Governor Larry Hogan Announces Fiscal Year 2017 Budget

Governor Larry Hogan Announces Fiscal Year 2017 Budget
Provides Record Investment in Education and Positive Tax Relief, Holds Line on Spending

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Governor Larry Hogan today announced his Fiscal Year 2017 Budget, which is both fiscally responsible and balanced; it controls spending while fully funding all education formulas and all legislatively mandated spending.

The FY 2017 operating budget totals $17.1 billion, and includes a Rainy Day Fund balance of almost $1.1 billion and a cash balance of $449 million going into FY 2018. In 2015, the Hogan administration inherited $5.1 billion in accumulated structural deficits, including a $2.1 billion deficit in 2015 and 2016. Over the course of the last year, almost 90 percent of that inherited $5.1 billion deficit has been eliminated. The governor’s proposed budget continues to build on this progress and provides for sound fiscal management in future years.

"Our proposed FY 2017 budget brings fiscal restraint back to Annapolis and holds the line on spending, while increasing funding for top priorities like education and infrastructure," said Governor Hogan. "I am hopeful that this budget will set the stage for bipartisanship, while helping us clean up problems of the past, take care of our current issues, and make provisions for a better future."

For the second straight year, the governor’s budget provides a record-high level of funding going toward the education of Maryland’s children, including $6.3 billion for K-12 education, which is approximately $140 million more than last year. The budget also fully funds the Geographic Cost of Education Index (GCEI), making Governor Hogan the first governor in Maryland’s history to fully fund this program in a second budget.

Additionally, the FY 2017 budget provides for the tax and fee relief legislation recently announced by the governor that will save Maryland citizens and businesses approximately $480 million over the next five years. The Marylanders who will benefit the most under the governor’s proposals are the citizens who have been struggling the most: working families, retirees, and small businesses.

Macy's just announced the end of department stores as we know them

In the near future, Macy's stores could turn into discount outlets.

CEO Terry Lundgren told CNBCthat the brand is planning to put some of the "Backstage" stores in its existing retail locations this year.

The stores will sell Macy's brands at steeply discounted prices — up to 80% off. This model copies highly successful brands like TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Rack.

The outlet locations would serve as a test of whether the store's new discount outlets will take business away from the higher-priced traditional stores.

"We have to make stores more productive — all of us box stores," Lundgren told CNBC. "Customers buying online have got to find more reasons to visit."

Macy's is closing 40 stores in the beginning of this year.

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Caution Urged As Snow Storm Moves In

Maryland State Police are urging drivers to use caution and think twice before heading out this weekend due to the potential snow storm.

Here are recommendations from state troopers:

• Stay home this weekend unless the nature of your employment requires you to travel (emergency responder, medical profession, snow removal etc.);
• Maryland State Police will begin towing vehicles currently abandoned more than 24 hours prior to the storms arrival;
• Once the snow emergency plan is put in place for a particular county, abandoned vehicles will be towed immediately;
• If you have to drive, ensure you are driving a vehicle equipped for snow travel;
• Don’t abandon your vehicle on a snow emergency route (interstate, MD or US route) without notifyingMaryland State Police or the police agency responsible for that particular roadway;
• If you have called a private tow to remove your vehicle, let Maryland State Police know so we don’t dispatch resources to have it removed;
• If you have an accident, move your vehicle out of the travel portion of the roadway if possible and contact Maryland State Police;
• Give snow plows room to work and do not try to pass a plow train;
• If your vehicle is towed, contact the barrackor local police agency where it was abandoned with a full description (make, model, tag number and exact location) so the towing company information can be provided to you for pickup;

The CEO Paying Everyone $70,000 Salaries Has Something to Hide

It seemed too good to be true. On April 13, with reporters from the New York Times andNBC News hovering nearby, Dan Price, the young chief executive officer of Gravity Payments, a Seattle-based credit card processing company, told his staff he was raising their minimum salary to $70,000 a year. Some employees would see their wages double. There was more: He planned to cut his own $1.1 million compensation to help cover the cost. The idea came to him, he’d later tell the media, after talking to a friend who earned less than he did. He’d read about a study showing that extra income improves the happiness of people who earn less than about $75,000. “It’s not about making money; it’s about making a difference,” Price told the Today Show, one of two dozen TV interviews he did in the days following the announcement.

