The VIRGINIA House and Senate each pass measures that would make it illegal for drivers to talk on a cellphone without using a hands-free device. Those measures, HB 1811 and SB 1341, pass now to the opposite chambers for consideration (DELMARVA DAILY TIMES, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET).
The WYOMING House approves HB 145, which would abolish capital punishment in the Equality State. It moves to the Senate (ASSOCIATED PRESS).
The ARKANSAS Supreme Court rules that the city of FAYETTEVILLE can’t enforce an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The court said it has already ruled that the measure violates a state law aimed at preventing local protections for LGBT people (ASSOCIATED PRESS).
The NEW YORK CITY Department of Health and Mental Hygiene orders Big Apple restaurants under its jurisdiction not to sell food products containing the cannabis derivative cannabidiol, or CBD. The agency said CBD has not been determined to be safe to eat (NEW YORK TIMES).
The KEY WEST, FLORIDA City Commission bans the sale within city limits of sunscreens that contain the ingredients oxybenzone and octinoxate. The ban will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2021. Scientists say the two chemicals cause severe harm to sensitive coral reefs (FLORIDA KEYS KEYNOTER).
-- Compiled by RICH EHISEN
Attention, all you pathetic cringing little milksops – Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has had enough of your wimpy whining! As the Washington Post reports, Bevin went on a radio show last week where he proceeded to lament the closing of some Bluegrass State schools due to extreme cold weather brought on by the polar vortex. Yep, Bevin is pretty sure that temperatures dropping to as low as minus-15 Fahrenheit is no good reason for keeping the kids indoors. Or, as he puts it, “We’re getting soft.” Yep. And this would be the same Gov. Matt Bevin who regularly blocks people from commenting on his public Facebook page if they criticize him. Which basically means Bevin is okay with the cold – he just can’t take the heat.
A gubernatorial State of the State address is a governor’s spotlight moment, the time where they get the stage all to themselves to showcase everything they believe to be important. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott understands this as well as anyone, which is why he used his SOS speech last week to talk about school finance, teacher pay and taxes. Oh, and why he thinks the University of Texas ought to renew its football rivalry with Texas A&M. Yes, as the Waco Tribune-Herald reports, Abbott finished his SOS with a promise to help work out a deal that would see the two football titans return to their on-field competition, which ended in 2011. And this being Texas – arguably the most football-mad state in America – the proposal drew raucous bipartisan cheers from lawmakers. Teacher pay? Not so much.
It was big news recently when a Colorado trail runner was attacked by a mountain lion, which the runner ultimately killed by choking it to death. As someone who has spent half his life in the great outdoors and run across more large critters than I can recall, I can attest that taking out a big cat – even a juvenile one like the one that attacked the runner – with your bare hands is indeed an almost unbelievable feat. It also clearly made an impression on Gov. Jared Polis, who, as the Denver Post reports, took to Twitter to praise the runner and to warn the general public to not try such a thing on purpose. That’s fine, but let’s hope that nobody actually needs to be told to not mess with a mountain lion.
The historically long federal government shutdown had lots of repercussions across America, most of them bad. But for a large colony of elephant seals, the shutdown was as good as hanging out a welcome sign. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the shutdown furloughed rangers who normally keep tabs on the beaches at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore. With humans not keeping them away, a big group of the massive marine mammals took over the popular Drake’s Beach area. When the shutdown ended, they pretty much said, “Too bad, so sad, this is ours now.” And with as many as 60 elephant seals now inhabiting the place, along with approximately 35 new pups having been birthed there, they are definitely not going anywhere else anytime soon.
-- By RICH EHISEN
Paris, Milan, New York—The biggest fashion houses take center stage in the coming weeks. And when the buzz starts, the fashion industry will race to take the couture collections from the runways to the more affordable racks of retailers. But in the sprint to deliver what many consider ‘disposable’ clothes, organizations are failing on multiple fronts. Our newest eBook goes behind the fashion scene to explore one serious supply chain risk: forced labor.
Fast Fashion on the World Economic Forum’s Agenda
According to an article on the World Economic Forum website, “Entire business models are built on the premise of ‘fast fashion,’ providing clothes cheaply and quickly to consumers through shorter fashion cycles.” But the disposable nature of the clothes and the speed at which products go to market leads to negative economic, environmental and social impacts. Here are three examples:
More than $400 billion worth of clothing is thrown away annually. We’re not talking about shirts that are in shreds, either. Rather, it is clothing that is “discarded prematurely” because it’s no longer fashionable.
Take all those clothes that are discarded prematurely. In one year, says the article, people throw away enough clothing to fill Sydney Harbor. That’s nearly 83 billion kilograms of unwanted (but still useable) garments. Moreover, fast fashion production is notoriously hard on natural resources. The jeans and t-shirt you’re wearing contribute as much greenhouse gases as driving a car 80 miles and use enough water to meet one person’s drinking needs for 2.5 years.
Short fashion cycles mean that workers are often forced to work long hours for little to no pay to meet production targets. Often this work is outsourced to third-party facilities in countries with inadequate worker protections, leading to higher incidence of forced and child labor, as well as unsafe working conditions. As we noted in our coverage of this year’s World Economic Forum, corporate social responsibility (CSR) featured heavily in Davos.
