WASHINGTON (AP) — Strong job growth lifted U.S. consumer confidence this month, as Americans looked past the economy’s dismal first quarter performance.
The University of Michigan says that its index of consumer sentiment rose slightly to 82.5 in June from 81.9 in May. That is still below April’s reading of 84.1, which had been the highest in almost a year.
The reading suggests consumers shrugged off the economy’s first quarter contraction. Still, the survey was conducted before the government said the economy shrank much more than previously estimated, at an annual rate of 2.9 percent rather than 1 percent.
And better confidence hasn’t yet translated into more spending.
Steady hiring is improving American’s finances, the survey found. Forty percent of respondents said their finances had improved in June, the most in seven years.
SPRINGFIELD (AP) – Ozarks Community Hospital says it will lay off up to 60 of its employees in the Springfield area.
CEO Paul Taylor said in a letter dated Wednesday that the layoffs will occur during the next 60 days. The hospital has about 800 employees, with 500 working in the Springfield area.
The Springfield News-Leader reports Taylor blamed the layoffs on the Missouri Legislature’s failure to expand Medicaid in the state.
Taylor says even if the state eventually expands Medicaid, hospitals are unlikely to recapture the ground they are losing because of what he called political posturing.
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — Residents of a southwest Missouri city devastated by a 2011 tornado are reaching out to the northeast Nebraska town of Pilger, which was torn apart by a tornado last week.
Joplin residents on Thursday announced a “Joplin Loves Pilger” campaign to help victims of the June 16 tornado in Pilger.
The Joplin Globe reports the campaign includes a Facebook page to offer encouragement and an account at Pinnacle Bank in Joplin, with all proceeds to go to the Pilger Community Development Fund.
The May 2011 tornado damaged hundreds of homes and businesses and killed 161 people in Joplin.
Joplin resident Doug Hunt, who was working Saturday in Pilger, says the campaign is part of his efforts to thank you to people who helped him and his city.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) renewed his calls today for the U.S. Senate to vote on the Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments of the Law (ENFORCE the Law) Act, a bill that he introduced to ensure the president upholds his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Blunt expressed his support for House Speaker John Boehner’s (Ohio) announcement yesterday that he plans to pursue measures to sue President Barack Obama “in an effort to compel the president to follow his oath of office and faithfully execute the laws of our country.”
“It’s time for Congress to tell President Obama: You cannot ignore the law. The president’s ‘pen and phone’ do not supersede the U.S. Constitution,” said Blunt. “The House already passed this bill, and the Senate should allow a vote immediately. The president has a constitutional responsibility to faithfully execute the laws of our country.”
The ENFORCE the Law Act puts a procedure in place to allow Congress to authorize a lawsuit against the executive branch for failure to faithfully execute the laws in an effort to ensure the president upholds his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The bill also provides for expedited consideration of any such lawsuit, first through a three-judge panel at the federal district court level, and then by providing for direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Additional Background Information:
The ENFORCE the Law Act provides that if the president, or any other officer or employee of the United States, establishes or implements a formal or informal policy to refrain from enforcing any provision of federal law in violation of the requirement that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” the House or the Senate may, by adoption of a resolution, authorize a civil action to seek declaratory or injunctive relief. Any such lawsuit may be brought by the House of Representatives, the Senate, or both Houses of Congress jointly.
The bill also provides for expedited consideration of any case brought by Congress pursuant to the bill’s provisions. First, the bill provides that any such action shall be filed in a federal district court of competent jurisdiction and that the court shall convene a three-judge panel to hear the case. Second, the bill provides that the three-judge panel’s decision is appealable directly to the United States Supreme Court. Finally, the district courts and the Supreme Court are required to expedite any case filed pursuant to this legislation.
The bill is intended to address procedural hurdles the courts have put in front of previous attempts by individual Members of Congress, and ad hoc groups of Members, to seek judicial review of alleged failures by the president to faithfully execute the law. The courts have held that when Congress or one House of Congress suffers an institutional injury, the Congress or a House of Congress must authorize any lawsuit aimed at redressing the injury. This bill puts a procedure in place to allow for such authorization and expedites judicial review of such decisions to ensure decisions are made in a timely manner by the courts.
