Jacksonville is the 40th-largest metropolitan area in America, according to new estimates from Business First of Buffalo, a sister paper of the Jacksonville Business Journal.
The newest estimates put Jacksonville’s metro population at 1,362,214 as of Monday morning.
The Obama Administration has quietly issued another 126 waivers to one provision of the Obama health law, putting the total number of waivers now at over one thousand.
The latest waivers were issued Friday by the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, a new agency set up by the Health and Human Services Department after the approval of the controversial health reform statute.
Unlike previous lists of the waivers - which were all listed on one web page - the CCIIO has now broken them out into seven different pdf pages, which makes it a bit more difficult to go through.
Some of the newest waivers have again been granted to labor unions, like Local 246 in New York City of the Service Employees International Union, Teamsters Local 20 in Toledo, Ohio, the United Food and Commercial Workers Unions and Employers Health & Welfare Fund in Atlanta, Local 247 of the Plumbers & Steamfitters Union in Alexandria, Louisiana, and many more.
Among the private companies that received waivers, Goodwill Industries of North Georgia, May Trucking Company, Stonebridge Companies of Colorado and Military Deli & Bakery Services, the self-described "largest operator of Deli and Bakery departments in military commissaries."
Other waiver recipients include the Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, Florida, Sportsman's Warehouse, a multi-state retail store dealing in hunting, fishing and camping gear and Scottish Food Systems, which operates Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Inn restaurants.
These waivers usually deal with limited health benefit plans, often referred to as "mini-med" policies, which companies as large as McDonald's and Waffle House use for some of their employees.
The plans have strict limits on how much can be paid out in coverage, a limitation that won't be legal after 2014 when the Obama health law is fully phased in.
These waivers - for one year - allow these many companies and unions to get around the limits on payment benefits, which in 2011 is no less than $750,000.
One more note - the waivers aren't limited to just companies and unions - for example, several school districts and county governments were added to the list as well.The Florida Supreme Court on Friday upheld Gov. Rick Scott’s decision to reject more than $2 billion in federal funds to build a high-speed rail link between Tampa and Orlando, which had been a major part of the Obama administration’s plan for a nationwide network.
The unanimous decision came on the day the federal government had given Florida as a deadline to either accept the money or see it transferred for rail projects in other states.
Some insurance industry lobbyists say the new federal health care law is driving up premiums. But Vincent Capozzi, senior vice president for sales and customer service at Harvard Pilgrim, said that only one percentage point of the increases here was attributable to the federal law, mainly its requirement for free coverage of preventive services.
Another percentage point results from new state laws requiring coverage of hearing aids and certain treatments for autism, Mr. Capozzi said. Most of the remainder, he said, reflects increases in the use and cost of medical care by small-group customers, with adjustments for demographic characteristics like age.
A Jacksonville company was named 2011 exporter of the year by the publisher of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s export promotion magazine.
SOHO Network Solutions Inc., which was named the state’s top exporter in 2010 by the U.S. Small Business Administration, exports investigative tools to foreign police departments.
Gov. Rick Scott Friday said the state will contribute $77 million to deep dredge the port of Miami so that larger ships can use it.
Scott said he’s directed the state Department of Transportation to “amend” its work plan to account for the $77 million “so that Florida can take another leap forward in international trade.”
The agency found problems with the way the company organized, stored and labeled engineering drawings and documents.
In his most forceful response to the near-civil war in Libya, Mr. Obama said the United States would consider imposing a “no-flight zone” over the country — a step his defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, warned a day earlier would carry major risks, requiring the United States to destroy Libya’s air defenses.
Mr. Obama said the United States and the world were outraged by Colonel Qaddafi’s “appalling violence against the Libyan people.” Speaking after he met with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico at the White House, he declared, “Muammar Qaddafi has lost the legitimacy to lead, and he must leave.”
In announcing the fees Thursday, the new Republican governor cited a sharp increase in such requests since he took office in January.
Citizens making requests will be provided with cost estimates before the requests are answered.
Fees must be paid in advance based on the estimates. If actual costs are less the overpayment will be refunded. If the cost is more, the requester will have to pay the additional amount.
The fee will be waived if costs are under $5 if it's not cost-effective to collect it.
Their most common complaints:
Contribution caps of $500 for state candidates are unrealistically low. It’s nearly impossible to pay for a statewide campaign that way and it’s too easy to circumvent the limit.
Politicians avoid accountability by using state parties to collect and spend six-figure campaign contributions from corporate donors.
