Real median household incomes, meaning all inflation-adjusted income for households at the midpoint of income distribution, for the United States and Ohio over the last five years available:
2008 — United States: $53,644. Ohio: $50,051.
2009 — U.S.: $53,285. Ohio: $49,112.
2010 — U.S.: $51,893. Ohio: $48,322.
2011 — U.S.: $51,100. Ohio: $45,581.
2012 — U.S.: $51,017. Ohio: $44,375.
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
WASHINGTON -- A primer on the Koch brothers and their role in politics.
Q: Who are the Koch brothers?
A: Charles and David Koch, ages 78 and 74, are billionaire brothers who helped create a broad network of nonprofit groups that control hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into politics. Through their deep pockets, they are reshaping politics with an uncompromising agenda of reducing regulation, advancing libertarian ideas, promoting free-market Republican candidates and ousting Democrats. They have two other brothers, William and Frederick, who aren't involved in the effort.
Q: Where did they get their money?
A: The Kochs inherited their father's company in Kansas, and turned Wichita-based Koch Industries into the second-largest privately held company in the nation. The conglomerate makes a wide range of products including Dixie cups, chemicals, jet fuel, fertilizer, electronics, toilet paper and much more. William and Frederick cashed out in 1983 and no longer have a stake in the company.
Q: How rich are Charles and David?
A: With a fortune estimated at $41 billion each, Charles and David tie for fourth on Forbes' list of the richest Americans, and tie for sixth on Forbes' worldwide billionaires list.
Q: What's their secret?
A: Charles, chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, attributes the company's success to his business philosophy, "Market-Based Management," which he's trademarked. Among its components: hiring and retaining people with the right values, and giving employees a bigger voice in decision-making. The company's growth strategy also includes reinvesting 90 percent of earnings.
Q: How much money do Charles and David put into politics?
A: That's the big question. It's unanswered because the Kochs channel lots of money into nonprofit groups that don't have to identify their donors. The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics have calculated that the donor network organized by the Kochs took in at least $407 million in the 2012 election cycle. However, not all of that money came from the Kochs themselves. David Koch's charitable giving has included $58 million donated to nonprofits that could include groups such as Americans for Prosperity, the CATO Institute and the Heritage Foundation, according to company spokeswoman Missy Cohlmia. In addition, the two brothers' direct political contributions to federal candidates and party committees totaled at least than $2 million over the past two decades.
Q: What motivates them?
A: Family patriarch Fred Koch, who built refineries in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, became convinced of the evils of communism and instilled in his sons an aversion to government intrusion. As David said of their father in a 2012 interview with The Wichita Eagle newspaper in Kansas, he "was extraordinarily fearful of our government becoming much more socialistic and domineering. ... So from the time we were teenagers to the present, we've been very concerned and worried about our government evolving into a very controlling, socialist type of government."
WASHINGTON -- They are an outsized force in modern American politics, the best-known brand of the big money era, yet still something of a mystery to those who cash their checks.
Meet the Koch brothers. (Pronounced like the cola.)
Perhaps the first thing you need to know is that there are four of them.
Charles is the steady, driven one. He's grounded in the Kansas soil of their birth.
David is his outgoing younger brother. He's a New Yorker now and pronounces himself forever changed by a near-death experience.
William is David's free-spirited twin, a self-described contrarian whose pursuits beyond business include sailing, collecting things and suing people, including his brothers.
And then there's Frederick, the oldest, who's as likely to turn up in Monte Carlo as at his apartment on New York's Fifth Avenue. He doesn't have much to do with the rest of the lot.
They're all fabulously wealthy, all donate lavishly to charity, all tall — Frederick is the shortest at 6-foot-2 — and all are prostate cancer survivors. Beyond that, there are plenty of differences.
Charles and David are the billionaire businessmen who are pouring millions into politics. Bill and Freddie, as they're known in the family, cut their ties to the family business decades ago and don't display the same passion to change the world.
As Bill sizes up his siblings during an interview with The Associated Press: "David and I like off-color jokes, Freddie likes more sophisticated jokes." Charles? "Charles likes golf."
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Charles and David, in sync on business and politics, are miles apart in geography and style.
Charles is the white-haired alpha male at the helm of Koch Industries. Midwestern through and through, the 78-year-old still walks up four flights of stairs to work at Koch headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, each morning and eats lunch in the company cafeteria.
After building Koch Industries into the nation's second-largest private company, he turned his business philosophy into a book, "The Science of Success."
"He's the most focused person I've ever met in my life," says Koch general counsel Mark Holden. "A purpose-driven life, that's Charles."
Charles wrote in The Wall Street Journal this spring that in recent years he's seen "the need to also engage in the political process."
And how.
He and David have created a sprawling network of groups working to promote free-market views, eliminate government regulations, fight President Barack Obama's health care law, oppose an increase in the minimum wage, shift control of the Senate to Republicans and oust Democrats from office.
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David, a Koch executive vice president and board member, keeps a higher profile. He ran for vice president as a Libertarian ticket in 1980 and chairs Americans For Prosperity Foundation, a tax-exempt corner of the brothers' network.
At 74, with a distinctive bray of a laugh and an aw-shucks manner, David is literally a fixture in New York. His name is splashed across many of his charitable causes. Among them: the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center and the forthcoming David H. Koch Center for ambulatory care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. (He committed $100 million to each).
David's giving escalated after two searing experiences: his survival in a 1991 plane crash that killed 34 people, and a subsequent diagnosis of prostate cancer that left him believing he didn't have long to live. (His brothers all began regular testing, and caught their cancers much earlier.)
"When you're the only one who survived in the front of the plane and everyone else died — yeah, you think, 'My God, the good Lord spared me for some greater purpose,'" David once said.
David is equally passionate about politics, once telling a reporter for the liberal blog ThinkProgress, when asked if he was proud of Americans for Prosperity, "You bet I am, man oh man."
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And what of Bill and Freddie — the other Koch brother and the other other Koch brother?
Bill, 74, worked for Koch Industries in the 1970s, but grew frustrated with what he saw as Charles' autocratic management style and the corporate money his brother put into politics.
What came next played out over two decades: Bill and Freddie tried unsuccessfully to oust Charles as chief executive. Bill got fired. Charles and David bought out their brothers for a combined $800 million. Bill had second thoughts and sued for more. Charles and David won.
"Financially, we probably made a bad deal," Bill says, then adds: "In my life, I'm happier than I ever have been when I was working at Koch Industries. I'm my own person."
Today, he runs his own energy company, Oxbow Carbon LLC and ranks 122nd on Forbes' richest-people list. He's stopped collecting artwork because he's "run out of wall space." But he's still suing people, spending more than $25 million on lawsuits against dealers he's accused of selling fake wine.
Freddie, who turns 81 on Tuesday, loves restoring castles and historical houses.
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Associated Press writer Philip Elliott and News Researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.
CINCINNATI -- Looking at a wide-screen view of Ohio's economy, there are clear signs of economic progress during Republican John Kasich's time as governor. Zooming into the kitchen tables of typical Ohioans brings a fuzzier picture.
In the broad view, the state has added jobs and reduced unemployment, and overall state income and consumer spending have increased. Yet, many households' incomes and their net worth have lagged below pre-recession numbers, home ownership hasn't bounced back all the way, and poverty rates have risen.
A look at the facts and politics about Ohio's economy at the household level with Kasich seeking re-election Nov. 4 against Democrat Ed FitzGerald.
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THE NUMBERS
Overall state income has risen, but real median household income — or the money coming into households at the midpoint of income distribution — fell at a steeper rate than the nation's. Real median incomes dropped from more than $54,000 in 2007 to less than $45,000 in 2012, the latest federal estimates. That indicates that income gains tended to be in the top half, while some in the lower half had less income than before the recession. The number of people living at or below federal poverty levels continued to increase in Ohio, topping 16 percent in the last Census estimates from 13 percent in 2007. In a measure of a middle class-defining goal, home ownership rates were at 68 percent last year, down from 71 percent before the recession's onset.
Ohio's growth in economic output slowed to below 2 percent last year, or about the same as the national rate, after topping the national rate with rises of around 3 percent in each of the previous three years. The state's gross domestic product, which fell to $476 billion in 2009, has climbed steadily to $565 billion under Kasich, according to federal numbers. That means the value of Ohio-produced goods and services are increasing, and in another positive sign for the state's economic outlook, recently released federal statistics show consumer spending in Ohio rose 12 percent in the first three years after the recession's end.
