NO TIME TO DIE: The Official James Bond Podcast Trailer

Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission Meeting - Sept. 14, 2021

U.S. Consumer Price Growth Cools

NEW: TIFs and Opportunity Zones: Everything you wanted to know (but were afraid to ask)

Got this from Greg Leroy

Here's an extract:

Opportunity Zones: An FAQ

And speaking of programs supposedly meant to help struggling, disinvested communities, we turn now to Opportunity Zones (OZs). Created as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, OZs allow wealthy investors to reduce their capital gains tax liability by investing in real estate (condos or office space), businesses (manufacturing, mining) or other enterprises.

Today, there are 8,762 OZs located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories. Nearly all of Puerto Rico is an Opportunity Zone. Rather than help economically depressed areas, we’ve seen the program simply direct investments to already gentrifying communities, be used for upscale, luxury development or to simply increase profits for projects long in the works.

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Forward to a friend or read online: https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/news/releases/tifs-and-opportunity-zones-everything-you-wanted-know-were-afraid-ask

Two new FAQs seek to demystify two widely used economic development tools

TIFs and Opportunity Zones: Everything you wanted to know (but were afraid to ask)

Here at Good Jobs First, we get loads of questions about Tax Increment Financing, a widely used yet poorly understood economic development subsidy. How it works can sound complicated, yet the developers who champion it make it seem so simple – look at this free-lunch way to grow our local economy and create jobs! The reality in no way resembles that oft-repeated narrative.

 

With that in mind, we tried to answer our most-asked TIF questions.

 

We start with basic questions – such as, What is tax increment financing? Who has the power to create TIFs? Where does the money go? – and then take you through the ins and outs of TIF bonds, reporting and accountability, and our recommendations for reforms to make TIF more effective.

We’re hopeful this guide, laid out in four parts, helps demystify TIF, so you can ask the probing questions about true costs and benefits. And more importantly, what must change so economic development programs like TIF actually do what they were originally intended to do, and that’s help boost struggling, historically disinvested communities.  

 

Reach out if we’re missing anything.

 

Opportunity Zones: An FAQ

And speaking of programs supposedly meant to help struggling, disinvested communities, we turn now to Opportunity Zones (OZs). Created as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, OZs allow wealthy investors to reduce their capital gains tax liability by investing in real estate (condos or office space), businesses (manufacturing, mining) or other enterprises.

Today, there are 8,762 OZs located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories. Nearly all of Puerto Rico is an Opportunity Zone. Rather than help economically depressed areas, we’ve seen the program simply direct investments to already gentrifying communities, be used for upscale, luxury development or to simply increase profits for projects long in the works.

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We hope our new OZ FAQs can help you understand the basics of this program and give you ideas for telling stories about them in your backyard. We also have tons of other OZ resources here.

Again, reach out if we missed anything.

Until next time.

USA FACTS: How much did the US spend on aid to Afghanistan?