The rise of so-called 501(c)(4) groups, which are corporations that can engage in lobbying and campaigning without having to disclose donors.But before Scott’s case, he spending limit was rarely given a second thought.
The limit has been raised so high — $25 million in 2010 for governor candidates — that it would take a staggering 50,000 donations of $500 to reach it.
After the Senate’s bipartisan 91-to-9 vote in a favor of a bill that keeps federal agencies open through March 18 while enacting $4 billion in new spending cuts, Mr. Obama urged House and Senate leaders to meet with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and two top aides to work out a longer-term budget agreement.
“Living with the threat of a shutdown every few weeks is not responsible, and it puts our economic progress in jeopardy,” said Mr. Obama, who signed the bill a few hours after the Senate vote. He said any eventual agreement should “cut spending and reduce deficits without damaging economic growth or gutting investments in education, research and development that will create jobs and secure our future.”
Republican leaders said they were already in talks with Democrats and the White House but would take part in budget meetings if they were invited. They noted that the Republican-led House had passed a $61 billion package of cuts covering the remaining seven months of the current fiscal year while the Democratic-controlled Senate had not produced any legislation beyond passing the temporary budget measure drafted by the House.
The Supreme Court ruled decisively Wednesday that a fringe anti-gay group has a constitutionally protected right to stage hateful protests at the funerals of dead servicemen, saying “such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”
In one of the year’s most closely watched cases, the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision upheld a lower-court ruling to throw out a multimillion-dollar judgment that the father of a dead U.S. Marine from Maryland had won against the Westboro Baptist Church.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in writing the majority opinion, noted that “speech is powerful” and can “inflict great pain.”
“On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” the chief justice wrote. “As a nation, we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. rebuked the majority and wrote in a blistering dissent that “our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.”
The high court said Westboro Baptist’s protest is protected under the First Amendment because it focused on matters of public concern, namely the “political and moral conduct of the United States,” gays in the military and the sexual-abuse scandal surrounding the Catholic Church.
Chief Justice Roberts noted the “messages may fall short of refined social or political commentary,” but he said the church members have engaged in many such protests, and nothing suggests they used “speech on public matters” to “mask an attack on Snyder over a private matter.”
“And even if a few of the signs — such as “You’re Going to Hell” and “God Hates You” — were viewed as containing messages related to Matthew Snyder or the Snyders specifically, that would not change the fact that the overall thrust and dominant theme of Westboro’s demonstration spoke to broader public issues,” the chief justice wrote.
“We don’t want full-time legislators, and I’m glad we’re not like Congress,” says House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park.
Such professional diversity gives lawmaking a real-world component in Tallahassee but also leads to conflicts of interest for legislators who earn $29,000 a year.
In city and county government, officials must abstain from voting on matters that could benefit them personally, but the rules are different in Tallahassee.
Senators and representatives are allowed to vote on matters in which they have a financial stake as long as they disclose it up to 15 days after the vote is cast. And Florida ethics laws say it’s legal for elected officials to vote on matters that affect their own professions.
During the past five years, dozens of legislators have filed voting conflict forms in cases where they had conflicts of interest.
Jacksonville ranks as the fifth-worst speed trap in the nation with 175 sites where police set up equipment to catch speeding drivers, according to newly released National Motoring Association statistics.
It's not the only Florida city on the list, which ranks Orlando at No. 7 with 165. Houston is the worst with 373 speed traps. They're based on motorists' contributions to the association's Speed Trap Exchange at www.speedtrap.org.
AT&T Inc and other corporations do not have personal privacy rights to prevent disclosure of federal government records about them, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.
The justices unanimously overturned a ruling by a U.S. appeals court for the telecommunications company that corporations can assert personal privacy in claiming the records should be exempt from disclosure.
The high court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, agreed with the Obama administration's argument that the personal privacy exemption under the Freedom of Information law applied only to individuals, not to corporations.
This guide is for City Council District 6 (Jacksonville 2011).
The three candidates and their platforms:
1) Matt Schellenberg (Republican)
Sources: http://www.votematt2011.com/votematt/Home.html
http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=532959
http://www.news4jax.com/duval-county-elections/27039958/detail.html
2) Jack Webb (Republican)
Sources: http://www.ibackjack.net/index.php
http://www.news4jax.com/duval-county-elections/27039958/detail.html
http://thamanjimmy.blogspot.com/search?q=jack+webb
http://www.jaxtaxpayers.org/jack-webb/
3) Greg Youngblood (Republican)
Sources: http://www.voteyoungblood.com/
http://www.news4jax.com/duval-county-elections/27039958/detail.html
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