https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/30/politics/watch-democratic-debate-time-schedule-lineup/index.html

(CNN)CNN is hosting the second set of Democratic presidential debates Tuesday and Wednesday, taking place in Detroit.

20 Democrats will take the stage over two nights. The first night will, for the first time, offer a match-up between Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the two top progressives in the Democratic primary. The second night will offer a rematch of former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris, whose clash over race became the most closely watched moment of the first round of debates.

For a large part of the Democratic field outside of the top-tier candidates, the pair of debates will be one of the last chances to make an impression on a national audience. The Democratic National Committee raised the threshold to qualify for the fall debates, meaning many of the candidates run the risk of not making the stage in September and October.

Here's how to watch:

When are the debates?
CNN's Democratic presidential primary debates will be held on Tuesday, July 30, and Wednesday, July 31, starting at 8 p.m. ET and ending around 10:30 p.m. ET.

How can I watch them?
CNN's Democratic presidential debates will air exclusively on CNN and will stream live in their entirety, without requiring log-in to a cable provider, exclusively to CNN.com's homepage, across mobile devices via CNN's apps for iOS and Android, and via CNNgo apps for Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Chromecast and Android TV.

The full debate nights will be available exclusively the day following the airing on demand via cable/satellite systems, on CNNgo (at CNN.com/go on your desktop, smartphone, and tablets, and via CNNgo OTT apps), and CNN mobile apps on iOS and Android.
CNN's live story will capture key moments from each debate, serving as the home for coverage, expert analysis and fact-checking in real-time.

Additionally, customized coverage will roll out across all of CNN's platforms. This will include stories on CNN's flagship Instagram, featuring CNN's political reporters during and following the debates with important takeaways, fact-checking the candidates, and sizing up their place in the polls.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/economy/hahnemann-hospital-closing-philadelphia/index.html

For decades, Hahnemann University Hospital served as the main safety-net hospital for downtown Philadelphia's neediest residents. But last week, it released its last patient. Within a month, the hospital's 2,572 staff will all have been laid off, and the doors will close, leaving a gaping hole in the city's ability to serve its poor — not to mention any victims of trauma, like shootings or car accidents.

"It's not safe. We're right here in the middle of everything. Jefferson [University Hospital] isn't that far, but for a life-threatening situation, minutes matter," said Maria Gutierrez, a Hahnemann oncology nurse who on Wednesday received a call from a manager saying all her shifts had been canceled. "That's why he wants the land."

The "he" Gutierrez was talking about is Joel Freedman, the California-based owner of the private equity-backed company that bought Hahnemann and its sister hospital St. Christopher's for $170 million in early 2018. About a month ago, the entity that owns the two hospitals filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying that although St. Christopher's was profitable, Hahnemann's financial situation was unsalvageable.

Not included in the filing: The entity that owns the entire city block's worth of land underneath the hospital, as well as a few associated medical office buildings and parking garages, which Freedman had split off from the operating businesses when he and his co-investors acquired them. The same central location that made Hahnemann valuable as a health care provider — spitting distance from City Hall and the convention center — also makes the site incredibly desirable for a high-end hotel or condominiums.

That's fueled accusations from the city, the state, the unions representing the hospital workers and even Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that Freedman allowed the hospital to slip into bankruptcy, and now wants to free up the land for a potentially lucrative sale.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katangus/i-am-very-smart

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/24/investing/trillion-dollar-deficit/index.html

New York (CNN Business)Deficits are cool again in Washington. After a few years of stabilizing toward the end of the Obama administration, the annual budget deficit is on track to reach $1 trillion in the near future.

Here are three things you need to know.
A short history of federal deficits
Budget deficits are the norm in Washington. The United States has run a budget deficit for nearly two decades straight. The last time it recorded a budget surplus was between 1998 and 2001. The last time before that: 1969.
But running a deficit isn't necessarily bad. In the short term, government spending can boost the economy. One big contributor to the latest budget deficit predictions is the 2018 tax cut. That helped give the economy a super charge last year, but it also drastically reduced the amount of revenue the United States collects from taxpayers.

"Spending has continued to rise in line with its long-run trend, but the tax cuts introduced at the start of last year have prevented revenues from rising more substantially," wrote Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics, in a note.
The White House Office of Management and Budget projects the deficit to top $1 trillion this year, while the Congressional Budget Office expects it to climb to $900 billion by the end of 2019.
The last time the difference between US government spending and its revenue was that massive was in 2012, in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Interest is the killer
As the deficit grows, the government's debt will pile up. In the first quarter of 2019, the United States' debt load was nearly $70 trillion.
To borrow that much debt, the country needs to pay an enormous amount of interest to its bondholders. The United States' interest burden was more than $800 billion in the first quarter. And the higher the debt grows, the bigger the interest bill will get too.
That's why, in times of economic prosperity, countries typically pay down their debt. Adding tax cuts with an unemployment rate below 4% represented "a complete breakdown of fiscal discipline," said Ashworth.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/were-like-thelma-and-louise-republicans-shrug-at-deficits-under-trump/2019/07/23/cdc5c330-ad5d-11e9-8e77-03b30bc29f64_story.html?utm_term=.99b23eb4d0a9&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

In 2011, with the nation still climbing back from the Great Recession, Republicans threatened global markets by refusing to raise the federal debt limit unless President Barack Obama and the Democrats agreed to steep across-the-board spending cuts for years to come.

