Business
Rising gas prices from Russia-Ukraine conflict will hit Angelenos who can least afford it
Jose Mendoza’s semitruck rumbled right into a fuel station as he ready for a once-a-week routine that has grown excruciating in latest months: watching the digital numbers on the diesel pump ratchet up till his 100-gallon tank is full.
The worth tag on Monday? $550.
Mendoza — who lives in Moreno Valley and infrequently hauls garments, make-up and, nowadays, private protecting tools — works as an impartial contractor. However he’s locked into particular shipments, so he can’t change up his route in an effort to avoid wasting fuel. And the gasoline surcharge the federal government pays his firm to assist offset costs virtually by no means makes it right down to him, Mendoza stated, so dearer fuel interprets to a pay lower.
“It makes it more durable to pay my payments,” he stated.
Even earlier than final week, when Russia, one of many world’s prime producers of petroleum and different crude oil, invaded neighboring Ukraine and set off Europe’s largest floor battle in 75 years, fuel costs had ballooned in response to pandemic supply-chain points and inflation.
In L.A. County, the typical price of a gallon of regular-grade gasoline is $4.90 — up from $4.67 a month in the past and $3.75 a yr in the past, in line with the American Vehicle Assn. In Orange County, the typical is as much as $4.87 from $4.65 a month in the past and $3.73 a yr in the past.
The escalating Ukraine battle is amongst a trifecta of things that may disproportionately have an effect on low-income earners — particularly those that, like Mendoza, depend on their autos to make a dwelling.
“In the event you’re a lower-income individual commuting from Riverside into Irvine, it’s going to hit you actually onerous,” stated Eric Swanson, a professor of economics at UC Irvine.
Whereas gasoline isn’t a giant a part of the typical American’s funds — about 3%, Swanson stated, in contrast with about 40% for housing prices, which are also rising — hikes in fuel costs are regressive, that means they hit lower-income individuals comparatively more durable than larger earners. And elevated fuel costs create a ripple impact, Swanson stated, finally resulting in larger costs for nearly all transported items.
“Even earlier than Ukraine, we have been having the worst inflation since 1980,” Swanson stated, noting that, along with oil, Russia is a serious producer of wheat and palladium, a metallic used to make digital chips.
“Costs are going to go up,” he stated.
In lots of locations throughout the Southland, they have already got.
Carlos Perez, who owns El Monte-based C.P. Towing Service, stated elevated fuel costs just lately compelled him to boost his charges for a number of providers, together with a easy tire change and hauling crashed autos.
“That’s simply the enterprise,” he stated. “Every thing goes up.”
The 55-year-old, who runs the corporate on his personal and infrequently works 14-hour shifts, usually covers Los Angeles and Orange counties however typically makes farther pickups, he stated, together with one which was 700 miles away.
To cowl that form of mileage, he fills up his 2016 Peterbilt flatbed truck virtually day-after-day, shelling out $200 every time — up from $160 at the moment final yr, he stated.
It’s been difficult, however Perez finds encouragement from his prospects’ loyalty and constructive opinions.
“Fuel is excessive, however what are you able to do?” he stated. “I’m pleased work hasn’t stopped.”
For some employees, together with many Uber and Lyft drivers, rising fuel costs have made them think about altering careers altogether.
Greater than 5,000 individuals have signed a web based petition urging the ride-hailing corporations to extend their charges to assist drivers cowl fuel costs.
“Fuel hikes are brutal,” one signatory wrote Monday night.
One other driver posted, “I barely break even. Not value it to drive anymore and beat up my automotive.”
Benjamin Valdez, a part-time Uber driver, upgraded final fall from his Toyota Prius to an SUV — a call formed, partly, by the truth that Uber pays $1.20 per mile for XL rides (those who match as much as six passengers) versus 60 cents per mile in smaller autos.
On reflection, Valdez stated, it was in all probability the incorrect transfer. The brand new automobile takes extra fuel, and the demand for Uber XLs is basically in the course of the day, when Valdez can’t drive as a result of he’s working his different job in laptop tech for a neighborhood school. He’s now contemplating switching to a taxi firm, which might let him use his private automobile and pay round $3 per mile — a steep increase from what he makes at Uber.