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THE CONTEXT
Ohio's experience has been similar to much of the nation's in making a slow recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-2009. The state was particularly hard hit by an auto industry freefall that contributed to losses of thousands of good-paying jobs.
Overall employment rates have rebounded and the state's economy has expanded, but that growth, Miami University economist William Even says, "isn't lifting all boats by the same amount." Many non-skilled workers and less-educated residents are still hurting, and one study found nearly half of Ohio households are living paycheck-to-paycheck with little in the way of savings or emergency funds, surveys have indicated.
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THE CAMPAIGNS
Kasich trumpets "the Ohio comeback" under his leadership, saying the state has led the Midwest in job creation while building up a budget surplus and cutting taxes. The administration also points out that per-capita income and average wages have risen since 2010 faster than the national averages.
FitzGerald says the state's wealthiest people and its biggest corporations have benefited the most from tax cuts and other Kasich policies, while "working people are being chased out of the middle class." Democrats also point to statistics showing that Ohio's recovery began in 2010, the last year that Kasich's predecessor, Democrat Ted Strickland, was still governor.
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THE PLANS
Kasich says continued income tax cuts will put more dollars into the pockets of working Ohioans, and aggressive work by the private JobsOhio agency he created will continue to bring good-pay jobs to Ohio and give major employers incentives to expand in the state. He also is promoting education changes aimed at making sure students are being prepared for modern workforce needs.
FitzGerald says he will help households have more cash by restoring local government funding trimmed from the state budget, which he says has led to local levies for many households in recent years, and make tax changes to help small businesses grow and hire more workers. He also supports expansion of pre-K education to give early starts on their futures to Ohio children.
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OHIO VOICE
Andrea Deckard, who left a corporate job to become a stay-at-home mom in suburban Monroe because of family needs, started a website, Savings Lifestyle, during the recession to help people find discounts, freebies and make household changes to stretch their budgets. Her readers and the experiences of her own family of five tell her that times remain tight for many people.
"The economy might be improving somewhat," said Deckard, "but people don't have that extra money in their budgets." In some cases, people who lost jobs during the recession have taken jobs at lower pay or jobs at similar pay but requiring long, gas-sucking commutes, while monthly budgets are squeezed by higher food, gas and home energy costs, she said.
People spend more time shopping for discounts — she said she went a long time when she didn't buy anything without a coupon — and have given up pleasures that have become luxuries, from annual vacations to cable TV channels, she said.
"I know it doesn't seem like big sacrifices to people who are really struggling," Deckard said. "My husband loved to watch ESPN."
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Contact the reporter at http://bit.ly/XIBqXR
The second of a series of stories ahead of the November election that look at the health of Ohio's economy.
WASHINGTON -- They are the outsized force in modern American politics, the best-known brand of the big money era, yet still something of a mystery to those who cash their checks.
They're demonized by Democrats, who lack a liberal equal to counter their weight, and not entirely understood by Republicans, who benefit from their seemingly limitless donations.
These are the Koch brothers, and perhaps the first thing you need to know is that there are four of them.
The constant shorthand reference — "Koch brothers," pronounced like the cola — that lumps them all together shortchanges the remarkable story of four very different people who rode the Koch genes and the Koch money in vastly different directions.
Charles is the steady, driven one. He's grounded in the Kansas soil of their birth.
David is his outgoing younger brother. He's a New Yorker now, and pronounces himself forever changed by a near-death experience.
William is David's free-spirited twin, a self-described contrarian whose pursuits beyond business include sailing, collecting things and suing people (his brothers included).
And then there's the oldest, Frederick, who's as likely to turn up in Monte Carlo as at his apartment on New York's Fifth Avenue and doesn't have much to do with the rest of the lot.
They're all fabulously wealthy, all donate lavishly to charity, all tall — Frederick is the shortest at 6-foot-2 — and all are prostate cancer survivors.
Two of them, Charles and David, have defined the public notion what it means to be a "Koch brother."
In the eyes of the political establishment, it's the willingness to freely spend their awesome wealth in the pursuit of a smaller, more limited government. Among the executive set, it's their success at turning Koch Industries into a corporate behemoth whose reach extends into every corner of American life — toilet paper to jet fuel, fertilizer to cattle.
Among Democrats? Well, it's the idea that success at business allowed them to advance a political agenda that is designed to benefit those businesses.
The other two brothers — known in the family as Bill and Freddie — cut their ties to the family business decades ago and don't show the same passion as Charles and David to change the world. One of them, if you can believe it, has even given money to Hillary Rodham Clinton. (That would be Bill.)
As Bill sizes up his siblings during an interview with The Associated Press: "David and I like off-color jokes, Freddie likes more sophisticated jokes." Charles? "Charles likes golf."
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Let's start with Charles and David, the two in sync on business and politics who most people think of when referring to the "Koch brothers." To even pair these two together risks missing their differences, of both geography and style.
Charles is the white-haired alpha male at the helm of Koch Industries. Midwestern through and through, the 78-year-old still walks up four flights of stairs to work at Koch headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, each morning and eats his lunch in the company cafeteria.
After building Koch Industries into the nation's second-largest private company, he turned his business philosophy into a book, "The Science of Success," drawing on — take a breath here — "economics, ethics, social philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, management, epistemology and the philosophy of science."
"He's the most focused person I've ever met in my life," says Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden, who's worked at the company since 1995. "A purpose-driven life, that's Charles. It's always, 'What's next? Let's focus. Let's keep moving.'"
What's next has become the next election. After spending decades promoting his libertarian ideas through think tanks and other educational organizations, some of which he founded, Charles wrote in The Wall Street Journal this spring that in the past decade he's seen "the need to also engage in the political process."
And how.
Thanks to changes in the nation's campaign finance laws, it's not possible to know for sure how much he and David have spent to create a sprawling network of groups working to promote free-market views, eliminate government regulations, fight President Barack Obama's health care law, oppose an increase in the minimum wage, shift control of the Senate to Republicans and oust Democratic officeholders — from Obama to folks at the local level.
Money from Charles and David got Americans for Prosperity started, empowering the tea party activists who have tugged Republicans to the right. Eyeing younger voters, they back Generation Opportunity. Older voters? The 60 Plus Association, a conservative alternative to AARP. Their political hub, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, has funneled cash to a Who's Who of conservative groups, including Concerned Veterans for America, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the National Rifle Association.
Critics trace the excesses of the tea party to the Kochs' doorstep, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., regularly takes to the Senate floor to denounce the brothers as greedy billionaires and "oil baron bullies" who are attempting a "hostile takeover of the American democracy."
Says brother Bill: "I think my brothers wish they had as much power as Harry Reid says they do."
But not the profile.
For all the money Charles is pouring into politics, he's never out front waving a banner for their cause. He's more comfortable behind the scenes, particularly as death threats and protests have escalated to match the brothers' political activity.
"It's made them stronger in their resolve," says Holden.
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David, an executive vice president and board member at Koch Industries, is more often the public face of their politics.
He ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980, drawing little more than 1 percent of the vote with presidential nominee Ed Clark. He is chairman of the Americans For Prosperity Foundation, a tax-exempt corner of the brothers' network that advances a message of low taxes and limited government.
At 74, with a distinctive bray of a laugh and an aw-shucks manner, David is literally a fixture in New York: His name is splashed across his many charitable causes. Among them: the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center ($100 million), the forthcoming David H. Koch Plaza at the Metropolitan Museum of Art ($65 million), the forthcoming David H. Koch Center for ambulatory care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital ($100 million).
David's money follows his passions — the arts, medical research, education, less-is-more government — and he frequently lands on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of the country's top 50 most generous donors.
His giving escalated after two searing experiences: his survival of a 1991 plane crash that killed 34 people, and a subsequent diagnosis of prostate cancer that left him believing he didn't have long to live. (His brothers all began regular testing, and caught their cancers much earlier.)
"When you're the only one who survived in the front of the plane and everyone else died — yeah, you think, 'My God, the good Lord spared me for some greater purpose,'" David said in a 2008 interview with Upstart Business Journal.
