New digital divide seen for blacks, Hispanics

Today, as mobile technology puts computers in our pockets, Hispanics and blacks are more likely than the general population to access the Web by cellular phones, and they use their phones more often to do more things.

But now some see a new "digital divide" emerging — with Hispanics and blacks being challenged by more, not less, access to technology. It's tough to fill out a job application on a cell phone, for example. Researchers have noticed signs of segregation online that perpetuate divisions in the physical world. And blacks and Hispanics may be using their increased Web access more for entertainment than empowerment.

Fifty-one percent of Hispanics and 46 percent of blacks use their phones to access the Internet, compared with 33 percent of whites, according to a July 2010 Pew poll. Forty-seven percent of Hispanics and 41 percent of blacks use their phones for e-mail, compared with 30 percent of whites. The figures for using social media like Facebook via phone were 36 percent for Hispanics, 33 percent for blacks and 19 percent for whites.

A greater percentage of whites than blacks and Latinos still have broadband access at home, but laptop ownership is now about even for all these groups, after black laptop ownership jumped from 34 percent in 2009 to 51 percent in 2010, according to Pew.

Concerned by the wave of requests for customer data from law enforcement agencies, Google last year set up an online tool showing the frequency of these requests in various countries. In the first half of 2010, it counted more than 4,200 in the United States.

Google is not alone among Internet and telecommunications companies in feeling inundated with requests for information. Verizon told Congress in 2007 that it received some 90,000 such requests each year. And Facebook told Newsweek in 2009 that subpoenas and other orders were arriving at the company at a rate of 10 to 20 a day.

Many Internet companies and consumer advocates say the main law governing communication privacy — enacted in 1986, before cellphone and e-mail use was widespread, and before social networking was even conceived — is outdated, affording more protection to letters in a file cabinet than e-mail on a server.

They acknowledge that access to information is important for fighting crime and terrorism, but say they are dealing with a patchwork of confusing standards that have been interpreted inconsistently by the courts, creating uncertainty.

Last year, for example, the Justice Department argued in court that cellphone users had given up the expectation of privacy about their location by voluntarily giving that information to carriers. In April, it argued in a federal court in Colorado that it ought to have access to some e-mails without a search warrant. And federal law enforcement officials, citing technology advances, plan to ask for new regulations that would smooth their ability to perform legal wiretaps of various Internet communications.

Panel: Gov't, industry must do more to stop spills

The oil industry, Congress and the Obama administration need to do more to reduce the changes of another large-scale oil spil, a presidential panel investigating the BP well blowout concluded Tuesday.

The seven-member panel unanimously endorsed 15 separate recommendations in the wake of the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Many of the proposals will require action by Congress.

The panel calls for increasing budgets and training for the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling; increasing the liability cap for damages when companies drill offshore; dedicating 80 percent of fines and penalties from the BP spill to restoration of the Gulf; and lending more weight to scientific opinions by other federal scientists in decisions about drilling.

The panel said Congress should draft legislation to create within the Interior Department an independent safety agency and a separate environmental office to evaluate the risks of oil drilling to natural resources.

The panel also called for an industry-led safety institute, similar to the one created by nuclear power producers after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

The oil industry and government have taken numerous steps in an effort to improve safety since the BP blowout.

BP fired its executive responsible for deep-water wells like the one that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico in September. The company also created a new unit to police safety practices in all of BP's technical operations, while the federal government imposed new regulations and a moratorium on deep-water drilling. It later lifted the moratorium.

AFL-CIO disputes 'myths' about Fla. pension funds

Florida AFL-CIO legislative and political director Rich Templin said the union is troubled by such comments although details of proposed legislation are hazy and nothing has yet been filed.

"We can't find any verifiable information to indicate that those claims are true, that those claims are anything other than political rhetoric and ideological posturing," Templin said.

He said pension benefits averaging $16,000 to $23,000 a year cannot be considered extravagant.