One other Uber driver, who lives in Orange County and requested to be recognized solely by his first identify, Taje, stated that when he began with the corporate in 2017, he might typically discover fuel for $2.18 a gallon, lower than half the present common within the county.
For Alexis Fernandez, a third-generation date farmer from Coachella, rising fuel costs have made her every day routine way more nerve-racking. The 25-year-old wakes up most days at 3:30 a.m. to pack candy Medjool and creamy Barhi dates from her household’s ranch to promote at farmers markets throughout the Southland.
She used to make the lengthy treks within the ranch’s cargo van, which she loved as a result of it sits excessive and has highly effective headlights, making it simpler to see whereas driving in the course of the darkish early-morning hours. And since the van is spacious, one other worker accompanied her on the journeys to assist maintain her awake and run the household’s stand as soon as they arrived.
However on Monday, when Fernandez drove by way of the darkness for 140 miles from her house to the South Gate Farmers Market, she was alone in her private automotive, a Nissan Altima. The back and front seats have been piled excessive with plastic packing containers of dates — leaving no house for a passenger.
“It’s a call of paying $40 to replenish my Nissan or $90 to drive the van,” she stated. “We simply can’t afford to make use of it day-after-day, so adjustments must be made.”
To assist offset the upper prices, Fernandez stated, the ranch in January raised its costs by $1: A one-pound pack of dates now sells for $7.
On the Azteca Farms stand, vendor Irma Suárez, 48, stated she just lately raised the worth of all her produce by 50 cents. Kale and broccoli now promote for $3 a pound; Brussels sprouts are $4.
“We had some complaints after we first made the change, as a result of prospects didn’t need to pay extra,” Suárez stated. “However our greens are high quality and higher than what you’re going to seek out on the grocery retailer.”
Virtually each morning, Suárez and her husband, Vicente, who personal 20 acres in jap Ventura County, load one to 2 tons of produce into their Ford F-350 diesel truck and head to a farmers market within the Southland.
They’ve been promoting at markets for 22 years, Suárez stated, and all the time take the identical route.
“Proper earlier than we get on the freeway, we go the identical fuel station, and it seems like each different day, the worth is larger than the final time,” she stated, noting that she’d shelled out $130 that day to replenish the truck.
On Monday afternoon, Rosalinda Diaz, a 73-year-old retired waitress from South Los Angeles, surveyed the Azteca Farms greens earlier than selecting a pound of inexperienced onions and a head of lettuce. It totaled $3, leaving her with $2 in her purse.
Diaz, who lives on a hard and fast revenue of round $1,300 a month, stated that though she primarily makes use of public transportation, she is aware of that larger fuel costs imply rising costs typically.
“You must purchase much less and do extra with much less, even when you don’t personal a automotive,” she stated. “Every thing goes up besides Social Safety.”
Business
'Rust' to premiere at Poland film festival, followed by panel about Halyna Hutchins
Three years after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of “Rust,” the movie is set to make its world premiere in Europe.
The organizers of Poland’s EnergaCamerimage international film festival announced Thursday that “Rust” will be screened at the event, followed by a panel discussion honoring Hutchins. EnergaCamerimage will take place Nov. 16 -23 in Torun.
Hutchins was working on the New Mexico set of “Rust” in October 2021 when a bullet from star and producer Alec Baldwin’s prop gun killed the 42-year-old Ukrainian cinematographer and wounded director Joel Souza.
Baldwin recently stood trial in New Mexico for involuntary manslaughter in connection with Hutchins’ death, but the case was dismissed amid a dispute over the special prosecutor’s handling of evidence. The actor had pleaded not guilty.
This week, a New Mexico judge denied a request to release Hannah Gutierrez from prison after the “Rust” armorer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Gutierrez has maintained that she loaded Baldwin’s gun with what she believed were inert “dummy” rounds, unaware that a live bullet was in the chamber.