KANSAS CITY- Six people, including two children under the age of five, were injured in a five-vehicle crash on Thursday afternoon in Johnson County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 1984 Chevy driven by Phillip M. Johnston, 39, Kansas City, was traveling northbound on Interstate 35 under Quivira Road in Lenexa and rear-ended a 2008 Mercedes-Benz GL5 driven by Odai a. Al Omari, 29, Kansas City.
The Mercedes then struck a 2010 Pontiac G6 driven by Ashley M. Jordan, 29, Liberty, MO.,
The Chevy then continued and struck a 2012 Ford Econoline driven by Ethan E. Lindsey, 26, Frankford, MO., and a 2011 Jeep Compass driven by Rusty L. Haines, 35, Kansas City.
Johnson, Al Omari, and Jordan were transported to Overland Park Regional Medical Center. Two children in the Chevy were transported to Children’s Mercy. Lindsey was transported to Shawnee Mission Medical Center.
The KHP reported a three-year old child in the Chevy was in a seat belt but not a safety seat.
By Mike Sherry
KHI News Service
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — When activists worldwide marked three decades since the emergence of a mysterious immune disease, Kansas City, Kan., participants posted a timeline of key events in the fight against the AIDS pandemic in a building foyer in their community.
Yet this was no ordinary foyer; it was the main entrance to Mt. Carmel Church of God in Christ at 2025 N. 12th St. Not only that, but the display in the African American church went up right around Christmastime to coincide with World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.
“That was the first thing that you saw when you came through the front door of the church – was this huge bulletin board. So that was paramount, because it was not just Mt. Carmel folks who were seeing this,” says church member LaTrischa Miles, who helped coordinate the 2011 display.
Visiting churches were coming through at the time, mixing with Mt. Carmel congregants.
It was all part of a project known as Taking it to the Pews (TIPS), a project spearheaded by Jannette Berkley-Patton, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. One of her main partners is the Rev. Eric Williams, pastor of Calvary Temple Baptist Church in Kansas City, Mo.
Church power
Years in the making, the project aims to leverage the credibility of the church in the black community to attack a disease that disproportionately affects African Americans. A key component in helping to eliminate the stigma is making HIV testing available to the congregation during services – oftentimes with the pastor and his wife leading by example from the pulpit.
And now, Berkely-Patton and her colleagues are poised to take what could be the final step in what may become a tool for black churches across the country to address AIDS – as well as exploring whether the TIPS model can help reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases within the black community.
With a new five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, project organizers are putting together a full clinical trial expected to include up to 14 churches across the metropolitan area. Researchers aim to engage about 1,500 adult African Americans.
“We will be knocking on a bunch of doors trying to get new churches involved,” Berkely-Patton says.
According to the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, AIDS affects blacks more than any other racial/ethnic group. Citing data from 2010, the CDC says:
• African Americans accounted for an estimated 44 percent of all new HIV infections among adults and adolescents (aged 13 years or older), despite representing only 12 percent of the U.S. population
• African American women accounted for nearly a third (29 percent) of the estimated new HIV infections among all adult and adolescent African Americans. The estimated rate of new HIV infections for African-American women (38.1/100,000 population) was 20 times that of white women and almost 5 times that of Hispanic/Latino women.
• The greater number of people living with HIV in African American communities and the tendency of African Americans to have sex with partners of the same race/ethnicity means that they face a greater risk of HIV infection with each new sexual encounter.
Early in the AIDS pandemic, Williams recognized that black clergy were inadvertently contributing to the fear and stigma surrounding the disease by demonizing it from the pulpit. A defining moment for Williams came, he said, when a family could not find anyone to conduct the funeral of their gay son who had died from AIDS.
Touchy subject
“Most of our colleagues, if you were to ask them if they wanted to relieve human suffering, hands down, they would, ‘Yes, we believe the church should be equipped to relieve human suffering,’” Williams said. “Until you start talking about HIV. Then the waters start getting a little fuzzier.”
By the mid-1990s, though, Williams said, attitudes among black clergy began to soften as they witnessed the effects of the disease on sufferers and their families within their congregations.