Scott has called the $122 billion Florida Retirement System "a ticking fiscal time bomb" because he doesn't think it can sustain its current high rate of return on investment. He's also worried about its unfunded liability.

As of last June 30, the closing date for the plan's last annual report, it had $109 billion in assets and an unfunded liability of about $15 billion, or 12 percent.

That percentage is one of the lowest of any public pension funds in the nation.

Study: Obesity costs $300B a year

The study finds that those who are overweight and obese in the U.S. and Canada cost $300 billion a year, a result of increased need for medical care, as well as loss of economic productivity due to death and disability.

According to the SOA, the $300 billion-a year figure breaks down into the following economic costs:

• Total cost of excess medical care caused by being overweight/obese: $127 billion
• Economic loss of productivity caused by excess mortality: $49 billion
• Economic loss of productivity caused by disability for active workers : $43 billion
• Economic loss of productivity caused by being overweight/obese for totally disabled workers: $72 billion

Fed paid U.S. Treasury record $78.4B last year

The Federal Reserve paid a record $78.4 billion in earnings to the U.S. government last year, reflecting gains from the central bank's unconventional efforts to lift the economy.

The payment to the Treasury Department is the largest since the Fed began operating in 1914. It surpasses the previous record $47.4 billion paid in 2009, the Fed said Monday.

The bigger payment mostly came from more income generated by the Fed's massive portfolio of securities, which includes Treasury debt and mortgage securities.

In early November, the Fed launched a program to bolster the economy by purchasing $600 billion worth of Treasury debt through June. The program aims to boost the economy by lowering rates on mortgages and other loans and by lifting stock prices.

To fight the financial crisis and lift the country out of recession, the Fed bought $1.4 trillion of mortgage-backed securities and mortgage debt as well as up to $300 billion worth of government debt. The Fed completed the mortgage purchases last year.

The Fed's balance sheet now stands at $2.4 trillion, nearly triple its size from before the financial and economic crises.

Florida Highway Patrol: Traffic Fatalities Continue to Decline

Nearly 2,500 people died on Florida's highways in 2010, and the Florida Highway Patrol calls said that is the lowest number in three decades.

In spite of the good news, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate traffic fatalities are the number one killer of people between the ages of 5 and 34. The CDC says seat belt use reduces serious injuries and deaths by half.

Florida ranks 5th in new national report on education quality

Florida, once criticized for its "lackadaisical" attitude toward education, ranks fifth in a new national report on education quality released today.

The annual "Quality Counts" report grades the 50 states and the District of Columbia on their education policies and performance.

The nation earned a C. Top-performing Maryland got a B-plus. Florida earned a B-minus.

The Quality Counts report grades states in six broad categories, although not all the information is updated every year. The categories look at both state policies, such as academic standards and laws governing teachers, and the performance of students on national benchmarks.

Jax home prices fall harder than state

Home prices in Jacksonville declined by 9.2 percent year-over-year in November, higher than the average for Florida, according to data CoreLogic released Tuesday.

Excluding distressed transactions, year-over-year the home price index [HPI] in Jacksonville for November was negative 6.76 percent.

In Florida, the HPI declined by 4.9 percent year-over-year in November. When distressed sales are factored in, HPI declined by 8.2 percent.

Florida No. 3 in 2010 foreclosures

Florida registered the nation’s third highest foreclosure rate in 2010, with 5.51 percent of its housing units (one in 18) getting at least one foreclosure filing during the year, according to RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based online marketplace of foreclosure properties.

Florida was one of five states that accounted for 51 percent of the nation’s total foreclosure activity in 2010. The others were California, Arizona, Illinois and Michigan. In those five states together, nearly 1.5 million properties got a foreclosure filing.

The good news for Florida: The 2010 number was down 6 percent from 2009. However, the rate was 25.95 greater than 2008.

Broad Racial Disparities Seen in Americans’ Ills

Many of the differences are large and striking:

¶Babies born to black women are up to three times as likely to die in infancy as those born to women of other races.

