U.S. to suspend auto "clunkers" program

"The Obama administration will suspend a $1 billion program intended to spur U.S. auto sales after it approached its funding limit after only a few days, government and industry sources said."

"The program was expected to run through September 30 but the sources said the administration would suspend it within the next day."

"The government estimated 250,000 auto sales if the full rebate was granted. It is unclear how many vehicles have been sold under the program. The government formally launched the program on July 24."

Mortgage Co. Face New Pressure on Homeowner Help

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement following the meetings that 200,000 loan modifications are already underway."

Mayor Peyton Vetoes City Council Tax Vote

"The Mayor vetoed City Council's amendment to keep the millage rate at 8.45."

"City Council could override the Mayor's veto with 13 votes, but Clark believes it will be difficult to bring everyone together for a meeting before August 4, the deadline for the property appraiser to hand out tax notices to property owners."

Sheriff Looks for More Revenue to Keep Up Fight Against Violent Crime

"Mayor Peyton's budget proposal includes a $27 million budget increase for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office this coming fiscal year."

"The Sheriff's Office expects to cut $9 million from next year's budget, primarily by cutting overtime."

"Another $18 million will go straight to the pension fund, off-setting the additional money needed in the fund with new officer hires. "

"City crews perform maintenance on JSO vehicles and receive a mark-up for administrative costs. That means in addition to labor and parts costs, JSO pays the City $600,000 in mark-ups on tire repair alone."

"JSO also pays the City 22 cents for every gallon of gas. On average, Rutherford says police vehicles burn 7,000 gallons of gas a day."

Fla. spends less than national average per student

"Florida’s public schools spent $8,515 per student in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, according to a report issued Monday morning by the U.S. Census Bureau."

"That’s $1,151 below the U.S. average of $9,666, and nearly half of what New York’s public schools spent."

Study: Obesity accounts for 9.1% of medical spending

"Spending on conditions associated with obesity, such as diabetes, has doubled in the last decade, as obesity rates grew 37 percent between 1998 and 2006, according to a study published Monday."

"Obesity now accounts for 9.1 percent of all medical spending, up from 6.5 percent in 1998."

"The report found that per-capita medical spending for obese people was 42 percent – or $1,429 – higher per year than for someone of normal weight."

Sheriff Urges Residents to Support Tax Hike

"In his budget presentation, Sheriff Rutherford says, "We have had the highest murder rate in the state for 10 consecutive years." The sheriff issued a letter to "concerned citizens" of Jacksonville."

"Rutherford says funding for public safety in Jacksonville is the lowest among major cities. He says now is not the time to stop progress on the war against violent crime."

"The sheriff attached a list of council members, urging people to call them in support of the millage rate increase."

10 years later, Florida's FCAT, school grade reforms get mixed grades

"Back in the 1990s, Florida had a reputation -- deserved or not -- for graduating too many kids who couldn't read or write. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush, who saw himself as an education innovator, hit on a grand plan to make schools accountable."

"He called it the A+ Plan for Education. It morphed into the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and took on newfound importance: Schools would be assigned a letter grade, A through F, based on exam scores."

"A decade later, the FCAT and school grades -- along with a host of other changes -- have placed Florida front and center in the educational reform movement."

"Since Florida began grading schools in 1999, the percentage of schools receiving A's and B's has more than tripled from 21 percent to 79 percent. The proportion of D and F schools dropped from 28 percent to 7 percent. The improvement came even as the state continually raised the standards on which the grades would be based, affording the schools little time or resources to adapt."

"Critics say improved school grades show only that students are getting better at the FCAT, not that they are necessarily learning more. But students have also improved their scores on other standardized tests they don't prepare for."

"One of them -- the National Assessment of Educational Progress, billed as ``the nation's report card'' -- showed 70 percent of Florida fourth-graders reading at grade level in 2007, compared with 53 percent in 1998."

"Those results lifted Florida's national ranking. In 1998, Florida placed 35th on the fourth-grade reading test. The state ranked 22nd in the same category in 2007, though the results have been less stellar in math and in eighth grade."

Administration Takes Aim at State Laws on Teachers

"The Obama administration took aim on Thursday at state laws — adopted after heavy teachers’ union lobbying — barring the use of student achievement data to evaluate teacher performance."

"The federal Department of Education proposed rules to prevent states with such laws from getting money from a $4.3 billion-educational innovation fund."

"Proposed rules for the $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition say that states must show they are carrying out education innovation and reform, improving student achievement, adopting higher standards, recruiting effective teachers and principals, building educational data systems, and turning around low-performing schools."