Then, in 2005, Berkley-Patton arrived at UMKC as an adjunct faculty member.
A product of Kansas City’s urban core who grew up attending Second Baptist Church at 39th Street and Monroe Avenue, Berkley-Patton had left a job in the aerospace industry to earn a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Kansas.
Upon her return to the city, Berkley-Patton became active with the Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS in Kansas City.
Her involvement came as Williams and others involved with a sister organization of his church, Calvary Community Outreach Network, were growing frustrated that clergy had not progressed on AIDS education initiatives suggested through the Black Church Week of Prayer. The clergy had not done much, he says, mainly because they didn’t know where to start or how to convey the information.
That formed the seeds of TIPS, which launched in 2006 with some local grants. It began with a series of focus groups and planning sessions involving about a dozen churches in the metropolitan area.
Patton then got an initial National Institutes of Health grant to conduct a four-church pilot, along with the outreach network, in 2011-2012. Mt. Carmel was one of the churches in the pilot, which showed promise in getting people tested.
Mt. Carmel experience
Mt. Carmel performed 179 tests during the pilot, Miles said. That’s a significant amount, given that community outreach events typically log no more than 10 or 15 tests.
Church leaders committed to holding at least two events per month, Miles said – whether youth activities, responsive readings, rallies or testimonials.
Medical staff only tested individuals between the ages of 18 and 64, but conversations were not limited to those age groups, said Stephanie Kimbrough, another church member involved with the pilot.
Kimbrough says it certainly opened lines of communication between her and her daughter, who was 12 years old at the time. The pilot also engaged older congregants as well, she says.
“Imagine talking to an 80-year-old woman about anal sex,” Kimbrough said. “That’s not always easy. Sometimes they didn’t understand. You had to explain what this was.”
Transferable process?
Berkley-Patton is hoping TIPS strategies work for other conditions afflicting the black community, including diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
She has termed that initiative Faith Influencing Transformation (FIT), an eight-month project scheduled to begin this fall with an $850,000 grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
Berkley-Patton is working with the UMKC School of Nursing & Health Studies to perhaps have FIT provide hands-on experience to undergraduate health sciences students as preparation for public health careers.
At Mt. Carmel, Miles said, addressing other health issues might seem like a piece of cake after the discussion within the congregation about AIDS.
“If we could organize around an issue as complex as this, with the stigma and the lack of education,” she said, “then I think we can tackle anything.”
ST. LOUIS (AP) – Missouri congresswoman Ann Wagner has been named to the Republican House leadership team.
Wagner, of St. Louis County, is one of five people selected for the “senior deputy whip team” by new House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. She is the only freshman member of Congress named to that leadership role.
The whip team is responsible for helping rally support for legislation.
Scalise is taking over as majority whip because current whip Kevin McCarthy was chosen by Republicans to replace House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who was defeated in a recent Republican congressional primary.
Scalise said North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry will be his chief deputy whip. Wagner will be joined by representatives from Florida, Illinois, Ohio and South Dakota on the deputy whip team.
REEDS SPRING (AP) – The Missouri Lottery wants to hear from its latest multimillion-dollar winner.
Lottery officials say a ticket purchased for Wednesday night’s Lotto drawing matched all six numbers, good for the $3 million jackpot.
The ticket was sold in the southwest Missouri town of Reeds Spring, near Branson, at a retailer called Sportsmans. The winning Lotto numbers were 1, 10, 22, 38, 41 and 42.
Winners in the Lottery’s drawing games have 180 days to claim their prize – in this case, until Dec. 22.
SHAWNEE, Kan. (AP) — A northeast Kansas businessman running as an independent for U.S. Senate has opened his headquarters and named a campaign manager.
Greg Orman announced Thursday that his new headquarters is in the city of Shawnee. He said the leader of his campaign team is veteran political consultant Jim Jonas.
Jonas did television and radio production for Republican President George H.W. Bush’s unsuccessful campaign for re-election in 1992. Jonas was also communications director for Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander’s unsuccessful bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 1996. He’s since moved into independent politics.
Orman is an Olathe resident and co-founder of a business capital and management services firm.
His supporters are working to gather 5,000 signatures from registered voters to get him on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.
