worked to facilitate the funding for the AHP grant, and said BancorpSouth is a proud partner in NDC's efforts to assist local homebuyers in purchasing their first home.
BancorpSouth and Federal Home Loan Bank Provide $175000 Grant for Affordable ... - PR Newswire (press release)
What Health Care Program Should Replace ObamaCare? - Forbes (blog)
Several years before Barack Obama or even Mitt Romney introduced us to the health insurance mandate, Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, gave a speech to the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas about the “perverse” nature of the health payment system. How is it, Thomas asked, that the government gives an unlimited subsidy for health insurance to those who need it least (people with jobs) and to the detriment of those who need it most (people between jobs)? By making health coverage dependant on employer benefits, the third-party group model offers the lowest costs to the highest earners.
Thomas’ speech in 2004 came on the heels of a glimmer of hope in the creation of health savings accounts. With HSAs, people finally were given a way to accumulate some pretax dollars for health spending needs. Of course, Romney and then Obama doubled down on the status quo with the insurance mandate. Decades of America pricing itself out of a health care market accelerated with the all-in bet on more insurance being the panacea. Now it’s either have (more expensive) coverage or be left to face rising out-of-pocket costs.
He wasn’t talking about a new entitlement, but means-tested premium support and a tax credit for high deductible health insurance. Those who wanted a lower deductible could buy it with their after-tax dollars. But the point would be that billions in medical expense liability would be lifted off the backs of Americans for a relatively cheap cost. The horror stories of patients being sent home with six-figure hospital bills would be over. Without the wedge of insurance between patient and provider for less expensive routine services, people would have an incentive to tailor their behavior in favor of preventive care.
It will take nothing less than a new president (or the much longer odds of the election of a filibuster-proof Republican Senate majority) to repeal Obamacare and start over. Or maybe the Supreme Court will throw it out. Then what? Republicans still have to offer a way out of the deeply flawed employer-provided system that undergirds Obama. The idea of untaxed out-of-pocket dollars covering routine expenses and subsidized catastrophic insurance covering large expenditures is the most efficient and equitable model.
What Health Care Program Should Replace ObamaCare? - Forbes (blog)
Lawmakers: Get Lobbyists Out of Windstorm Fight - Texas Tribune
The Senate Business and Commerce Committee with Sen. John Carona (c), R-Dallas, votes to pass out the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) bill to the full Senate on June 22, 2011.
Lawmakers writing one of the most contentious bills of the legislative session say special interests need to butt out of the battle over the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.
The fight over how to overhaul TWIA has become the latest proxy battle between two powerhouse legal lobbying groups, Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association . TLR, which has long and successfully promoted tort reform, wants legislators to limit the number of lawsuits filed against TWIA and the amount of damages claimants can collect. TTLA, which represents plaintiffs' lawyers, wants to preserve the ability of policyholders to sue and to recover money when they have been treated unfairly.
While the high-powered, deep-pocketed lawyers' groups fight using lawmakers as their intermediaries, critics say those who get left out are the coastal residents who stand to be most affected by the TWIA overhaul. Alex Winslow, executive director of the nonprofit citizen advocacy group Texas Watch , said lawmakers' have a duty to set aside the extraneous interests of lobbyists. "They're supposed to be the adults in this process," Winslow said.
Lawmakers: Get Lobbyists Out of Windstorm Fight - Texas Tribune