Maybe it’s time for this industry to become participants in the CSR trend instead of racing to deliver the next fad in fashion.
Next steps:
In the United States, competition doesn’t get much fiercer than it does at the Super Bowl. The culminating matchup of the National (American) Football League, it’s a television event that draws viewers from around the world. In addition, the Big Game (as it’s commonly known) is a time for advertisers to compete for would-be customers, athletes to compete for fame and victory, musicians to grow their audience and television networks to compete for viewers.
In competition, knowing and anticipating your opponent is vital. While pro football players spend the weeks before the Super Bowl training their bodies, running new drills and reviewing the competition’s playbook, competitive intelligence requires much more than physical toughness. It requires mental focus, too; that’s why athletes devote time to researching the rival team and brushing up on their media interview skills.
In fact, the entire event is rich with lessons to learn about the spirit of competitive intelligence. As natural nerds always ready to dig in to the bigger picture, we couldn’t resist exploring this a little further.
LESSON ONE: IDENTIFY THE STARS OF THE COMPETITION
You may have heard of the importance to “know thyself,” but when you’re in a competition it’s pretty important to know something about who you’re up against. In American Football, the stars are the quarterbacks. And in this particular matchup, one quarterback, the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady, came to the game with a leg up on the competition. He’s been called one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, and we see evidence of his star power in Newsdesk results for overall sentiment, popularity and total number of Super Bowl wins.
The coaches, too, each brought a certain level of star power to the conversation. While perhaps not household names, the Ram’s coach, Sean McVay, and the coach for the Patriots, Bill Belichick, each played a prominent role in overall share of voice.
You can take this a step further still by moving beyond just the current conversation and researching a bit more. While a win may not depend on this level of research, the perhaps bigger battle over fans, sponsorships and brand equity relies on this deeper knowledge.
Look at Brady, for instance. He’s carefully curated a number of significant partnerships—from commercial ventures, sponsorships and philanthropy—to help establish a high level of name recognition… and the sheer number of Super Bowl rings he’s earned doesn’t hurt. Add to that a best-selling book, appearances on television shows like The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live and—love him or hate him—the reason behind his popularity starts to come into focus. (Jared Goff, take note.)
LESSON TWO: HIJACK THE COMPETITION
When your competition does something good, a success for them can be an even bigger win for you. We’re not talking about hijacking a win by tampering with the game balls (too soon?); we mean being diligent about monitoring the competition and industry, noticing trends and executing accordingly.
Take the feud between Bud Light and Miller Lite, for example. For those outside of the States, forgive our taste in beer for a moment and stick with us. Miller Lite hasn’t advertised during the Big Game in more than two decades, yet still somehow managed to be a star during and after the game with a well-executed social media plan.
Why does this matter? Miller Lite’s chief competitor, Bud Light, has been a prolific sponsor of the game. Media monitoring leading up to the game left a clear trail of breadcrumbs for what Bud Light had in store for this year, including an all-out reveal before the commercial aired: they were continuing their competitive feud with a tongue-in-cheek attack on Miller Lite. Armed with this knowledge, Miller Lite initiated its own campaign to attack back… and they succeeded in becoming part of the conversation.
LESSON THREE: USE DEEP RESEARCH TO ANTICIPATE CHANGES
The last time the Rams and the Patriots faced off in The Big Game was back in 2002, which offers a pretty interesting apples-to-apples comparison of—and historical context for—how dramatic change can be. Using Nexis® to search the archives, we can get a peek into an entirely different universe, with press clippings like:
Tom Brady, a “no-name backup”?! Wow, have times changed. But there are other clues as to just how much cultural change has occurred in the 18 years since Brady and his Patriots faced the Rams.
Looking back over transcripts, we dive into the context of top TV coverage at the time. With the world wide web still early in its widespread adoption, newscasters in the early 2000s weren’t sharing URLS or social media pages… they were mentioning AOL keywords! And while this year we saw coverage speculating on how the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown would impact Super Bowl security, in 2002 the nation was focused on heightened security in a country still reeling from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In summation: Things change. Yesterday’s underdog can be today’s MVP. And, just like the Los Angeles Rams, your competition is playing the game to win. So be the Tom Brady of your industry by using both historical and real-time research to give your competitive intelligence a boost.
Intrigued by these insights on competitive intelligence? For more information on the products we used for media intelligence and research, contact us today.
One of the biggest potential time-savers for risk management professionals is technology. From initial risk assessment before on-boarding a new client to ongoing risk monitoring to surface threats more quickly, the power of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics show great promise.
Tools to help you identify and mitigate financial, regulatory & reputational risk
Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations are familiar in the financial sector. But no sector is immune to compliance risk—be it from customers, business partners, suppliers, M&A targets or other agents acting on a company’s behalf. In addition to anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws that banks must consider, organizations across industries must consider anti-bribery and corruption regulations, as well as a growing number of data privacy and security laws. Companies also need to stay alert to sanctions, politically exposed persons (PEPs) and other watchlists.
