Tag: Bernie Sanders

Checks & Imbalances: Vivek Ramaswamy’s Driving Obsession

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Today we take a close look at Vivek Ramaswamy’s business career – and what it tells us about his political ambitions.

This Surprising Obsession Drives Vivek Ramaswamy And His Presidential Campaign

On what feels like the hottest morning amid the hottest August in recorded history, Vivek Ramaswamy sits coolly on a plush leather couch in his campaign bus, chomping on an apple and brimming with self-belief, reports John Hyatt. Thirty-six hours earlier, the 38-year-old political neophyte was the breakout star in the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 primary season. “My gut instinct is that I’m going to be the nominee, that I’m going to win the general election in a landslide,” he says, before positing why that could be: “I think I am closer to Trump in 2015 than Trump today is to Trump in 2015. You only get to be the outsider once.”

That’s among the more truthful things he’s in the habit of saying. Eight years ago, Donald Trump turned every American political assumption upside down. He ran for president as a businessman without any political experience, any realistic platform or any repercussions from scandals that would have blown out pretty much every politician, ever. Instead, he was grievance personified, which, combined with uncanny messaging instincts, enabled him to pull an inside straight and punch his ticket to the White House.

MORE FROM FORBESThis Surprising Obsession Drives Vivek Ramaswamy And His Presidential CampaignBy John Hyatt

Tracking Trump

How Trump, Master Of Avoiding Paper Trails, Finally Got Caught With One

Donald Trump has all kinds of tricks to avoid paper trails. He refuses to use email. He ditches cell phones. He’s famous for tearing documents to shreds, reports Dan Alexander. And when asked about something nefarious, like the inflated net worth statements he sent to lenders over the years, he feigns ignorance, even to authorities: “I didn’t get involved in it very much.”

But it’s hard to both convince lenders that you stand by documents and to persuade prosecutors that you had little to do with those same documents. That explains how Trump landed in his current predicament, accused by New York State of engaging in a years-long fraud by telling banks and insurers he had more money than he actually did. Judge Arthur Engoron sided with prosecutors Tuesday, ruling before the trial had even started that Trump was personally liable for fraud.

MORE FROM FORBESHow Trump, Master Of Avoiding Paper Trails, Finally Got Caught With OneBy Dan Alexander

Did Judge Kill The Trump Organization? What Fraud Ruling Means For Ex-President’s Business

A New York judge ordered the dissolution of businesses owned by former President Donald Trump and his associates in a ruling Tuesday that found the ex-president and his company committed fraud—a decision that could have a devastating impact on Trump’s company and its operations in New York, though the full scope of the order still remains to be seen, reports Alison Durkee.

MORE FROM FORBESDid Judge Kill The Trump Organization? What Fraud Ruling Means For Ex-President’s BusinessBy Alison Durkee

By The Numbers

$17.5 billion

The estimated value of Rupert Murdoch and family’s fortune.

$5,000

The amount of campaign donations Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) plans to return to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), “in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills,” after the latter was indicted.

At least eight

The number of investigations, criminal cases and lawsuits involving Rudy Guiliani.

From The News Desk

How TikTok Has Exposed Celebrities And Politicians’ Closest Personal Contacts

Beyonce. Ed Sheeran. Charli D’Amelio. The Bidens. Members of Congress. Abortion activists.

They’re just a handful of the high-profile celebrities and public figures whose closest contacts could be searched and scrutinized by nearly any TikTok or ByteDance employee around the world this year with few restrictions, according to people familiar with one of the company’s social graph tools and a trove of internal images, videos, audio and communications related to it that were obtained by Forbes, reports Alexandra S. Levine.

MORE FROM FORBESHow TikTok Has Exposed Celebrities And Politicians’ Closest Personal ContactsBy Alexandra S. Levine

Sen. Robert Menendez Pleads Not Guilty To Bribery Charges

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) pleaded not guilty to three felony counts Wednesday after being indicted for allegedly taking bribes from several New Jersey businessmen, marking Menendez’s second set of criminal charges—as the senator maintains his innocence in the case and refuses to leave Congress, reports Alison Durkee.

MORE FROM FORBESSen. Robert Menendez Pleads Not Guilty To Bribery ChargesBy Alison Durkee

Here’s How Much 2024 Presidential Candidate Larry Elder Is Worth

Larry Elder pitches his presidential campaign as an act of personal sacrifice, reports Monica Hunter-Hart. “I’m not flush like some of the other candidates, so this is a big financial hit for me,” says the California media icon, who Forbes estimates is worth $4 million. “I gave up my nationally syndicated column. I gave up my radio show. I gave up my TV show.”

