Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/990701
69 Q2 2018 / CINEMONTAGE DOJ MAY RESCIND DISABILITIES PROTECTIONS When President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law in July 1990, he said, "Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down." But almost 28 years later, that wall may be back, writes Ariana Marini in Endocrinology Advisor in April. In December 2017, the Department of Justice ruled to formally withdraw four Advance Notices related to Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The withdrawals included rulemaking that made medical equipment and furniture, such as examination tables, scales and mammogram equipment, accessible to individuals with disabilities. The DOJ has been "re-evaluating whether regulation of…equipment and furniture is necessary and appropriate," according to the withdrawal document. In the United States, 53 million adults have a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many Americans have "mobility limitation," which involves difficulty walking or climbing stairs and is the most common functional disability type, affecting one in eight adults, according to Marini. MINIMUM WAGE STUDY FINDS SIGNIFICANT GAINS A new study on the effects of the minimum wage confirms previous research that found the policy raises wages for low-income workers without reducing total employment, writes Cody Fenwick in AlterNet. The study was done by Kevin Rinz and John Voorheis of the US Census Bureau. It used data from the Census Bureau, which surveys more than 75,000 households. Tyler Cowen, a conservative economist, writes that he has "long been critical of policies like the minimum wage," and while the new study "hasn't made him a believer…he does acknowledge that the new research is 'thorough and detailed.'" "On the pro-minimum wage side," writes Cowen in Marginal Revolution, "you should consider that those immediately affected by the wage hike do seem better off, and their higher income in the meantime may itself bring some efficiency-enhancing gains." In light of the study, Fenwick believes that "an increased minimum wage is almost certainly not enough. Workers need a range of new protections, like labor union protections and a greater ability to sue their employers, to dampen the power that businesses wield over them." CA HEALTH GIANT SUED OVER HIGH COSTS California's attorney general sued Sutter Health, accusing the hospital giant of illegally suppressing competition and for years overcharging consumers and employers, write Chad Terhune and Ana Ibarra in The Washington Post. The lawsuit marked a daring move by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra against the biggest health care system in Northern California as concerns grow nationally about consolidation among hospitals, insurers and other industry middlemen. "It's time to hold health-care corporations accountable," Becerra said at a news conference in April. "We seek to stop Sutter from continuing this illegal conduct." HOW CORPORATE TAX CUTS BENEFIT CORPORATIONS "Corporate tax cuts will put billions of dollars back in the hands of businesses this year," writes Justin Wolfers in The New York Times in late March. "Naturally, people want to know how those businesses will spend it. But the answer doesn't really matter, at least not for understanding whether the tax cuts were a good idea. "That's because the economic case for corporate tax cuts has almost nothing to do with what corporations do with the extra cash. Economists generally recognize that corporate tax cuts have two quite distinct effects. "First, a tax cut increases the incentive to invest. A lower corporate tax rate gives investors in a new factory a larger share of the income that factory generates. And that, in turn, leads more investment projects to pass the cost-benefit test that tells a company whether it's worth building the factory in the first place. "This incentive effect drives most economic models of investment, and few economists debate its underlying logic, although there's considerable debate as to whether it will yield a large or small increase…" LABOR MAT TERS Union workers and minimum wage activists gather for a Labor Day rally in downtown Los Angeles last September. Photo by Richard Vogel/AP.