Dr. Peter Scardino, chairman of the surgery department at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, to which Koch has donated more than $66 million, said Koch meets with the center's top cancer researchers each year and asks "provocative and interesting and challenging questions."
Scardino said he always warns newcomers who are scheduled to speak before Koch, "Only plan to present your work for 10 minutes because he's going to ask questions and extend it to 30 to 40 minutes."
David is equally passionate about his politics, once telling a reporter for the liberal blog ThinkProgress, when asked if he was proud of Americans for Prosperity, "You bet I am, man oh man." As for the tea party, David said, "There are some extremists there, but the rank and file are just normal people like us. I admire them. It's probably the best grassroots uprising since 1776."
It's the extraordinary success of Koch Industries that has allowed Charles and David to spend so freely. The two are tied for fourth on Forbes' list of the richest Americans, with fortunes of $41 billion each. Since 1961, when their father persuaded Charles to come back to Kansas and work for him, the value of Koch Industries has grown more than 2,400-fold.
The company that was founded by the brother's father in 1940 got its start building oil refineries. It now has 100,000 employees worldwide in a range of businesses that include refining, consumer products, chemicals and electronic components. That red and blue carpeting on Obama's 2008 inaugural podium? Made with fiber from INVISTA, a Koch operation.
Like Charles, David rarely gives interviews; both declined requests to talk for this story.
But David hasn't always been so reticent. In a 2010 interview with New York magazine, he chatted about everything from how hormone therapy for his cancer had affected his sex life to the reason for his knee replacements, joking that "If you spent as many years as I did begging girls for favors, you'd have bad knees too."
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And what of Bill and Freddie — the other Koch brother and the other other Koch brother?
Bill worked for Koch Industries in the 1970s, but he grew frustrated over time about what he saw as Charles' autocratic management style, how much money was being plowed back into the company rather than distributed to shareholders and how much corporate cash Charles was diverting to the Libertarian Party.
"Charles was giving as much to the Libertarians as he was paying out in dividends," Bill once told The New York Times. "Pretty soon we would get the reputation that the company and the Kochs were crazy."
What came next played out over two decades:
Bill enlisted Freddie in a 1980 plan to oust Charles as chief executive. Charles and David derailed it. Bill got fired. Charles and David bought out Fred and Bill for a combined $800 million. Bill had second thoughts and sued for more. In 2000, Charles and David won.
"Financially, we probably made a bad deal," Bill says, then quickly adds: "In my life, I'm happier than I ever have been when I was working at Koch Industries. I'm my own person. I do things that I love. I take chances."
Today, the 74-year-old Bill runs his own energy company, Oxbow Carbon LLC, ranks 122nd on Forbes' richest-people list, and has stopped collecting artwork because he's "run out of wall-space." But he's still suing people, spending more than $25 million on lawsuits against a "hit list" of dealers he's accused of selling fake wine.
He's reconciled with his 19-minutes-older twin, David, whom he considers "an extremely good friend." He describes a "peaceful coexistence" with Charles, but makes mention of a 2012 Forbes article in which Charles would refer to Bill only as "the brother of the twin."
Over the past two decades, Bill has donated more than $1.5 million to various candidates, party committees and causes across the country — both Republican and Democratic — but nothing on the scale of the political activity of Charles and David. (Bill contributed to Clinton back in 1999 when she ran for the Senate. He also gave to Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000.)
Bill knows a thing or two about winning. He spent more than $60 million to claim the America's Cup in 1992.
He gives mixed reviews to Charles' and David's political pursuits. He says he's glad they're "fighting the socialistic trends in this country," but worries that Charles' politics sometimes are a "bit extreme."
He thinks about the shadow that his brothers' political activities casts on him, referring in passing to an IRS audit and wondering if it came about "because my last name is spelled K-O-C-H."
What about Freddie? The oldest brother, who turns 81 on Tuesday, loves restoring castles and historical houses. His whereabouts at any given time are unknown.
"I think he's a resident of Monaco," says Bill, "but he has a place in New York, he has a place in London, he has a place in Austria — he bought Archduke Ferdinand's hunting castle —he has a place in Monaco and then he has a place in Butler, Pennsylvania."
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Associated Press writer Philip Elliott, and News Researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.
Six thoughts from William Koch, on family, money and politics. From an interview with The Associated Press:
—On his brother Charles: "He likes to do things his own way. He likes to be the boss, as most older brothers do. ... He does like control."
—On his siblings overall: "I once used to say that my brother David collected girlfriends till he got married, then my brother Charles collects money and my brother Fred collects houses and then I collect everything I can."
—On Charles' and David's involvement in politics: "I wonder a little bit about the high profile they've taken but admire them for their passionate beliefs and their putting their money where their mouths are."
—On Charles' political views: "He's a born-again libertarian or a born-again conservative and sometimes born-agains take positions that are a bit extreme."
—On misconceptions about his family: "We're all branded as right-wing extremists or right-wing conservatives and I know my brother David and particularly I don't care if two guys want to get married or two women want to get married. So what? And so I don't think we have what you'd call the Bible-belt attitudes that are thrown onto conservatives. ... Some of my brothers are socially liberal and economically conservative."
—On life: "I've really enjoyed the ride I've had since I left Koch Industries. ... What money does is allow you to act out a lot of your eccentricities. ... I've put a lot of it to good use and I've had a lot of fun with the rest."
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration on Friday moved to enact new rules that help ensure contraception coverage for employees of certain companies that have religious objections to birth control.
The new rule would seek to isolate the employers from the coverage they found morally objectionable. They’d be able to notify the government of their objections, which in turn would notify the insurance companies and order them to provide the coverage at no cost.
Without the change, the religious-minded employers have to contact the insurance companies directly.
It was unclear if the new approach would avert legal challenges.
“Today’s announcement reinforces our commitment to providing women with access to coverage for contraception, while respecting religious considerations raised by non-profit organizations and closely held for-profit companies,” Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in a statement.
Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, supported the HHS moves.
“At this time when opponents of women’s health are taking extreme steps to deny women coverage for birth control, we applaud the Obama administration for taking steps to protect this essential coverage,” Ness said.
But Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion public interest law firm, criticized the HHS moves as a violation of the “conscience rights of Americans.”
The Obama administration wants Congress to enact legislation ensuring birth control coverage for women affected by the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, said Eric Schultz, White House deputy press secretary.
“We believe that Congress can and should act to ensure that any women affected by recent Supreme Court actions get the same overage, options that everyone else is offered,” he said. “Legislative action is the quickest and best way to ensure that women get access to the services they need, and we call on Congress to act quickly.”
The Affordable Care Act requires job-based health insurance to provide women with free coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive services prescribed by a health professional.
Certain non-profit religious employers that object to birth control on religious grounds don’t have to provide that coverage, however, under a special government accommodation. In these instances, the federal government steps in to provide coverage for employees.
Other employers eligible for the coverage waiver include those organized and operating as non-profits and those that define themselves as religious organizations and self-certify that they meet the necessary criteria for that designation.
Under the new interim rule, these organizations can notify HHS in writing of their objection to contraceptive coverage. HHS and the Department of Labor will then inform insurers that enrollees in these plans can receive separate contraceptive coverage from the federal government through third-party providers.
The move comes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s groundbreaking 5-4 decision in the Hobby Lobby case, which maintained that certain businesses can reject on religious grounds the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to provide employees with birth control coverage.
The high court’s decision in June concluded that closely held corporations may claim religious rights similar to those enjoyed by individuals. Hobby Lobby, an arts and crafts retailer, maintained that the birth control coverage mandate violated its rights of religious freedom under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
In addition, HHS also issued a proposed rule on Friday seeking comment on how to allow closely held for-profit companies like Hobby Lobby to seek similar waivers of the birth control coverage mandate. Closely held companies typically are family owned or have a small number of investors.
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department on Thursday announced a $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America, a record-setting deal that helps homeowners and ends myriad state and federal investigations triggered by the nation’s mortgage meltdown.
The behemoth package includes a $5 billion civil penalty; $7 billion in various forms of consumer relief; and hefty monetary settlements with six states, including Kentucky and California. Along with other provisions, the complicated settlement amounts to the Justice Department’s largest-ever civil settlement with a single entity.
“I want to be very clear,” Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference. “The size and scope of this multibillion-dollar agreement go far beyond the cost of doing business.”