MORE FROM FORBESHere’s How Much 2024 Presidential Candidate Larry Elder Is WorthBy Monica Hunter-Hart

Bernie Sanders Has Hauled In $2.5 Million In Book Payments Since 2011

Sen. Bernie Sanders earned $2.5 million from book advances and royalties from 2011 through 2022, according to his annual financial disclosures. During that period, political committees for the Vermont independent bought $843,000 worth of books from his publishers.

MORE FROM FORBESBernie Sanders Has Hauled In $2.5 Million In Book Payments Since 2011By Zach Everson

Quiz

Vivek Ramaswamy named his biotech company Roivant Sciences. What does “Roi” stand for?

a. Radiating overconfidence internally

b. Return on investment

c. Riding on Iowa

d. Rupture of integrity

Check if you got it right here.

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#Checks #Imbalances #Vivek #Ramaswamys #Driving #Obsession

Huzzay! Debt Ceiling Raised, Catastrophe Averted, Republicans And Joe Manchin :(

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Senate passed the debt limit bill last night, raising the ceiling on how much the government can borrow to pay for spending it’s already done, and thereby avoiding a default on the federal debt and the attendant economic disaster that would follow. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden, who will sign it today and is scheduled to address the nation this evening at 7 p.m. Eastern. We expect the speech will say something along the lines of, “Now look, for cryin’ out loud, we need to pay our bills, I mean it! None of this was necessary, and that’s why I’m invoking the 14th Amendment, I’m not joking, to make the Supreme Court rule on whether the debt limit law is even constitutional. What a load of malarkey, goodnight.”

Following the Senate vote last night, Biden actually said in a statement, “No one gets everything they want in a negotiation, but make no mistake: This bipartisan agreement is a big win for our economy and the American people,” which was far nicer.

The bill passed in the Senate on a 63 to 36 vote, enough to avoid a filibuster. Five members of the Democratic caucus — John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), Ed Markey (Massachusetts), Jeff Merkley (Oregon), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) voted nay. (They presumably would have voted for it if necessary.) The majority of Republicans, 31 of ’em, also voted against the bill albeit for very different reasons. Only 17 Republican senators voted for the bill. I’ll note that it was a rare thing for me to see both of Idaho’s senators, Mike Crapo and the other one, voting with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Before the vote, the Senate debated and rejected 11 amendments to the bill, including Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine’s amendment to yeet Joe Manchin’s pet methane pipeline project out of the bill (which Manchin had somehow sneaked into the House version) and into the sun. That was the only amendment offered by a Democrat; the others were Republican attempts to demand deeper cuts to domestic spending programs than in the House bill, to increase military spending even more than the House bill did, to Git Tougher on the border, and the like.

During floor debate, several Republicans fretted that without unlimited Pentagon spending, the Russians, Chinese, or Martians might try something sneaky, or that the US would be unable to support Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion (as far as we can tell, no Republicans rose to shout, “That’s the point!”). Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said that the defense hawks needn’t worry, and that the debt ceiling bill

does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries, and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats, including Russia’s evil ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine.

Schumer added that the bill wouldn’t limit Congress’s ability to pass emergency funding for disaster relief or other needs, either, although he failed to note that Republicans would certainly whine about such expenditures unless their own states were affected.

All told, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the spending caps in the bill would reduce federal spending by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Reuters rather cheekily adds, “That is below the $3 trillion in deficit reduction, mainly through new taxes, that Biden proposed,” and we say good on you, Reuters.

Also, in a coda that gives us at least a satisfied smirk, Fox News reports that in an interview, Joe Manchin (D?-Methane) complained that Republicans were getting too much credit for his personal boondoggle in the bill, the fast-tracking of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The debt limit agreement forces an end to all regulatory and court challenges to Manchin’s pet project, which he has pushed since it was proposed in 2014, and by golly, Joe Manchin isn’t about to have any Republicans take the focus away from him and the ginormous favor he’s doing for the fossil-fuel industries (of which he’s not only the president, he’s also a client).

What’s the problem here? They’re afraid of who gets credit for it?” Manchin told Fox News Digital. “You know, what we said before — success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Well, I guarantee you, I was an orphan there for a long time because I was the only one on the front taking all the spears and everything, taking point on this.”

