beyond those numbers with more geno now let's get to the stories topping today's political and business headlines. in just a few months eighteen thousand will face off with the justice department in court over its attempt to buy time warner and the trial will begin on march nineteenth but a decision isn't expected to be handed down until after april twenty second which is the deadline for both sides to complete the deal while eight hundred t. announced the plan to acquire time warner back in october two thousand and sixteen it wasn't until last month that the government sued to block it from happening over antitrust concerns following the news eighteenth tee shot back and called the lawsuit a quote radical and inexplicable departure from decades of antitrust precedent during a hearing on thursday judge richard leon said he would likely rule on the issue in april or may. leaders in the u.k. and the e.u. came to an agreement early friday to move on to the next round of brecht's at talks to get here both sides had to agree on the future of the border between ireland

which is part of the e.u. and northern ireland which is part of the u.k. they also had to hammer out details on the rights of british citizens in the e.u. and vice versa on top of perhaps the most divisive issue which is agreeing on the u.k.'s financial obligations to the bloc following this round of negotiations british prime minister may said i very much welcome the prospect of moving ahead to the next phase to talk about trade and security and to discuss the positive and ambitious future relationship that isn't all of our interests commission president john clive younker even said i believe that we have now made the breakthrough that we needed. tax reform pledge by president donald trump to be completed before christmas also a limited key portion of obamacare the affordable care act and what might that mean for individual. in our country joining us now from denver is does hadley heath

manning the director of policy for independent or the independent women's forum have we thank you so much for being with us really appreciate your time and before we get to it could you tell us just a little bit about your organization your history. current and or m. is that twenty five year old organization based in washington d.c. and our mission is to speak about issues that are important to women and family instead of course tax reform and health reform both in that bucket did you all start around the clarence thomas time was at the beginning of when you were you're out there the clarence hill anita hill. yes in the early one nine hundred ninety s. and of course you can tell from our title that we're primarily interested in women the vast majority of our staff are women and we sort of originally formed as an alternative to feminist organizations that we believed were getting away from being

pro women and became more. democrat organizations or left leaning organizations so we wanted to step in and be a pro women organization with an alternative now on to health care i'm not sure if it's going to happen or not the a.c.l.u. portion it looks like it might but you know if the individual mandate is goes computing is killed what happens to that what happens to the country then what gets put in its place remember the president was going to repeal and replace what didn't seem like there's any replace now so what happens do you think oh it's a it's a fascinating issue for people who like to study help policy of course the individual mandate in itself isn't really a solution in terms of health policy it's sort of a side effect or a symptom once you create regulatory environment that might invite people to only buy health insurance when they do have health care problems or when they become sick and that's the case under the affordable care act then you have to create some

kind of mechanism to encourage people to buy into the system even when they aren't sick when they're young and when they're healthy and that's the goal of the individual mandate that's the goal of similar mandates and other health care systems around the world for example in the swiss system there's such a pretty hefty penalty that pete. will have to pay for going without insurance and president obama when he was that candidate actually for office in two thousand and eight he said you know if we wanted to get rid of homelessness we could try to mandate that everyone buy house but people can't i think that they can't afford and unfortunately that's been the case under the affordable care act many people and spite of the penalty are going without insurance opting to pay the penalty which is on average between four and five hundred dollars a year for people who face the penalty versus those premiums under the affordable care act which unsubsidized cost over four hundred dollars a month for someone who is thirty years old for example so what better what is the plan on the what do we do how do we replace it hadley how do we think you know i

agree i agree there are problems but what is right what's a solution so getting rid of the individual mandate just like putting it in place isn't really at the heart of the debate at the heart of the debate is how do we make those health insurance premiums more affordable for people because that's ultimately the greatest incentive to buy health insurance it's something that most people like to carry especially considering the high cost of medical care in this country and making health insurance premiums more affordable this is a subject of great debate over the summer as republicans put together a health care package that ultimately did not pass but one of their key ingredients was let's give states the opportunity to change some of those regulations under the affordable care act for example the essential health benefits which is a list that the department of health and human services but say gether and they say every plan must cover this ten different categories of care and services in our health care system where as some people may not want to buy a policy that includes every category includes every treatment service that the federal government says it's necessary or essential and so my removing that

regulation or at least offering greater flexibility for states there might be opportunities for insurers that the together more basic insurance plans don't cover everything but of course not everyone needs every piece of coverage so seeing those average premiums come down that's ultimately a solution. hadley thank you so much for your time you know i would just keep waiting for the right solution and nobody's come up with it we have more people covered by health insurance now it's not perfect but i keep people wanting not just the the repeal part but the replace part so we have a healthier current country hadley heath medi the director of policy for independent women's forum thanks for your time thank you. fires continue to burn in southern california and the latest report just from just moments ago indicate that more than one hundred sixty thousand acres have been scorched closing hospitals schools roads and even some freight rail and past