The settlement resolves claims against the Bank of America and its former and current subsidiaries, including Countrywide Financial Corp. and Merrill Lynch. The claims involve the companies’ mortgage loan practices and the packaging and sale of mortgage-backed securities.
Holder said that “when confronted with concerns about their reckless practices – bankers at these institutions continued to mislead investors” and approve “loans with fundamental credit, compliance and legal defects.”
As part of the settlement, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America acknowledged that it sold billions of dollars of the so-called “residential mortgage-backed securities” without disclosing key facts to investors. Investors lost serious money when the market collapsed.
“Bank of America profited by misleading investors about the risky nature of the mortgage-backed securities it sold,” California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement.
Underscoring the national scale of the investigation, federal prosecutors from California, North Carolina and other states flanked Holder at his Justice Department headquarters news conference, along with two state attorneys general.
The global settlement reached following protracted negotiations includes $300 million to settle claims in California and $23 million to settle claims in Kentucky, among other states where pension funds invested in the wobbly mortgage-backed securities.
“This is the first time Kentucky has been in the forefront of this kind of case,” Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway said in an interview. “It’s a big win for our pension system.”
In a statement Thursday morning, Bank of America said the settlement was expected to reduce the company’s third-quarter earnings by $5.3 billion, or 43 cents per share after taxes. The company noted that the claims relate primarily to “conduct that occurred at Countrywide and Merrill Lynch prior to Bank of America’s acquisition of those entities.”
“We believe this settlement, which resolves significant remaining mortgage-related exposures, is in the best interests of our shareholders, and allows us to continue to focus on the future,” CEO Brian Moynihan said in the statement.
The settlement includes payments to resolve claims from different federal agencies, including $1 billion to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and $135.8 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It leaves alive the possibility of future criminal charges.
Homeowners could benefit in several ways, particularly those living in regions defined as “hardest hit” by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. These are areas, including California and Florida, with high numbers of vacant or distressed properties and foreclosures.
Under the settlement, Bank of America will provide certain homeowners with loan modifications, reducing both the principal that is owed and the interest rate that is paid. The bank will also offer new loans to credit-worthy borrowers who have been having a hard time getting loans. And it will donate at least $100 million to community development funds, legal aid groups and housing counseling agencies, and provide an additional $100 million in financing for affordable rental housing.
“It requires those we are holding accountable to shoulder some of the responsibility for repairing the damage caused by their conduct,” Associate Attorney General Tony West said.
The settlement includes money set aside to help offset the tax liability that homeowners could face as a result of the mortgage relief they receive. An independent monitor will be appointed to see that Bank of America meets its obligations.
Among the specific cases resolved by the global settlement is one filed against the bank in August 2013 by federal prosecutors in North Carolina. The case involved the sale of mortgage-backed securities that were billed as “prime” even though the bank knew of underwriting defects and poor performance.
“Even reputable institutions like Bank of America caved to the pernicious forces of greed and cut corners, putting profits ahead of their customers,” said Anne M. Tompkins, U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, who accompanied Holder at the news conference Thursday.
Other key investigations that prompted the settlement announced Thursday were pursued by federal prosecutors in the Central District of California, based in Los Angeles, and in New Jersey.
“All involved Bank of America or its affiliates saying one thing to investors about the quality of the loans they packaged . . . yet in reality knowing the facts indicated something quite different,” West said.
An Israeli air strike hit a house in central Gaza before dawn Saturday killing five family members, including two...
TRUCKEE, Calif. -- Tesla Motors is building a supercharger station in the Sierra north of Lake Tahoe where drivers of their electric cars can recharge along U.S. Interstate 80 between Sacramento and Reno, Nevada.
Tesla officials announced plans earlier to build a station near Truckee about 30 miles southwest of Reno, but haven't confirmed an exact location or opening date.
The Sierra Sun reported (http://bit.ly/1v9v7dB) this week that six charging bays with "Tesla" labels have been delivered to a taped off site in Truckee with construction equipment behind the Safeway on Donner Pass Road.
Assistant Truckee town manager Alex Terrazas confirmed Tesla pulled the required permits and paid the appropriate fees.
Information from: Sierra Sun.
ALBANY, N.Y. -- An 11-story hotel dating to the 1920s was demolished Saturday to make way for the capital's new $66 million convention center.
Fireworks exploded and crowds cheered as the Wellington Hotel Annex disappeared into a cloud of beige dust.
Some people positioned cameras on tripods to capture the demise of the annex, which had stood near the state Capitol for nine decades but was vacant in recent years.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan was among the spectators posing for pictures with the building — from a safe distance — before it was reduced to rubble.
"That was really an amazing thing to see," Sheehan told the Albany Times Union. "To see so many people come out and witness history in the making and history in the coming, it's really a wonderful thing."
The implosion was postponed from Thursday to limit traffic disruptions.
Streets near the demolition site were closed for several hours. Street sweepers lined up along a nearby street to clear away dust and debris.
The 80,000-square-foot convention center, dubbed the Albany Capital Center, has been in the planning stages for two decades. Developers say it will be connected by a pedestrian walkway to two other hotspots: the Empire State Plaza and the Times Union Center, a popular sports and concert venue.
"This is a new chapter in Albany's economic future, and the implosion was impeccably timed," state Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy told the newspaper.
DONETSK, Russia -- Hundreds of Russian aid trucks returned home from rebel-held eastern Ukraine on Saturday, highlighting a dire need for long-term assistance to the region where homes and livelihoods have been destroyed by months of fighting.
Ahead of a much-anticipated meeting on Tuesday between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks in Kiev with Ukrainian officials and expressed hope for a peaceful solution to the conflict that has claimed more than 2,000 lives.
Russia unilaterally sent hundreds of aid trucks into Ukraine through a rebel-held border point Friday, saying it had lost patience with Ukraine's delaying tactics, a move that Ukraine promptly described as an invasion.
By mid-afternoon Saturday, all the vehicles had returned to Russia, Paul Picard of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe told reporters in the Russian town of Donetsk. A Russian emergency official said 227 vehicles had taken part.
An AP reporter on the Ukrainian side of the border was able to look inside about 40 of the white-tarpaulined tractor-trailers and confirmed they were empty. Russia said the trucks carried only food, water, generators and sleeping bags to the hard-hit rebel stronghold of Luhansk.
Ukraine and others — including the U.S., the European Union and NATO — denounced the Russian move as a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty. Kiev and Western countries also suggested the convoy could be used to smuggle supplies and reinforcements to pro-Russian separatists fighting the government.
It remained unclear, however, what the Russian convoy had actually delivered, since it only arrived late Friday afternoon. Unloading all those trucks in just a few hours in a war-battered region represents a sizeable task. AP journalists following the convoy said rattling sounds Friday indicated some of the trucks were not fully loaded.
In those towns and cities recaptured by Ukrainian forces from the rebels, the need for something more long-term than a one-time delivery of food and water is glaring. Assistance has been trickling in from the government and international donors, but it is still not enough to help rebuild livelihoods destroyed by war.
Residents in the city of Slovyansk, which endured a weekslong siege before the rebels left town in July, were caught between government forces and the separatists for several months and are now largely left on their own after devastating artillery strikes.
Valerie Amos, who oversees U.N. emergency assistance programs, visited Slovyansk on Saturday to inspect aid efforts there.
"This is particularly difficult in some areas in the eastern part of the country where there is ongoing fighting," Amos told The Associated Press.
Rebels have rejected overtures by authorities to provide territory under their control with much-needed aid.
Rows of burned-out houses on the northern fringes of Slovyansk stood as a reminder of the impact of the fighting. Owners could be seen Saturday clearing out the debris from their partially damaged or totally charred homes. Few seem confident they will be able to repair their houses anytime soon.
Yevgeny Bezkorovainy, an unemployed 25-year-old resident of Slovyansk, said his household didn't have enough money to repair their shrapnel-scarred roof.
"Somebody said they would help, but it has been two months already, but what help do we see? Everybody is building now off their own back," he said.
One of the countries pledging aid to Ukraine is Germany. Chancellor Merkel held talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev on Saturday and promised 500 million euros ($660 million) in loan guarantees to support private investment in infrastructure and schools in war-struck areas.