Compliance risks are not just about fines and penalties. The public relations, market and shareholder ramifications can also be devastating.
Source: Corporate Compliance Insights
Moreover, the sheer challenge of staying current with an evolving array of regulations—particularly for companies with global operations—is enormous. Conducting risk assessments, due diligence and monitoring of 100s or even 1000s of third parties requires a huge commitment in both time and resources. And companies are still vulnerable to human error—from a simple typo to a major miss like not identifying an emerging risk BEFORE it becomes disruptive.
Let’s look at three ways technology can help you manage the time spent on risk mitigation.
Third-party risk assessment:Using technology to automate customer or vendor risk assessments or conduct ongoing batch screening streamlines your process so you quickly identify parties that require deeper due diligence before onboarding. Plus, you get the confidence of timely updates in the event that a customer or vendor becomes the subject of a sanction or is added to a watchlist.
Source: McKinsey
Due diligence: Risk professionals cannot escape the need for conducting due diligence—particularly if a risk assessment determines the person or entity poses an elevated risk. But you can look for a due diligence research tool that leverages the power of AI to improve results relevance. Natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, for example, can be used to apply metadata to huge content collections so that search results are more focused—saving you time.
Ongoing risk monitoring: Risk monitoring is a full-time job—especially in today’s fast-paced digital world. The 24/7/365 news cycle, on top of a complex and always-evolving risk landscape, means companies need fast awareness into emerging threats. Technology is a huge time-saver in this area. Automated risk monitoring takes advantage of text analysis to identify key risk factors, entities named and more to separate the noise from the news and alert you to potential issues far sooner than a manual process. Plus, you can have more confidence in the results since this process scans thousands of documents in minutes, giving you a much broader perspective. How long would it take you to scan thousands of documents?
Automation of risk mitigation offers additional benefits beyond time savings for risk management professionals.
Source: Adaptive Insights
So, as you’re looking for ways to optimize your daily schedule, see risk more clearly, and achieve your “better work-life balance” resolution, consider what tools you can add to your risk management process to make it more hands-off and more data-driven through automation.
3 Steps to Take Now:
The world of academic research has changed. The current generation of students have grown up with always-on internet, smart phones and social platforms--and they want their research experiences to be just as fast, convenient and intuitive as googling 'how do I ...' or collaborating on WhatsApp.
What do digital natives want?
We recently put together an infographic that outlines how digital natives want to conduct research and how Nexis Uni helps.
According to Revenue River, digital natives are:
Another important consideration? These digital natives switch devices constantly, so you need a research tool that works as well on a laptop as a smart phone or tablet.
In addition, digital natives want collaboration tools that are just as convenient as the devices they rely on.
Nexis Uni delivers with an intuitive interface that enables fast, precise research across a expansive source universe and collaboration tools that make it easier to work on group projects and keep everyone on the team accountable.
Other steps to take:
Márcia Balisciano is Director of Corporate Responsibility at RELX, the FTSE30 data and analytics company (and LexisNexis parent company), who was in Davos this year to take part in a panel discussion on how women leaders can help achieve the UN's goals. On a freezing afternoon at the SDG Tent in Davos, she explained how corporate responsibility has moved up the agenda of companies, employees, investors and governments.
“I have definitely seen corporate responsibility or sustainability or whatever name you want to use for it rise up in terms of its importance to business. I think that is because there is a clear understanding that how you conduct your business influences how sustainable you are going to be as a business over the longer term.”
“It has coincided with the interest of governments in how we undertake our business—a good example of that is the Modern Slavery Act in the United Kingdom. It also coincides with the interest of investors. They want to know that they are investing in companies that are going to be doing the right thing because that is going to have a positive impact on the business into the future and it is not going to damage shareholder value through unethical practice.”
“On my first evening in Davos I sat next to two private equity investors and they both said, ‘we want to be better at ESG, we want to really be serious about understanding the impact of the companies that we invest in.’ One mentioned gender equality as something that they were really passionate about and the other mentioned environmental sustainability and how they want to factor that into the investments that they make.”
“I see that corporate responsibility will only increase over time in terms of the importance that the range of stakeholders— NGOs, employees, investors and government—place on this very important agenda.”
“If a company is not considering its impact on the environment, on its people or in terms of fostering a responsibility towards society, they will feel the pain of that in the longer term because to my mind there will be an increase in the value that consumers place on products and services that have been produced in an ethical fashion, that don’t damage the environment and that are sourced in environmentally-friendly ways.”
“I think companies ignore environmental, social and governance qualities (ESG) at their peril because this will continue to be of importance to a range of stakeholders, to government, to investors, to our employees and to NGOs who will continue to put scrutiny on companies and their performance—and rightly so."
“At RELX Group we began in 2003 with a small corporate responsibility team and we are still a small team because the emphasis is across our business getting people engaged in maximizing the ethical performance of our business.”
“I would say about half of the work of my team and colleagues is about making sure we have our own house in order. It is very important that all companies do well in terms of governance and how we treat our people, the impact that we have on the environment and the local communities, and also how we engage with our customers.”