passenger train traffic like amtrak surfliner that runs runs along the coast earlier today after california governor jerry brown south federal disaster assistance president trump declared the pirates and merchant sea and ordered additional federal aid while individuals have been hospitalized there have been no fatalities unfortunately that can't be said for some animals on thursday barns containing five hundred race horses were gulf in flames but workers and trainers risked their lives and saved all but twenty five of the animals some of those horses by the way were worth several hundred thousands of dollars and were simply set free to save their lives a few remaining m.i.a. to give us more details and texture as to what's going on in california here's our t. correspondent tasha sweet with a report here in ventura county avocado and citrus ten years make up a good portion of the local economy and similar to the fire storms in northern

california and its vineyards it's going to take more than just time to rebuild its local produce the fires erupting in southern california has ripped through more than one hundred thousand acres irene henry is one of the thousands who have had to evacuate this was the scene from her balcony in ventura. and as an insurance agent she's usually on the other side of the equation on a personal note the hospital visit to del mar that was right that's actually blocks from my home well several multimillion dollar homes burned down in los angeles from the scribal fire near the getty the vista dome or hospital was one of many commercial properties damaged in the fires it was a close call for six flags magic mountain on wednesday flames could be seen right over the theme park we contacted park officials who confirmed no damages were made but when it comes to ensuring those types of businesses risk is well as these kinds of natural disasters like fires certainly comes into play you're putting a bigger portion of the population at risk with raw ins and whatever else you

know public food everything just more open to the public or more of a liability issue just weeks ago wildfires that broke out in northern california and its famous wine country killed forty four people and astroids one thousand one hundred homes and other structures and now it was just announced insurance claims for northern california have added up to a whopping nine billion dollars so my county was the highest coming in at seven point five billion dollars in claims that the county made one point five billion in claims the fires are common in southern california this time of year before the winter rains set in when the vegetation is tinder dry and winds blast the region but neither venture or los angeles counties northern neighbors up north this past october were expecting destruction to this degree the series of fires in northern california burned two hundred forty five thousand acres so then california has at least one hundred thousand acres burned it's something henry says could raise

insurance rates for residents who stray they will have their actuarial go back to the table and figure out they have to calculate recalculate numbers and see of premiums will need to be adjusted as well only time will tell just how long it will take reza. and to pick up the pieces from all they've lost this is what's left of our house. our house. look at it i mean know it's very well how. well i've done in there. were my brother well. our new friend as people like dearly in jordan pick up the pieces and move on the question remains if the issues seen up north like price gouging in the housing sector will plague the area suddenly they charge three hundred dollars an hour because they know they're going to get paid they know the checks not going to bounce before right now with their home or business take care smart video everything so what and if there's a fire you have

a list and you can supply that to your your adjuster and you can show proof of ownership you'll make your claim go that much smoother easier for a processing standpoint well now that we know the insurance claims up north amounted to nine billion dollars the question remains of how much the damage will cost here into the california not only to insurance companies but to the economy as a whole inventor accounting atocha suites. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we were turning we'll take a look at the latest jobs report posted infeed how wages are faring. and as we go to break here are the numbers at the closing bell. leap.

of done some is not so is not conclude place is not a good country. church because it is the minister there but some of the local storms. exist without the us the gist of it is. this that the flagellum sale of the coveted list for the for the good lunch at a prestigious. pulling in just little and bias from the i'm still forbidding that i'm. a little slow on the slow slow. play almost any kind of number for the last ten dots that come out right that are johns and i'm based on our much less credit card number can i do not the last caller we asked was from dr nick matter how on amanita. from michelle to me and cannot. confront mom i can now move in with

some almost feel now we're going to fuck them on the. road since we're going to sort of numbers go show you will see about all of them go to the cities in the money from our voices in his or the one of the street the. cinema bargain for you know the answer is. this seriously as well. they call me a useful idiot i mean you called me a useful idiot a useful idiot useful idiots go expressing my opinions on the first two sins of us doing it behind his record is the same strategy we attack persons instead of talking about what's next why stop me from getting this close to the white house

i'm with a group code pink why not ban the color pink one outstretch dildo right i should be sent to the town one because i want to try to break me on the wheel but out with a long time of this sort of nonsense you don't scare me and i'll continue to voice my opinion i'll continue to speak out in good company i'm in good company you're going to lose me you want to do this because we're freezing cold. it looks like we have another space race on our hands though this time it's between industry leaders during an interview on c n b c the c.e.o. of boeing was asked whether it would be his company or space x. that will get the first person to arrive on mars he responded by saying it'll be a boeing rocket that does it first which eventually yielded earth funds from the competition on twitter a space x. c.e.o.