After the “Rust” screening, EnergaCamerimage will host a panel featuring Souza, as well as one of Hutchins’ mentors, Stephen Lighthill, and the cinematographer who finished the film, Bianca Cline.
The panelists are expected to discuss how the filmmakers completed the picture while maintaining Hutchins’ artistic vision. Other topics of conversation will include the role of women in cinematography and the importance of safety on set.
According to the festival’s announcement, Hutchins suggested bringing the film to EnergaCamerimage — a festival celebrating the art of cinematography — during the early stages of production on “Rust.”
“We knew that our event was important to her, and that she felt at home among cinematographers from all over the world, who have been gathering at Camerimage for over 30 years,” festival director Marek Zydowicz said in a statement.
“During the [2021] festival, we honoured Halyna’s memory with a moment of silence and a panel of cinematographers discussed safety on set. Now, once again, together with cinematographers and film enthusiasts, we will have this special opportunity to remember her.”
Business
Using retirement savings to pay down debt is risky business. Do this instead
Dear Liz: I’m way behind on retirement funds. I did get pension funds from my employer after 25 years of service but used a large portion to pay debt that was crushing me. I’m widowed, age 62 and work full time as a nurse. I rent my place. How do I catch up? I have $200,000 in an IRA.
Answer: This answer comes too late for you but may help others who are overwhelmed by debt as they approach their retirement years.
People understandably want to pay what they owe, but bankruptcy is sometimes the best of bad options. This is particularly true as you approach the end of your working years and don’t have enough time to replenish your savings. The typical bankruptcy filing can erase debt while protecting the retirement funds you’ll need for the future. Before using your lump sum pension payout to pay debts, you should have discussed your situation with a bankruptcy attorney.
At this point, your best options may be to work as long as possible, save as much as you can and figure out a smart Social Security strategy. As a widow, you may qualify for Social Security survivor benefits as well as your own retirement benefit. You can’t receive both simultaneously, but you would be allowed to switch between benefits. For example, you could start survivor benefits and then switch to your own when it maxes out at age 70, if that amount is higher. Typically you would want to wait until at least your full retirement age to start benefits, because otherwise you’ll face the earnings test that reduces your benefits by $1 for every $2 you earn over a certain amount, which in 2024 is $22,320. Paid services such as Maximize My Social Security or Social Security Solutions can help you determine the best approach.
The fine print on deducting medical expenses
Dear Liz: I take $5,000 per month out of my brokerage account (and the $1,400 in taxes when I withdraw the money) for my husband’s Alzheimer care facility where he now lives 24/7. Can I only claim that on my taxes under medical expenses if I itemize my deductions on my taxes? I don’t have any other deductions.
Answer: Your husband’s expenses may be enough to justify itemizing even if you don’t have other deductions.
The standard deduction for married couples in 2024 is $29,200. To itemize, your deductions would need to be higher than that amount. Furthermore, medical expenses must exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income to be deductible, notes Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.
If your husband meets certain criteria, however, the deduction can include the expenses related to meals and lodging at the facility as well as the medical care portion, Luscombe says.
A licensed healthcare professional must certify annually that your husband is chronically ill and living in the care facility due to medical necessity, he says. A tax pro or the facility itself can provide further details.
More on payable-on-death accounts
Dear Liz: You recently wrote about payable-on-death accounts. You wrote that one of the disadvantages to these accounts is that an estate’s executor might have to try to get money back from beneficiaries or pay expenses out of their own pocket if there wasn’t enough money left in the estate to pay the bills. I thought your bills would have to be paid before any money was distributed. Is that not the case?
Answer: No. Payable-on-death accounts typically go directly to the named beneficiaries. Such accounts avoid probate, the court process that otherwise follows death, so there’s no mechanism to withhold money that might be needed to pay final expenses or other bills.
Furthermore, beneficiary designations usually override the terms of a will or living trust. If you were counting on an account to pay final expenses but forgot you named a beneficiary, your executor probably couldn’t access those funds.