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security President George W. Bush created the Office of Homeland Security to oversee internal anti-terrorism efforts days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It soon became the cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS), consolidating border security, emergency preparedness, cybersecurity, and countermeasures against chemical, biological, and nuclear threats. Twenty years after the attacks, what has this department come to regulate and encompass? Get the answers at USAFacts, including: DHS has an $87 billion budget, 89% higher than its initial 2003 budget when accounting for inflation.   The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the largest DHS agency. Allocated $26.5 billion in 2021, FEMA has 30% of the department's budget, up from 17% in 2003. The agency had 13,400 full-time equivalent employees in 2021.   Customs and Border Protection (CBP), responsible for border control at airports, land borders, and more, is the second-largest DHS agency by budget. It employed 62,600 people as of this year. CBP is 19% or $16.2 billion of the 2021 budget. Immigration inspection and the Border Patrol were previously under the Treasury Department. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received $8.3 billion in the 2021 DHS budget, up from its allotment of $4.8 billion in 2003. ICE employed 21,300 in 2021 and is responsible for investigating non-citizen individuals for removal and running transnational criminal investigations. For more, scroll through the visuals on how DHS has allocated budgets for 20 years. How much did the US spend in aid to Afghanistan?  Since 2001, Afghanistan has received more US foreign aid than any other nation. This aid consists of two categories: military spending and economic assistance. Get a deeper understanding of this aid with metrics from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department.   Military aid primarily benefits government armed forces and does not include the cost of US combat operations. Military spending was 70% of total foreign aid ($91.4 billion) to Afghanistan since 2001. The US spent $3.7 billion on Afghanistan military aid in 2019, the most of any country that year.   According to USAID, $3.64 billion of military assistance went to the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund. The rest was for defense operations and maintenance, counter-drug activities, and international military education and training.   In 2019, the US spent $1.2 billion on economic assistance to Afghanistan. These programs include international narcotics control and law enforcement, plus famine assistance. Economic aid to Afghanistan peaked in 2010 at $4.8 billion. Learn more about aid during America's longest war. For extra context, compare how these numbers have fluctuated with troop levels in Afghanistan. Americans killed in terrorist attacks since 9/11 The US made several policy changes to combat terrorism following the 9/11 attacks, as seen in the reports above. But there have been additional terror attacks on Americans in the US and beyond in the two decades since then. Learn more with data and definitions on attacks at USAFacts.  Since 2001, there have been 546 terrorism attacks on US soil. The number of attacks in the US rose from 20 in 2013 to as high as 73 in 2018.    On 9/11, 2,908 people were killed in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Penn. Since that day, 549 Americans have died in terrorist attacks. In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, 51 people died in terrorist attacks within the US.   Dive deeper with USAFacts + Flipboard These reports are part of Flipboard's Understanding the Many Legacies of 9/11. See the collections of remembrances and examinations from authors, photographers, and journalists here. USAFacts is proud to partner with Flipboard to help bring government data to Americans' daily news consumption.     One last fact Visas for Afghans have dropped 35% since 2014. The fewest visas for Afghans are granted for family-sponsored relocation and employment. Both have pathways to qualify for permanent residence certified by a green card.

Press Release from U.S. Census: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S.: 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2021   

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2020

September 14, 2021

Release Number CB21-151

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/income-poverty-health-insurance-coverage.html

SEPT. 14, 2021 — The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that median household income in 2020 decreased 2.9% between 2019 and 2020, and the official poverty rate increased 1.0 percentage point. Meanwhile the percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2020 was 91.4%. An estimated 8.6% of people, or 28.0 million, did not have health insurance at any point during 2020, according to the 2021 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC).

Median household income was $67,521 in 2020, a decrease of 2.9% from the 2019 median of $69,560. This is the first statistically significant decline in median household income since 2011.

> Between 2019 and 2020, the real median earnings of all workers decreased by 1.2%, while the real median earnings of full-time, year-round workers increased 6.9%. The total number of people with earnings decreased by about 3.0 million, while the number of full-time, year-round workers decreased by approximately 13.7 million.

> The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4%, up 1.0 percentage point from 2019. This is the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019.

Private health insurance coverage continued to be more prevalent than public coverage, at 66.5% and 34.8%, respectively. Some people may have more than one coverage type during the calendar year. Of the subtypes of health insurance, employment-based insurance was the most common subtype of health insurance, covering 54.4% of the population for some or all of the calendar year.

These findings are contained in two Census Bureau reports: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020 and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2020.

For consistency with past reports, the income and poverty estimates in the Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020 report are based on the concept of money income, which is pretax and does not include stimulus payments and tax credits. An appendix to the income and poverty report provides post-tax estimates of median household income and income inequality metrics that do reflect the stimulus payments.

>> Another Census Bureau report, The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2020, was also released today. The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rate in 2020 was 9.1%. This was 2.6 percentage points lower than the 2019 SPM rate. The SPM estimates reflect post-tax income that include stimulus payments. The SPM provides an alternative way of measuring poverty in the United States and serves as an additional indicator of economic well-being. The Census Bureau has published poverty estimates using the SPM annually since 2011 in collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

All three reports are based on data from the CPS ASEC.

> The Current Population Survey (CPS), sponsored jointly by the Census Bureau and BLS, is conducted every month and is the primary source of labor force statistics for the U.S. population. It is used to calculate monthly unemployment rate estimates. Supplements are added in most months.