Merkel urged a political solution to the crisis three days before Poroshenko will be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Minsk in their first encounter since June. Merkel said she was looking forward to the outcome of those talks and expressed "hope that at least a step forward will be reached there."
Poroshenko said Ukraine is anxious to bring peace as soon as possible and solve the conflict by negotiations, but "not at the expense of sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine."
Asked what message he intended to convey to Putin, Poroshenko said "take away your armed people from our territory and I can promise peace will come to Ukraine very soon."
Ukraine has retaken control of much of its eastern territory bordering Russia in the last few weeks, but fierce fighting for the rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk persists.
In Ukraine's Donetsk, the largest city under rebel control, residents reported artillery strikes throughout Friday night and Saturday. The mayor's office said six people were killed, including two who had been waiting for a bus and three others in an artillery strike on their apartment building.
The stadium of Ukrainian soccer champion Shakhtar Donetsk, a city landmark that had hosted games for the 2012 European championships, was damaged by shelling Saturday.
Unrest in eastern Ukraine began in mid-April, one month after Russia annexed Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. The United Nations says more than 2,000 people have been killed and 340,000 forced to flee their homes during the fighting.
Leonard reported from Slovyansk, Ukraine; Nataliya Vasilyeva in Kiev, Mstyslav Chernov in Izvaryne, Jim Heintz in Moscow and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
BERLIN -- Several thousand people have formed a human chain across the German-Polish border to protest the expansion of open-cast mining for brown coal in the region.
Organizers said more than 7,500 people linked up in an 8-kilometer ( 5-mile) chain between Kerkwitz, Germany, and Grabice, Poland — two villages that activists fear will be evacuated to make way for further brown coal mines, also known as lignite.
Some of Saturday's demonstrators waded into the Neisse river, which divides the two countries, as part of the chain. The leaders of Germany's opposition Green party were among those attending the protest.
Both coal and lignite, which is decried as a dirty fuel by environmentalists, play a significant part in the energy mix of both Germany and Poland.
MASHANTUCKET, Conn. -- The tribe that runs the country's largest resort casino is showing new signs of strain under the weight of its billion-dollar debt, saying it has had to review its options with senior lenders as a slump continues to batter the Foxwoods Resort Casino.
The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which owns and operates Foxwoods, has been selling off land near its reservation in southeastern Connecticut. And in a report this past week, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's lowered its rating for the tribe and said the chances of a debt default appear to be growing.
Foxwoods had unrivaled success for years after opening in 1992 but has struggled to reverse a downturn in recent years as competition has grown from gaming in neighboring states. The tribe, which defaulted on a debt of $2.3 billion in 2009, last year completed a restructuring process that reduced its debt to $1.7 billion.
A week ago, the tribe announced it had entered discussions with senior lenders as a result of "failure to comply with certain financial covenants." It said agreements with lenders were premised on improvements in financial performance that have not materialized.
"In particular, the gaming industry remains weighed down by a sluggish consumer economy while the regional market is feeling the added effect of new competition and increased supply from surrounding states," the tribe said in a news release.
The Day of New London reported that the tribe sold off 371 acres of mostly vacant land in North Stonington last month for $1.25 million. The newspaper, citing town land records and property listings for the report Aug. 9, said the tribe was also looking to shed land holdings in Preston, Waterford, and Hopkinton, Rhode Island.
Representatives for the tribe and the casino did not respond to requests for comment on the tribe's financial situation and whether it is related to the sale of land.
In a report last week on its downgrade of the tribe's credit rating, Standard & Poor's said it believes the tribe might not be able to pay some creditors.
"We believe the combination of continued operating weakness and the failure to comply with financial covenants increases the likelihood of a near-term default," the report said.
The tribe said in its news release that the underlying business remains strong at Foxwoods and the recent struggles that led to talks with lenders do not affect the casino's projected liquidity. The tribe has been renovating the property and plans to open an outlet mall at Foxwoods next spring.
IRVINE, Calif. -- Botox maker Allergan says it's reviewing shareholder requests for a special meeting to consider replacing most of its board.
That's a change fellow drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals is seeking as part of its hostile takeover attempt.
Allergan has repeatedly rejected Valeant's offers to buy the company, the latest for about $53 billion, saying Valeant is substantially undervaluing the company and that an independent Allergan can generate more value for shareholders.
Valeant and its partner — investment fund manager Pershing Square — said late Friday they submitted to Allergan written requests from its shareholders of 31 percent of Allergan's stock requesting a special meeting of Allergan shareholders.
Allergan says it will announce details on a possible meeting once it finishes reviewing the requests. Valeant says it believes Allergan must hold that meeting by Dec. 20.
CONCORD, N.H. -- From farmers markets teeming with new customers in New Hampshire to a Massachusetts flower grower desperately seeking new buyers for tens of thousands of mums, fallout from the Market Basket supermarket stalemate has been a mixed bag.
The 2-month-old employee revolt at the 71-store New England grocery chain coincides with what farmers say has been one of the best growing seasons in recent memory. But some growers who rely on big orders from Market Basket are not reaping the benefits as well as others.
While there are signals a breakthrough could come soon, Market Basket patrons have been boycotting stores. Most deliveries have stopped. Shelves are empty. Farmers who grew produce and flowers to fill Market Basket orders are scrambling to find other outlets. Those who saw the promise of profits in June are now counting their losses.
"There's just been so many ripple effects," said Lorraine Merrill, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, Markets and Food. "It's nothing like anything we've ever seen."
John Simone of Simone's Riverside Farm in Methuen, Massachusetts, said the first day he was to begin shipping produce to Market Basket was the day employees walked off the job to protest the June 23 ouster of CEO Arthur T. Demoulas by his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, and his allies.
"It's going to be hard to recover from," said Simone as he stared at 20,000 mums that were grown and bound for Market Basket stores. "It's completely stressing me out."
There have been weeks of talks, competing bids to buy out the chain and even the involvement of governors in Massachusetts and New Hampshire as the stalemate drags on.
The governors said in a joint statement late Friday that they were optimistic the feud would be resolved, perhaps in a matter of days, with an agreement to sell the chain to Arthur T. Demoulas.
Rich Bonanno of Pleasant Valley Gardens, also in Methuen, feels Simone's pain four-fold. He grew 80,000 mums destined for Market Basket. He's managed to offload 50,000 of those to another chain store, at 50 cents less per plant than Market Basket had agreed to pay.
"It's a $40,000 loss," Bonanno said. "But if I'm able to move them, I'll still be in business at the end of the year."
Bonanno is now wrestling with whether to invest $18,000 by ordering bulbs from Holland to fill Market Basket's Easter 2015 order — a decision that has to be made this week. "I honestly don't know what to do," he said.
Thirty miles north in Hollis, Massachusetts, Tyler Hardy of Brookdale Fruit Farm is working 95 hours a week to meet the demands of competing grocery chains that have seen a boom in business during the protracted protest.
He said he usually delivers to Shaw's and Hannaford's three to four times a week. He's now making deliveries seven days a week.
"It's tough to get enough picked during the day to keep up with the demand," Hardy said.
Farm stands and farmers markets also are booming this summer, a phenomenon Jane Lang attributes to the Market Basket standoff. She is president of the New Hampshire Farmer's Market Association.
"We have seen a tremendous growth," said Lang, who hopes people who come to the markets for the first time will be smitten and return.
EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- Evansville-based Vectren Corp. says 120 southwestern Indiana coal miners will lose their jobs by month's end as the natural-gas utility completes the sale of its coal-mining subsidiary.
Vectren announced last month that it was selling its Vectren Fuels subsidiary to Terre Haute-based Sunrise Coal in a $296 million deal that includes two underground coal mines in the Knox County town of Oaktown, and one in the Pike County city of Petersburg.
The Evansville Courier & Press reports (http://bit.ly/1t2kdp8 ) Sunrise Coal has offered jobs to all but 120 of the mines' 670 workers.
Vectren says those miners have been released from their jobs so they can look for new work, but will remain on company payrolls through the end of August.
Vectren Fuels' sale is scheduled to close on Aug. 29.
LOS ANGELES -- Gay bathhouses that once remained in the shadows to stay in business are now seeking attention to keep their doors open.
Some are doing aggressive online advertising and community outreach. Others tout their upscale amenities like plush towels and marble baths. A bathhouse in Ohio has even added hotel rooms and a nightclub.
