magic ocean dive

When the Great Recession struck California 17 years ago and hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs, the state’s unemployment insurance system crashed. The employer-financed program quickly exhausted its thin reserves, due to a short-sighted political decision six years earlier. In 2001, the Unemployment Insurance Fund had a $6.5 billion positive balance. But the governor at the time, Democrat Gray Davis, owed big political debts to unions that financed his 1998 campaign. He repaid them by doubling unemployment insurance benefits, contending that the seemingly hefty reserve could cover them without raising payroll taxes on employers. When recession struck, the insurance fund soon leaked red ink and the state borrowed about $10 billion from the federal government to maintain cash payments. When the state didn’t repay the loan, the feds raised payroll taxes for nearly a decade to retire the loan. It should have been a lesson for political policymakers about instant gratification and financial responsibility, but it wasn’t. Shortly after the $10 billion loan was paid off, California was hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and upwards of 3 million workers lost their jobs as the state ordered workplace closures. Once again, the unemployment insurance program had virtually no reserves to cover the sharp increase in claims. Once again it borrowed from the federal government, this time for $20 billion, and once again its failure to repay forced the feds to increase payroll taxes. In addition to a double dose of financial problems, the Employment Development Department has also experienced managerial failures. In 2011, Elaine Howle, the state auditor, laid out the department’s shortcomings in a sharply worded report, but when the pandemic hit, they once again became evident. There were massive glitches in responding to legitimate claims for insurance benefits, while the department gave tens of billions of dollars to fraudsters. Meanwhile employers are still repaying the last loan, and the state’s insurance fund is continuing to run deficits, unable to cover current benefits of nearly $7 billion a year. With that history in mind, another watchdog agency, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, is urging a complete overhaul of unemployment insurance , declaring the system “is broken.” Noting that the current state payroll tax cannot fully cover current benefits, much less build reserves, the LAO report projects a “perpetually outstanding federal loan” to keep payments flowing that must be repaid with interest. The report proposes a four-part tough love approach to a crisis that has been building for more than two decades and cannot solve itself, to wit it advises the state to: • Increase the taxable wage base from $7,000 per worker to $46,800, tying it to the actual benefits of up to $450 a week. It “would place California among the ten states with taxable wages bases above $40,000 and all other Western states.” • Adopt two payroll tax rates, one to cover current benefits and another to rebuild reserves. The combined rate of 1.9% would be applied to the $46,800 wage base. • Base employers’ tax rates on their changes in employment, thus imposing higher costs on employers that reduce their number of workers. • Refinance the federal loan with a bond backed by payroll taxes and state loans from its internal sources to reduce overall interest costs. There may be other alternatives, perhaps affecting benefits, but the main thing is that doing nothing will just perpetuate this crisis — even though the politics of the issue are daunting. It’s been a political stalemate for nearly a quarter-century, pitting unions seeking to protect, or even increase, benefits against employers who don’t want to shoulder increased taxes. Successive governors and legislative leaders have shunned engagement, preferring to kick the can down the road. Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. His commentary comes via CalMatters.org, a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more, go to calmatters.org/commentary.magic ocean dive 。

