(FREE) PAINE IN THE MORNING: What you need to know this Thursday – January 12, 2023

Here’s what you need to know today, Thursday – January 12, 2023.

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Aviation Groups Have Complained for Years About the Outdated FAA Alert System That Crashed Today – When a mix of bad weather and an outdated crew-tracking system caused a meltdown last month at Southwest Airlines, forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was unflinching in her criticism of the airline.

“Southwest Airlines failed its customers. Point blank,” she said, promising that “The Department of Transportation will hold them accountable to their commitments to make their customers whole.” – READ MORE


Computer “Outage” Hits Canadian Flight System Hours After US System Went Down – Nav Canada, the not-for-profit corporation that operates Canada’s civil air navigation system, reports the Candian real-time safety alerts system for pilots, otherwise known as NOTAM — short for Notice to Air Mission — has been hit with an outage.

So far, no delays have been attributed to the outage. – READ MORE


Here’s What the FAA Has Been Focused on Instead of Keeping Planes in The Air –Keeping planes in the air has taken a back seat at the Federal Aviation Administration as the agency pivots its focus to diversity, equity, and inclusion under the leadership of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

The FAA’s mission-critical pilot safety alerting system crashed overnight, causing the agency to temporarily ground all outgoing air traffic across the country Wednesday morning and delay more than 6,500 flights. The FAA has had much to say about the system under Buttigieg’s watch, but not for matters relating to its functionality or upkeep. Rather, the agency announced in December 2021 that it had changed the system’s name from “Notice to Airmen” to “Notice to Air Mission,” a “more applicable term” that the agency said is “inclusive of all aviators and missions.” – READ MORE


No-Lockdown Sweden Seemingly Tied for Lowest All-Causes Mortality in OECD Since COVID Arrived – COVID lockdowns could have saved lives, by decreasing COVID deaths (and also incidentally decreasing some other deaths, for instance from auto accidents, from other communicable diseases, and the like). They also could have cost lives—for instance, through drug abuse deaths or suicides or homicides stemming from people being cooped up for months, drug abuse deaths or suicides or homicides stemming from economic damage and unemployment caused by the lockdown, cancers not caught early as people delayed early screening (even if such early screening would have been officially excluded from the lockdown), and so on.

What was the likely aggregate of all these effects? In particular, to look at just one data point (recognizing that it’s indeed just one data point), how did Sweden, which basically didn’t lock down, fare compared to other prosperous countries? – READ MORE


UK Report: Extra Deaths in 2022 Nearly Highest Level in 70 Years, Higher in Europe Too – Based on data from the UK’s National Health Service and its Continuous Mortality Investigation, Sky News reports that the number of “extra deaths” — deaths above the yearly average — in 2022 were “close to the highest level in 70 years,” and British officials are not exactly sure why this occurred. However, some of the extra deaths may be due to the delays (failures) in the NHS.

“More than 35,000 additional people died than expected in the last six months, 11% more than the five-year average,” reported Sky News on Jan. 11. “Over a thousand more people are dying every week than expected, and many of these extra deaths are happening at home.” – READ MORE


Biden’s Newest Student Loan Proposal Would Allow Some Borrowers To Pay Back Only a Fraction of What They Owe – Seemingly undeterred by the multiple recent defeats of his student loan forgiveness plan in federal courts, President Joe Biden has unveiled another program designed to lower the burden of student loan costs—this time, attempting to turn federal student loans into glorified grants, a shift that is likely to result in a further acceleration of ever-increasing college costs.

In August, Biden announced a sweeping loan forgiveness proposal which, in addition to promising to forgive thousands of dollars in loans for over 20 million eligible Americans, also contained a provision noting an intent to expand currently existing student loan forgiveness programs. One such program up for reform was “income-driven repayment” (IDR), a group of five plans that allowed participants to have their monthly payments topped at a set percentage of their “discretionary income”—adjusted gross income left over after subtracting a set percent of the federal poverty threshold. Under Biden’s plan, the program would be changed to radically reduce the amount borrowers enrolled in IDR plans pay back. – READ MORE


Big banks raising a giant red flag for U.S. economy – Some of the country’s largest banks are expected to see a 15% decline in profits in the fourth quarter compared to the year before, signaling a possible recession, according to the Wall Street Journal’s analysis of data from FactSet, an independent financial data company.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley will report their fourth quarter results in the coming days, which are expected to demonstrate a total of about $28 billion in profits, 15% lower than the fourth quarter a year prior, according to the WSJ. Banks have set money aside over the past year in anticipation of a slowing economy, which can cut banks’ profits. – READ MORE


School Nutrition Directors Report Devastating Effect of Inflation, Regulation, Supply Chain Kinks, Staff Shortages – Inflation, over-regulation, supply chain problems and staff shortages are devastating school lunch programs, a national survey by the School Nutrition Association (SNA) reveals.

“School meal programs are at a tipping point as rising costs, persistent supply chain issues and labor shortages jeopardize their long-term sustainability,” SNA President Lori Adkins said Wednesday, echoing many of the problems haunting the Biden Administration, while announcing the results of SNA’s survey of school nutrition director members and its 2023 Position Paper. – READ MORE


Social Security spends $250 million on system it doesn’t use – When reviewing applications for disability benefits, the Social Security Administration consults an obsolete directory last updated in 1977, despite having spent $250 million on a newer, more relevant one.

The SSA relies on a 45-year-old job titles database, filled with jobs like “Document Preparer, Microfilming,” “Telephone Quotation Clerk” and “Nut Sorter” to deny thousands of claims a year, The Washington Post reported. – READ MORE


Privacy Watchdog: ATF Uses Stingrays To Track Americans – The Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability announced this week that it has obtained records about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ use of stingrays to track Americans.

Stingrays are a relatively new technology that simulate cell towers and collect signals from devices nearby. – READ MORE


These Doctors Pushed Masking, Covid Lockdowns on Twitter. Turns Out, They Don’t Exist – Last month, Dr. Robert Honeyman lost their sister to Covid. They wrote about it on Twitter and received dozens of condolences, over 4,000 retweets and 43,000 likes.

Exactly one month later, on Dec. 12, Honeyman wrote that another tragedy had befallen their family. – READ MORE

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Here’s what you need to know today, Thursday – January 12, 2023. Aviation Groups Have Complained for Years About the Outdated FAA Alert System That Crashed Today – When a mix of bad weather and an outdated crew-tracking system caused a meltdown last month at Southwest Airlines, forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights, White House…

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