In this week's address, the President addressed critical pieces of
national security business that remained unfinished when the Senate left
town. This Sunday at midnight, key tools used to protect against
terrorist threats are set to expire.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
Catching Up with The Curator: The Presidential Portrait of John F. Kennedy
Go Inside the White House with Curator, Bill Allman, as he discusses the inspiration behind the presidential portrait of the 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Lawsuit Heating Up Over Hologram Technology
Hologram USA is suing a company called Pulse that claims the basis for hologram technology is in the public domain.
Roundtable on Food Safety
Richard Williams with the Mercatus Center and former FDA Director Michael Jacobson discuss the Obama administration’s move to ban trans fats in foods, recent foodborne illness outbreaks, and food labeling standards for GMOs.
Source: C-Span
Broadband Internet Access
National Journal Technology Correspondent Brendan Sasso talked about FCC Chair Tom Wheeler’s proposal to expand broadband
internet access through the FCC’s Lifeline program, which provides
telephone service to low-income Americans.
Source: C-Span
Saudi Arabia's New Leadership
Middle East scholars and energy experts talked about the implications of
recent changes in Saudi Arabia’s leadership on the global energy market
and regional stability.
Source: C-Span
Reporter Charnice Milton Mourned in Southeast D.C.
By Derrick Ward and Andrea Swalec
From The G-Man offers its condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Charnice Milton. May she forever rest in peace.
U.S. Officially Removes Cuba From State Sponsors of Terrorism List
The U.S. has formally dropped Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"The rescission of Cuba's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement.
"While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba's policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation."
Now that Cuba is off the list there are only three countries remaining: Iran, Sudan and Syria.
Source: NBC News
Full article available here: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-officially-removes-cuba-state-sponsor-terrorism-list-n366621
Second Estimate of GDP for the First Quarter of 2015
Statement on the Second Estimate of GDP for the First Quarter of 2015
WASHINGTON, DC – Jason
Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, issued the
following statement today on the second estimate of GDP for the
first quarter of 2015. You can view the statement HERE.
Posted by Jason Furman on May 29, 2015 at 9:30 AM EST
Today’s
downward revision to GDP growth was entirely accounted for by revisions
to inventory investment and net exports, with other changes being small
and neutral on balance. The first-quarter slowdown was the result of
harsh winter weather, tepid foreign demand, and consumers saving the
windfall from lower oil prices. The combination of personal consumption
and fixed investment, the most stable components of GDP, has grown 3.4
percent over the past four quarters. This solid long-term economic trend
complements the robust pace of job growth and unemployment reduction
over the last year. The President is committed to further strengthening
these positive trends by opening our exports to new markets with new high-standards free trade agreements that create opportunities for the middle class, expanding investments in infrastructure, and ensuring the sequester does not return in the next fiscal year as outlined in the President’s FY2016 Budget.
FIVE KEY POINTS IN TODAY’S REPORT FROM THE BUREAU OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
- Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.7 percent at an annual rate in the first quarter of 2015, according to the second estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The decline follows an increase of 3.6 percent at an annual rate during the second half of 2014. First-quarter growth was likely affected by a number of factors including especially harsh winter weather in the first quarter (see point 3) and a spike in personal saving (see point 4). A decline in the trade balance was another major contributor, partially reflecting the continued drag on U.S. exports from the slowdown in foreign growth. Indeed, net exports subtracted nearly 2 full percentage points from quarterly GDP growth. Structures investment subtracted about 0.7 percentage point from GDP, likely reflecting reduced oil mining in the wake of last year’s decline in oil prices.
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Real
private domestic final purchases (PDFP) — the sum of consumption and
fixed investment — rose 1.2 percent at an annual rate in the first
quarter, a faster pace than overall GDP. Real
PDFP growth is generally a more stable and forward-looking indicator
than real GDP, as it excludes volatile components like inventories, net
exports, and government spending. PDFP is a better predictor of next-quarter GDP than GDP itself. The year-over-year growth rate of PDFP rose this quarter to 3.4 percent.
The entire downward revision to first-quarter GDP can be accounted for
by downward revisions to two especially volatile components of economic
output: inventory investment and net exports. Inventories
and net exports subtracted a combined 1.1 percentage points from
annualized GDP growth relative to the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ first
estimate. At the same time, business investment added 0.2 percentage
point more than originally estimated. Other small revisions to the
contributions of personal consumption expenditures and residential
investment offset one another.
