Insider Report
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Congress Weighing 'Draconian' Changes for Ad Industry
2. Obamacare Loophole 'Legalizes Fraud'
3. Film on Chinese 'Gendercide' Screened in Hong Kong
4. Youth Football Participation Plunging
5. Conservative Radio Hosts Out at Pittsburgh's WPGB
6. We Heard: Armstrong Williams, Cable News, Anderson Cooper
1. Congress Weighing 'Draconian' Changes for Ad Industry
The American Advertising Federation has sent an email to organization members warning that the House Ways and Means Committee is considering a proposal that would dramatically impact the ad industry.
The plan under consideration would allow advertisers to deduct only 50 percent of all ad expenses in the first year they’re incurred, and then amortize the remaining 50 percent over the next 10 years.
The measure has been written into a working draft of a tax reform bill, Adweek reported.
"That's draconian," Clark Rector, the AAF's executive vice president-government affairs, told Advertising Age. "And how does this simplify the tax code?"
The proposal would "all but obliterate what has been a recognized business expense for more than 100 years," according to Adweek, which pointed out that the change would make advertising "a lot more expensive" and reduce revenue for ad-supported media.
Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, said, "We take this more seriously than any other threat we've seen in many years.
"There simply is no economic or tax policy justification for the proposed changes."
And Paul Boyle, senior vice president of public policy for the Newspaper Association of America, said the committee members "are only looking at how much revenue it would bring to the government, not at the impact on the economy."
Rector has urged AAF members to contact their legislators to tell them the proposed change could reduce ad sales by as much as $446 billion a year and place 1.7 million American jobs at risk.
Supporters of the bill hope to have it clear the committee by the end of the year.
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2. Obamacare Loophole 'Legalizes Fraud'
An often overlooked provision of the Affordable Care Act allows Americans to scam the system by taking advantage of a grace period for paying insurance premiums.
Under Section 156.270 of the 11,000-page act, people need to pay a premium for just one month and then can qualify for a three-month grace period during which they don't pay premiums — but continue to get covered medical care.
The insurance company must pay claims during the first month of the grace period, but during the second and third months doctors and hospitals will be left to collect unpaid bills, Watchdog.org reports.
And any doctor who is paid by the insurance company during the last two months of the grace period will have to return that money if the insured don't pay their premiums, according to the website.
"In a sense, it legalizes fraud," declared Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute of Human Exceptionalism. "It legalizes putting your burdens on the insurance companies' shoulders and never paying your premiums."
The only downside for the scammers is that they have to wait until the following year's open enrollment if they want coverage on the insurance exchange.
The loophole is already being exploited in Massachusetts, where a healthcare system similar to Obamacare was enacted in 2006 and signed into law by then-Gov. Mitt Romney.
"People [in Massachusetts] are signing up and getting care and bailing out," said Devon Harris, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.
"I was talking to an insurance agent a few years ago. She said once a week she would get a call from a college girl who discovers she's pregnant and wants health insurance. That's an example of a condition you can schedule."
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, predicts the loophole "will help break the system" and "bankrupt people involved."
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3. Film on Chinese 'Gendercide' Screened in Hong Kong
An American film screened for the first time on Chinese territory focuses on the reprehensible practice of “gendercide†— aborting female fetuses as a consequence of China's one-child policy.
"It's a Girl," a 2012 movie by Arizona director Evan Grae Davis spotlighting gendercide in China and India, was shown in an Amnesty International documentary series in Hong Kong on Monday and Tuesday.
As one expert states in the film, "Today, India and China eliminate more girls than the number of girls born in America every year."
The first screening came just three days after China's Nov. 15 announcement that it was revising the one-child policy introduced in the 1970s.
China will now allow urban couples to have a second child if one of the parents is an only child. Previously, urban couples could have a second child only if both parents were only children. Rural couples are generally allowed to have a second child if the first-born is a girl.
But observers say the new policy will not end Chinese gendercide, a term coined by American feminist Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book "Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection."
Bob Fu, president of the human rights organization China Aid, said, "The whole coercive system remains in place."
That system includes forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and infanticide as well as elective abortions of female fetuses.
"In a society that favors boy children for cultural and economic reasons, couples allowed just one child but who learn they are expecting a girl have had abortions in the hope the next pregnancy will produce a boy," CNS News reported. "The government said it outlawed the practice almost a decade ago, but that it remains widespread is clear from the increasingly unbalanced ratio of boys to girls."
China has a national average ratio of 124 boys to 100 girls, rising to 140 boys in some provinces, according to the British Medical Journal. The international average is from 103 to 107 boys for every 100 girls.
There are now some 32 million more males than females in China under the age of 18, with gendercide reportedly accounting for nearly all the excess males.
The lopsided ratios are a major factor in the rise of cross-border trafficking of women and girls into China from Southeast Asia and elsewhere, CNS noted.
And The Economist observed: "In any country rootless young males spell trouble. In Asian societies, where marriage and children are the recognized routes into society, single men are almost like outlaws.
"Crime rates, bride trafficking, sexual violence, even female suicide rates are all rising and will rise further as the lopsided generations reach their maturity."