“But I’m happy to — everyone is happy — to share the success. I think everybody knows how this happened,” the West Virginia senator added. “I mean, my God, for the whole year I’ve had the living crap beat out of me, back and forth and everything.”

Now there’s a man who loves sharing the spotlight, as long as nobody else is right in the center. Manchin also whined that it really pissed him off something fierce that Republicans might get any credit (which he’s happy to share, but not) since it was his hard work and stubborn assholishness that won over or exhausted the White House in negotiations, and where were Republicans the other times he tried to ram through a bunch of fossil fuel projects, huh?

“It’s bulls— because they knew there was not going to be a problem on the Democratic Senate side or the Democrat president and his staff because they were the ones who supported it and got us 40 votes in the Senate when we voted,” Manchin said.

“It was the Republicans that killed us when we voted last time — only got seven votes. And the Republicans have always supported permitting. The only reason they wouldn’t support that is because of the Republicans being upset about the [Inflation Reduction Act]. That’s it. So it got caught in the politics.”

Still, you have to be impressed by the bipartisan outreach, calling Joe Biden a “Democrat president” just like the Fox News analyst he’s destined to become following his Senate career.

[CNBC / The Hill / Reuters / Fox News]

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#Huzzay #Debt #Ceiling #Raised #Catastrophe #Averted #Republicans #Joe #Manchin

Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin Is A Very Stupid Man

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , ,

If your parents named you “Mark Wayne” and as a nickname, you decided to just stick them two names together and just be “Markwayne,” how many brain cells you think you’d have? Four? Six? Baker’s dozen?

Watch this clip of Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin interviewing witnesses in today’s hearing of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and see how many brain cells you can personally count. (You’ll note that he’s sitting next to Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, who is officially the stupidest motherfucker in the Senate. This will not affect your counting of the brain cells.)

Because Mullin is so stupid, he wanted to know whether a children’s book about race called Our Skin should be taught in schools, or whether they should teach “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” (If you are not familiar, white racist Christians like that song because its lyrics about Jesus loving children of all colors allow them to feel like they are being accepting with THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM effort humanly possible.)

But first he had to get mad at Bernie Sanders, the committee’s chair:

Mullin noted the committee is run by a “self-proclaimed socialist.”

“I’m not just calling you that, Chairman, you openly say that you’re a socialist in your book, Outsider in the House. The chairman says Bill Clinton is a moderate Democrat. I’m a Democrat socialist,” Mullin continued, warning a socialist has oversight of the U.S. education system.

“That’s over our education system.”

It is a testament to how deranged and yes, uneducated, modern Republican MAGA hogs are that they can’t conceive of the idea that among normal people, “socialist” isn’t an insult, merely a political philosophy. (We’d add that no man named “Markwayne” could likely serviceably explain what “socialism” is, even if the penalty for not doing so was having to carry a Bud Light around a Target while singing “I Feel Pretty.”)

Mullin pulled out the children’s book and read the terrible words in it.

MULLIN: And I’m going to read exactly what this book says. You guys might find it interesting. ‘A long time ago, way before you were born, a group of white people made up an idea called race. They sorted people by skin color and said that white people were better, smarter, prettier, and they deserved more than everybody else.’ This would be taught if we socialize our pre-K system, this would be …

SANDERS: Do you disagree with that? Findings in the book?

MULLIN: One thousand percent.

We guess he “disagrees” with the idea that white people made up race. (A group of white people invented race, and continued inventing it for several hundred years, in different contexts.)

Mullin doesn’t want to teach children that there was a time when people with white skin weren’t considered all parts of one race, we guess, even though that is an indisputable fact. He wants to teach this:

MULLIN: How about we teach ‘Jesus Loves Me’? How about, how about this? And teaching Jesus loves and loves the little children. The lyrics go ‘red and yellow, black and white. They’re all precious in our sight.’ Now, which one would you think would be better? I’ll ask everybody on the panel. Which is better to teach?”

That’s two different songs. What a stupid, stupid goddamned idiot, mixing up the preschool Jesus songs like that, stupid motherfucker.

“This, that is a story that was made up to teach our kids, three-year-olds, who have no idea what race is,” he continued, holding up the book.

Which is why you teach them things, so that they learn things. This is called “education.”

“Now all of a sudden is being taught that white people said this as a truth. Someone prove to me that this is a truth that white people developed race, that white people developed that, that all of a sudden that was our word that we developed,” Mullin continued.