Gone are the days when bathhouses drew crowds just by offering a discreet place for gays to meet, share saunas and, often, have sex.
"The acceptance of gays has changed the whole world. It's taken away the need to sneak into back-alley places," said Dennis Holding, 75, who owns a Miami-based bathhouse.
In the heyday of bathhouses in the late 1970s, there were nearly 200 gay bathhouses in cities across the U.S., but by 1990, the total had dropped to approximately 90, according to Damron, the publisher of an annual gay travel guide. In the last decade, bathhouses, including ones in San Diego, Syracuse, Seattle and San Antonio, have shut down and the total nationwide is less than 70. Most patrons are older.
Hollywood Spa — one of the largest bathhouses in Los Angeles, a city regarded as the country's bathhouse capital — closed in April. Owner Peter D. Sykes said fewer customers and rising rent put an end to four decades in business.
"Bathhouses were like dirty bookstores and parks: a venue to meet people," said Sykes, who still owns the smaller North Hollywood Spa. "Today, you can go to the supermarket."
Bathhouses date to the Roman Empire. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, American bathhouses were built in many cities to maintain public hygiene among poor and immigrant communities. Chicago and Manhattan each had about 20 public bathhouses.
But the need for public places to wash up declined and by the 1950s and '60s, bathhouses largely had become rendezvous spots for gays, prompting occasional raids because sodomy was still criminalized.
Privately run, gay-owned bathhouses proliferated in the 1970s, offering a haven for gay and bisexual men to meet. Clubs like New York City's Continental bathhouse and Los Angeles' 8709 Club saw a steady stream of patrons.
Each venue was operated like a speakeasy: a nondescript building often located in the urban fringe. In-house entertainment was common, from DJs to live performers. Bette Midler even launched her career from the stage of the Continental.
Amid the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, bathhouses were vilified for enabling promiscuity and helping spread the disease, and many either closed voluntarily or by legal pressure. Those that remained were stigmatized, and now many younger gays see them as anachronisms.
"The younger generation's main fear is that it's some dark, seedy place," said T.J. Nibbio, the executive director of the North American Bathhouse Association. NABA formed two years ago for bathhouse owners to pool best practices for marketing and operations.
To attract younger patrons, some bathhouses offer steep discounts, cutting admission by as much as 60 percent. At the three-story Midtowne Spa in downtown Los Angeles, 18- to 20-year-olds get in for $5 any time. On Tuesdays, Los Angeles' Melrose Spa lets those 18 to 25 in for free, a deal that brought 22-year-old Brett Sparks on a recent midweek visit.
"You're either hooking up online or you are here, or you go to bars in West Hollywood, get drunk and hook up," said Sparks, acknowledging that although the bathhouse crowd skews older, it's not as risky as going home with a stranger. "Here it's a safer environment — there's condoms and other protection."
The CEO of Ohio-based Flex Spas, Todd Saporito, has positioned his bathhouse chain as a pillar of the gay community. Saporito uses the chain's Cleveland-based flagship spa, whose 50,000 square feet include luxury hotel rooms and a nightclub, to run the city's annual pride parade and this year's Gay Games, an international LGBT athletic competition.
Flex Spas also has sponsored the White Party, an annual electronic music festival in Palm Springs, and partnered with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, part of an effort to frame the bathhouse as an opportunity for preventing risky behavior.
Flex Spas has had mixed success over the past few years. Its location in Atlanta has seen "exponential" growth, but clubs in New Orleans and Columbus, Ohio, have closed, Saporito said.
Saporito said more progressive views on homosexuality aren't evenly spread across the country, underscoring the need for modern bathhouses in some areas. Still, he takes nothing for granted, regardless of the location.
"Bathhouses at some level will go extinct if you don't offer something more than a towel," Saporito said.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- Iceland's Meteorological Office says a subglacial eruption is underway at the Bardarbunga volcano, which has been rattled by thousands of earthquakes over the past week.
Vulcanologist Melissa Pfeffer said seismic data indicates that lava from the volcano is melting ice beneath the Vatnajokull glacier. She said it was not clear when, or if, the eruption would melt the ice and send steam and ash into the air.
Minutes earlier, Iceland raised its aviation alert for the volcano to the highest level of red on Saturday, indicating an eruption that could cause "significant emission of ash into the atmosphere." Red is the highest alert warning on a five-point scale.
Scientists had planned to fly over the glacier later Saturday to look for changes on the surface but it was not clear if that would still take place.
Authorities had evacuated several hundred people earlier this week from the highlands north of the Vatnajokull glacier as a precaution. The area is uninhabited but popular with hikers.
Iceland sits on a volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge and eruptions have occurred frequently, triggered when the Earth's plates move and when magma from deep underground pushes its way to the surface.
A 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokul volcano produced an ash cloud that caused a week of international aviation chaos, with more than 100,000 flights cancelled. Aviation regulators since have reformed policies about flying through ash, so a new eruption would be unlikely to cause that much disruption.
Pfeffer said the amount of ash produced would depend on the thickness of the ice.
"The thicker the ice, the more water there is, the more explosive it will be and the more ash-rich the eruption will be," she said.
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Online:
Icelandic Meteorological Office: http://en.vedur.is/
DERIDDER, La. -- TriParish Rehabilitation Hospital has opened a $500,000 facility housed within the site of Beauregard Memorial Hospital.
The American Press reported (http://bit.ly/1eOXZNb) the new facility is called Rehabilitation Hospital of Beauregard.
It provides physical rehabilitation care, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, respite, speech, social services, dietary therapy and around-the-clock nursing.
The campus is on the third floor of Beauregard Memorial Hospital and includes therapy gyms, private and semi-private rooms, a dining area and a nurse station.
Mark Harris, CEO of Maxim Management Group, which manages Tri Parish Rehabilitation Hospital, said the DeRidder area's growing population of senior citizens warranted expansion beyond the company's current facility in Rosepine.
"Today we're at 13 out of 16 beds in the Beauregard (Memorial Hospital) facility, and we're at 15 out of 20 at Rosepine, so that tells you right there that there's a need," he said.
Harris said the company spent nearly $500,000 on renovations at Beauregard Memorial to provide inpatient rehabilitation services similar to those offered in Rosepine.
Rehabilitation Hospital of Beauregard will employ about 80 people. The staff will be led by TriParish director Dr. Jenness Courtney III.
Uber is hiring David Plouffe, the mastermind of Obama's 2008 campaign, to power its own political strategy. What can a tech-savvy political animal offer a ride-sharing service? Charles Dharapak/AP hide caption
Uber is hiring David Plouffe, the mastermind of Obama's 2008 campaign, to power its own political strategy. What can a tech-savvy political animal offer a ride-sharing service?
President Obama's former campaign manager has gone to work for Uber. The ride-sharing start-up based in San Francisco has hired David Plouffe in hope that the political strategist who helped elect a president can steer the company through a thicket of local regulatory disputes.
This new power couple raises some questions:
Why does Uber need one of the best political strategists in the country?
First off, they can afford him. The company is valued at $18 billion. NPR tried to find out what Plouffe is getting paid, but Uber won't say.
They need the muscle, though. CEO Travis Kalanick is spinning this as one epic campaign of Silicon Valley innovation against the "big taxi cartel." Cabbies say that Uber is just a smartphone-enabled taxi and should be subject to all the same rules as they are. That level of regulation would really hurt Uber's business.
Take the question of how to insure part-time drivers, for instance. Uber's taken out a million-dollar insurance policy, but it's very limited. Some insurance companies have said they won't cover a car that's being used for commercial ride sharing. The rules are all over the map.
Plouffe could help Uber come up with a federal strategy to address regulatory attempts, so the company could lobby more efficiently than the current city-by-city campaigns. Kalanick talked about that at an Atlantic Live forum last November.
"I'm trying to find some angle where I can just say all this corrupt stuff just comes down to the federal thing," he said. Perhaps Plouffe can help get the Federal Trade Commission to intervene.
How might Plouffe campaign for Uber?
Uber won't get into the details, but presumably Plouffe is going to lead a big marketing push. That's what both of them hinted at when they appeared together on Bloomberg TV this week to talk about the partnership. Kalanick says he wants "to tell a story in the cities that we're going to."