“But there is also this other area where we look at maximizing access to science through things like Research for Life which we are the largest contributor of content to this UN-sponsored program which provides content to researchers, libraries and universities in the developing world.”
“Also, RELX Group in 2017 launched the free SDG Resource Centre to curate content from across our company that map to the SDGs and we’ve created some amazing tools like the SDG News Tracker which provides up-to-the-minute news on the SDGs.”
1. Learn how Lexis Diligence® and LexisNexis® Entity Insight help companies efficiently manage risk.2. Share this blog with your colleagues and connections on LinkedIn.
Alfred Berkeley, chair of the UNGSII’s SCR500 fund, former president of the NASDAQ stock exchange and advisor to U.S. presidents Bush, Clinton and Obama, took time out at Davos to discuss the fund’s performance with LexisNexis
“The UNGSII sponsored a fund that is trying to make the point that you can make better than market averages by investing in companies that are adhering to the SDGs for 2030. We are running a paper portfolio that is doing that right now and we’ve had results for 2018 of about 13.7 percent—that’s a little better than the Standard & Poor’s 11.97 percent.”
“The great challenge in the sustainable investing area is to convince people that you can make a good return while you are making good investments, that the companies can subscribe to the SDGs, they can change their business models so they can become more sustainable and they can still make good money.”
“I think there are two keys that we need to be addressing - one is the companies themselves and our primary purpose is to make money, at least as much money as the market would make you, and then to reward companies with attention and praise for adhering to the SDGs”What is your message to companies considering putting sustainability at the heart of their business strategy?“It’s a big decision for a company to go sustainable, many companies are paying lip service to it, but more and more companies are actually delivering and doing it. We have a wonderful chance as a western society, indeed the world, to take on the challenge of the UN, to change our behavior and up our game.”
“The SDGs are all about upping humanity’s game in this long-term view of our own survival and the world’s health. So, that’s what we’re about—proving to investors that you can make a better than average return and proving to companies that it pays to be a sustainable company."
1. Learn more about SDGs on our parent company’s RELX SDG Resource Center.
2. See how a commitment to SDGs benefits companies and communities.
3. Share this blog with your colleagues and connections on LinkedIn.
A fund which invests in major companies who have made a legal commitment to supporting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) announced its 2018 performance on Thursday 24 January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It returned 13.71 percent over two years, which is better than every major index other than the Dow Jones. This is hard evidence that ethical and sustainable businesses can be more profitable than others.
Last year, we wrote about the new fund which only invests in companies who can prove they are supporting the SDGs. The SCR500 fund studies the annual reports of the world’s 500 largest companies to determine which have made legal commitments to supporting the SDGs and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria. It only invests in those which have committed to the goals in their annual report or can prove that they are making concrete moves in the direction of sustainability.“Our approach is straightforward: we apply traditional investment rules to a select universe of companies that have committed to sustainability and implement their commitment in their business,” said Alfred Berkeley, chair of the fund. The results in its first year were remarkable: Its returns beat every other major fund. So, we attended the announcement of the latest results to find out if its first result was more than a fluke.
At 3.15pm at the SDG Lab opposite Davos’ Congress Centre, the results were unveiled. The fund did not perform as well as last year, but this was to be expected with a difficult period for the markets over the last two months.
Overall, the fund has returned nearly 14 percent since 2017, which is better than every major fund apart from the Dow Jones. Alfred Berkeley, who was formerly President of the NASDAQ stock exchange and advisor to Bush, Clinton and Obama, said the results offer a major lesson to companies. “This performance demonstrates a solid challenge to competitors and highlights that responsible, socially conscious business is also profitable business, providing unique opportunities to support progress on the SDGs while also making an investment profit,” he said. “We’re about proving to investors that you can make a better than average return and proving to companies that it pays to be a sustainable company.”SDGs on the corporate agenda.
Perhaps more interesting than the fund’s results is the data it has now released on how companies are approaching the SDGs. It shows that more companies are focusing on the SDGs: analysis showed that over 85 percent of the largest 500 global corporations now disclose non-financial information as part of their legally-binding annual financial report. “It seems fair to conclude that the SDGs.
1. Read our Q&A with Fund Chair Alfred Berkeley.
2. Download our eBook on the ethical expectations of investors and consumers.
Maurice Ostro, OBE KFO, is Vice-Chair of YPO and Founder of Entrepreneurial Giving and an entrepreneur and former government advisor. Ahead of the launch of the Global Leadership Survey results, he explained its significance and other trends he has noticed at this year’s World Economic Forum summit.
“In the new year, we polled 27,000 members in 130 countries, and we had thousands of responses, and two very interesting facts came back. Firstly, today there’s been such a shift in the mindset of CEOs and the next generation. 93 percent of respondents say that they don’t believe that business is just about making more money and being a more successful company in terms of profitability, but rather the impact that that company has on society.”
"What’s even more phenomenal is that 74 percent of them in the last five years have changed their minds. If we’d have done precisely the same poll five years ago, we’d have had significantly different results and that’s very encouraging.”