Oh my fucking God.

So then Mullin started badgering each and every witness, asking should they teach that whiteness was created — which we guess is a very offensive idea to him! — or whether Jesus loves the little children. “WHICH ONE IS BETTER?” he yapped and yapped at the witnesses.

“If you don’t want to answer my question, that’s fine. Let’s move on down the panel. Which one is better to be taught? This book or the ‘Jesus Loves Me’ lyrics that say everybody’s skin doesn’t matter. They’re all precious in his sight,” Mullin continued.

“I think it’s important to teach that all children are seen and valued for who they are, and that’s…” replied another witness before Mullin cut her off.

“But why do you teach this? Don’t you think that other people are saying that white kids are to blame? It’s exactly what they’re going to teach, is exactly what it is, ma’am,” Mullin shot back.

Why is it totally normal to these people to think that if children are taught real history, little young white children will immediately be blamed and shamed? Why are they such fucking MILKTOASTS about all this?

“I disagree. First, it is important that we teach Jesus and Jesus is what we teach,” replied Cheryl Morman – President of the Virginia Alliance for Family Child Care Associations.

“So which one is better?” Mullin demanded.

Morman replied, “But reality is…”

Mullin cut her off, “Do you think this.”

“Could she answer the question, please?” Sanders then interjected.

“I don’t want reality. I’m asking the question which one is better?”

And that’s when everybody laughed at him.

“Got it on tape,” another senator could be heard saying on the microphone.

“Misspoke,” Mullin conceded.

No he didn’t.

“So what I’m saying is, which one is which? Which one is better to be taught?” Mullin demanded yet again.

“Mr. Chairman, is it this, or is it or is it the Jesus?” he continued.

Is it this, or is it the Jesus?

These are the inbred MAGA cow people who want to control your child’s education in America.

Oh my fucking God.

OPEN THREAD!

[Mediaite]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.

Just got to BlueSky!

I have profiles those other places but I think I forgot how to log on.

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#Oklahoma #GOP #Sen #Markwayne #Mullin #Stupid #Man

Louisiana Wingnut Rep. Clay Higgins Bulldozes Protester. WHAR ASSAULT CHARGES?

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rightwing Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana — known around these parts as the ‘WHAR BOXES?’ guy, or simply WHAR BOXES — took it upon himself to play bouncer Wednesday when a young protester got a little too mouthy during a press conference being held by prominent House Wingnut Caucus members including Higgins, Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), Paul Gosar DDS (R-Arizona) and others. (Higgins later tweeted that the presser was about the very real threat to US sovereignty posed by the World Health Organization, which is part of the UN One-World Communist Plot, which seems like indispensable context.)

The protester, law student and organizer/troublemaker Jake Burdett, 25, told the Daily Beast he’d actually been in DC for a Medicare for All rally led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), but when that was over, he saw the Freedom Caulkers setting up and decided to be a free speech pest, which is his right as an American citizen.

Spotting Gosar and Boebert, he decided to stick around. “I figured I’d ask them some tough questions,” he said. “Bird-dog them, whatever you want to call it.”

And indeed, as Burdett’s videos show, he was definitely heckling the rightwing dipshits, which may happen when politicians hold a “press conference” in public.

In the first video, Burdett shouts questions while Gosar is speaking, asking about his appearance at a confab held by neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and about that embarrassing campaign ad made by Gosar’s own siblings, urging people not to vote for him. As Freedom Cockups try to tell Burdett to leave, Higgins steps in to promise he’ll answer all Burdett’s questions later (about Gosar, sure!) if the young man will just stop recording and be quiet. Higgins does get right up in Burdett’s face to deliver that offer of help.

In the first video, Higgins fairly calmly introduces himself and says, “All I’m asking you to do is just peacefully stand by with your camera and I promise you — look at me — I’ll come talk to you straight up and answer all your questions. Fair enough?”

And yes, Burdett wanted to know how on earth Higgins would be in a position to know anything about Gosar’s very public embarrassment.

But Burdett hadda go and persist. While Boebert spoke, he asked her about her divorce, and asked her whether it was at all related to that time in 2017 when her restaurant customers got diarrhea from tainted pork sliders. Sure, it was a rude, nonsensical, pesky question. And goddamn it, it was also perfectly legal because this is America and we can ask rude stupid questions of our elected leaders in public, Crom bless our First Amendment!