elan musk briefly tweeted do it to an account that posted a link to mule in verb's interview and followed nearly a year of back and forth between both companies though it's still unclear if and when either of them will have enough funding to actually develop a real trip. less than a year ago ford motor company announced it canceled its plan to move a billion dollar car plant to mexico instead the operation would take place in michigan earning praise from president trump who campaigned on keeping jobs in the u.s. but the company has changed its mind yet again on thursday ford said it will indeed be making electric cars in mexico though the flat rock michigan plant will get a bigger investment than initially planned the vice president of autonomous vehicles and electrification told the new york times we want to make sure we have the capacity at flat rock when we launch we are very optimistic that we will grow the volume in the autonomous business and he added that the latest plan will bring more jobs to the michigan plant to.

the bureau of labor statistics released the jobs report and two hundred twenty eight thousand jobs were created beating expectations in the unemployment rate remain the same four point one percent here to break it all down is more to nobut president of money strong who joins us from dallas did. thanks for helping us out today this is a pretty good number twenty eight thousand beating expectations plus those october numbers were revised up from two hundred forty four to to sixty one thousand so give us some details about where these jobs were created in our economy what sectors didn't you know you know i think that the economists community wanted for there to be one month of negative hurricane destruction and then one month of a positive bounce back but there's nothing to compare you can't can compare hurricane katrina to harvey followed by erma followed by more of that we saw the

hurricanes fingerprints manufacturing had a huge amount in the in the october numbers a lot of people said that the key worker groups highest unemployment i know are always teenagers but where they come out just now beginning to catch up if you're earning years twenty five to fifty dressed for a minute here what's fast and one out of three american jobs would be automated but by the time twenty thirty rolls around is that a lot of the middle income workers that at that populate that twenty five twenty forty fifty four year old cohort of male workers it's the middle income workers not just fast food hamburger flippers that are going to be in the crosshairs but are we going to train them can we can they can they build robots now. you know that's a very good question because if you look at the advanced developed economies all the way around the world there's only one country that stands out for having a declining labor force participation rate for two decades running and that's the

united states it is indicative of the fact that we fall short when it comes to to retraining our workforce in the aftermath of recessions so we have forty percent of all jobs created during the housing boom years that were directly or indirectly related to real estate we didn't retrain them properly so that they would be prepared for the next generation of jobs to come along and in this current recovery we've had three out of every ten jobs go into that eat drink entertain yourself and be sick sectors and a lot of these jobs are going to be vulnerable as well absolutely if we had some great retail numbers just you know whatever ten days ago from black friday cyber monday small business saturday do you expect that that positive path will continue sort of into the holidays and will be reflected into the december numbers any better than than the last couple years that the retail jobs created for the holiday time. well actually if you look at some of the challenger gray and christmas layoffs and hiring statistics we're technically two percent below where we were at

the same time last year on the other hand we've closed a lot of stores across the country and today's employment statistics showed us that we actually had a very nice one nine hundred thousand worker pop in the retail sector and that was encouraging for the holiday shopping season i would carry out that with the fact that credit card spending has been going up at a much faster pace than american than american paychecks have been growing so it's going to be problematic if the pop we see in holiday shopping is being done on plastic. and you're a really good point and i think we were ported here on this program not long ago that you know a lot more people were buying their their goods on those days on phones and on laptops except for a lot lots more of that online let's talk construction we briefly got a little bit into it earlier but what's going on there that this isn't a time of year where we see super strong could structure and i mean as the that

holiday song goes it's cold out there it's going to snow this weekend in d.c. but are we seeing jobs created in those hurricane impacted areas including areas in texas not all that far from where you are danielle. absolutely look it's going to be in the seventy's here next week and that the areas that have been affected the most california florida texas you don't consider these to be the frozen tundra states where construction workers have to go into hibernation during the winter months done as a nation is whole a lot of the construction workers it would otherwise in the aggregate for the nation's income is going to act as a boost to income and spending going into the first quarter you know this is just anecdotal but i my wife and i happen to be doing a lot of traveling down arkansas florida houston area you know about in the six weeks ago and you're absolutely right i mean people were driving with minnesota plates and wisconsin plates you know work trucks obviously stacked in tents and

