Much the information for the following article was gleamd from the AP and Forbes.com….
The outlook for universal health care in the golden state does not appear too great at this particular point in time,
and some analysts believe that a failure could set back similar efforts around the whole country for at least several years more, unfortunately.
All in all, a formidable federation of trade Unions, physicians & similiar power brokers are arrayed against the Governors twelve billion annual plan to
make health insurance a requirement. He has threatened to veto the Democrats’ alternative and take his own plan to the ballot.
A faceoff is possible by tomorrow, when the the Democrats plan to put the Governator’s proposal to vote in the Assembly. The goal would be to prove how little support it really has.
Of course, what happens in the California may have major ramifications elsewhere, since it is the countries biggest state in terms of population.
Following the course set by Massachusetts, which passed universal health care into law last year, Schwarzenegger stated his particular plan last January to provide everyone in the Golden State
with health insurance. Nearly seven million people in California, or a staggering 18.5 percent of the people, are uninsured here.
The reason there is so much opposition is because his plan would call for new fees on physicians, hospitals and also employers.
The uninsured would have to to purchase coverage in the same way as you need it in order to be able to drive legally. Meanwhile, the poorest individuals would be subsidized.
The Dems have devised an alternative written up in such a mannor that it needs only a simple majority. It would make employers spend a minimum of 7.5 percent of their payroll on health care,
or instead pay that amount into a state-run pool. That is almost fifty percent of what the governor has himselfproposed, and he has already warned them that he will veto it if necessary.
According to a recent article in the San Jose Mercury News,
it was reported that the current administration is now admitting that the most heavily hyped measure in punishing employers - an offensive against Social Security fraud - will be practially useless in the “fight” against illegal immigration.
The reason for this is that even as Social Security Administration warns employers about phony social security numbers, it is still not allowed to alert the Dept. of Homeland Security. This is the agency that is supposed to hand out penalties and regulate this issue.
California is of course is one of the leading states in terms of undocumented workers.
On top of that, government promises to hold hiring firms accountable for the hiring of illegals could possibly be halted or at least slowed down by a number of other important factors. For example, employers are still not mandated by law to check a new workers’s SSN against a free government database,
thus permitting big holes between when an worker is actually hired to when the warnings are issued, and there is no realistic method at this time to effectively monitor workers
who have been fired. In a plethera of cases, illegals may still jump from position to position without being caught.
What all this really boils down to is that the only real way for the government to actually punish an employer - via fines and/or criminal charges - is if an individual tips them off about possible fraud and then, during the course of the investigation,
authorities find adequate evidence that the Social Security warnings have been ignored.
As far as the upcoming election is concerned, I believe that Hillary has the brains to win if she gets the nomination….but I believe that Guilliani could actually win if he has a real plan to curb illegal immigration. People are fed up with illegal immigration and no one is doing anything about it.
I recently read a report that something like 40% of illegals have some sort of criminal background and many are rapists, murderers and other violent offenders.
And there are nan estimated twelve million illegals in the country and 3 million more walking across the border each and every year. Of course if you fly from California to Oregon expect to be treated like YOUR the criminal at the airport.
Highly respected journalist and author Matt Woolsey of Forbes magazine recently compiled his list of the
priciest real estate markets in the country, and what a sobering list it really is.
Not surprisingly, New York City and LA top the list….. buyers there can expect the cost to be a million dollars or more for a house which could cost 50% less than that in other markets.
LA has just been ridiculous. For instance, in quarter one of 2001, about forty-two percent of the houses purchased there were available at the median earning household. Yet in the first quarter of 2007,
only some three percent of the houses sold there were affordable to those households earning the median income!
This information comes from the National Association of Home Builders as well as Wells Fargo Bank.
Matt pointed out that a decade ago, San Francisco was the only major real estate market that was above a 4.5. But today there are a staggering thirteen. Unfortunately, the more incronguent that prices are with income, the more potential buyers must turn to various credit sources to make up for
the market’s inherent unaffordability. This could realistically signal trouble later on. Just consider the current tightening of credit standards for instance. This may very well create problems for the markets trying to recover from a downturn.