And because we are indeed a nation of laws, our elected leaders are not allowed to assault us just for being annoying, although that’s what Higgins did. Here’s video from another angle, showing Higgins grabbing Burdett to eject him (nearly knocking over another person in the audience) and manhandling Burdett away from the speakers all the way to the sidewalk.

Burdett wasn’t harmed or arrested; he told the Daily Beast that he was questioned for about a half hour by Capitol Police and told he could go. But he was certainly none too happy that the Capitol Cops didn’t seem very interested in hearing him tell them he’d been assaulted by a member of Congress.

“It’s one thing for anybody to do that,” he said of Higgins’ behavior. “But for a sitting U.S. congressperson to think that that’s OK—it just shows an extra level of entitlement, that they feel they’re untouchable and the law doesn’t apply to them.”

For his part, Higgins, a former sheriff who loves to act the Tough Guy, later took to Twitter to lie about the encounter, claiming that Burdett was “a 103M” (police code for “disturbance by a mental person,” never mind the bad English usage) and insisting in an attached video that Burdett (an “agitator activist”) was “very disruptive and threatening, in violation of the law.”

Higgins gives himself credit in the video for having “successfully de-escalated the situation,” a phrase with which we’re certain the Inigo Montoya meme would take issue. He also claims that Burdett “aggressively disrupted” Boebert and “approached her in a threatening manner,” which just isn’t the case. He was rude and shouty, not threatening.

Say, is this a good place to mention that in 2007, Higgins, then in law enforcement, was accused of beating up an innocent bystander to an arrest, and then lying to Internal affairs to cover it up? The former cop also busted for helping with that alleged cover-up is now a congressional aide to Higgins. Higgins resigned before he could be punished for that incident.

Burdett told the Daily Beast that he’s now “evaluating my options” and that “if it looks like there is a strong case for assault and [there is] an attorney willing to take on the case, I am absolutely prepared to press charges.” On Twitter, when Burdett asked for any attorneys to tell him if they thought he had a case, civil rights attorney Andrew C. Laufer replied, “Yes, assault, battery, and a potential civil rights violation.”

Former US Attorney and current MSNBC legal commentator Joyce Vance was succinct: “Looks like an assault to me?”

[Daily Beast / Lafayette Daily Advertiser / Salon / Nola.com]

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#Louisiana #Wingnut #Rep #Clay #Higgins #Bulldozes #Protester #WHAR #ASSAULT #CHARGES

Concern grows around US health-care workforce shortage: ‘We don’t have enough doctors’ | CNN

Post By Health , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



CNN
 — 

There is mounting concern among some US lawmakers about the nation’s ongoing shortage of health-care workers, and the leaders of historically Black medical schools are calling for more funding to train a more diverse workforce.

As of Monday, in areas where a health workforce shortage has been identified, the United States needs more than 17,000 additional primary care practitioners, 12,000 dental health practitioners and 8,200 mental health practitioners, according to data from the Health Resources & Services Administration. Those numbers are based on data that HRSA receives from state offices and health departments.

“We have nowhere near the kind of workforce, health-care workforce, that we need,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told CNN on Friday. “We don’t have enough doctors. We don’t have enough nurses. We don’t have enough psychologists or counselors for addiction. We don’t have enough pharmacists.”

The heads of historically Black medical schools met with Sanders in a roundtable at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta on Friday to discuss the nation’s health-care workforce shortage.

The health-care workforce shortage is “more acute” in Black and brown communities; the Black community constitutes 13% of the US population, but only 5.7% of US physicians are Black, said Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

“What we’re trying to do in this committee – in our Health, Education, Labor Committee – is grow the health-care workforce and put a special emphasis on the needs to grow more Black doctors, nurses, psychologists, et cetera,” Sanders said.

At Friday’s roundtable, the leaders of the Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Howard University and Charles R. Drew University called for more resources and opportunities to be allocated to their institutions to help grow the nation’s incoming health-care workforce.

“Allocating resources and opportunities matter for us to increase capacity and scholarships and programming to help support these students as they matriculate through,” Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, told CNN.

“But also, the other 150-plus medical schools, beyond our four historically Black medical schools, owe it to the country to increase the diversity of the students that they train,” Rice said, adding that having a health-care workforce that reflects the communities served helps reduce the health inequities seen in the United States.

Historically Black medical schools are “the backbone for training Black doctors in this country,” Dr. Hugh Mighty, senior vice president for health affairs at Howard University, said at Friday’s event. “As the problem of Black physician shortages rise, within the general context of the physician workforce shortage, many communities of need will continue to be underserved.”