- Over the past decade, first-quarter GDP growth has averaged a considerably slower pace than the other three quarters. Economists have debated whether this gap reflects a problem with the algorithms used to seasonally adjust GDP data (“residual seasonality”), especially harsh winter weather in recent years, or noise. The seasonal adjustment process should remove the growth effects of “normal” winter weather, but particularly harsh winters will still reduce seasonally adjusted output. And weather in the first quarter was especially harsh: Q1 was only the fourth quarter in 60 years on record with three or more snowstorms sufficiently severe to be rated by the National Climatic Data Center’s Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS). The historical relationship between weather and first-quarter growth suggests that weather may have reduced annualized growth by about a full percentage point this quarter, and by about 0.6 percentage point on average over the past decade. That effect accounts for much, but not all, of first-quarter underperformance since 2005.
The
debate so far over the cause of first-quarter underperformance has
tended to treat residual seasonality and weather effects as analytically
distinct explanations. However, to the extent that worsening winter
weather is part of a long-term trend rather than a random occurrence,
changing weather patterns may be related to residual seasonality. A
seasonal adjustment algorithm should adjust for effects of normal
weather within a particular quarter—and to the extent that global
climate change leads to a new “normal” for weather, seasonal adjustments
will eventually catch up. Indeed, first-quarter underperformance
(defined as the difference between GDP growth in the first-quarter and
the rest of the year) has tended to increase over the past ten years, in
parallel with intensifying winter weather.
- Consumers have so far saved most of their windfall gains from last year’s energy price decline. Since June, national average gasoline prices have fallen more than $1 per gallon, providing the equivalent of about a $700 tax cut per household. Looking over the past year, energy consumption as a share of disposable personal income has declined by 1.1 percentage points, leaving more space in consumer checkbooks to save and spend. To date, however, households appear to have put most of those gains in the bank, as the personal saving rate has risen by 0.6 percentage point over the past four quarters. Just over the last quarter, the personal saving rate rose 0.8 percentage point—an unusually large increase that is at the 88th percentile of historic increases.
Historically
the personal saving rate has tended to revert to its short-term mean;
temporary spikes like this one do not usually persist. If the saving
rate returns to normal levels with continued growth in real disposable
personal income and no major resurgence in gasoline prices, personal
consumption growth is likely to increase. If the saving rate returns to
its previous level by the end of 2015, consumer spending would grow at a
nearly 4 percent annual rate for the final three quarters of the year.
If the saving rate remains constant at the new higher level, consumer
spending growth would also pick up somewhat to a 2.5 percent annual rate
for the final three quarters of the year. Given the current forecasts
for growth in disposable personal income, the saving rate would have to
rise by another 0.4 percentage point by the end of the year to continue
the 1.8 percentage point annualized growth rate in Q1. All told, the
difference between a mean reverting saving rate and a rising saving rate
is about 0.8 percentage point for GDP growth for the four quarters of
2015.
- Gross domestic income (GDI)—an alternate indicator of economic output that would equal GDP absent measurement error—grew an estimated 1.4 percent at an annual rate in the first quarter, faster than estimated GDP. Over the last four quarters, real GDI grew 3.6 percent, as compared with the 2.7 percent growth in real GDP over that period. GDP gauges overall activity by measuring the final expenditures of households, businesses, governments, and trading partners in a given time period, while GDI measures the incomes generated during that production process. If we hadperfect information, the two measures would equal one another: they are conceptually identical as a measure of economic activity. But because the data underlying each are gathered from different sources, they often differ substantially in practice due to measurement error. This quarter, although GDP fell at a 0.7 percent annualized rate, GDI rose at a 1.4 percent annualized rate. This 2.1 percentage point gap reflects the inherent uncertainty underlying measures of aggregate output, and underscores the importance of focusing on multiple data sources and longer term trends. Some economists track the average of the two measures as a more stable gauge of activity, a measure BEA will start reporting in July. The average of GDP and GDI rose 0.3 percent at an annual rate in the first quarter. While combining information from GDP and GDI can help reduce measurement error about what actually happened in the current period, PDFP (see point 1) may provide a better indication of growth in future periods because it omits noisy economic developments.