Price’s story rocketed around the world, a capitalist fairy tale to counter growing inequality. With his tousled long hair and dark brown eyes, Price combined Brad Pitt’s smolder and Boo Boo Bear’s aw-shucks demeanor to become an articulate and attractive messenger. Rush Limbaugh denounced him as a socialist. Jesse Venturachristened him Robin Hood.

In late summer, the New York Times ran a longer piece on Price, now 31, showing that raising wages wasn’t so simple. Job applicants had overwhelmed his company, and two employees quit, saying the increase wasn’t fair to higher earners. “Potentially the worst blow of all,” the Times wrote, was that about two weeks after the announcement, Price was sued by his older brother Lucas, who owns about 30 percent of Gravity, alleging Price paid himself too much in the first place. Price insinuated that his brother may have sued in reaction to the generous pay increase. “I know the decision to pay everyone a living wage is controversial,” he told the Seattle Times, which first reported the lawsuit. “I deeply regret the rift this has caused in my relationship with my brother.”

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No One Hates Political Ads More Than Car Dealers

As presidential campaigns fill the airwaves in battleground states, auto dealership spots are crowded out, potentially impacting sales.

As what promises to be the most expensive presidential election in U.S. history heats up, one constituency is dreading the coming barrage of political advertising perhaps more than any other: car dealers.

In some battleground markets, a presidential race can soak up a third or more of local broadcast television advertising time, crowding out auto dealers, who are typically the biggest buyers of local TV ad time, according to a Bloomberg analysis. That shift, according to the analysis of data from Kantar Media Intelligence, CMAG, and Kelley Blue Book, can hurt sales.

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The Challenges for Smart-Gun Makers

Obama’s reform push won’t create demand overnight.

“If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?” That’s the reasonable-sounding question President Obama asked during his Jan. 5 gun control address from the White House. The answer is a little complicated: Even with presidential backing, it would be naive to expect a market for so-called smart guns to spring to life anytime soon.

Digitally equipped firearms have been around since the mid-1990s. They’re designed to avoid mishaps and criminality by working only for authorized users. Smart guns typically employ either biometric technology, like fingerprint scanners, or a radio-frequency-identification device (RFID), such as a ring or bracelet that sends a signal to unlock the weapon at a certain proximity.

Hostility from gun rights activists has deterred any major manufacturer from marketing smart guns. Colt’s Manufacturing, for example, dropped a smart-gun project in the late ’90s following a severe consumer backlash. Retailers who’ve put startups’ products on their shelves have likewise faced fierce ideological protests.

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Jeb: 'If Hillary Broke the Law, She Should Be Prosecuted'

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told Newsmax TV Tuesday that he doubted whether Hillary Clinton would be indicted in the email scandal because "it's the most politicized attorney general and Department of Justice in a long while. I have doubts that they will do the right thing," Bush, who governed Florida from 1999 to 2007, told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth. "I think the process should go forward, but at a minimum she is not telling the truth." 

[Full Story]

Need A Ride? Soon You Can Hail A Helicopter With Uber

Hate dealing with traffic, and have a big chunk of money just burning up in your pocket? You’ll soon be able to summon a helicopter ride using Uber, as part of partnership between the ride-hailing company and aircraft manufacturer Airbus.

Uber and Airbus will provide on-demand flights with H125 and H130 helicopters, starting with a test of the service during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT, which starts Jan. 21. Don’t get excited about the idea of a chopper landing on the front lawn, either, as Uber will send a car to pick up clients for their helicopter rides.