A new study commissioned by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities estimates that the economic burden of health inequities in the United States has cost the nation billions of dollars. Such inequities are illustrated in how Black and brown communities tend to have higher rates of serious health outcomes such as maternal deaths, certain chronic diseases and infectious diseases.

The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions, analyzed excess medical care expenditures, death records and other US data from 2016 through 2019. They took a close look at health inequities in the cost of medical care, differences in premature deaths and the amount of labor market productivity that has been lost due to health reasons.

The researchers found that, in 2018, the economic burden of health inequities for racial and ethnic minority communities in the United States was up to $451 billion, and the economic burden of health inequities for adults without a four-year college degree was up to $978 billion.

“These findings provide a clear and important message to health care leaders, public health officials, and state and federal policy makers – the economic magnitude of health inequities in the US is startlingly high,” Drs. Rishi Wadhera and Issa Dahabreh, both of Harvard University, wrote in an editorial that accompanied the new study in the journal JAMA.

The Covid-19 pandemic “pulled the curtain back” on health inequities, such as premature death and others, Rice said, and “we saw a disproportionate burden” on some communities.

“We saw a higher death rate in Black and brown communities because of access and fear and a whole bunch of other factors, including what we recognize as racism and unconscious bias,” Rice said.

“We needed more physicians, more health-care providers. So, we already know when we project out to 2050, we have a significant physician shortage based on the fact that we cannot educate and train enough health care professionals fast enough,” she said. “We can’t just rely on physicians. We have to rely on a team approach.”

She added that the nation’s shortage of health-care workers leaves the country ill-prepared to respond to future pandemics.

The United States is projected to face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034 as the demand outpaces supply, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The workforce shortage means “we’re really not prepared” for another pandemic, Sanders said.

“We don’t have the public health infrastructure that we need state by state. We surely don’t have the doctors and the nurses that we need,” Sanders said. “So what we are trying to do now is to bring forth legislation, which will create more doctors and more nurses, more dentists, because dental care is a major crisis in America.”

In March, Bill McBride, executive director of the National Governors Association, wrote a letter to Sanders and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy detailing the “root causes” of the health-care workforce shortage and potential ways some states are hoping to tackle the crisis.

“Governors have taken innovative steps to address the healthcare workforce shortage facing their states and territories by boosting recruitment efforts, loosening licensing requirements, expanding training programs and raising providers’ pay,” McBride wrote.

“Shortages in healthcare workers is not a new challenge but has only worsened in the past three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Burnout and stress have only exacerbated this issue,” he wrote. “The retirement and aging of an entire generation is front and center of the healthcare workforce shortage, particularly impacting rural communities.”

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#Concern #grows #healthcare #workforce #shortage #dont #doctors #CNN

Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

Post By World , , , , , , , , ,

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

On Thursday, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani finally got some good news. After weeks of cratering share prices in the publicly traded firms in his Adani Group conglomerate—largely caused by the release of U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report on January 24—the group announced a $1.9 billion investment in four of its public companies. The deal led to a stock rally that boosted Gautam Adani’s net worth by $3.8 billion to $42.7 billion on Friday, yet still a long way from his peak of $158 billion last September.

The man behind that deal is Rajiv Jain, the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based asset management firm GQG Partners. Like Adani, he’s also a billionaire. According to GQG’s filings on the Australian Stock Exchange, where it went public in October 2021, Jain owns 69% of the company—a stake worth roughly $2 billion. A spokesperson for GQG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jain founded GQG in 2016 and has grown it to $92 billion in assets under management, with several funds that hold large positions in oil producers ExxonMobil and Petrobras, as well as tobacco giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. If it weren’t for the recent market rout in Adani Group companies, his bet on a ports-to-power conglomerate wouldn’t seem out of place among the other firms that GQG typically invests in.

GQG purchased stakes in four Adani companies: Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises, according to a statement from Adani Group. All four stocks rallied on Friday after the deal was announced, with the flagship Adani Enterprises rising 17%, a stark contrast from weeks of stock price declines driven by the Hindenburg report. Jain’s firm invested in the Adani companies on behalf of various pension funds and institutional clients, including nearly $480 million through its Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities Fund, a $25 billion (assets under management) fund that GQG manages on behalf of Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm

“I am excited to have initiated positions in the Adani companies. Adani companies own and operate some of the largest and most important infrastructure assets throughout India and around the world,” Jain said in a statement announcing the deal. “Gautam Adani is widely regarded as among the best entrepreneurs of his generation.”