> The CPS ASEC – conducted in February, March and April – is designed to give annual, national estimates of income, poverty and health insurance numbers and rates. It collects information about income and health insurance coverage during the prior calendar year. 

The Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on the CPS ASEC

The Census Bureau administers the CPS ASEC each year between February and April by telephone and in-person interviews, with the majority of data collected in March. In 2020, data collection faced extraordinary circumstances due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as the Census Bureau suspended in-person interviews and closed both telephone contact centers. The response rate for the CPS basic household survey was 73% in March 2020, about 10 percentage points lower than preceding months and the same period in 2019, which were regularly above 80%.

During collection of the 2021 CPS ASEC, for the safety of both interviewers and respondents, in-person interviews were only conducted when telephone interviews could not be done. In March 2021, the response rate for the CPS basic household survey improved to about 76%, though not quite returning to the prepandemic trend. While the response rate improved, it is important to examine how respondents differ from nonrespondents, as this difference could affect income and poverty estimates. Using administrative data, Census Bureau researchers have documented that the nonrespondents in both 2020 and 2021 are less similar to respondents than in earlier years. Of particular interest, for the estimates in this report, are the differences in median income and educational attainment, indicating that respondents in 2020 and 2021 had relatively higher income and were more educated than nonrespondents.

For more details on how these sample differences and the associated nonresponse bias impact income and official poverty estimates, refer to our Research Matters blog.

Income

• Median household income was $67,521 in 2020, a decrease of 2.9% from the 2019 median of $69,560.
• The 2020 real median income of family households and nonfamily households decreased 3.2% and 3.1% from their respective 2019 estimates. The difference between the 2019 to 2020 percent changes in median income for family and nonfamily households was not statistically significant.
  
• Real median household incomes decreased 3.2% in the Midwest and 2.3% in the South and the West from their 2019 medians. The change for the Northeast was not statistically significant. The differences between the 2019 to 2020 percent changes in median household income among all regions were not statistically significant.
  
• The Gini index is a statistical mea­sure of income inequality ranging from 0.0 to 1.0. It measures the amount that any two incomes dif­fer, on average, relative to mean income. It is an indicator of how far apart or “spread out” incomes are from one another. A value of 0.0 represents perfect equality, and a value of 1.0 indi­cates total inequality. The money income Gini index was 0.489 in 2020, not statistically different from 2019.
  

Post-tax Income and Inequality Estimates

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed legislation to aid individuals and families. This legislation included the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act); the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSA Act); and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).

The CARES and CRRSA Acts provided households with additional income in the form of stimulus payments and tax credits. Given the large scale of the stimulus payments, the income and poverty report includes an appendix which compares household median income and inequality measures based on post-tax income.

• Post-tax, real median household income increased 4.0% between 2019 and 2020.
  
• The Gini index based on post-tax income fell 3.1% from .442 in 2019 to .428 in 2020.
  

Race and Hispanic Origin

Race data refer to people reporting a single race only. Hispanics can be of any race.

• The 2020 real median incomes of non-Hispanic White, Asian and Hispanic households decreased from their 2019 medians, while the change for Black households was not statistically different. Between 2019 and 2020, median incomes declined 2.7% for non-Hispanic White, 4.5% for Asian, and 2.6% for Hispanic households. However, the differences between the 2019 to 2020 percent changes in median household income among the race groups were not statistically significant.

Earnings

• In 2020, real median earnings of those who worked full-time, year-round increased 6.9% from their 2019 estimate. Median earnings of men ($61,417) and women ($50,982) who worked full-time, year-round increased by 5.6% and 6.5%, respectively. The differences between the 2019 to 2020 percent changes in median earnings among all full-time, year-round workers; male full-time, year-round workers; and female full-time, year-round workers were not statistically significant.
• The real median earnings of all workers age 15 and over with earnings decreased 1.2% between 2019 and 2020, from $42,065 to $41,535.
  