Payable-on-death accounts might be a solution for people with simple situations and too few resources to justify a living trust. For example, you might use a pay-on-death designation if you’re leaving a bank account to an only child and you trust them to use the money to pay your final bills.
Otherwise, you’ll want to discuss your situation with an estate planning attorney and get personalized advice about how best to settle your affairs.
Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist. Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the “Contact” form at asklizweston.com.
Business
Column: Examining Trump's lies about what he did with Obamacare and COVID
My favorite Lily Tomlin line is this one: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
I love it more today than ever, because it applies so perfectly to how we must respond to the campaign claims of Donald Trump and JD Vance. Especially Trump’s assertions about his role — heroic, in his vision — in “saving” the Affordable Care Act and fighting the COVID pandemic.
I’ve written before about the firehouse of fabrication and grift emanating from the Trump campaign like a political miasma. On these topics, he has moved beyond his habit of merely concocting a false reality about, say, immigration and crime to deliberately concocting a false reality about himself.
Donald Trump could have destroyed [Obamacare]. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.
— JD Vance, flagrantly lying about Trump’s management of the Affordable Care Act
To start by summarizing: Trump did everything in his power to destroy the Affordable Care Act, starting on the very first day of his term in 2017. On COVID, he did everything in his power to make America defenseless against the spreading pandemic.
Let’s take them in order.
Here’s what Trump said about the Affordable Care Act during his Sept. 10 debate with Kamala Harris: “I had a choice to make when I was president, do I save it and make it as good as it can be? Never going to be great. Or do I let it rot? … And I saved it. I did the right thing.”
This was the prelude to his head-scratching assertion that he has “concepts of a plan” to reform healthcare in the U.S. I examined what that might mean in a recent column, in which I explained that it would turn the U.S. healthcare system to the deadly dark ages when people with preexisting medical conditions would be either denied coverage or charged monstrous markups.
During his own debate Tuesday with Tim Walz, Vance made himself an accomplice to Trump’s crime against truth .
Here’s Vance’s version of the Trumpian fantasy:
“Donald Trump has said that if we allow states to experiment a little bit on how to cover both the chronically ill, but the non-chronically ill … He actually implemented some of these regulations when he was president of the United States. And I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare. … Donald Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”
Here’s what Trump actually did to the Affordable Care Act during his presidency. He had made repealing the ACA a core promise of his 2016 presidential campaign, stating on his website, “On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare.” (Thanks are due to the indispensable Jonathan Cohn of Huffpost for excavating the quote.)
On Inauguration Day, Trump issued an executive order instructing the entire executive branch to find ways to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or requirement” of the ACA.
During his presidency, he never abandoned the Republican dream of repealing Obamacare, even after July 28, 2017, when the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) strode to the Senate well and delivered a thumbs-down coup de grace to a GOP repeal bill.
Trump never ceased slandering the ACA as a “disaster.” He returned to the theme during last month’s debate: “Obamacare was lousy healthcare,” he said. “Always was. It’s not very good today.” As president, he threatened to make it “implode,” and used every tool he could get his fingers on to do so.
Just after taking office, he abruptly canceled the customary last-minute advertising blitz to encourage enrollments in Obamacare plans before open enrollment ended on Jan. 31. The last minute surge in enrollments, which had occurred every previous year, vanished. The drop-off was particularly devastating because it was concentrated among the healthiest potential enrollees — those who often wait until the last minute to sign up and whose premiums generally subsidize older, less healthy patients.
In September 2017 he slashed the advertising budget for the upcoming open enrollment period for individual insurance policies by a stunning 90%, to $10 million from the previous year’s $100 million. He also cut funds for nonprofit groups that employ “navigators,” those who help people in the individual market understand their options and sign up, by roughly 40%, to $36.8 million from $62.5 million.
The impact these policies had on enrollment was dire. In the three years before Trump took office, ACA marketplace plans experienced annual enrollment increases, to 12.7 million enrollees in 2016 from 8 million in 2014. During every year of the Trump administration, enrollment declined, falling to 11.4 million in 2020.