On Wednesday, India’s supreme court asked the country’s stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to open an investigation into the Adani Group to look into allegations of stock manipulation and failures to disclose transactions with related parties. Forbes previously reported on several transactions involving offshore funds in Singapore and Cyprus with ties to Vinod Adani, Gautam’s elder brother, that appear designed to benefit the Adani Group and lend further credence to Hindenburg’s allegations of hidden leverage and accounting irregularities within the Adani Group.

The Adani Group has denied all wrongdoing. “The Adani Group welcomes the order of the honorable Supreme Court,” Gautam Adani said in a tweet on Thursday. “It will bring finality in a time bound manner. Truth will prevail.”

MORE FROM FORBESExclusive: New Investigation Reveals Gautam Adani’s Older Brother As Key Player In Adani Group’s Biggest DealsBy Giacomo Tognini

Born in India, Jain studied accounting at the University of Ajmer in the Indian state of Rajasthan, getting a master’s degree in the same field before leaving to pursue an M.B.A. in finance and international business at the University of Miami. He then worked as an international equity analyst at Swiss Bank Corporation before leaving to join Swiss asset manager Vontobel in November 1994, as a co-portfolio manager of emerging markets and international equities. Several promotions later, he became Vontobel’s chief investment officer in 2002 and was later tapped as co-CEO in 2014. During his time at Vontobel, he helped grow the firm’s assets under management from less than $400 million to nearly $50 billion.

Two years later, he left Vontobel to start GQG Partners in Florida. At GQG, he’s become known for focusing on companies’ earnings rather than following the hottest trends in the market—a fact borne out by his funds’ large positions in energy, mining, tobacco, consumer goods, healthcare and banking. (The only tech company Forbes identified in GQG’s fund disclosures was Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.)

“We believe earnings drive stock prices, the market offers very limited opportunities to create an information advantage, and investors are disproportionately focused on the short term,” Jain said in a July 2022 interview with Toronto-based Bridgehouse Asset Managers. “Our core valuation philosophy creates an investment style that we describe as buying high-quality, sustainable businesses at reasonable prices.”

With GQG’s $1.9 billion investment, Jain has wagered that despite Hindenburg’s allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud—which the Adani Group has denied—the Adani firms are a good bet, at a far lower price than their peak last year. “We believe that the long-term growth prospects for [the Adani] companies are substantial,” Jain added in the deal announcement.

Besides its bet on the Adani Group, GQG also invests in several other Indian companies: 22% of its $9.9 billion emerging markets equity fund is invested in Indian companies. Those include Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance conglomerate and the State Bank of India, as well as housing finance provider Housing Development Finance Corp, ICICI Bank and Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC. And at least five GQG funds hold positions in French energy major TotalEnergies, which owns a 37.4% stake in Adani Total Gas and a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy—which, as Forbes previously reported, was acquired from Mauritius-based firms controlled by Vinod Adani for $2 billion in 2021. (The price rally spurred by GQG’s investment in the Adani companies lifted Vinod’s estimated net worth by 12% to roughly $9 billion.)

Outside of his investments, Jain has also backed Democrats in the U.S. Forbes found that Jain contributed $81,600 to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates between 2012 and 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. In the 2016 primaries, Jain decided to hedge his bets: he donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton and $1,000 to Bernie Sanders.

MORE FROM FORBESInside The Offshore Empire Helmed By Gautam Adani’s Older BrotherBy John Hyatt

Additional reporting by John Hyatt.



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Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

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The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

On Thursday, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani finally got some good news. After weeks of cratering share prices in the publicly traded firms in his Adani Group conglomerate—largely caused by the release of U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report on January 24—the group announced a $1.9 billion investment in four of its public companies. The deal led to a stock rally that boosted Gautam Adani’s net worth by $3.8 billion to $42.7 billion on Friday, yet still a long way from his peak of $158 billion last September.

The man behind that deal is Rajiv Jain, the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based asset management firm GQG Partners. Like Adani, he’s also a billionaire. According to GQG’s filings on the Australian Stock Exchange, where it went public in October 2021, Jain owns 69% of the company—a stake worth roughly $2 billion. A spokesperson for GQG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jain founded GQG in 2016 and has grown it to $92 billion in assets under management, with several funds that hold large positions in oil producers ExxonMobil and Petrobras, as well as tobacco giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. If it weren’t for the recent market rout in Adani Group companies, his bet on a ports-to-power conglomerate wouldn’t seem out of place among the other firms that GQG typically invests in.