Another contributing factor to a region’s unaffordability is certain local policies which increase the cost of building new houses.
Affordability has much to do with where a market is in its particular growth cycle. For instance 5 years ago Las Vegas was one of the countries’s most affordable cities, because of a flurry of development. Yet now, growth has slowed down enough so that fewer than twenty percent of all house sales last quarter were available to those households at the median income level.
A fascinating tidbit is that since the beginning of the century, Boston house prices have risen 16.7%. Median-income buyers who make up half the buying pool in 2000 now represent only 28% of it. By way of comparision, in Raleigh, North Carolina., house prices have grown by 37% in that span, and the share of median-income earners buying houses has dropped by only three percent.
The rest of top 10 most expensive real estate markets are San Diego, California, Miami, Florida.; Sacramento, California.; Las Vegas, Nevada.; Seattle, Washington.; Boston, Massachusetts & Orlando.
According to An Aug. Sixth editorial written by esteemed journalist Richard Burnett,
it was reported that the real-estate boom and it’s subsequent mass speculation combined with a lot of
”creative” financing that was not good solid accounting are pushing many investors as well as homeowners into bankruptcy.
California is one of the worst hit states. Florida is right up there too.
On a wider level, the sheer quantity of personal bankruptcies nationally is actually below the pace of the first six months of 2005, when Americans
inundated the system with filings in order to avoid the federal law that took effect that October, the pace is roughly back to what it was a decade ago.
B In addition to this, bankruptcy attorneys state that a large number of those nearing insolvency are trapped by huge mortgage debts.
Unfortunately, the victims include vacation-home buyers, condominium investors plus others who attempted to time the real estate market at it’s top. Sadly enouph, they also include
house buyers who overextended themselves by using ARM loans & small down payments to finance their properties. But as the interest rates have dropped,
certain borrowers’ monthly payments have gone up by nearly fifty percent, even while the estimated values of their houses have stagnated or even dropped.
This is certainly a major issue around the whole nation, according to the news story. Should you ever need an attorney may I recommend Ehline Law. They have the best Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorneys available.
According to a recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times newspaper,
it was reported that while maneuvering between lanes of traffic may in fact be very dangerous, individuals may be miledly shocked to discover
that the act of “lane splitting” as it is commonly referred is actually legal in California, making the Golden State the lone state in the union where this is
the case. There are a number of justifications for this act which infuriates so many citizens….
Certain motorcyclists do it simply to escape from traffic jam-ups or to save gas & lower their emissions. Meanwhile some others claim that they are actually helping to lower
congestion or are just keeping their vehicles from overheating.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of these lane-splitters claim that the strip in-between lanes is much more secure than the “sandwich zone” which is in between the bumpers.
In addition, they also claim that they are able to best prevent accidents by lane-splitting.
Certain car drivers who spot a motorcyclist approaching in-between lanes will ease away from the line so as to allow the biker to pass freely.
However, it is claimed that a large number of others, who think that this particular maneuver is not a legal one, react in frustration. Some even tell stories of being trailed or blocked by hostile car drivers.
For their part, certain car-drivers invision the lane-splitters as being too aggressive and reckless, sometimes veering dangerously close to their cars or trucks,
sometimes even clipping a mirror or fender. Because this act is is not technically against the law,
the California Police Department does not actively track it statistically as a factor in accidents.
As a matter of fact, they usually leave the lane-splitters be so long as they do not alter the traffic flow.
Spaeking of the law, if you need a California Personal Injury Attorney you should consider Michael P. Ehline who serves Los Angeles
and the greater los Angeles area. He lives in Marina Del Rey and is dedicated to protecting the citizens of LA, making California a safer place and serving the community in general.
As he says, “Look, I’m a servant of the people, it is a privilege for me to serve you and fight on your behalf.”
According to the respected Associated Press news network,
today the President put his signature on a new bill
which puts a heavier focus on the anti-terrorism home front,
moving more available funds to higher-risk regions of the nation while also substantially increasing the
screening of air & sea cargo.
In a nutshell, it basically mandates screening of all the cargo holds in passenger aircraft within a 3 year period while also setting a 5 year goal
of scanning all holds within container ships for nuclear materials prior to them ever leaving foreign ports of call.