¶American Indians and Alaska Natives are twice as likely to die in car crashes as any other group.

¶More than 80 percent of all suicides are committed by whites, but young American Indian adults have the highest suicide rates by far — 25 per 100,000 population at age 21, compared with 14 for whites, 10 for blacks and 8 for Asians and Hispanics.

¶Overdoses of prescription drugs now kill more Americans than overdoses of illegal drugs, the opposite of the pattern 20 years ago. Overdose death rates are now higher among whites than blacks; that trend switched in 2002, after doctors began prescribing more powerful painkillers, antidepressants and antipsychotics — more easily obtained by people with health insurance.

¶Blacks die of heart disease much more commonly than whites, and die younger, despite the availability of cheap prevention measures like weight loss, exercise, blood-pressure and cholesterol drugs, and aspirin. The same is true for strokes.

¶High blood pressure is twice as common among blacks as whites, but the group with the least success in controlling it is Mexican-Americans.

¶Compared with whites, blacks have double the rate of “preventable hospitalizations,” which cost about $7 billion a year.

¶People in Utah, Connecticut and North Dakota report the most “healthy days” per month — about 22. People in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee report the fewest, about 17.

¶Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians, whether gay or straight, all have higher rates of new infection with the AIDS virus than whites, and the situation is getting worse for blacks and Indians. Asians have the lowest rate.

¶Binge drinking — defined as five drinks at a sitting for men and four for women — is increasing. In a switch from the norm for health problems, it is more common among the better-educated and more affluent, including college students. But poor people, and especially American Indians, drink much more heavily when on binges.

¶Teenage pregnancy is holding steady or falling for all ethnic groups, but is still three times as common among Hispanic girls as among white girls, and more than twice as common among black girls as among whites.

Study: African-Americans in Jacksonville see higher rate of mortgage denial

The differences in mortgage denials among the three races were highlighted as part of the Jacksonville Community Council Inc. 2010 Race Relations Progress Report. In 2009, black middle-income mortgage applicants were denied conventional mortgages at a rate of 32.1 percent, double the 15.5 percent rate for whites and significantly higher than the 19.2 percent rate for Hispanics.

Yamato said under the Community Reinvestment Act, however, lenders get incentives for writing loans in under-served areas.

It's against federal law for a mortgage applicant to be denied on the basis of race, she noted.

But Danford said he doesn't rule out subtle violations of the 1968 Fair Housing Act and vestiges of a system that barred blacks from moving into primarily white neighborhoods.

Jermyn Shannon-El, co-founder of the Blacksonville Community Network, a Jacksonville website, agreed.

Candidates collected $5.8 million in public money

Florida taxpayers spent more than $5.8 million to bolster the campaigns of 10 candidates for statewide office last year, giving public dollars to individuals who arguably didn't need the money but took it anyway.

The money was doled out under Florida's public campaign finance law, enacted in 1986 to try to enable under-funded candidates who agreed to limit their spending to compete with rivals raising millions in special-interest contributions. But because of changes approved in 2005 by the Legislature, the law allows virtually anyone running for office to apply for a public subsidy.

The 25-year-old law provides matching dollars of up to $250 per contribution to statewide candidates who raise enough money on their own to be considered viable, and also agree to spending limits. If an opponent spent more than the limits set by the law, the under-funded candidate was eligible for a dollar-for-dollar match of the excess.

But in 2005, the Legislature more than tripled the spending ceiling – from $6.7 million to $24.9 million for the governor's office; and from $3.35 million to $12.4 million for other statewide races. At the time, that was more that any candidate had ever spent for statewide office – and it made even well-funded candidates eligible for subsidies.

This year, candidates for the three Cabinet offices – attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner – accepted a combined $4 million in taxpayer support, about the same as what was spent on those offices in 2006.

U.S. ends "virtual fence" project on Mexican border

President Barack Obama's administration on Friday canceled the troubled "virtual fence" project meant to better guard stretches of the vast U.S. border with Mexico and will replace it with other security measures.