everything on top of them so we're seeing that i guess reflected in some of these numbers you were just breaking down for us ok let's get to the overall economy still looks as larry david would say pretty pretty pretty good right. it does look good in fact morgan stanley came out with some figures yesterday that suggest that we could see three percent growth rate for the entire year two thousand and seventeen that is pretty remarkable but not to throw rain on all see we even see mortgage delinquencies begin to increase credit card loss provisions at the major banks the major credit card lenders like citi group like j.p. morgan chase they're starting to set set aside more money for credit card losses and the ongoing story in the automobile sector is that we're seeing more and more repossessions there it's reflective of the fact that in this current recovery renting an apartment renting a single family home or buying a home it's never been more expensive and this is the household biggest line item

the one thing we didn't see take up in today's jobs report was it was earnings and income that still remains at a stubbornly low level and again i think the tension between the two between the lack of adequate growth in income and the fact that americans have once again put too much credit on their balance sheets i think we're seeing that come to fruition once the sugar high of hurricane reconstruction passes i worry about what we're going to see going into the spring of next year. that's really great i was trying to find a look at the b.l.s. report here and i think earnings just one up sort of as you're indicating like a measly two tenths of a percent danielle so you get pretty pretty stagnant and pathetic there's room for improvement there but overall if you consider the last recovery that figure that came in at two and a half percent with consistently running about three percent in the last recovery

right well we can we can hope which brings me to tax reform and the prospects have certainly been reflected in the markets you know for a year they've been reflected in the markets we've had i was counting up the other day like sixty six different record breaking breaking n.y.s.e. records but are there any indications that the good economy that we've been talking about with g.d.p. eccentric is actually going to lead to an investment boom or will companies really be is be taking profits and sharing with shareholders. you know the thing is we've already seen companies investing in capital expenditures at the fastest rate in years these past few quarters so we're where we need to be without the tax reform you know my greatest concern about the math behind that behind the tax reform and this is a nonpartisan statement is that it assumes that we're not going to have a recession for the next ten years the longest recession in u.s.

history is ten years long but the c.d.o. is math its basic underlying assumption suggests that the u.s. economy is going to expand for nineteen consecutive years i just can't buy that i don't think it's going to be the economic philip that most people are planning on on wall street you would say by the rumor sell the news and i worry that markets have been celebrating this tax reform bill far too long you just said sixty six consecutive records i worry that there's going to be some selling the news if we actually see a package come through absolutely danielle mark de martino bill thank you so much for joining us appreciate it take care thank you. looking for a way to impress the guests at your next dinner party well a british luxury food retailer may have just the thing marks and spencer is selling what they call a cocktail of a kotto has an edible skin and no seeds that can be eaten whole multinational company has previously marketed many giant and ready sliced avocados and calls this

innovation the holy grail of off a cot owes it will cost more but it could save you the cost and pain of a trip to the emergency room enough people have cut their own hands while trying to pitch is that a british surgeons association has suggested that they should carry warning labels to prevent so-called of a hand the innovation comes as demand for avocados is soaring in china while strikes in mexico and and poor harvests in peru and south africa have created scarcity and the global market it also may add to the trendiness and notoriety of the avocado earlier this year australian millionaire tim governor notoriously scolded millennial suggesting that they weren't able to afford homes not because of low wages and student loan debt but because they were quote buying smashed avocado for one thousand dollars provoking countless avocado toast means on line the cocktail avocado may also turn out to be

a little less healthy than the regular variety the food technology specialist from the retailer says quote my top tip is to try them deep fried. so that the thing about i have a car is that i know this from my time at the agriculture department one day they are fruit yes they have more protein and more fiber than any other fruit and weird fact that we did practice this is that rudolph haas in california in one thousand nine hundred thirty found an avocado tree growing in his bed. and is getting international recognition with the help of israel at least in the world of zoos and dismiss it to do it like you know. this isn't my cup but he is going up to the study hall maybe you know shon i just hope. the only palestinians it gets the most helpful is to respond counterparts i don't think there's some of those when they were on the vision that no one who could do this. and that is

a life that's not just you have to this lady is the most out of that you have i don't want you to compete in the customs you know doing the most last time piss off .

whenever you buy russian products. just getting closer. to the little. league. two protesters are killed and more than a thousand injured as violence escalates between israelis and palestinians our correspondent was caught up in the clashes in jerusalem. so we're in the middle of . as you can hear we're having some tear gas it's being shot all this another attempt to undermine donald trump c.n.n.

runs a full story on the alleged conniving between trump's election team and wiki leaks for the stories that claim to be the smoking gun of collusion with russia. prosecutor claims a district populated almost entirely by migrants is fast becoming a war zone.