"To be eligible to apply for money, a “state must not have any legal, statutory or regulatory barriers to linking data on student achievement or student growth to teachers and principals for the purpose of teacher and principal evaluation,” according to a summary of the proposed rules."

Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Kill More Americans Than Car Wrecks

"Diseases easily preventable by adult vaccines kill more Americans each year than car wrecks, breast cancer, or AIDS."

"Yet relatively few in the U.S. know much about these diseases -- and far too few adults get vaccinated, find surveys by the CDC and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID)."

"It may surprise you to learn that over 50,000 adults die each year of diseases that are potentially vaccine preventable," NFID president-elect William Schaffner, MD, said at a news conference held to announce the survey results."

Who Is Killing America's Millionaires?

"CapGemini's survey contains some interesting geographic wrinkles. High-tax areas like New York and California—places where politicians have been talking about potentially raising taxes on the rich to deal with budget crises—held up better than the national average. The New York region, which has the most HNWIs, at 561,000, lost only 13.6 percent of its rich population last year. Los Angeles and San Francisco lost 17.8 percent and 15.3 percent, respectively. As for Maryland, the Baltimore metro area had a 19 percent drop in high-net-worth population."

"Comparative tax havens like Florida, Nevada, and Arizona didn't see an influx of millionaires in 2008. Far from it. In 2008, Las Vegas lost 38 percent of its HNWIs, and Phoenix lost 34 percent. Florida, which has no state income tax and hasn't been talking about one, was a killing field for the rich. The three major metro areas that lost more than 40 percent of millionaires in 2008 were all in no-income-tax Florida—Orlando (42 percent), Miami (42 percent), and Tampa (51 percent). The decline has nothing to do with taxes and everything to do with bursting asset bubbles. Florida, Vegas, and Phoenix are places whose economies were dominated by ultra-bubbly real estate markets and where lots of businesses owned by wealthy people are dependent on construction, tourism, and leisure—sectors that got seriously whacked in 2008."

Successful charter school cuts staff, hours over union contract

"Baltimore's most successful middle school is laying off staff and shortening its school day to meet demands of a teachers union contract in what is one of the first major disputes over teacher pay between a charter school and a union."

"KIPP Ujima Village Academy, based on a model that has forged a successful track record among poor students in more than a dozen states, has been violating a contract requiring teachers to be paid more if they work extra hours, school and union leaders acknowledge."

"After seven years of ignoring the issue, the Baltimore Teachers Union told the charter school earlier this year that it must pay its teachers 33 percent more than other city school teachers because they were working nine hours and 15 minutes a day, as well as every other Saturday. The standard workday for teachers is seven hours and five minutes."

"KIPP has been paying its teachers 18 percent above the salary scale, but could not afford to increase all teachers' salaries by 33 percent, according to Jason Botel, executive director of KIPP Baltimore. So it decided to stagger staff starting times and cut back on the hours students are in school when they return to classes next month."

"Students will attend classes for eight hours in the next school year, and Saturday classes have been canceled. The four layoffs include one music and one art teacher who were recently let go, as well as two staff members who worked with special education and struggling students."

Study Links Rise in Health Care Costs to Job Losses

"The Rand researchers examined the economic performance of 38 industries from 1987 through 2005, in an attempt to assess the economic impact of “excess” growth in health care costs on U.S. industries. Excess growth is defined as the increase in health care costs that exceeds the overall growth of the nation’s GDP—a yearly occurrence in the U.S. The team compared changes in employment, economic output and the value added to the GDP product for industries that provide health benefits to most workers to those where few workers have job-based health insurance."

"After adjusting for other factors, industries that provide insurance had significantly less employment growth than industries where health benefits were not common. Industries with a larger percentage of workers receiving employer-sponsored health insurance also showed lower growth in their contribution to the GDP."

"The rate of growth in U.S. health care costs has outpaced the growth rate in the gross domestic product (GDP) for many years. In 1940, the share of GDP accounted for by health care spending was just 4.5%. By 1990, it had reached 12.2%, and 16% in 2005, when health care spending totaled nearly $2 trillion, or $6,697 per person, far more than any other nation. This year health care spending is on track to equal 18% of GDP."

City Council Committee Snubs Tax Hike

"The Finance Committee of the Jacksonville City Council said no to the Fix it Now tax hike proposal that Mayor Peyton is shopping around the city."

"The committee voted to approve an amendment to set the millage rate at 8.48, which happens to be the current millage rate for homeowners."