“Its a pilot project, we’ll see where it goes—but it’s pretty exciting,” Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders told The Wall Street Journal at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich.

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Sam’s Club To Accept Visa Credit Cards As Of February 1

Shoppers at Sam’s Club will no longer need to ensure that they have the correct credit card on hand or that they’ve brought cash: as of February 1, 2015, the warehouse club will begin accepting Visa credit cards in its stores, finally making all four credit card networks accepted in its stores.

Wait… didn’t Sam’s already accept Visa? That’s complicated, and it involves the fees each credit network charged to Sam’s and to corporate parent Walmart. We shoppers don’t see these fees, but when you’re a mega-retailer like Walmart, small differences in fees make a huge difference.

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FOX Just Broke With EXCLUSIVE News…THIS Could REALLY Mean The End Of Hillary’s Campaign This Time!

How many times have we thought…oh this could be it, THIS could be the one awful thing Hillary has done that could get her booted from the Presidential race, and then….nope, just kidding. Well Fox has just come out with BREAKING NEWS that could be the final straw for Hillary…

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton’s emails on her unsecured, homebrew server contained intelligence from the U.S. government’s most secretive and highly classified programs, according to an unclassified letter from a top inspector general to senior lawmakers.

Fox News exclusively obtained the text of the unclassified letter, sent Jan. 14 from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III. It laid out the findings of a recent comprehensive review by intelligence agencies that identified “several dozen” additional classified emails — including specific intelligence known as “special access programs” (SAP).

That indicates a level of classification beyond even “top secret,” the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets.

“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element. These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels,” said the IG letter to lawmakers with oversight of the intelligence community and State Department. “According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.”

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Joe Albero On Power 101.7

Joe Albero On Power 101.7
Posted by Salisbury News on Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Click on the title if video fails to load. 

Hopefully this will work for those that had problems with the other file.

What Changed?

How Obama has turned back the clock on race relations

Americans celebrating Martin Luther King Day today should be proud of the incredible progress made since the civil-rights leader’s birth 87 years ago. At the same time, we should lament one of President Obama’s greatest failures.

The last Democratic president and the last Republican president both managed race relations more effectively than Obama has. Seven years after American voters made history by electing the country’s first black president, racial tensions have worsened.

It didn’t rank on Obama’s one-item list of his “few regrets” during his State of the Union address. But signs of Obama’s failure are on our streets, on our campuses and among our leaders, left and right.

“Ferguson” has become shorthand for African-American fury objecting to insensitive white cops harassing young blacks. The “Black Lives Matter” movement has spilled into American campus culture, as privileged kids attending the world’s finest universities bemoan their alleged oppression — bullying anyone who challenges them.

This black backlash has prompted a white backlash, personified by Donald Trump. Every justifiable police shooting called “racist,” every Halloween costume labeled politically incorrect, every reasonable thought censored makes Trump look like America’s last honest man.

Amid this tension, Obama has been disturbingly passive — even during America’s first serious race riots since 1992. He acts like a meteorologist observing the bad weather, not a president able to shape the political climate.

How embarrassing that Obama’s most memorable act of presidential leadership on race may end up being inviting a black professor and a white cop to the White House for his 2009 “beer summit.”

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Oldest Christian monastery in Iraq razed

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical.

St. Elijah’s Monastery stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years, including most recently for U.S. troops. In earlier millennia, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches, prayed in the chapel, worshipped at the altar. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ’s name, were carved near the entrance.

This month, at the request of the AP, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera to grab photos of the site, and then pulled earlier images of the same spot.

Before it was razed, a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. One month later photos show “that the stone walls have been literally pulverized,” said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the destruction between August and September 2014.

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Determining A Health Plan's Abortion Coverage Remains A Challenge

As the third open enrollment period winds down on the health insurance marketplaces, one thing hasn't changed much since the online exchanges opened: It's still often hard to find out whether a plan covers abortion services.