Obama's 2008 campaign was a social media home run well before the app ecosystem on smartphones took off — remember all the homegrown sites and personal testimony.
We might see a MyUber app and stories about dads and moms able to pay the bills. Kalanick likes to tell a story about a dad who built an entire fleet — not just one cab on the Uber app — and he's paying for his daughter to go to Stanford.
Is this part of that revolving door between Silicon Valley and Washington D.C.?
Yes. It's a high profile example of a pretty consistent trend. The former mayor of D.C., Adrian Fenty, came to Silicon Valley to be a special advisor to a leading venture capital firm. Facebook has hired former Hill staffers. The cybersecurity start-ups in Silicon Valley are full of former Pentagon and NSA employees.
One unique thing about this partnership is that both parties are exceptionally good at spin. That's not always the case; Facebook is really struggling with how to frame its work as not creepy or manipulative, for example.
Uber sticks to a talking point that it's fighting for big principles like 'economic freedom.' Some people in Silicon Valley mock that a bit, saying the company is also just trying to get around driver safety regulations.
As Obama's campaign manager, Plouffe was the guy who told Politico about how rival John Edwards spent $400 on a haircut. That story came to define Edwards' unsuccessful campaign, and showcased Plouffe's savvy for opposition research. The taxi versus Uber narrative probably has lots of room for vivid, unflattering stories, too.
What's Uber's master plan?
Uber plainly wants to be more than a car service. Just this week they started delivery service in D.C., experimenting with the transportation of goods as well as people. The so-called "Uber Corner Store" is a move into on-demand delivery services.
Also remember that Uber's money comes from Google Ventures. Google is in search of "moonshots," so maybe we'll see Uber fully integrate with Google Maps to connect people going in the same direction in a new, paid car-pooling service. That wouldn't just disrupt the taxi industry; it could affect buses and trains, too.
Uber has also partnered with AT&T to embed the Uber app into smartphones and just opened its API to developers who want to find interesting new ways to embed Uber's services in other platforms.
As for Plouffe, he's a political operative who loves technology. Right now, there are a bunch of tech start-ups making get-out-the-vote apps. Maybe Plouffe will do his stint at Uber, milk all the amazing Silicon Valley contacts and bounce to his own start-up.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Kindred Healthcare is planning to expand its headquarters in downtown Louisville, and the project will likely result in big changes in the Theater Square area.
The Courier-Journal (http://cjky.it/VISjjz ) reports that Kindred has purchased nearly all the property at Theater Square across from The Brown hotel. Kindred's corporate offices are in a six-story building.
A couple of popular lunchtime spots will be affected by the expansion.
Kindred officials are mum on their plans and on such details as how many jobs might be added. Chris Poynter, a spokesman for Mayor Greg Fischer, says Kindred officials are in continuing talks with the city.
Kindred and subsidiaries operate more than 100 hospitals, nearly 100 nursing centers and numerous home-health, hospice and non-medical home-care facilities.
It has more than 2,000 employees based in Louisville.
WASHINGTON -- "Hold this," Bill Thomas whispers as he hands me a bottle of Macallan 18-year scotch that he's just plucked off the top shelf at a liquor store in Hagerstown, Maryland. "We'll talk about it in the car."
A peanut-sized dust bunny lands in his beard, but he's too excited to notice.
He grabs three other bottles of whiskey and checks out. Including the $199 bottle of Macallan, the total comes to $660. His girlfriend, Brittany Garrison, a local publicist, and I follow him to the car, which is relatively tidy save for a vintage ceramic decanter clinking around in the back seat.
"This is absolute gold to me," he bursts out once we've shut our doors. "I'm literally overjoyed right now."
Garrison pulls out her iPhone and searches for "Macallan 18, vintage 1988" on a website that appraises alcohol.
"OK, in 2013 it went for . holy s--!" Garrison says. "Well, this was in Hong Kong. Which is interesting because Asia has started purchasing a lot of American whiskeys in the past couple of . "
"Are you going to tell us or what?" Thomas asks.
"$1,840," she says.
"I can't believe this is the first store we hit, and this is what we found," Thomas says. "Let's go. It's already a really good trip."
Jack Rose Dining Saloon, Thomas' bar in Adams Morgan, houses more than 1,800 bottles of scotches, bourbons and ryes, making it one of the largest retailers of whiskeys in the Western Hemisphere. That's still a nip compared to Thomas' private stash of 4,000 bottles that he stores at his Northwest Washington home.
The collection is divided into two main categories: dusties (museum-quality bottles from old distilleries so-called for the layer of dust they collect after going unnoticed for so long) and special releases (limited-run, discontinued whiskeys from bigger brands).
In both cases, there's a finite amount available of these types of whiskey in the world, and the minute you take a sip of one, there's that much less on the planet.
Because of the whiskeys' rarity, enthusiasts are willing to pay top dollar through a broker or at auctions. Or, as in Thomas' case, spend their time "hunting" for them in the wild at liquor stores that sell them at retail prices far below their real-world values. "A lot of the stuff we find has been sitting on the shelf since the '80s," Thomas says. "And it's still priced at $12.99."
Thomas, 44, searches primarily in the District of Columbia and the surrounding area, though he's increasingly spending more time in Kentucky. He can't help but notice that his turf has gotten more crowded over the past two years.
At the end of the hunt, Thomas ended up purchasing just over $1,000 in whiskeys.
"Back in the day, when you went hunting you expected to find something," he says. "Nowadays, it's not guaranteed. You don't have to know your craft anymore. Anybody can find an old bottle and Google it, and those are the people draining the market."
Thomas is on a high after his first "kill." He doesn't even mind that Garrison, the elected driver for the day, has gotten us turned around. ("I usually navigate because he doesn't know how to use Google Maps," she says when she thinks he's not listening.)
The next liquor store we hit is more manicured than the first, which Thomas worries will mean fewer chances to nab a dusty. He's right. On the way out, he asks the cashier if he has anything old lying around in the back.
The inquiry gets the two talking about rare alcohols and the rise of whiskey hunters. "You can always tell when they come in," the cashier says. "Some of them are jerks." When Thomas mentions he owns Jack Rose, the cashier perks up.
"Come here," he tells Thomas, motioning to the other end of the counter with his head. He crouches down, pulls out a bottle of Stagg Jr. bourbon second release from Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky and places it on the counter.
"Already got it," Thomas says.
The cashier goes back under and comes up with a coveted Thomas H. Handy Sazerac rye whiskey from Buffalo Trace's Antique Collection.
"Got that one, too."
We leave empty-handed, but the cashier tips us off to another store nearby. "It's not exactly a retail gem, but you may know something he has that he doesn't."
Domestic whiskey revenue rose 10.1 percent in 2013 over the year before, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. In comparison, vodka revenue was up only 2.2 percent and gin was down 0.6 percent.
"Why do we have a Starbucks on every corner when a Dunkin' Donuts would have been fine?" asks Frank Coleman, senior vice president of the D.C.-based trade association. "It's because there's a flavor revolution going on. People are leaning toward whiskey because they're interested in products that have flavor," as opposed to less-complex spirits like vodka.
This is good news to Thomas, because it means a steady stream of customers thirsty for something unique. While most of the bottles he finds in the wild end up in his private stash, he uses some of them to replenish the stock at Jack Rose. But nothing he owns is sacred.
"It's all meant to be drunk eventually," he says. "The collection is a library, not a museum."
The shop recommended by the cashier proves to be a bust. As does the next one we hit. And the next one. We stop at a total of 13 more stores in Hagerstown, which Thomas zeroed in on after an industry friend tipped him off that the town held some good finds.
After replenishing at a roadside deli, we swing by six more shops with varying degrees of success before heading home. We've been at this for 7½ hours, and Thomas is sated for now, with the day's purchases ending up at just over $1,000.
Long before he had his first sip of whiskey, Thomas collected aluminum cans when he was 7 to make money to spend at the arcade. The son of a major appliance salesman-turned-video-store owner, the Prince George's County, Maryland, native grew up with a go-getter attitude.
"My favorite quote is (attributed to) Abraham Lincoln: 'Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle,'" he says.
Thomas opened his first bar — The Blue Room in Adams Morgan, which he later converted into Bourbon — in 1999 with money he earned scalping concert tickets. He also owns Breadsoda and another Bourbon in Glover Park.