• The total number of those who worked full-time, year-round declined by 13.7 million between 2019 and 2020. This was the largest year-to-year decline in the number of full-time, year-round workers since 1967, the first year for which there is comparable data. The number of female full-time, year-round workers decreased by about 6.2 million, while the decrease for their male counterparts was approximately 7.5 million.
  

Poverty

• As defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and updated for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, the weighted average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2020 was $26,496. (Refer to <www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-thresholds.html> for the complete set of dollar value thresholds that vary by family size and composition.) (OMB determined the official definition of poverty in Statistical Policy Directive 14).
• The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4%, up 1.0 percentage point from 2019 This is the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines.
  
• In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019.
• Between 2019 and 2020, poverty rates increased for married-couple families and families with a female householder. (In the income and poverty report, families with a female householder with no spouse present are referred to as families with a female householder. Families with a male householder with no spouse present are referred to as families with a male householder.)
  
• The poverty rate for married-couple families increased from 4.0% in 2019 to 4.7% in 2020.
  
• For families with a female householder, the poverty rate increased from 22.2% to 23.4%. The poverty rate for families with a male householder was 11.4% in 2020, not statistically different from 2019.
  

Race and Hispanic Origin

Race data refer to people reporting a single race only. Hispanics can be of any race.

• Between 2019 and 2020, the poverty rate increased for the non-Hispanic White and Hispanic populations.
• Among the non-Hispanic White population, 8.2% were in poverty in 2020, while the Hispanic population had a poverty rate of 17.0%. Among the major racial groups examined in this report, the Black population had the highest poverty rate (19.5%), but did not experience a significant change from 2019. The poverty rate for the Asian population (8.1%) in 2020 was not statistically different from 2019. The 2020 poverty rates for the Asian and non-Hispanic White populations were not statistically different.
  

Age

• Poverty rates for people under the age of 18 increased from 14.4% in 2019 to 16.1% in 2020. Poverty rates also increased for people ages 18 to 64 from 9.4% in 2019 to 10.4% in 2020. The poverty rate for people ages 65 and older was 9.0% in 2020, not statistically different from 2019. 

Supplemental Poverty Measure

The SPM extends the official poverty measure by taking into account many of the government programs designed to assist low-income families and individuals that are not included in the current official poverty measure, such as the stimulus payments enacted as part of economic relief legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additionally, the SPM deducts necessary expenses for critical goods and services from income. Deducted expenses include taxes, childcare, commuting expenses, contributions toward the cost of medical care and health insurance premiums, and child support paid to another household. The SPM permits the examination of the effects of government transfers on poverty estimates. The SPM does not replace the official poverty measure and is not used to determine eligibility for government programs.

While the official poverty measure includes only pretax money income, the SPM adds the value of in-kind benefits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), school lunches, housing assistance, stimulus payments and refundable tax credits.

• The SPM released today shows that in 2020, the overall SPM rate was 9.1%. This was 2.6 percentage points lower than the 2019 SPM rate.
  
• The SPM rate for 2020 was 2.3 percentage points lower than the official poverty rate of 11.4%. This is the first time in the history of the SPM where poverty is lower using the SPM than the official poverty rate.
  
• The 2020 SPM rate of 9.1% was the lowest rate since estimates were initially published for 2009.
• Social Security continued to be the most important antipoverty program, moving 26.5 million individuals out of poverty.
• Unemployment insurance benefits, also expanded during 2020, prevented 5.5 million people from falling into poverty.
• Stimulus payments, enacted as part of economic relief legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved 11.7 million persons out of poverty. For example, not including stimulus payments in resources, the poverty rate for all people would have been 12.7% rather than 9.1%.
• There were 11 states plus the District of Columbia for which SPM rates were higher than official poverty rates, 30 states with lower rates, and 9 states for which the differences were not statistically significant.

Age

• SPM rates were down for all major age categories: children under age 18, adults ages 18 to 64, and adults age 65 and older between 2019 and 2020.

Health Insurance

In previous years, the Census Bureau released estimates of health insurance from two surveys. The CPS ASEC asks people about coverage during the previous calendar year. The American Community Survey (ACS) asks people to report their health insurance coverage at the time of interview. However, this year’s report relies solely on data from the CPS ASEC because of impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 ACS.