By the way click here for the Best California Cruise Ship Injury Lawyer .In addition to those measures, it elevates the
importance of risk factors regarding which areas recieve federal funds set aside for security purposes. This would mean that
more money for such cities as New York and Washington. It also puts money into a new program to ensure that security
officials at each level could communicate with one another much more easily than they do at this time.
The President praised the Congress for passing this bill, and stated that he would keep on working with them to help guarantee that the various screening provisions are indeed workable and do not step on the toes of commerce
and therefore hurt the nation economically.
This bill fulfills the unimposed recommendations which the Sept. 11 Commission made some 3 years prior following the attacks on the United States mainland via the twin towers. It was passed in the House on a 371-40 vote and 85-8 in the Senate.
GOP members mostly supported this bill, the AP reported.
In addition to these security measures, there are several more provisions in this bill,
including a brand new electronic travel authorization system which is designed to improve security for visitors from nations participating in the visa waiver program.
Tech News World recently ran an interesting story about the internet and how the law is unfolding regarding this medium
and how various laws and regulations tend to generally follow major innovations such as the World Wide Web as societies try to come to grips with how the technology in question can
be best used by the world.
Thus far courts have seen legal subjects which pertain to the World Wide Web covering freedom of speech issues, security breaches, fraud, waste, abuse, intellectual property rights, patent law, privacy issues, telecommunications, copyright infringements, contractual law and even tort reform.
Given the sweeping impact the world wide web has had around the globe, especially since 1992,
it is really not too surprising that the innovations dealing with web technologies are proving to be extremely fertile soil for various relevent new laws, regulations, legal precedents as well as interpretations of existing case law as it stands.
In an article entitled ‘The Internet and the Law: Work in Progress’ it was discussed how
the case of Columbia Pictures Industries v. Justin Bunnell was somewhat groundbreaking in this regard.
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In this case Central District of California Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian ruled that information that is stored in a computer server’s random access memory (RAM)
is “electronically stored information” for purposes of a rule, included in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which is part of a set of civil law procedures that help to standardize the
discovery of electronically stored information. The court ruled that they should start logging certain servers’ RAM dat in addition to producing their logs. This possibly landmark ruling “raises potentially
endless legal and metaphysical questions by opening the door to discovery of data in RAM,” according to Clifford Davidson, an associate in a Los Angeles Law firm office.
In another major case the music industry’s effort through the Library of Congress’s Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) and it’s agents to raise royalty rates to a point that independent webcasters say threatens the viability of web radio as a whole.
The Infoworld News Portal has reported on their website that additional legal defeats have been foethcoming for the rather sneaky
(appropriately named) Sneakwrap Terms. The California court system has decided not to enforce the 1-sided mandatory arbitration clauses. Shortly afterwards came news of a different legal case,
Gatton vs T-Mobile, which may prove to be the largest defeat of all against unjust arbitration clauses. T-Mobile was trying to block class action lawsuits from their customers on various issues
like non-prorated early termination fees as well as handsets locked into using the T-Mobile cell phone service. Under the mandatory arbitration clause and a ban on class-action lawsuits in T-Mobile’s contracts, the firm tried to
claim that these lawsuits should be summarily dismissed by the judge and the customers should have to submit to arbitration.
The California appeals court decided that “the high degree of substantive unconscionability arising from the class action waiver rendered the arbitration procedure unenforceable.”
They also cited a major California Supreme Court decision a couple of years back which basically stated that” … are unconscionable under California law and should not be enforced.”
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This ruling that went against the T-Mobile corporation does carry the possibility of making it much more difficult for all of the vendors to use both arbitration as well as class-action waivers to escape answering for their actions.
Firthermore, another decision by a higher court goes much further than that,
calling into question the core sneakwrap licensing tactic whereby the vendor may edit terms of the “contract” simply by posting changes to their website.
The recent decision by the United states Court of Appeals 9th Circuit in Douglas verses Talk America generally follows the same overall outline as the court in the T-Mobile case, except that it also looked at a wider issue.
