Breaking News Events

[Jesse]

First Brussels, and now women and children in a Pakistan park.

Suicide Bomber Kills Dozens, Mostly Women, Kids in Pakistan Park
by MUSHTAQ YUSUFZAI

At least 55 people, mostly women and children, were killed and more than 100 others were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a children's park in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province on Sunday evening.

"A large number of people, majority of them women and children, were present in ‎Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in Lahore when the suicide bomber blew himself up. Mostly women and children are killed and injured in the blast," Said Lahore Police Chief Dr. Haider Ashraf.

In addition to the 55 killed, 150 are injured, according to Punjab Health Minister Salman ‎Rafique...

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/su...l_nbn_20160327

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

This April Fools’ Day, Congress will play a cruel trick on the country’s most destitute people: It will make their food disappear. They will lose access to food stamps—not because they’re no longer in need of assistance, but because, in a way, they need it too much.

A twisted legislative quirk embedded in the Clinton-era welfare reform law is timed to go into effect after March 31 in several states, blowing a gaping hole in the already threadbare social safety net.

The cuts purport to impose fiscal discipline on poor people who are “able-bodied adults without dependents” (ABAWD)—meaning adults without young children. The rule sets a three-month limit on food stamps for across a three-year period “when they aren’t employed or in a work or training program for at least 20 hours a week.”

The formula, which suggests a lack of “work ethic,” does not account for how long you’ve been searching for a job, or local social conditions. The main defining characteristic of the “able-bodied” is apparently that they’re breathing—and hungry. “These are not people who are sitting on their sofas eating bonbons,” says Margarette Purvis, head of Food Bank for New York City. “Our system does not have the adequate resources for all of these ‘able bodies’ to do exactly what the government is supposedly saying what they want them to do. The systems are not there. Plain and simple.”

The Center on Budget Policy and Priorities (CBPP) estimates that between 500,000 and 1 million people nationwide, most of them living in extreme poverty, “will lose SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits as a result of states’ reimposition of the three-month time limit.”

In many areas, the cuts will be triggered automatically because previous legislative waivers, which temporarily shielded local households from the time limit, have lapsed. Of the 23 states where the cuts will be newly instituted this year, according to CBPP, 19, including New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Connecticut, have waivers that are losing eligibility this year. Lawmakers in Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, and West Virginia are voluntarily “choosing to reimpose the time limit,” presumably because they think taking people’s food aid away is worth the “savings” for state coffers.

New Yorkers are casualties of the city’s tragic arithmetic of inequality. The huge wealth gap has skewed the area’s economic profile enough to push Manhattan out of waiver eligibility, so local socioeconomic indicators essentially price the neediest out of their benefits. Local antipoverty organizations project that 53,000 people across New York State are due to lose their benefits (typically around $190 per month). These households will experience funding reductions equivalent to an estimated 31 million meals per year.

The cuts are one component of the Clinton administration’s infamous 1996 welfare reforms, which imposed harsh limits on benefits through bureaucratic “sanctions” and onerous work requirements, which exacerbated extreme poverty and pushed many out of the welfare system altogether.

The victims of the cuts do not match the facile stereotype of the single jobless male deadbeat sponging off welfare. It simply means they are childless adults—half of a childless couple, a single parent of a 19-year-old, or a caregiver to an elderly parent.

About half of the affected individuals are white, a third are black, and 10 percent Latino; about 40 percent are women. About 40 percent live in the suburbs, with the same portion in cities. Arguably, the people targeted for cuts are those who can least afford them: CBPP reports that the individuals in the ABAWD group generally “either don’t qualify for unemployment insurance or any other federal or state cash or food assistance benefit,” or they’ve been out of work for so long (generally more than half a year) that they’ve used up their unemployment insurance.

According to CBPP, the ABAWD population “are more likely than other SNAP participants to lack basic job skills like reading, writing, and basic mathematics”—hampering their prospects in a “recovering economy” where over four in 10 unemployed people have been jobless for 15 weeks or more. Besides, a job alone doesn’t preclude deep poverty; about half of families with children on food stamps actually earn income from work.

Whether states are proactively implementing the SNAP cap or just letting benefits lapse out of malign neglect, antipoverty groups argue that a more comprehensive approach to hunger is needed—not merely through emergency aid, but programs that look beyond whether people are superficially “able” to work and that contemplate the social burdens the poor face when struggling toward self-sufficiency.

Since most of the affected states lack comprehensive employment assistance programs, advocates argue that simply cutting benefits would only ensure they show up to their next job interview even more miserable and hungry.

Antihunger groups are now pinning their hopes on pieces of corrective legislation pending in Congress, to at least provide some economic support to the affected populations by preventing SNAP termination until emergency job-training programs are implemented.

In some cases, CBPP warns, underfunded and understaffed local welfare office caseworkers may neglect to flag individuals with “temporary disabling injuries or mental illness” who should qualify for an individual exemption. And those private charities that conservatives praise as a surrogate for public assistance for the hungry are themselves resource-starved.

According to Food Bank surveys, in the city’s shadow sector of food aid, roughly half of the food pantry network is running on empty: driven by volunteer labor alone, or struggling with dwindling stocks and budget deficits.

“If the average soup kitchen or food pantry in this city was a person, they too would be low income,” Purvis says. “And that’s where we’re telling these people, who have nothing, to go.”