“We now need to tap into that wellspring of supportive feelings for making business a force for good and let’s make a real difference on the ground by changing these feelings into tangible outcomes to help people around the world.”
“Here in Davos 2019, we have had multiple reports that make it very clear that the purpose agenda is important, that business needs to be a force for good. Our challenge is: How do we do that in a collaborative manner so that governments, NGOs and corporates work together to be an effective force for good?”
“I don’t believe there’s any single answer, I think there are multiple things happening at the same time.”
“A primary driver is the demographic of the millennial generation. They are less likely to have the same levels of financial security and wellbeing that their parents have and that’s a very interesting change. That dynamic makes them think, ’Well, it can’t just be about making money and then maybe later on we’ll give it away and build hospitals’, so they’re thinking: ‘What can we do because we don’t want to feel that we’re just there working for ourselves trying to make money and knowing that we’ll never be as successful as our parents? That doesn’t give us a good feeling or sense of self-worth.’”
”Many Millennials are thinking: ’We want to make a difference now. We don’t want to wait for some future event that might never happen. We want that in our work life we can embed a sense of purpose ‘. That is a shift that drives things on multiple levels—it means for businesses that you need to be thinking about that if you want to recruit the very best caliber of individual in your team.”
“And furthermore, if a business wants to resonate with the consumers who are having these same feelings, you need to be thinking about your purpose, your environmental impact, your supply chain.”“Who wants to have things that they are buying made be slaves or kids? That doesn’t make anybody feel good and most of the things that people purchase are not a necessity and certainly not only from one particular supplier. If you are giving them a choice saying my product is [ethically] better, you will have a more successful business and a more engaged staff. That will help society, and everyone gains.”
“For the 74 percent of CEOs who have changed their mind about purpose in business, our challenge is do something about it. It’s nice to have the feeling, but you have to act on it. You don’t have to act alone. Work with others and you’ll be even more impactful by leveraging your combined resources.”
“Here, I have been talking with a number of friends from YPO and major organizations— corporates, governments and NGOs—and we’re talking about how we can collaborate to be an effective force for good from the business side.”
“This is not about philanthropy. This is about being effective business leaders. There are multiple ways we can do this and that is precisely why here—amongst the larger corporates in the world—we’re focusing on the start-up businesses, the little guys.”
“You might think: ‘What a funny place to do it,’ but it’s business leaders, corporates and governments that need to come together to make this happen. It cannot be done by one organization. It needs to be done as a collaborative effort. I hope this Davos will be the beginning of many good initiatives.”
1. Read more about the Global Leadership Survey results released during the 2019 World Economic Forum.
2. Explore how LexisNexis Entity Insight helps companies take a proactive approach to risk management.
3. Share this blog with your colleagues and connections to keep the conversation going.
93 percent of CEOs believe business should have a positive impact on society, according to a new survey. The Global Leadership Survey by YPO shows the changing attitudes of business leaders, who increasingly feel responsible for tackling climate change and supporting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals through CSR programs. We were there for the report’s launch at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.
The Global Leadership Survey identifies the priorities of CEOs and the next generation of business leaders. Between 23 December and 4 January, YPO polled more than 4,000 senior executives in 110 countries. More than 2,200 are chief executives and nearly 2,000 are younger than 31. The survey was carried out by YPO, which is a collection of more than 27,000 chief executives in 130 countries who run businesses which turnover $9 trillion every year and employ 22 million people.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations have gained traction in recent years, and the survey confirms the trend. Key findings include:
• 93 percent of CEOs and the younger generation believe business should have a positive impact on society beyond pursuing profits and wealth.• 93 percent said purpose drives how they run their company.• 74 percent of CEOs say they have changed their perspective on the role of leadership in the past five years—they now believe that businesses should play a stronger role in society.• CEOs and younger leaders both picked climate change as their top area of concern related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Other top choices were education, poverty, peace and the availability of work opportunities.• Young people are the most concerned about the environment—55 percent of young leaders said they are acting to reduce their company’s environmental impact, compared to 37 percent of current CEOs.• 67 percent said society as whole is a “very important” or “extremely important” stakeholder of a business, and 66 percent said the same of the planet.
The report was launched in front of a packed audience at the Hilton Hotel in Davos on Friday 25 January. Its authors said the report is clear evidence of a change in thinking of the current and next generation of business leaders.
The report notes, “Business leaders, and society in general are moving from considering a business’ interest completely focused on its traditional shareholders to having a significant impact on more stakeholders, including society as a whole. Chief executives are working to ensure that their businesses make a positive impact.”
The motivations for this shift are not purely altruistic. In addition to mitigating risk of compliance failures or reputational damage, businesses have noticed that prospective customers, investors and employees are more likely to buy from, invest in and work for ethical companies. As the survey shows, more companies are realizing that ‘good profit’ is possible: greater investment in CSR and placing purpose at the heart of their business strategy will lead to more profitability and sustainability in the future.
Maurice Ostro, Vice-Chair of YPO, said the report’s findings have been confirmed by other reports and conversations during this week’s WEF summit. “Here in Davos 2019, we have had multiple reports that make it very clear that the purpose agenda is important, that business needs to be a force for good,” he said. “Our challenge is how do we do that in a collaborative manner so that governments, NGOs and corporates work together to be an effective force for good.”