The project, begun in 2006 and run by Boeing Co, has cost about $1 billion and was designed to pull together video cameras, radar, sensors and other technologies to catch illegal immigrants and smugglers trying to cross the porous border.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said commercially available surveillance systems, unmanned aerial drones, thermal imaging and other equipment would be used instead, suggestions made by critics of the Boeing SBInet program.

An assessment of the Boeing program released by DHS found that $1 billion was spent to cover just 53 miles in Arizona. The new approach should cost less than $750 million to cover the rest of Arizona's border, some 323 miles, DHS said.

E-Verify illegal-worker screening system has holes, report says

Within an hour of becoming Florida's 45th governor, Rick Scott signed an order meant to ensure that anyone working for the state was in the country legally.

But the screening system that Scott is relying on lets unauthorized workers slip through its filter more than half the time because it cannot spot identity theft, according to a federal report.

The E-Verify system, a federal database available to employers, failed to identify those workers as unauthorized 54 percent of the time, according to an audit released last year. Investigators discovered that was the percentage of illegal workers incorrectly deemed eligible for work.

The study done for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services found that overall, the system correctly determined a worker's immigration status 96 percent of the time.

Study: Skinnier Wives Make For Happier Marriages

A University of Tennessee research team just released a study that they say shows a couple is more likely to be happy when the wife is thinner than her husband.

The study, Miller-McCune magazine reports, looked at 169 newlyweds for four years and found that husbands were more satisfied when their wives had a lower body mass index than themselves. The study also showed that wives with lower BMIs than their husbands also stayed more satisfied over time.

The study also claimed that the weight of the partners didn't matter so long as the wife's weight was always lighter than the husband's. In addition, the study took into consideration the couple's financial standing, education and other factors that could affect the final result.

U.S. Bills States $1.3 Billion in Interest Amid Tight Budgets

As if states did not have enough on their plates getting their shaky finances in order, a new bill is coming due — from the federal government, which will charge them $1.3 billion in interest this fall on the billions they have borrowed from Washington to pay unemployment benefits during the downturn.

The interest cost, which has been looming in plain sight without attracting much attention, represents only a sliver of the huge deficits most states will have to grapple with this year But it comes as states are already cutting services, laying off employees and raising taxes. And it heralds a larger reckoning that many states will have to face before long: what to do about the $41 billion they have borrowed from the federal government to help them pay benefits to millions of unemployed people, a debt that federal officials say could rise to $80 billion.

The states, when they borrowed the money, hoped that the economy would have turned around by the time the first interest payments came due, or that future Congresses might loosen the terms. But the economy did not turn around in time and the new Congress, dominated by Republicans determined to shrink the size of government, shows little appetite for deepening the federal deficit by bailing out the states.

Senators seek end to prisoners' bogus tax refunds

Prisoners nationwide have bilked taxpayers out of $123 million in the last five years through phony tax refunds they applied for from their cells, according to four senators.

Sens. Charles Schumer of New York, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Internal Revenue Service have failed to cooperate and comply with a 2008 law aimed at stopping the practice in federal and state prisons nationwide. Prisoners use their own names or the names of friends and associates to submit false claims to receive and cash refund checks.

Mass Shootings and Mental Illness

The events in Tucson left many of us asking - How could this happen? But we've seen this before - an unstable man, a senseless attack.

It's put a spotlight on mental illness. In this country, 45 million adults are mentally ill. 11 million of those cases are considered serious.

The Tucson shooting is the latest tragedy linked to a gunman believed to be mentally ill. In 1993, Colin Ferguson killed six commuters on a New York Train. In 1998, Russell Weston killed two at the U.S. Capitol. In 2007, Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech.

Mental health funding has been declining for decades. Since 2009, states have cut more than $2 billion for mental health from their budgets.

History of the Election of 1932

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Election Results

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"Support for FDR during the 1932 Election"

"African Americans and the Democratic Party"

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