"We felt it important to get into our budget and cut unnecessary expenses and dig into the budget process before we raise taxes," said City Council president Richard Clark. "We need to look at the budget before we look at tax increases."

"The issue will be voted on by the full city council on July 28. The committee has a total of 7 members."

Report: Fewer Mexicans entering U.S.

"The number of Mexicans moving to the USA has dropped sharply since the middle of the decade, according to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center."

"Figures from various sources, including the Census Bureau, show that 30% to 50% fewer Mexicans came here — legally or illegally — in 2008 compared with 2006, says Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the non-partisan research center, who is a co-author of the study."

"Last year, 653,035 of the 705,005 people caught breaching the southern border were Mexican, he says."

Mayor talks public safety and Jacksonville Journey

"In fact, he included $6.1 million in Jacksonville Journey's budget proposal to fund 40 police officers, 44 additional corrections officers and 19 civilians. He hopes the city receives federal funding to offset the costs for the new officers."

"The Journey Oversight Committee has asked for $19.8 million in funding, down from the $31 million approved last summer. Most of the reductions come from no longer funding capital projects and eliminating $4 million spent on police overtime."

FCAT test is no longer sole factor in grading

"Florida is changing the way it grades its high schools. Beginning this fall, grades no longer will be based solely on performance on the often-criticized Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. In fact, FCAT will only account for half of a high school's grade. Final details are pending."

Foreclosures rise 15% in first half of '09

"The number of U.S. households on the verge of losing their homes soared by nearly 15% in the first half of the year as more people lost their jobs and were unable to pay their monthly mortgage bills."

"The mushrooming foreclosure crisis affected more than 1.5 million homes in the first six months of the year, according to a report released Thursday by foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc."

"The data show that, despite the Obama administration's plan to encourage the lending industry to prevent foreclosures by handing out $50 billion in subsidies, the nation's housing woes continue to spread. Experts don't expect foreclosures to peak until the middle of next year."

"Foreclosure filings rose more than 33% in June compared with the same month last year and were up nearly 5% from May, RealtyTrac said."

"It was the fourth-straight month in which more than 300,000 households receiving a foreclosure filing, which includes default notices and several other legal notices that homeowners receive before they finally lose their homes. Banks repossessed more than 79,000 homes in June, up from about 65,000 a month earlier."

U.S. must address high minority jobless rates: think-tank

"Minority jobless rates have spiked sharply higher than those of whites in some states, according to a report released on Wednesday, prompting calls for new job growth efforts and the possible revival of a funding mechanism long opposed by Wall Street."

"The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, issued a report analyzing racial and ethnic jobless rates in the 50 states. It said the 18-month recession has erased many recent gains for minorities because manufacturing, construction and trade jobs, often the easiest for them to obtain, are melting away."

"At the end of the first quarter of this year, Alabama's black jobless rate soared to 15.1 percent from 5.3 in the 2007 fourth quarter. For whites, however, the rate rose to 5.8 percent from 3 percent."

"For blacks, Louisiana had the worst comparable rate. They were three times more likely than whites to be jobless. In Alabama, New York, Mississippi and Texas, blacks were more than twice as likely to be unemployed."

Pot No Longer Focus of Anti-Drug Campaigns

"In fact, the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the nation's largest creator of anti-drug messages, hasn't produced a single anti-marijuana public service advertisement since 2005. "

"The change comes as a result of the decline in marijuana use amongst teens, and growing worry over the abuse of prescription drugs. Marijuana use has been declining for 10 years and past-month use is down 25 percent since 2001 according to the largest tracking study in the U.S., "Monitoring the Future" by the University of Michigan. "

"Meanwhile prescription drug abuse has held steady over the past five years according to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, with nearly one in five teens (19 percent) abusing prescription medications to get high."

"The bottom line is the Opiates and Stimulates are much more addictive than marijuana, those that try it are likely to return to them after first use." said Mitch Earleywine, associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York. "Maybe 9 percent of marijuana users develop problems but 14-23 percent of prescription drug abusers end up saying can't quit or report withdrawal when they want to stop."

"The report compared data on deaths due to marijuana with FDA-approved medications. It found that the approved drugs -- which included anti-psychotics, Attention Deficit Disorder medications, painkillers and other prescription drugs -- were suspected as the primary cause of 10,008 deaths and as a secondary cause in 1,679 more."

"Another report recently issued by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement indicated that prescription drugs caused more deaths than illicit drugs - even including alcohol-related automobile accidents. Prescription drugs were the cause of more than 25 percent of drug related deaths in the state. Marijuana was not listed as a cause of death last year in Florida."