As the Administration stresses every quarter, GDP figures can be volatile and are subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one single report, and it is informative to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
New York State Gun Violence Awareness Month Begins June 1
Elected Officials, Clergy, Activists and Community Leaders Converge to Address Increase in Violence
New York, NY – (May 26, 2015) –For the third year Gun Violence Awareness Month (GVAM)
will take place
across New York during the month of June, highlighted by anti-violence
events and advocacy efforts, and by proclamations from Mayors and County
Executives, community leaders, clergy and activists, who will mark
GVAM in their respective communities with heightened awareness and activities.
On June 10, 2015,
thousands of New Yorkers across the state will wear orange, the
universal theme color
of peace that has been adopted to remember the lives lost and to
amplify the clarion call for gun violence prevention as New York heads
into the summer months. Elected officials, businesses, unions, student
organizations and community groups will wear orange,
and there will be events across the city and state.
Other highlights for
GVAM will include PSA’s from city and state leaders, a social
media campaign, endorsement from Mayors at their annual June conference
in San Francisco, “Sermon Sundays” where ecumenical religious leaders,
including preachers, rabbis and Imams across
New York State have signed on to devote one Saturday or Sunday
in their House of Worship to anti-violence, and proclamations,
resolutions and letters of support from a range of elected officials.
State Co-Chair of
GVAM is Byron Brown the Mayor of Buffalo. Also uniting around the
effort are US Congressional leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Charles B. Rangel,
Carolyn Maloney; Members of the NYS Black Puerto Rican Hispanic and
Asian Legislative Caucus; NYS Assemblyman Brian
Kavanagh, Co-Chair of NYLGVP and Chair of ASLGVP; NYS Assemblywoman
Michelle Shimel, Co-Chair of NYLGVP; Byron Brown, Mayor of Buffalo,
Stephanie Miner, Mayor of Syracuse; Lovely Warren, Mayor of Rochester;
Kathy Sheehan, Mayor of Albany; Mike Spano, Mayor
of Yonkers; Noam Bramson, Mayor of New Rochelle; Earnest Davis, Mayor
of Mount Vernon; Scott Stringer, NYC Comptroller; Letitia James, NYC
Public Advocate; Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President; Eric Adams,
Brooklyn Borough President; Melinda Katz, Queens
Borough President; Ruben Diaz Jr, Bronx Borough President; Jumaane
Williams, NYC Councilmember; Robert Cornegy, NYC Councilmember; Ydanis
Rodriguez, NYC Councilmember; Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone;
Tamika D. Mallory, Chair of the New York Justice
League, Erica Ford, LifeCamp Inc./I love My Life.
New
York State is the only state in the nation to dedicate and entire month
to the issue of gun violence
prevention and awareness. In 2013 the first resolution unanimously
passed the New York State Legislature naming June Gun Violence Awareness
Month as part of a five year push to reduce gun violence across the
State. The resolution was sponsored in the Assembly
by former State Assemblyman Karim Camara and in the Senate by State
Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson. Similar resolutions and proclamations
were issued in every major city in New York State, including New York
City. Highlights from last year’s
GVAM included, a public service announcement done by New York
City First Lady Chirlane McCray and New York City Councilman Jumaane
Williams, Co-Chair of the New York City Council Gun Violence Task Force.
Events in June will include: Everytown for Gun Safety June 2nd #WearingOrange; Mother’s in Charge, Inc.
June 6th National Rally; National ASK Day on June 21st;
and many other marches, town hall meetings, youth engagement
activities, gun buy backs, public service announcements and social media
campaigns. For more information on the month’s activities or to get
involved, please visit: www.gunviolenceawarenessmonth.
Long Term Care and the Nursing Home Industry
Advocate Says a ‘Dangerous Trend’ Will Force Alzheimer’s and Dementia Residents into Life-Threatening Situations
Jack Halpern is the CEO of the New York City-based "My Elder Advocate, LLC". The organization provides advocacy services and helps seniors with issues such as eviction prevention, nursing home or assisted living placement and long term care planning.
In March, Mr. Halpern was showcased in the episode "Home Health Aides from Hell", which will be the focus of discussion for members of the New York State Standing Committee on Aging during its next legislative session, as confirmed by Senator Joseph Addabbo, Jr., who serves on the committee.
Mr. Halpern recently asked The G-Man Interviews to meet with him to discuss what he described as a dangerous trend – in New York nursing homes and those in other states – that will lead to the evictions or deaths of Alzheimer’s and dementia residents who need and rely on long term care.
