http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/news/economy/employers-opioid-rehab-belden/index.html

This past winter, John Stroup had a problem.
Roughly one out of 10 applicants for jobs at his factory in Richmond, Indiana, had failed their drug tests, disqualifying them for employment at the safety-conscious company. A handful of the 450 people already working there had failed random drug tests as well. With opioids ravaging the region, the CEO of Belden Inc. was short-staffed while orders for the company's computer networking equipment were pouring in.

"Now that we're seeing a bit of a manufacturing renaissance, unfortunately we don't have the qualified labor that we need, and we have this terrible epidemic," says Stroup.

It's a challenge confronting employers across America. Drugs are sapping a workforce already spread thin across a tight job market. Factories are particularly affected, with high overdose rates concentrated in counties that have a greater number of manufacturing jobs, according to an analysis by the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation.

Some employers have dealt with the opioid crisis by altering their insurance contracts to discourage physicians from prescribing addictive painkillers, a survey by the National Business Group on Health found. Many also offer Employee Assistance Plans, which generally cover a few sessions of counseling.

For Stroup, the decision was a simple cost-benefit analysis: How much would it cost to help people get sober in this Rust Belt town of 37,000, compared to what he was losing by not having them available to work?

After a few meetings with board members and addiction experts, he came up with a plan. If an applicant or a current employee failed a drug test, but they still wanted the job, Belden would pay for an evaluation at a local substance abuse treatment center.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/investing/business-spending-tax-law-trump/index.html

President Donald Trump's tax law was sold as a transformative overhaul that would unlock an ocean of money Corporate America could spend on job-creating investments.
The Republican tax cuts enacted last December immediately sparked millions of one-time bonuses for employees as well as some wage hikes. And the windfall led to a record-shattering stock buyback bonanza that enriched shareholders.

However, the promised investment boom has not materialized -- not yet anyway. Business spending is humming along at healthy levels, but economists see little evidence that the tax cuts sparked an acceleration of investments in new equipment, factories or other projects.

"There is nothing to suggest the tax law is lifting investment in any substantive way, at least so far," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

One broad measure of business spending, real nonresidential fixed investment, rose by 6.1% during the first quarter. That's solid growth signaling a strong economy. However, it was roughly in-line with the past several quarters. It even marked a slight deceleration from the final three months of 2017.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/19/stephen-paddock-las-vegas-shooter-conspiracy-theories-documents-explained

In the documents, those who encountered gunman Stephen Paddock say he expressed conspiratorial, anti-government beliefs characteristic of the far right

What’s the latest development in the Stephen Paddock story?
Stephen Paddock was the gunman who killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more last October, when he opened fire from the window of his room at the Mandalay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

Yesterday, following legal action from news organizations, the Las Vegas police department released a trove of documents on the investigation, including statements from witnesses and victims.

What did the document release tell us?
Mostly the documents contain harrowing accounts from victims of Stephen Paddock’s shooting spree. There is also an interview with Paddock’s wife. As police said in the press conference announcing the release, there is nothing definitive in the material about Paddock’s motives for the massacre.

In a handwritten statement, one woman says she sat near Paddock in a diner just a few days before the shooting, while out with her son. She said she heard him and a companion discussing the 25th anniversary of the Ruby Ridge standoff and the Waco siege. (Each of these incidents became touchstones for a rising anti-government militia movement in the 1990s.)

She says she heard him and his companion saying that courtroom flags with golden fringes are not real flags. The belief that gold-fringed flags are those of a foreign jurisdiction, or “admiralty flags”, is characteristic of so-called “sovereign citizens”, who believe, among other things, that the current US government, and its laws, are illegitimate.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/18/news/companies/amazon-mcdonalds-chipotle-walmart-prices/index.html

You're not imagining things: Prices are creeping up.
Americans want to buy more stuff, and businesses are rushing to meet demand.

Unemployment is below 4% for the first time in 17 years, wages are slowly inching up, and consumers are spending money on clothes, furniture, and cars. At the same time, elevated labor, transportation and commodity costs are pinching their profit margins.

Both consumers and producers are feeling the squeeze from a healthy US economy. After years of low inflation, prices rose 1.9% in March from a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve's favored inflation measuring stick.

Consumer prices were up 2.1% in April from a year ago, while suppliers paid 2.6% more.

Auto loans are getting more expensive because the Federal Reserve is gradually raising interest rates. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has moved to a seven-year high above 4.6%, according to Freddie Mac.

Dozens of companies in recent weeks have said they already hiked prices or plan to in the coming months to combat inflation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/real-americans-are-a-myth-dont-you-dare-buy-it/2018/05/14/b4c3099e-57a3-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html?utm_term=.fd437ff5e7bb

The most offensive and corrosive idea in our politics today is that some Americans are more “real” than others. Don’t you dare buy it.

Republicans are cynically peddling this un-American conceit. “Real Americans” elected and continue to support President Trump, they claim, in defiance of snooty “coastal elites” who are hopelessly out of touch with the country. It’s a total crock, and shame on those using it for political gain.