• In 2020, 8.6% of people, or 28.0 million, did not have health insurance at any point during the year. The percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2020 was 91.4%.
• In 2020, private health insurance coverage continued to be more prevalent than public coverage at 66.5% and 34.8%, respectively. (Some people may have more than one coverage type during the calendar year.). Of the subtypes of health insurance, employment-based insurance was the most common subtype, covering 54.4% of the population for some or all of the calendar year.
• Between 2018 and 2020, the rate of private health insurance coverage decreased by 0.8 percentage points to 66.5%, driven by a 0.7 percentage-point decline in employment-based coverage to 54.4%.
• Between 2018 and 2020, the rate of public health insurance coverage increased by 0.4 percentage points to 34.8%. In that time, there was a 0.5 percentage-point increase in Medicare coverage. This increase was due to growth in the number of people age 65 and over. The proportion of the population 65 years and older with Medicare coverage decreased between 2018 and 2020 from 93.9% to 93.5%. However, the percentage of the U.S. population 65 years and older increased between 2018 and 2020.
• In 2020, 87.0% of full-time, year-round workers had private insurance coverage, up from 85.1% in 2018. In contrast, those who worked less than full-time, year-round were less likely to be covered by private insurance in 2020 than in 2018 (68.5% in 2018 and 66.7% in 2020).
• More children under the age of 19 in poverty were uninsured in 2020 than in 2018. Uninsured rates for children under the age of 19 in poverty rose 1.6 percentage points to 9.3%.

> Regional estimates are available for income, poverty, SPM and health insurance in each respective report.

> There is also a table showing state-level poverty rates using the supplemental poverty measure.

The CPS ASEC is subject to sampling and nonsampling errors. All comparisons made here and in each respective report have been tested and found to be statistically significant at the 90% confidence level, unless otherwise noted.

Additional information on the source of the data and accuracy of the income, poverty and health insurance estimates is available at

 <https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/techdocs/cpsmar21.pdf>.

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Can Changing Tongue Position Make People More Attractive?

Too much fun on cunning tongues and how a health remedy might not be what it appears.

This post appears courtesy of Undark Magazine.

Tongue Posture Is a Big Business With Little Evidence

Treatments to address improper tongue position have been hyped as a health remedy, but they may be doing more harm than good.

By Christina Szalinski and Undark

The Atlantic

 

Insert "...The idea that tongue position can contribute to health problems is not well-supported by research, but it’s edging towards the mainstream.

Millions of people are watching YouTube videos about how the tongue allegedly influences the face and jaw, and books, videos, websites, and social-media posts say that improper tongue position can contribute to a host of health issues—dental problems, sleep apnea, headaches, neck and back pain, and more. These ideas are especially becoming popular in dentistry—echoed by Colgate and a dental hygienists’ magazine. Some even claim that changing the tongue position can make people more attractive.

Two proposed solutions to help with an allegedly poor tongue posture are becoming more popular, which may be done together or separately.

The first is myofunctional therapy, a series of exercises to strengthen the tongue so that it can rest on the roof of the mouth. Celebrities, including Kourtney Kardashian, are promoting this therapy.

The second is surgery on what some practitioners call a “tongue-tie”—a condition in which the tissue under the tongue, called the frenulum, is supposedly restricted. . .

Despite the limited evidence, myofunctional therapy and tongue-tie surgeries are often promoted as a treatment for the many ailments attributed to poor tongue posture in adults...Many doctors, however, caution against the idea that changing tongue posture is a panacea. . .

To be sure, some patients say that tongue surgery and therapy has been life changing. In an invite-only Facebook group for tongue-tied adults, which has more than 15,000 members, some advocates report improvements in everything from facial composition to migraines, neck tension, anxiety, and even bowel movements. But not everyone has a positive experience . .

And dentists who revise adult tongue-ties can charge up to about $1,500 for the procedure. “I do not want to suggest ulterior motives,” Kezirian wrote in an email, “but of course treatment is offered to patients that pay for services, often on their own because these treatments are not covered by medical insurance.”