Homeless people gather at an encampment in Phoenix
Credit: AP/Ross D. Franklin
The Trump administration has proposed a new change that would overhaul how the government determines the national poverty level in a move that could cost millions of Americans access to welfare programs.
The Office of Management and Budget proposed a regulatory change Monday that would alter the formula for determining the annual poverty level, which the federal government uses to establish whether people qualify for benefits like Medicaid and food stamps, Bloomberg News reports.
The formula is currently based on three times the cost of a minimum food budget and is adjusted each year for inflation. Last year, the poverty level for a family of four was a mere $25,900. In 2016, more than 40 million Americans were considered to be living in poverty based on the current formula, despite the Trump administration’s claim that the war on poverty is “largely over and a success.”
Credit: illinoisfamily.org
On Saturday, April 27, as worshipers at Chabad of Poway were marking the conclusion of Passover, a gunman entered the synagogue and opened fire, killing Lori Gilbert Kaye and injuring two others, including Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein. Soon after this heinous act of domestic terrorism, it emerged that the anti-Semitic shooter, John T. Earnest, was a member in good standing of Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where his father is an elder, and that he was homeschooled prior to high school. Just as the Poway synagogue incident is the latest in a string of shootings to occur in American places of worship, so too is Earnest the latest in a string of domestic terrorists to have been homeschooled as part of a fundamentalist evangelical upbringing.
Two high-profile examples from 2018 include the Austin bomber and the Tennessee Waffle House shooter, both of whom targeted African-Americans. Researchers with Homeschoolers Anonymous, which has ceased to produce new work […]
Fake edition of The Washington Post
Credit: npr
It is time to stop the refrain that Russian interference did not change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. It did. That is not conjecture- it’s math. The Mueller Report is quite explicit that there was a substantial effort by Russian agents to influence the election. Generically they wanted to undermine American confidence in our institutions. As Trump became a viable candidate, increasingly they aided his campaign while injuring that of Hillary Clinton. Through hacking of the DNC emails and targeted advertisements the Russian trolls, certainly at the behest of Vladimir Putin, had direct influence on the election.
How do we know those events changed the outcome? It is in the numbers; and not those of prognosticators and pollsters. It is in the actual count of the votes. Already known is that Clinton won the national popular vote by a substantial margin (2,868,686). Therefore, the critical issue was the Electoral College and three states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The difference was […]
Pesticide spraying at a grape vineyard in Tulare county, San Joaquin Valley, California.
Credit: Education Images/UIG via Getty
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — California is banning a widely used pesticide that has been linked to brain damage in children, a major victory for public health advocates who have long fought to outlaw the toxic chemical in the agricultural industry.
The state ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide used on almonds, citrus, cotton, grapes, walnuts and other crops, follows years of research finding the chemical causes serious health effects in children, including impaired brain and neurological development. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had moved to ban the chemical under Barack Obama, but the Trump administration reversed that effort, rejecting the scientific conclusions of its own government experts.
“Countless people have suffered as a result of this chemical,” the California EPA secretary, Jared Blumenfeld, said in an interview on Wednesday. “A lot of people live and work and go to school right next to fields […]
Sarah Sanders White House Press gaggle
Credit: Washington Post
For the past 21 years, I have had the high privilege of holding a White House press pass, a magical ticket that gives the bearer a front-row seat to history.
I was in the White House the night Bill Clinton admitted his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and the day he was impeached. I was there on Sept. 11, 2001, and the fearful days thereafter, when we were trained to use escape hoods. I watched George W. Bush make the case for the Iraq War and Barack Obama pitch his remedies for the market crash. There, too, I have witnessed the carnival-like briefings and high histrionics of Donald Trump’s presidency.
But no more. The White House eliminated most briefings and severely restricted access to official events. And this week came the coup de grace: After covering four presidents, I received an email informing me that Trump’s press office had revoked my White House credential.
I’m not the only one. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