The whole point of democracy is that every citizen’s voice is supposed to have equal weight — even voices in favor of fair and compassionate immigration policy, universal health care, fighting racism, promoting gender equality, enshrining LGBT rights and other progressive causes. There is no need to be tentative about these views for fear they somehow make you, I suppose, “unreal.” They do not.

Nor does living within some arbitrary distance of an ocean, having a college education or preferring big-city life deprive anyone of standing as an American. A third-generation Kentucky coal miner and a goateed Brooklyn barista should have equal say in charting the course of the nation.

The miner and the barista don’t actually have equal say, because of the way the electoral college works, but let’s leave that aside. What I’m talking about is the perceived legitimacy of their political views. The notion has taken hold that because the miner is a “real American,” his views must therefore be more authentic — and the barista, if he does not share or accede to those views, is “out of touch.”

With world-class hypocrisy, Republican officeholders and activists are selling this load of bull while themselves, by and large, being “coastal elites.”

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/14/news/companies/truck-drivers-freight-costs/index.html

The biggest companies in America face the same dilemma: A truck driver shortage is squeezing profits.
Hasbro (HAS), Kellogg (K), Mondelez (MDLZ), Coke (KO), and Monster (MNST) have told Wall Street in recent weeks that higher freight and shipping expenses are eating into their profit margins. Rising costs will force them to absorb the hit or raise prices.

For these companies and hundreds of others, it's getting more expensive to move goods around the country because qualified truckers are in short supply in a tight labor market.

"There are more attractive options out there for potential truck drivers in a strong economy," said Gus Faucher, chief economist for PNC Financial. "It's difficult to find new workers to expand."

If it's in your home, it's been on a truck

Trucking is a vital link in the supply chain. It's how Coke gets its sodas to grocery stores and how Hasbro sends toys to Amazon and Walmart distribution centers.

More than 70% of goods in the United States hit the highway at some point before they get to your home, according to the American Trucking Associations, an industry trade group.

Companies paid about 6% more for trucking in April than a year ago, the fastest growth in almost seven years, according to the Labor Department.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/10/technology/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-mexican-americans/index.html

The Russian government-linked troll group indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February targeted more parts of the American population than had previously been reported, documents released Thursday by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee show.
The release includes more than 3,000 Facebook and Instagram ads purchased by the troll group, known as the Internet Research Agency, between 2015 and 2017. The committee had previously released only a few dozen ads, making Thursday's disclosure the most comprehensive insight into the trolls' paid online activity that is publicly available.

CNN and others have previously reported on how the Russian group operated a network of thousands of fake social media accounts that were designed to look like they were run by real American activists — including fake groups imitating Black Lives Matter, Muslims and Donald Trump supporters. Thursday's release shows the Russians also targeted Mexican-Americans.

It's not clear exactly when the Russian page targeting Mexican-Americans was set up, but in 2017 it had more than 200,000 followers and many of its posts were shared thousands of times, the records released by the House Intelligence Committee show. The group also had a presence on Instagram.

The page was titled "Brown Power," and featured artwork that showed a clenched fist surrounded by Mexican flags. One ad promoting the page on Facebook in December 2016 included the message "Brown power is a platform designed to educate, entertain and connect Chicanos in the US." The ad was targeted at people living in the US whose interests fell into the Facebook categories, "Mexico, Latin hip hop, Chicano Movement, Hispanidad, Low rider or Chicano rap." The page regularly posted statements that appeared to challenge of rhetoric of the nascent Trump administration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/heinous-and-violent-ms-13s-appeal-to-girls-grows-as-gang-becomes-americanized/2018/05/04/a4132e94-40bf-11e8-bba2-0976a82b05a2_story.html?utm_term=.973f83c8ba4f



For 15 years, the girls lived parallel lives. Left behind in El Salvador by mothers bound for America, they grew up a few miles apart in San Vicente, entering adolescence just as the city sank into gang violence.

They fled within weeks of one another, traveling north in 2014 along the same smuggling route, before ending up in the Washington suburbs.

It was there that Venus Iraheta and Damaris Reyes Rivas finally met, after becoming entangled in the same violent street gang, MS-13. And it was there, in a wooded park in Springfield, Va., that Venus stabbed Damaris 13 times.

Even amid a nationwide surge in MS-13 slayings, the 2017 killing stood out. Female victims are nothing new for MS-13, which is infamous in Central America for making young women choose between rape and execution. But in a gang as chauvinistic as it is fearsome, female killers are almost unheard of.

As Iraheta, now 18, awaits sentencing for murder later this month, authorities say the killing may be a sign of growing female involvement in MS-13 in the United States.

Unlike their counterparts in Central America, some MS-13 cliques in the United States now allow female members, said Michael Prado, assistant special agent in charge of the Washington office of Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“In that regard they are somewhat progressive,” he said. “The [cliques] here are a little bit more, for lack of a better term, Americanized.”