Thomas maintains his motives for whiskey hunting are not entirely financial. Rather, he's more excited to own a little piece of history, and he finds peace while hunting.
"I'm not maximizing my time by doing all of this. I'd be better off at Jack Rose pushing whiskey," he says. "But sometimes you don't want to do that. You want solitude. To me, this is relaxation."
EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. -- It's summertime in the Hamptons and the biggest buzz is coming from the sky.
Complaints about noise coming from aircraft ferrying visitors and locals to and from one of America's best-known playgrounds for the rich and famous have more than tripled over last year, due in part to a new service that lets people book 40-minute chopper rides from Manhattan for relatively cheap prices.
Between the helicopters, corporate jets, seaplanes and other aircraft, residents say life in the vacation paradise has become a nightmare.
"It is extremely disruptive," says Teresa McCaskie, who lives in Mattituck, 15 miles north of East Hampton Town Airport, which has logged 14,000 takeoffs and landings through early August, up 2,000 from last year.
McCaskie says she can't sit outside on her deck in the afternoons because of the clatter of helicopters that travel from Manhattan, across the Long Island Sound and directly over her house.
"There are some that are just unbearable — the sound of the thumping," she says. "The pounding sound when you're standing on your back deck and your deck is vibrating and it's pounding your windows."
Bob Malafronte, a retired New York City teacher who lives in Sag Harbor and is a member of a noise abatement committee, said he wants either an outright ban on helicopters or a requirement that they fly 20 miles farther east over Long Island Sound and then turn south over Peconic Bay — keeping them over water for a longer time.
While East Hampton operates the 600-acre airport, neighboring Southampton, Shelter Island and Southold towns are pressuring their neighbors for quiet.
"It has affected the quality of life for these people who are living under the flight path," says Southampton town supervisor Anna Throne-Holst. "Some (planes) come in at such a low altitude that you can look up and see the wing numbers."
East Hampton Supervisor Larry Cantwell knows he has to do something. Through early August, the town's airport noise hotline had received 11,758 complaints, up from 3,335 from the same period in 2013.
Cantwell said the town is studying whether no longer accepting funding from the Federal Aviation Administration would allow them to restrict the number of flights. Currently the FAA has no restrictions. He said he needs to balance the complaints of residents with aircraft operators' rights to ply their trade.
While chartering a helicopter ordinarily costs about $3,000 a trip, a new service called Blade that operates out of New York City allows passengers to buy individual seats on choppers for about $500 a trip.
That has made a Hamptons helicopter trip a more affordable option for many visitors seeking to avoid the chronically jammed summertime traffic that can make the 100-mile journey a four-hour ordeal.
"I'm taking this helicopter because I was very busy and I wanted to make it to my daughter's birthday," said attorney Matthew Kidd as he waited for a flight at the 34th Street heliport in Manhattan.
Added consumer products executive Jonathan Teller: "It's expensive, but relatively speaking, for the convenience, for the fact that you know how long it'll take you to get out to Long Island ... it makes it valuable for me."
Liberty Helicopters, which operates the Blade flights, did not respond to messages about sales figures for the new service.
Jeff Smith, vice president of operations for Eastern Regional Helicopter Council, a trade group that represents operators of about 110 helicopters in the New York City area, said figures are still being analyzed for the cheaper helicopter flights, but a new market has definitely been tapped.
Smith said East Hampton would be taking an economic hit if it were to restrict flights or reject FAA funding.
"Those folks are some of the biggest economic supporters for the town, both in terms of the property taxes they pay and the money they spend when they are out there," Smith said.
His organization opposes any effort by East Hampton town officials to shun FAA financing, citing safety concerns.
Smith also said proposals to force helicopter pilots to fly farther east before turning toward East Hampton were "unrealistic." He said he would welcome a meeting between helicopter operators and the residents.
"All options should be open."
Associated Press writer Verena Dobnik contributed to this story from New York.
BEIRUT: Hezbollah Minister Hussein Hajj Hasan Saturday said the Arab world should confront the conspiracy that is distorting the image of Islam, saying Gulf countries now fear the “monster” they created, in reference to ISIS.
“The biggest conspiracy against Islam is distorting its image and making every Muslim be seen as a terrorist,” Hajj Hasan said during a ceremony in the coastal city of Sidon.
“Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians and everyone, including Christians, Muslims, Shiites and other sects, are concerned with confronting this [conspiracy] culturally and socially - in defense of Islam not a party, a sect or a people,” he said.
“We have to defend Christians and Muslims, not against killing but against this social, psychological and infrastructure destruction that is threatening countries.”
Hezbollah has said they were fighting in Syria against the rise of takfiri groups and the possibility of such fighters infiltrating Lebanon.
While voicing the party's undying support for the resistance in Gaza, Hajj Hasan said countries now feared "the monster they created."
"We are facing a real challenge in security, military, economic and social fields. I am not only talking about Lebanon and Syria ... but Gulf states are now concerned about the monster they created in order to destroy the resistance,” he said.
Hezbollah has repeatedly accused Arab states of funding and backing extremist groups against resistance forces in the region and with the aim of forcing the collapse of President Bashar Assad.
EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. -- It's summertime in the Hamptons and the biggest buzz is coming from the sky.
Complaints about noise coming from aircraft ferrying visitors and locals to and from one of America's best-known vacation playgrounds for the rich and famous have more than tripled over last year. And takeoffs and landings at the East Hampton Town Airport are up 2,000 from a year ago.
That's due in part to a new service that lets people book 40-minute chopper rides to and from Manhattan for relatively cheap prices.
East Hampton Supervisor Larry Cantwell says a number of remedies are being considered. Proposals include banning or restricting the number of flights and forcing aircraft to fly farther over Long Island Sound before turning south to East Hampton.
BEIRUT: Health Minister Wael Abu Faour Saturday visited the southern town of Shebaa, reassuring residents that there were no gunmen in the area and urging them to leave security measures to the Army and security forces.
“We are here today to tell residents of Shebaa and Arqoub that the Army is doing its job in closing the border crossing, unless it is for humanitarian issues,” Abu Faour said during his tour in the town, where fears of a Arsal-style scenario have grown given the presence of thousands of refugees.
Shebaa’s location on Lebanon’s southeastern border with Syria and the Israeli occupied Golan Heights prompted concerns that militants from rural Damascus could enter the town and clash with the Army, similar to recent events on the northeastern border in the Bekaa Valley.
Starting Aug. 2 and lasting for five days, Lebanese troops battled gunmen from Syria who attacked military and police centers following the arrest of an ISIS commander. The Army has said that the fighting in Arsal was systematic and premeditated.
Shebaa, similar to Arsal, is home to thousands of Syrians fleeing the ongoing civil war in their country.
Abu Faour said municipalities were also carrying measures to better control the presence of refugees.
“There are no weapons here or gunmen. So people should stop disseminating fear and intimidation with the aim of sowing divisions,” he said.
“The circumstances are difficult and what we are doing is a preemptive effort.”
“Today's visit is to strengthen coexistence. I carry with me Walid Jumblatt and Talal Arslan's salutations. They want this area to be like the rest of Lebanon and enjoy calm and peace.”
He also said residents of Shebaa and surrounding villages should not adopt their own security measures, asking not to “fall prey to rumors of ISIS or the Nusra Front coming to take over the town."
Lebanese authorities have taken measures against Syrian refugee gatherings across the country in light of the Arsal clashes, with Army troops raiding informal refugee camps and carrying out arrests against suspected militants.
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BAY SHORE, N.Y. -- A famed bakery has left Long Island after nearly a century.
Newsday reports Saturday (http://nwsdy.li/1sf6C9T ) that the era of locally made Entenmann's cakes and cookies ended with the closure of its Bay Shore plant Aug. 13.
Entenmann's owner Bimbo Bakeries USA, a division of Mexico's Grupo Bimbo, says it's shifting production to other states, including Pennsylvania.
A spokesman told Newsday the Bay Shore facility, which opened in 1961, was closed because "it can no longer effectively compete in the market."
Newsday reports 176 of the plant's 265 workers lost their jobs. Some remaining employees will work in research and development, technology and marketing.
Locals lamented the move.
William Entenmann founded the company in Brooklyn in 1898. He moved it to a small store in Bay Shore in 1905.
