THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME
APRIL 10, 2014
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The Week results factored in income, physical health, and overall well-being. So which cities in the U.S. are pure misery? Well, Evansville, IN, came in at number ten. There are only 22.2% of adults there with a college degree and a whopping 29.4% of adults smoke. The median household income in this small town? Only $44,887. Next of the list was Mobile, AL, followed by Shreveport-Bosseir City, LA. Columbus, GA, came in at number seven. Citizens there have an average median household income of only $42,972 and 27.4% of adults are addicted to their cigarettes. Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX, Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC, and Spartanburg, SC, came in next on the list. Redding, CA, was the third most unhappy city in the nation. Only 18.2% of adults have college degrees; the average household income is a sad $45,442. Charleston, WV, was the second most unhappy place in the nation. And where is the epicenter of unhappiness in the United States? Seems like you should stay away from the Huntington-Ashland area in West Virginia. The median household income is only $39,160, 19% of adults have a college degree, and 29.2% of adults are smokers.
Orthodontists Make More Money than CEOs
Parents of teenagers probably won’t find it surprising that in the U.S., orthodontists in America earn more money than the average CEO.
The average U.S. orthodontist earns $196,270, while the average CEO makes $178,400. Even though this may sound like a surprising statistic, it is important to realize that the nation’s 248,760 chief executives include many small companies, which is probably the reason for the major discrepancy between orthodontists and CEOs. This information was garnered from figures released by the Labor Department last Tuesday listed the nation’s best-paying occupations according to a ranking of 821 jobs tracked by the government. The Labor Department calculates wages as a worker’s base pay plus tips, commissions and bonuses tied to quotas or job completion. The figure excludes stock and year-end bonuses, overtime pay, clothing and tool allowances plus any other perks. The study also found that the highest paying profession in the country is for anesthesiologists who earn an average of $235,070 a year. Surgeons have the second-highest average salary at $233,150. Now we know we’re I’m going to school.
Supreme Court Strikes Down Total Contribution Limits
Last week, the Supreme Court voided limits in federal law on the total campaign contributions that individual donors can donate to candidates, political parties, and political action committees. The justices said in a 5-4 vote that
In News Americans have a right to give the legal maximum to candidates for Congress and president, as well as to parties and PACs, without worrying that they will violate the law. For 2013 and 2014, the ceiling was set to $123,200, which includes a separate $48,600 cap on contributions to candidates. But their decision does not undermine limits on individual contributions to candidates for president or Congress, now $2,600 an election. Chief Justice John Roberts announced the decision, which split the court’s liberal and conservative justices. Roberts said the aggregate limits do not act to prevent corruption, the rationale the court has upheld as justifying contribution limits. The overall limits “intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise ‘the most fundamental First Amendment activities,’” Roberts said, quoting from the court’s seminal 1976 campaign finance ruling in the case Buckley v. Valeo. Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome of the case, but wrote separately to say that he would have gone further and wiped away all contribution limits. The limits were originally enacted by Congress after the Watergate scandal.
Virgin America Rules the Skies
For the second year running, Virgin America has been listed as the highest-quality major airline in the United States. The privately owned airline – founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson – has only been operating in the U.S. since 2007
and has come out on top both times it has been included in the Airline Quality Ratings’ analysis. “Virgin has great policies, they’re pretty much on time … they’re a great system,” says Dr. Dean Headley, one of the study’s co-authors. “But I suspect as they grow and their system becomes more complex, they’ll face more challenges.” The study looks at data that the airlines are mandated by law to report to the U.S. Department of Transportation over the last 12 months, focusing on four criteria: On-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled bags, and customer complaints. The final overall ranking is calculated as a weighted average of all four scores. Ruling the skies is not easy but Virgin America managed to post strong numbers in most of the AQR’s criteria: The airline had 82.1% of all flights arrive on time in 2013, compared with the industry average of 78.4%; it mishandled 0.97 bags per 1,000 passengers, well below the average of 3.21; and it denied boarding to just 0.04 ticketed passengers per 10,000, significantly below the average of 0.89. Not all was roses in the report. The airline’s number of customer complaints – 1.28 per 100,000 passengers– came in slightly high, just above the industry average of 1.13 per 100,000. But full-price and premium airlines like Virgin tend to attract more complaints than low-cost economy carriers, so Virgin might have taken a hit on customer complaints because its passengers expect more than those flying other airlines. The more you pay, the more you like to complain. The second-ranked airline in terms of overall quality was low-cost airline JetBlue, which posted better-than-average performance in terms of denied boardings and customer complaints. Hawaiian Airlines came in third place, followed by Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines. The last-place finisher, 15thranked American Eagle, came in well below average in all four measured criteria; 72.1% on-time arrivals, 1.14 denied boardings per 10,000 passen-