Eight years later — and $7.7 trillion more in debt — President Trump and GOP lawmakers have agreed this week to lift the debt ceiling again without a fuss, and with hundreds of billions in new spending on top of it.

The deal marks a significant capitulation to Trump after years of brinkmanship from Republicans claiming the mantle of fiscal responsibility, underscoring the president’s far-reaching hold over his party and a disregard for the budget-cutting and debt reduction that conservatives long claimed as priorities.

The move has sparked cries of hypocrisy from many Democrats, who endured routine GOP lecturing about spending and the federal deficit throughout Obama’s two terms in office.

With the agreement, Trump has effectively shelved a debate about the nation’s ballooning deficits as he turns his attention to pursuing protectionist trade policies, job growth and hard-line immigration measures, along with his grievances with rivals and Democrats.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/11/investing/inflation-cpi-federal-reserve-rate-cut/index.html

New York (CNN Business)The Fed may have to change its tune on inflation and potential rate cuts after a key report on consumer prices came in higher than expected.

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell told the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday that "there is a risk that weak inflation will be even more persistent than we currently anticipate."

But in the June Consumer Price Index data report Thursday morning, the US government said overall prices rose 0.1% in June while so-called core prices, which exclude food and energy, were up 0.3%.
The jump in core prices was the biggest monthly gain since January 2018. Core inflation is now up 2.1% over the past 12 months.

The government noted prices increased for housing, used cars and trucks, clothing, home furnishings, medical care and auto insurance among other categories.
In other words, weak inflation may not be as "persistent" as the Fed — or Wall Street — thought.

Investors still expect a small rate cut from the Fed at its next meeting later this month — but the calls for a larger move have ebbed a bit following the latest CPI data. (The Fed typically cuts rates when the economy is weak and inflation isn't a threat.)

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/09/perspectives/billionaires-publishing-journalism/index.html

Over the past several years, billionaires have been collecting legacy journalism titles, namely beloved newspapers. At first, many of us in journalism were wary that this would stifle a free press, blur the line between editorial and ownership, and ruin what historian Jill Lepore recently referred to as "the taproot of modern journalism."

However, we naysayers may have been premature in our judgment. Even-handed billionaire owners have been able to invest in legacy titles and help them transform digitally, giving them the chance to compete against the onslaught of unregulated third-party content polluting social media channels. Unlike hedge funds like Alden Global Capital, which owns Digital First Media, individual billionaire owners tighten the business model while funding new innovation and digital expertise.

Wealthy families have long owned media. The fabled father-daughter handoff of The Washington Post from Eugene Meyer to his son-in-law Philip Graham onto Katharine Graham, who inherited full control of the newspaper after her husband's suicide, is now a thing of Hollywood. The Bancrofts owned The Wall Street Journal, which they sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in 2007. The Ochs-Sulzberger family controls the publicly traded New York Times. The Newhouse sons, S.I and Donald, were born into one of the country's most powerful publishing families and inherited Conde Nast, which includes Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Of course, that was before the internet undercut the advertising-supported business model that had fueled newspapers for generations.

So, what is new? Today, when so many newspapers are struggling to barely hang on, buyers are digitally savvy, often live in the city where the paper is published and appear to care about democracy.

Take The Washington Post. When Jeff Bezos bought it for $250 million in 2013, the paper was struggling. The Graham family legacy appeared doomed thanks to Google, Facebook and Twitter. But Bezos understood the far-reaching power of both The Washington Post brand and the limitless delivery of news in a digital era. His funding has enabled the paper to think far beyond its zip code and transform to compete and integrate into digital platforms.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/07/08/washington-dc-flash-flood-how-why-area-was-deluged-by-months-worth-rain-an-hour-monday/?utm_term=.8b4f29349c85



A month’s worth of rain deluged the immediate D.C. area early Monday, resulting in one of its most extreme flooding events in years. The record-setting cloudburst unleashed four inches of water in a single hour, way too much for a paved-over, heavily populated urban area to cope with at the height of the morning rush.

The sheets of rain, with nowhere to run off, turned major roads into rivers while streams and creeks shot up 10 feet in less than an hour. The rushing water stranded scores of people in their vehicles, poured into businesses and the Metro system, submerged cars in parking lots, swamped basements and caused some roads to cave in, forming massive sinkholes.

Montgomery County, northern Fairfax County and Arlington endured some of the most extreme rainfall.

At Reagan National Airport, Washington’s official weather observing location, 3.44 inches fell, with 3.3 inches coming in the 9 a.m. hour alone. The odds of rain this intense in any given year are less than 1 percent.