Every year since Joseph Biden took office, enrollment has increased, reaching a record 21.3 million this year — an 86% increase over Trump’s last year.
As for Vance’s fatuous claim that Trump “worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care,” you have the right to ask what Vance has been smoking.
The only bipartisanship on the ACA during the Trump years, Cohn observes, were the actions of GOP senators such as McCain and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to cooperate with Democrats to stave off their fellow Republicans’ anti-ACA vandalism.
Now onto Trump’s fantasy vision of his role in fighting the COVID pandemic. Speaking in a low-energy, exhausted monotone at a speech Tuesday in Milwaukee and reading at times from a binder, he praised himself for instituting Operation Warp Speed, which funded COVID vaccine development in record time and got them rolled out in January 2021.
“We did a great job with the pandemic. Never got the credit we deserved,” he said. He then veered into blaming China for the pandemic, a familiar topic. He said bluntly that the pandemic was “caused by the Wuhan lab. I said that from the beginning, came from Wuhan. And the Wuhan lab, it wasn’t from bats in a cave that was 2,000 miles away. … It’s really the China virus.”
As for the rest of his COVID performance, he said this: “We did a great job with the ventilators, the masks and the gowns and everything. … When we got here the cupboards, our cupboards, I used to say our cupboards were bare. … No president put anything in for a pandemic.” Then he segued into praising himself for a big tax cut, and COVID was forgotten.
A few points about this spiel:
Trump is correct that Operation Warp Speed was a significant achievement. But he didn’t continue to support it by advocating for its product, the COVID vaccine. Instead, he has thrown in his lot with fanatical anti-vaccine agitators such as Robert F. Kennedy. He has repeated an anti-vax mantra, promising, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.” This is a formula for exposing children to vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and even polio.
Trump’s reference to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, underscores how closely the so-called lab-leak theory of COVID’s origins is tied to right-wing partisan politics. The theory originated with Trump acolytes at the State Department, who saw the accusation as a convenient weapon in Trump’s economic war with China.
To this day, not a speck of evidence has been produced to validate this claim; scientists versed in the relevant disciplines of virology and epidemiology say the evidence overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that the virus reached humans via the wildlife trade, and that its journey may well have started with bats thousands of miles from Wuhan, China.
Trump is lying when he says his predecessors in the White House left him without resources. The truth is that Trump himself hobbled pandemic response from the start.
In 2016, in the wake of the Ebola epidemic in Africa, President Obama had established the the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council “to prepare for and, if possible, prevent the next outbreak from becoming an epidemic or pandemic,” in the words of its senior director, Beth Campbell. Trump dissolved it in 2018.
During the pandemic, Trump cut off funding for the World Health Organization. He eliminated a $200-million pandemic early-warning program training scientists in China and elsewhere to detect and respond to such threats. He sidelined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which had been established under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Due to these steps, the U.S. was fated to sleepwalk into the pandemic. The COVID death toll in the U.S. stands at more than 1.2 million, and its reported death rate from COVID of 341.1 per 100,000 population is the highest in the developed world.
Ventilators, masks and gowns? Trump placed the procurement of this essential personal protective equipment in the hands of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who handled the task incompetently. Kushner turned away urgent appeals from state and local officials for those supplies.
“The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile, it’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” Kushner said at a briefing.
Following his remarks, the website of the government’s national strategic stockpile of medicines and supplies was changed from asserting that its purpose was to “support” the emergency efforts of state, local and tribal authorities by ensuring that “the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most.” The new language redefined the stockpile’s role as “to supplement state and local supplies … as a short-term stopgap.”
Supplies of ventilators, masks and gowns remained scarce through the first months of the pandemic. A procurement official at a Massachusetts hospital system told me of having had to cut a deal with a shadowy broker offering 250,000 Chinese-made masks at an inflated price, completing the transaction for $1 million at a darkened warehouse five hours from home.
Trump made anti-science incompetence and disregard for the welfare of Americans part of our history. The same thing, or worse, looms on the horizon in a second Trump term.
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