GQG purchased stakes in four Adani companies: Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises, according to a statement from Adani Group. All four stocks rallied on Friday after the deal was announced, with the flagship Adani Enterprises rising 17%, a stark contrast from weeks of stock price declines driven by the Hindenburg report. Jain’s firm invested in the Adani companies on behalf of various pension funds and institutional clients, including nearly $480 million through its Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities Fund, a $25 billion (assets under management) fund that GQG manages on behalf of Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm

“I am excited to have initiated positions in the Adani companies. Adani companies own and operate some of the largest and most important infrastructure assets throughout India and around the world,” Jain said in a statement announcing the deal. “Gautam Adani is widely regarded as among the best entrepreneurs of his generation.”

On Wednesday, India’s supreme court asked the country’s stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to open an investigation into the Adani Group to look into allegations of stock manipulation and failures to disclose transactions with related parties. Forbes previously reported on several transactions involving offshore funds in Singapore and Cyprus with ties to Vinod Adani, Gautam’s elder brother, that appear designed to benefit the Adani Group and lend further credence to Hindenburg’s allegations of hidden leverage and accounting irregularities within the Adani Group.

The Adani Group has denied all wrongdoing. “The Adani Group welcomes the order of the honorable Supreme Court,” Gautam Adani said in a tweet on Thursday. “It will bring finality in a time bound manner. Truth will prevail.”

MORE FROM FORBESExclusive: New Investigation Reveals Gautam Adani’s Older Brother As Key Player In Adani Group’s Biggest DealsBy Giacomo Tognini

Born in India, Jain studied accounting at the University of Ajmer in the Indian state of Rajasthan, getting a master’s degree in the same field before leaving to pursue an M.B.A. in finance and international business at the University of Miami. He then worked as an international equity analyst at Swiss Bank Corporation before leaving to join Swiss asset manager Vontobel in November 1994, as a co-portfolio manager of emerging markets and international equities. Several promotions later, he became Vontobel’s chief investment officer in 2002 and was later tapped as co-CEO in 2014. During his time at Vontobel, he helped grow the firm’s assets under management from less than $400 million to nearly $50 billion.

Two years later, he left Vontobel to start GQG Partners in Florida. At GQG, he’s become known for focusing on companies’ earnings rather than following the hottest trends in the market—a fact borne out by his funds’ large positions in energy, mining, tobacco, consumer goods, healthcare and banking. (The only tech company Forbes identified in GQG’s fund disclosures was Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.)

“We believe earnings drive stock prices, the market offers very limited opportunities to create an information advantage, and investors are disproportionately focused on the short term,” Jain said in a July 2022 interview with Toronto-based Bridgehouse Asset Managers. “Our core valuation philosophy creates an investment style that we describe as buying high-quality, sustainable businesses at reasonable prices.”

With GQG’s $1.9 billion investment, Jain has wagered that despite Hindenburg’s allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud—which the Adani Group has denied—the Adani firms are a good bet, at a far lower price than their peak last year. “We believe that the long-term growth prospects for [the Adani] companies are substantial,” Jain added in the deal announcement.

Besides its bet on the Adani Group, GQG also invests in several other Indian companies: 34% of its $9.9 billion emerging markets equity fund is invested in India, more than any other country. Those include Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance conglomerate and the State Bank of India, as well as housing finance provider Housing Development Finance Corp, ICICI Bank and Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC. And at least five GQG funds hold positions in French energy major TotalEnergies, which owns a 37.4% stake in Adani Total Gas and a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy—which, as Forbes previously reported, was acquired from Mauritius-based firms controlled by Vinod Adani for $2 billion in 2021. (The price rally spurred by GQG’s investment in the Adani companies lifted Vinod’s estimated net worth by 12% to roughly $9 billion.)

Outside of his investments, Jain has also backed Democrats in the U.S. Forbes found that Jain contributed $81,600 to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates between 2012 and 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. In the 2016 primaries, Jain decided to hedge his bets: he donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton and $1,000 to Bernie Sanders.

MORE FROM FORBESInside The Offshore Empire Helmed By Gautam Adani’s Older BrotherBy John Hyatt

Additional reporting by John Hyatt.



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#Meet #Rajiv #Jain #Asset #Management #Billionaire #Backing #Embattled #Adani #Group