The health law requires insurers to say one way or the other, and they have gotten better about reporting abortion coverage details this year, advocates on both sides agree.

But the federal government has yet to put out final instructions on how insurers should handle the issue on their Summary of Benefits and Coverage overview. Lacking specific instructions about what to say and where to say it, many insurers have simply left the information out of the summary, advocates say.

That leaves consumers in a bind. "It's not easy to figure out whether a plan covers abortion and if it does, to what extent," said Kinsey Hasstedt, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization that supports abortion rights.

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The robot revolution will take 5 million jobs from humans

The "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is already underway, according to a report from the World Economic Forum, which is focusing on how technological change is reshaping the workplace and global economies at its meeting this week in Davos, Switzerland. Developments in fields including robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence will change workplaces and the required different skills from workers in the years to come, according to "The Future of Jobs" report.

Not everyone will be impacted equally, with the report concluding that the jobs most at risk are office and administrative roles. Other industries with negative job outlooks include manufacturing and production, the arts and entertainment, construction and extraction, and installation and maintenance. Overall, automation and robotics will cause 5.1 million job losses over the next five years, the researchers found.

"As entire industries adjust, most occupations are undergoing a fundamental transformation," wrote World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and managing board member Richard Samans in the report. "While some jobs are threatened by redundancy and others grow rapidly, existing jobs are also going through a change in the skill sets required to do them."

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Hillary Clinton's Precocious Kid Questioners

It happens almost like clockwork, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton casts her gaze out over the crowd at her town hall style event looking for someone to call on, and then she spots cuteness.

Clinton's stump speech has changed from the summer when she was seen as the prohibitive front runner, to the fall when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders started gaining on her, to today with Sanders leading in New Hampshire and quite possibly in Iowa too. But one part of her campaign has not — her habit of calling on kids at her town hall style events.

Her campaign says she has called on more than 500 people since she started running for president last spring, and child questioners make up only a small share of that total (she was asked at least 29 questions by kids since July). But they are by far the most memorable, and a couple have wound up in campaign ads and videos.

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OC Council Approves Longer Contract For Free Special Events Aimed At Providing ‘Goodnight Kiss’ For Visitors

OCEAN CITY — The summer-long fireworks displays, laser shows, concerts and other free special events will continue this year and beyond after Ocean City officials voted to extend the contract for the promoter of the activities.

The Mayor and Council last week voted to extend the Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) annual $300,000 contract to produce the free, value-added special events such as the popular fireworks displays, laser shows, concerts on the beach and at other various venues, Sundaes in the Park and many others through 2017. TEAM Production’s Bob Rothermel, who, along with Jack Hennen, produces many of the value-added special events that have become so popular during the summer and throughout the shoulder seasons, was seeking an extension through 2018, but after considerable debate, the council voted to formally approve the contract extension through 2017 with at least tacit support for an extension through 2018 and beyond.

Rothermel explained the $300,000 investment in TAB has been typically extended in one-year increments, which has somewhat curtailed TEAM Productions’ efforts to secure long-term commitments from private sector sponsors and to take advantage of the cost savings associated with longer-term private contracts. He said TEAM’s successful track record warranted an extension beyond just one year and would help the public-private partnership to explore new special events.

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It's Official, I Just Saw A Snowflake In The 'BURY!

People With Minor Injuries Are Increasingly Getting CT Scans

If you fall off a curb, bop your head and go to the ER to make sure you're OK, there's a good chance you'll be trundled off for a CT scan.

That might sound comforting, but people with injuries minor enough that they get sent home are increasingly being given computed tomography scans, a study finds. That's despite efforts to reduce the unnecessary use of CTs, which use radiation and increase the lifetime risk of cancer.

There's been a lot of focus on excess use of CTs in children, but much less on adults who go to the emergency department for things that turn out to be no big deal.

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