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4. Youth Football Participation Plunging
Participation in Pop Warner football, the nation's largest youth football program, dropped nearly 10 percent from 2010 to 2012 — likely due to recent revelations about head injuries suffered by pro players.
Pop Warner lost 23,612 players in that period, dropping from 248,899 players in 2010 to 225,287 by the 2012 season. That's a drop of 9.5 percent and the largest two-year decline since the organization began keeping statistics decades ago, ESPN's "Outside the Lines" reported.
The organization's chief medical officer, Dr. Julian Bailes, cited worries about head injuries as "the No. 1 cause" of the decline.
"Unless we deal with these truths, we're not going to get past the dropping popularity of the sport and people dropping out of the sport," said Bailes, a neurosurgeon.
The NFL players union estimates that from 60 to 70 percent of NFL players started in Pop Warner football.
Participation in high school football is also plunging, Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports reported. It is down nearly 5 percent since 2007 in California and 10.5 percent in Michigan. At Vermont high schools, football participation has fallen a staggering 33 percent since 2006.
The dangers of football-related head injuries came into focus in 2005, when the first of dozens of former NFL players were confirmed to have suffered neurodegenerative disease.
In 2006, former Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters shot himself in the head and a doctor determined that football had damaged his brain, leading to depression and ultimately to suicide.
In 2011, former Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest so his brain could be preserved for study. He was later diagnosed to have been suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease that has been linked to football, according to ESPN.
Tony Strickland, an associate clinical professor of neurology at UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine and a member of Pop Warner's Medical Advisory Committee, said, "If I'm a parent, anybody hearing that information, in the absence of other science, would be foolish not to be cautious."
Doyel declared: "More than ever, parents are saying no to football."
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5. Conservative Radio Hosts Out at Pittsburgh's WPGB
Two long-serving conservative talk radio hosts, Jim Quinn and Rose Tennent, are off the air at Clear Channel's WPGB 104.7 FM in Pittsburgh.
The pair had been part of the station's morning programming since WPGB went all talk in early 2004.
"The Quinn and Rose Show" was syndicated regionally and carried in seven markets outside Pittsburgh, and was also on SiriusXM satellite radio until earlier this fall.
Clear Channel said in a statement that the station "tried to reach new terms with Jim Quinn and Rose Tennent, but as that was unsuccessful, they will be moving on," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
But WYSL-AM in Rochester, N.Y., posted this statement: "It is with a heavy heart that WYSL advises that Jim Quinn and Rose Tennent were abruptly fired by their flagship station, WPGB in Pittsburgh, over the weekend of November 16-17.
"Although this situation is beyond our control, WYSL apologizes for the sudden cessation of this very popular morning show."
A statement posted late Monday on the show's website read in part: "'The Quinn and Rose Show' has been on the air for 18 years with great success. Ten of those years were at 104.7. We love doing our show.
"We want our listeners to know how much we have enjoyed bringing you the news every morning. We feel like we are all part of one big family. Your loyalty and support over the years has meant so much to us and we think you know that.
"Our commitment has been, and will always be, to conservative values and to this great country of ours. Rest assured, we will be back on the air!"
David Bloomquist, a former sports and morning news anchor on West Virginia television, will host mornings on WPGB from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Listeners took to Twitter and Facebook to express their displeasure at Quinn and Tennent's ouster. One wrote on the WPGB Facebook page: "I may be only one listener, but you have lost me."
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6. We Heard . . .
THAT Howard Stirk Holdings, a media company owned by conservative talk show host and entrepreneur Armstrong Williams, has finalized the purchase of television stations WWMB in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and WEYI in Flint, Mich.
"I am elated to be entering television broadcasting with the acquisitions of WWMB-TV and WEYI-TV," Williams said. "As a native South Carolinian, I am looking forward to serving communities I know in South Carolina.
"The station has a strong and dedicated staff, has demonstrated a decades-long record of providing service and information for viewers, businesses, and community organizations, and we anticipate building on that legacy."
THAT the Pew Research Center monitored news coverage by four cable news outlets and found great discrepancies in reporting on two major stories, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the troubled rollout of Obamacare.
Pew tracked 20 hours of programming on each of the four outlets from Nov. 11 to Nov. 15, one hour of midday and three hours of prime-time broadcasts each day.
It showed similar coverage at both ends of the political spectrum. Fox News devoted seven hours and 52 minutes to Obamacare and just six minutes to the typhoon. MSNBC devoted three hours and eight minutes to Obamacare and 41 minutes to the storm.
CNN's coverage of Obamacare aired for four hours and 58 minutes, and reporting on the storm consumed three hours and 33 minutes.
Al Jazeera America devoted 3:10 to the typhoon and just 1:30 to Obamacare.
THAT Anderson Cooper has renewed his contract with CNN and will remain with the network through 2016, TVNewser reported.
Cooper will continue with his prime-time show and host "CNN Heroes."
Cooper's show trails Bill O'Reilly's program on Fox News in the 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. slot by a wide margin, and is also behind Chris Hayes on MSNBC in the key 25-54 demographic.
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