HMC Surgeons Save Limbs From Amputation Through New Method

Natalie Burn talks about starring in the sci-fi thriller ‘Eyes in the Trees’Just a year after he became chief executive officer of Philip Morris International Inc., Jacek Olczak swooped on rival nicotine pouch maker Swedish Match in a $16 billion deal. Olczak wanted the company’s vast U.S. distribution network and popular Zyn nicotine pouches, which are about the size of a chiclet and meant to be placed between a user’s gum and upper lip. Hailed by some as a product that can give users “unstoppable force,” Zyn now is in such high demand that the company is on track to sell 580 million tins in the U.S. this year, up from 385 million a year earlier. It’s all part of Olczak’s plan as he charts a way for the world’s largest tobacco company to generate two-thirds of its revenue from smoke-free alternatives to cigarettes by 2030. The problem? It’s becoming increasingly clear that the huge wave in popularity for Zyn is also sweeping up kids. There are already an estimated half million underage pouch users in the U.S. who are developing a taste for nicotine — a highly addictive, toxic chemical. Philip Morris was fined $1.2 million over the weekend for sales in Washington, D.C., of pouches made with banned flavors, which are seen as more attractive to children. Olczak is clear that the tobacco company may never be able to stop kids from trying its products. “The unfortunate thing is that with young people, there is an element of experimentation,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg at the company’s headquarters in Switzerland. “It doesn’t matter which country. This age is about experimentation, and they will experiment with the things the adults are doing.” His own 16-year-old son is curious about nicotine, he said. “You have to understand that ‘zero’ will not exist.” For Philip Morris, which reported $35.2 billion in net annual sales last year, the company is at a precipice: navigating the potential huge upside in the U.S. could depend on its ability to prove that it’s not hooking a new generation of young people on nicotine. Olczak says the company is already able to show this and he knows how important it is to “shield young people” from nicotine-containing products. The Polish-born executive said Philip Morris seeks to stop underage use of fake IDs to gain access to restricted items by partnering with organizations such as WeCard and TruAge. It also uses technology to “age gate” Zyn’s digital advertising in the U.S. and monitors social media for inappropriate content. “The restrictions which we need to seriously walk the talk is the age access,” he added. And while 480,000 young Americans now use nicotine pouches, the number has held steady from last year, according to the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey. The cautionary example here though is Juul, the high strength e-cigarette brand accused in multiple lawsuits of targeting underage users through stylishly designed vaporizers and advertisements on youth-focused websites. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned Juul from marketing its products in 2022, and rescinded the order earlier this year. Olczak, 59, insists the marketing of Zyn is “day and night” compared to Juul, pointing again to his company’s focus on age verification. Still, a quick search on TikTok turns up a stream of videos promoting the pouches, including endorsements from Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson. The CEO maintains that Philip Morris has never paid for influencer promotion. The company is “very careful about which audiences we talk with,” he said. “We don’t mind our consumers sharing their happiness,” he added, “but we would like them to watch who follows them.” With sales climbing, the FDA has already begun to crack down, penalizing retailers caught selling to minors, and sending warning letters to online sellers offering unauthorized flavors of Zyn products. The regulator says that nicotine, which is addictive, can harm adolescent brain development and impact attention, learning and memory. To Olczak’s frustration, Zyn and other nicotine pouches have not yet been authorized by the FDA — Swedish Match filed an application in March 2020 — but are permitted to stay on the market while the request is being considered. That hasn’t dampened demand: Zyn sales grew 41.4% in the third quarter in the U.S. compared to a year earlier, reaching 149.1 million cans. Following reports of supply shortages in the U.S., Philip Morris made a fresh investment in its Owensboro, Kentucky plant, and announced plans to build a new factory in Colorado. Other Philip Morris products are facing similar regulatory challenges. Sales of a heated tobacco stick called IQOS are expected to decline slightly this year as a result of what Stefan Volpetti, who oversees the company’s inhaled smoke-free products, calls “short-term turbulence” related to regulation. The EU has banned flavored heated tobacco products, and Taiwan has banned heated tobacco outright. In the United Kingdom, Philip Morris has also come under fire for its ambitions to expand into health care. In September, it announced plans to sell British inhaler-maker Vectura Group Ltd. for roughly a third of the price it paid just three years ago. The $1.2 billion deal was criticized by scientific organizations, health charities and anti-smoking campaigners who said that Big Tobacco should not benefit from a company whose products are used by Britain’s National Health Service, among others. Some even recommended that doctors stop proscribing Vectura-made inhalers. Olczak believes that this response crossed a line. “The scientists of Vectura were cut off completely from any symposia or gathering,” he said. People were “obsessed with the fact Philip Morris was the shareholder.” The controversy illustrates the challenges facing the company, as it attempts to leave cigarettes behind and push into new product areas. Philip Morris still has a long way to go before it sells its last pack, Olczak sees the launch of IQOS in the U.S. and a surge in Zyn sales as an opportunity to step in the right direction. “The destination is a given,” he reflected. “It’s written on the wall.”