1. Check out another post from this year’s World Economic Forum at Davos.
2. Read our eBook on Ethical Expectations to understand what’s driving the trend toward impact investing.
Battered by partisan opposition and bruised by a federal judge’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional, the Affordable Care Act continues to be embraced by the states and the clients it serves.
Democrats made preservation of the ACA, often called Obamacare, a central issue in last November’s elections, in which they gained seven governorships and six legislative chambers. Emboldened by their victories, Democrats in several states are seeking to extend the reach of Obamacare.
Legislators of both parties have virtually ignored a sweeping ruling striking down the ACA that was issued Dec. 14 in Texas by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. Agreeing with 18 Republican state attorneys general and two GOP governors who sued to overturn the law, O’Connor stated that a provision of the ACA requiring Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty was unconstitutional. He said this invalidated every other section of the 2,000-page law.
Experts on both sides of previous ACA legal battles denounced O’Connor’s ruling as overreaching, and many of them predicted it would be overturned on the appeal that has been launched by 17 Democratic state attorneys general. Until the appeal is decided, Obamacare remains the law of the land.
Yale law professor Abbe Gluck, a liberal health care expert, said that O’Connor’s “ludicrous” ruling ignored accepted legal doctrine on congressional intent. She noted that when Congress lowered the tax penalty for those without insurance to zero, it made no other changes in the law.
On the right, the conservative flagship National Review, an opponent of the ACA, made the point even more explicitly, stating that “The deliberate decision by Congress to eliminate the tax without eliminating the rest of Obamacare...shows that Congress in 2017 no longer considered it essential to the law.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act by a 5-4 majority that remains intact. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s four liberal justices. The two justices since appointed by President Donald Trump replaced justices who dissented from Roberts’ ruling.
The ACA expanded Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health care for the poor and disabled, to families and individuals with income up to 138 percent above the poverty level. Roberts’ ruling changed this provision, making Medicaid expansion discretionary for the states.
Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid. Four more — Maine, Idaho, Nebraska and Utah — will so do so this year because of ballot measures approved by voters. These approvals occurred in last November’s election except for Maine, where voters favored Medicaid expansion in 2017 only to have their decision blocked by a Republican governor. Janet Mills, the new Democratic governor, ordered expansion to begin Feb. 1.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governors Gavin Newsom in California and Jay Inslee in Washington, all Democrats, have unveiled health care plans that go far beyond the Medicaid expansion authorized by the ACA.
On his first day in office Newsom asked California lawmakers to create a state individual mandate that would require residents to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, expand ACA subsidy eligibility to persons with income up to 400 percent above the poverty limit and extend Medicaid coverage to unauthorized immigrants up to 26 years of age. California already covers unauthorized immigrants who are 18 or younger.
Newsom hopes eventually to create a California single-payer system that would replace all current programs, including Medicare. But the chances of the Trump administration approving such a plan, observed the Los Angeles Times, “seem more remote than the most distant star in the Milky Way.”
In Washington, Inslee and Democratic lawmakers have proposed a state-sponsored public option on Washington’s health-insurance exchange. Inslee called it a first step toward universal health care.
“This is not just a moral right,” Inslee said in announcing the proposal. “It is economic wisdom and very possible.”
In New York City, Mayor Di Blasio announced expansion of the city’s low-income health care program to an additional 600,000 uninsured, including unauthorized immigrants. The program will begin in the Bronx this summer and go citywide in 2021.
States in which Democrats newly control the governorship and both chambers of the legislature are also rethinking health care. Some Democratic lawmakers in Colorado have proposed a state-run insurance plan similar to Inslee’s.
In Nevada, the legislature in 2017 passed a bill that would have allowed anyone to buy into Medicaid. It was vetoed by a Republican governor. The new governor, Democrat Steve Sisolak, has formed a committee to review this and other options.
Delaware, Oregon and New Mexico are also conducting studies on various health care options. All three states have Democratic governors and previously expanded Medicaid.
Twelve million people received health insurance through the federal and state Obamacare exchanges in 2018 and another 11 million were covered by the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.
Enrollment for 2019 on the federal exchange HealthCare.gov dropped about 4 percent, but there was little or no decrease in many states with their own exchanges and later sign-up deadlines. Charles Gaba, a health-care blogger who tracks ACA sign-ups, found that 13 states, including seven with their own exchanges, increased sign-ups for 2019.
By any measure Obamacare has proved a tenacious survivor. It has survived Republican attempts to repeal the law and numerous efforts by the Trump administration to emasculate it.
In addition to eliminating the requirement that everyone have health insurance, the Trump administration has persistently declined to advertise the availability of Obamacare as state exchanges do. Trump also ended the subsidies the Obama administration paid insurers to provide policies for low-income ACA recipients. More recently, the Trump administration offered a bevy of low-cost health insurance plans that do not meet ACA standards, such as covering people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Some people have bought these bare-bone policies, but many more have stuck with Obamacare. The reason is clear from the administration’s own data. Surveys by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) show that 90 percent of Obamacare recipients are satisfied with their coverage.