The interview was conducted on May 22nd at My Elder Advocate’s Brooklyn office.
Information pertaining to this episode is available through the following links:
My Elder Advocate, LLC.
http://www.myelderadvocate.com/home
CBS News report
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/medicare-fraud-allegations-national-nursing-home-chain-accused-of-billing-for-excess-care/
New York Times report
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/business/as-nursing-homes-chase-lucrative-patients-quality-of-care-is-said-to-lag.html?smprod&_r=1
New York Times article on Excellent Home Care and Extended Home Care
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/nyregion/reinventing-long-term-care-and-endorsing-firms-accused-of-fraud.html?_r=0
Village Voice article on Howard Fensterman and Excellent Home Care
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2010/10/the-hasidic-looting-of-new-yorks-home-health-care-456.html
In March, Mr. Halpern was showcased in the episode "Home Health Aides from Hell", which will be the focus of discussion for members of the New York State Standing Committee on Aging during its next legislative session, as confirmed by Senator Joseph Addabbo, Jr., who serves on the committee.
Mr. Halpern recently asked The G-Man Interviews to meet with him to discuss what he described as a dangerous trend – in New York nursing homes and those in other states – that will lead to the evictions or deaths of Alzheimer’s and dementia residents who need and rely on long term care.
The interview was conducted on May 22nd at My Elder Advocate’s Brooklyn office.
Information pertaining to this episode is available through the following links:
My Elder Advocate, LLC.
http://www.myelderadvocate.com/home
CBS News report
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/medicare-fraud-allegations-national-nursing-home-chain-accused-of-billing-for-excess-care/
New York Times report
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/business/as-nursing-homes-chase-lucrative-patients-quality-of-care-is-said-to-lag.html?smprod&_r=1
New York Times article on Excellent Home Care and Extended Home Care
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/nyregion/reinventing-long-term-care-and-endorsing-firms-accused-of-fraud.html?_r=0
Village Voice article on Howard Fensterman and Excellent Home Care
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2010/10/the-hasidic-looting-of-new-yorks-home-health-care-456.html
Washington Journal: U.S. Strategy Against ISIS
John Bradshaw and Michael Doran talked about the current U.S. strategy in the fight against ISIS* in Syria and Iraq.
* The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), is a militant group that has called
itself the Islamic State.
Rick Santorum Presidential Campaign Announcement
Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) announced his campaign for the 2016
Republican presidential nomination. He talked about his agenda for jobs,
the economy, fighting terrorism, and veterans. After his speech he was
heard mingling with the crowd at Penn United Technologies in Cabot,
Pennsylvania.
EU, Burundi’s Catholic Church Pull Out from Observing Elections
By Clement Manirabarusha
BUJUMBURA (Reuters) – The
European Union and Burundi’s influential Roman Catholic Church on
Thursday pulled out from observing elections in the African country,
saying that next month’s vote cannot be fair because of daily unrest and
a crackdown on media.
More than a month of demonstrations against President
Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term in office has sparked
the biggest political crisis since an ethnically-charged civil war ended
in Burundi in 2005.
Source: Euronews
Full article available here: http://www.euronews.com/newswires/3020163-eu-suspends-election-observer-mission-to-burundi/
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
State Department Daily Briefing
Jeff Rathke responded to reporters' questions on a variety of foreign
affairs topics, including the Middle East peace process and the
closed-door espionage trial of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.
Military Response to Ebola
The highlighted area represents West Africa.
Officials from four Defense Department organizations talked about the
U.S. military response to the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, and
the research it has conducted on the deadly disease. They focused on
their behind-the-scenes work and how those actions halted further spread
of the disease.
Source: C-Span
U.S. Incarceration Rates
Panelists talked about a National Academy of Sciences report on the
origins and effects of growing incarceration rates in the U.S.
Source: C-Span
International Hotspot: Fighting ISIS in Iraq
Iraqi soldiers launch offensive and Shia militia trains volunteers to fight militants.
Arrested Execs Turned FIFA Into 'Criminal Enterprise,' AG Says
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch discusses criminal probe of the world soccer organization.
Mom Recalls Pain of Bullied Transgender Teen Who Committed Suicide
Katharine Prescott's 14-year-old child Kyler, who was born female but
identified as male, committed suicide after online bullying.
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