The ACA has also reduced the ranks of the uninsured. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2013, the year before the major coverage provisions of the ACA went into effect. By 2016, the number had dropped to just under 27 million.
The number of uninsured crept back up by 700,000 in 2017, the last year for which full figures are available. This reflected increases in ACA premiums in some states that caused some recipients to drop their policies as well as a reduction in health coverage by some employers.
As reported in this space in October, premium increases for ACA policies are less in 2019 than in two prior years, as insurers return to the Obamacare market they once fled. The Wall Street Journal attributed this to “the improved financial situation of many insurers’ ACA business.”
But health care remains more expensive in the United States than in any other industrialized democracy, and costs are at the root of any discussion of health care reform. Beyond Medicaid expansion, such bold proposals as “Medicare for all” or a single-payer system face objections from those who say they are too expensive.
Vermont abandoned a single-payer experiment because of high costs. In Colorado a 2016 ballot measure that would have created a statewide health care system lost by nearly 80 percent of the vote on the same day Hillary Clinton carried the state by a 5-percent margin.
Because health care is important to nearly everyone, ferocious debates about it are not going away. Unfortunately, these debates have been almost entirely partisan since the ACA passed on a party-line vote in 2009.
Without blaming anyone, let’s imagine an alternative universe where some Republicans support the goal of the ACA, prompting concessions from the Democrats.
That universe actually existed in this country in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed a then-radical idea of providing government-sponsored health care for the elderly. Some Republicans cried “socialized medicine,” but other GOP members of Congress worked with Johnson and wound up voting for an improved version of what we know as Medicare.
The best thing that could happen in the on-going health care debates would be for Democrats and Republicans to start talking to one another again. In other words, let’s go back to the future.
Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Four other states - Idaho, Maine, Nebraska and Utah - will do so this year, as a result of voter-approved ballot measures. Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) ordered the adoption, by Feb. 1, of rules mandated by the ballot measure approved there in 2017 but subsequently blocked by former Gov. Paul LePage (R). Effective dates for expansion in the other three states are yet to be determined.
Last year the Federal Communication Commission offered $4.5 billion in funding over the next 10 years to help states provide high-speed mobile broadband service in underserved rural areas.
Cell phone carriers informed the FCC that several states, including Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Vermont, were already well covered with high-speed broadband, making the states ineligible for the FCC’s Mobility Fund Phase II (MF-II) reverse auction money.
The states disagreed.
“When we first looked at the confidential coverage maps we called the FCC staff and said, ‘These maps are wrong,’” said Corey Chase, telecommunications infrastructure specialist for Vermont’s Department of Public Service.
He said the FCC told them, “Well, if you don’t think they’re accurate, it would behoove you to do a challenge.”
That advice resulted in scores of contractors and volunteers crisscrossing multiple states doing a rendition of the “Can you hear me now?” line from the Verizon ad and, ultimately, in the filing of several state challenges with the FCC.
In response to those challenges, the FCC suspended its MF-II program last month so it could investigate whether one or more of the major carriers had violated its auction mapping rules. The accuracy of that data is not only key for determining state eligibility for MF-II funding but also a “public safety issue,” according to Ryan Brown, a deputy commissioner for Mississippi’s Public Service Commission.
“We’ve had folks who have been in car wrecks and haven’t been able to call 911; we’ve had elderly people who have fallen and can’t get a signal to call an ambulance,” he said. “Lives are at stake in this matter too.” (STATELINE, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION)
Los Angeles teachers ended their walkout and returned to their classrooms last week, after reaching a tentative contract agreement with the district. Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said there was wide support for the contract among union members. But the teachers weren’t overwhelmingly successful in obtaining the better pay, smaller class sizes and school support staff they were asking for when they began their strike on Jan. 14.
The contract deal includes a 3 percent raise for teachers this school year and a 3 percent increase for last year. But the district had offered teachers a 6 percent pay increase before the strike, and teachers will lose about 3 percent of their salaries as a result of being on strike for six days.
The contract would only reduce class sizes in grades four through 12 by one student next year, by one more the following year and potentially two more the year after that, if there are sufficient tax revenues.
But the contract would also provide for a librarian in every middle and high school, and a full-time nurse in every school, a significant improvement from the current arrangement, with the district only paying for school nurses one day per week. (LOS ANGELES TIMES)
Nine of the 10 most populous states with an income tax and available data experienced revenue drops in December. Those declines, due mainly to lower income tax collections, ranged from -3.4 percent in Ohio to -41 percent in California.
The drops weren’t entirely unexpected, given the significant bump in last year’s tax collections from the December 2017 federal tax overhaul, which spurred taxpayers to file income and property taxes before the end of that year. But this year’s drops were steeper than last year's gains, according to Lucy Dadayan, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute.
“We might continue seeing weak growth in income tax revenues, particularly in these higher tax states, for the rest of the fiscal year,” she said. (GOVERNING)
CONNECTICUT’s Democrat-led General Assembly overwhelmingly approved and Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation providing state-backed, zero-interest loans for federal workers who aren’t getting paid because of the partial government shutdown. About 1,200 residents will be eligible for the loans of up to $5,000 per month for three months. (HARTFORD COURANT, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET)
The VIRGINIA Senate has passed a bill (SB 1255) that would provide incentive payments to Amazon for creating tens of thousands of high-paying jobs in Arlington County. Meanwhile, the state’s House Appropriations Committee has unanimously approved legislation (HB 2180) that would provide $70 million in incentives to Micron Technologies for undertaking a $3 billion expansion of its semiconductor plant in Manassas. (RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET)
OREGON residents returned more cans, bottles and other containers for redemption under the state’s bottle deposit program than ever, managing a return rate of about 90 percent. That achievement came in an otherwise challenging year for recycling, with China having announced it would no longer accept many of the recyclables it had been importing from Oregon and other states. (BEND BULLETIN)
Clark County, NEVADA has approved the use of up to $12 million in marijuana fees each year for homelessness programs, including housing and case management services. Recreational marijuana sales began in the state about a year and a half ago, and the county collected $9.3 million in marijuana business license fees in fiscal year 2018 and expects to approach $11 million in such fees this fiscal year. (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL)
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced last week that she would be introducing emergency legislation to allow federal employees who live in the district and are working without pay due to the partial government shutdown to file for unemployment benefits. That action could set up a legal showdown with the U.S. Labor Department, which has said only furloughed federal workers are eligible for such benefits. (WTOP)
-- Compiled by KOREY CLARK
Oklahoma state Rep. Terry O’Donnell (R) has filed a bill (HB 2094) for the coming session, which begins on Feb. 4, that would make it a misdemeanor crime, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $500 fine, to disrupt the Legislature. State Sen. Mark Allen (R) has filed a bill (SB 592) that would require organizers of protests at the state Capitol involving 100 or more people to post a $50,000 bond.
The two bills are part of a slew of measures aimed at cracking down on protests like the statewide teacher walkout over education funding last April that kept many of the state’s 500,000 students out of school for two weeks and came even after the Legislature had rushed to pass teacher raises.
Some of the legislation targets teachers more explicitly. For example, HB 2214, authored by Rep. Todd Russ (R), would make it illegal for “board of education or school district employees...to strike or threaten to strike or otherwise close schools or interfere with school operations as a means of resolving differences with the board of education, the State Department of Education, the State Board of Education, the Legislature or any other public official or public body.” Striking teachers would not only lose their pay while they were off the job, but also have their state teaching certificate “permanently revoked.”
Russ has authored another bill (HB 2208) that would bar the Oklahoma Education Association from representing teachers in local contract bargaining and require local boards of education to hold secret ballot elections “to determine whether the organization retains support of a majority of all employees in the bargaining unit.”
Senator Allen has also filed another measure (SB 574) that would provide for the establishment of an ethics code for teachers, prohibiting them from advocating for or against legislation, political issues or candidates “during class time or while otherwise operating within the scope of employment as a teacher.” (TULSA WORLD, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET)
A panel of federal judges has approved a redistricting map for the Virginia House of Delegates that could help Democrats in this year’s legislative elections.
The judges for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in June that 11 House districts drawn by the GOP-controlled General Assembly were racially gerrymandered and ordered a new map. When Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and lawmakers failed to reach agreement on a plan, the judges turned the task over to a special master, Bernard Grofman, a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine.
The district lines the judges chose last week from a series of options Grofman gave them could give Democrats control of six districts currently held by Republicans, including that of House Speaker Kirk Cox (R).
Cox called the new lines “legally indefensible” and charged that they “give Democrats an advantage at every turn.”
But Jesse Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University, said Virginia has been moving “in a much bluer direction lately.” Democrats made big gains in the House elections in 2017 - flipping 15 GOP-held seats - and drew considerably more votes overall in the House races than Republicans, 54 percent to 44 percent, although the GOP still holds a 51-48 majority in the chamber.
“The district lines had provided some shelter for Republicans in the House of Delegates,” said Richman. If this stands, we’re more likely to see the chamber change parties in the next election, barring some major unforeseen shift in political winds.”
Whether or not the map stands may ultimately be up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear a GOP appeal of the U.S. District Court’s ruling this coming spring. The District Court judges have also given all parties until Feb. 1 to file objections to the map they selected. (STATE [COLUMBIA])
The ARKANSAS Ethics Commission received 146 citizen complaints against candidates and others during last year’s election cycle. That number was a new record and a 45 percent increase from 2012. (ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE)
Despite a push for greater transparency in KANSAS state government, both chambers of the Legislature allow unrecorded votes on bills in committee. Unrecorded votes are also allowed on amendments to bills before the full chambers, although final votes always get recorded. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
MINNESOTA Rep. Mike Freiberg (D) and Sen. Melisa Franzen (D) are working on legislation to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Rep. Raymond Dehn (D) is aiming, instead, to put the issue before the state’s voters as a constitutional amendment in 2020, which would still require the approval of both the DFL-controlled House and the Republican-led Senate first. (MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, LEXISNEXIS STATE NET)