So on April 1, an unknown number of able bodies will be told the government has no relief left for them. Then, perhaps, their bodies will line up at their local church pantry, only to find empty shelves. That’s what they get for being too able, yet too poor, while living amid too much wealth.

http://www.thenation.com/article/con...le-in-america/

Well, tomorrow is April 1st. States nation wide have been fairly quiet about the major shift in how the SNAP program will be administered from here on out, unless there's an massive change in social policy affecting hunger and poverty for millions of Americans .

CHIP is an program that is an exceptionally gated process. All that program did was guarantee more poorly paid jobs to administer an program that has virtually helped hardly anyone.

I know that for a fact because in the early 90s, freshly relocated to another state for personal protection and safety, social workers tried to secure that program assistance for me and my two very young boys, to no avail could they get that program assistance secured for our own dire needs.

Before any kind of social assistance was available for young mothers and their starving babies, it was members of the Black Panther movement of the 60s that saw to the birth of an new social agency, to help mothers and kids to afford basic vital elements of nutrition: That program is now known as WIC (WOMEN INFANTS AND CHILDREN). Women, infants and children benefit today with supplementary help the program gives to purchase milk, juice, fruits, cereal, cheese and expensive formula for babies who are lactose intolerant.

It ticks me off to the high heavens that people are going to discover that social agencies are crumbling under the iron fist of the Clinton Welfare Reform years.


It was men and women activists in the 1960s Black Panther movement that came to the rescue of people stranded in postwar poverty, with no real jobs or ways to earn an living, back in the late 50s -- clear up until the late 60s, early 70s.

Since then, the war on poverty and hunger in our own country seems to spiral toward conditions not seen, since the post war economy of nearly 45 to 50 years ago.

With mass media blackouts, it's going to get really ugly.

[*Anya*]

Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to ‘One Person One Vote’

By ADAM LIPTAKAPRIL 4, 2016

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled that states may count all residents, whether or not they are eligible to vote, in drawing election districts. The decision was a major statement on the meaning of a fundamental principle of the American political system, that of “one person one vote.”

As a practical matter, the ruling mostly helped Democrats.

Until this decision, the court had never resolved whether voting districts should contain the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places that have large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally — including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants, children and prisoners. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic.

Had the justices required that only eligible voters could be counted, the ruling would have shifted political power from cities to rural areas, a move that would have benefited Republicans.

The court did not decide whether other ways of counting were permissible. “We need not and do not resolve,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgwrote for six justices, whether “states may draw districts to equalize voter-eligible population rather than total population.”

The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, No. 14-940, was a challenge to voting districts for the Texas Senate that was brought by two voters, Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger. They were represented by the Project on Fair Representation, a small conservative advocacy group that successfully mounted an earlier challenge to the Voting Rights Act.

The group is also behind a pending challenge to affirmative action in admissions at the University of Texas at Austin.



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/us...pgtype=article

[Nat]

ICIJ and an international coalition of media outlets investigated the trove of papers which allegedly reveal a clandestine network involving associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and business ties between a member of FIFA's ethics committee and men whom the United States has indicted for corruption.

Why are they called the Panama Papers?

The more than 11 million documents, which date back four decades, are allegedly connected to Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca. ICIJ reports that the firm helped establish secret shell companies and offshore accounts for global power players. ICIJ reports that a 2015 audit found that Mossack Fonseca knew the identities of the real owners of just 204 of 14,086 companies it had incorporated in Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago often described as a tax haven.

Is it clear anything illegal has happened?

The documents do not necessarily indicate illegal activity. But shell companies and offshore accounts can be used to mask the origin of financial transactions and ownership. The files include people and companies that the U.S. has blacklisted due to drug trafficking and terrorism links, according to the ICIJ.

Who is implicated in the documents?

The documents reference 12 current or former world leaders, as well as 128 other politicians and public officials. In addition to allegations involving Putin and FIFA, the papers also accuse Iceland's prime minister of having ties, through his wife, to an offshore company that were not properly disclosed. The documents allegedly show Argentina's president did not correctly disclose assets when he was mayor of Buenos Aires.

How have the accused responded to the Panama Papers?

The Kremlin has dismissed the allegations as "a series of fibs" aimed at discrediting Putin ahead of elections. FIFA, the international soccer governing body, called them "ridiculous." But the United Kingdom, France, Australia and Mexico have vowed investigations for possible tax evasion.

What is Mossack Fonseca saying?

On Monday, the firm released a statement:
"Our industry is not particularly well understood by the public, and unfortunately this series of articles will only serve to deepen that confusion. The facts are these: while we may have been the victim of a data breach, nothing we've seen in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests we've done anything illegal, and that's very much in keeping with the global reputation we've built over the past 40 years of doing business the right way, right here in Panama. Obviously, no one likes to have their property stolen, and we intend to do whatever we can to ensure the guilty parties are brought to justice.

Panama Papers a very big deal

"But in the meantime, our plan is to continue to serve our clients, stand behind our people, and support the local communities in which we have the privilege to work all over the world, just as we've done for nearly four decades."
Firm co-founder Ramon Fonseca Mora told CNN earlier that the information published is false and full of inaccuracies and that parties "in many of the circumstances" cited by the ICIJ "are not and have never been clients of Mossack Fonseca." The firm provided longer statements to ICIJ.

How did ICIJ get the documents?

An anonymous source gave the documents to Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung and the newspaper shared them with ICIJ. Other media organizations that reported on the documents include the BBC, The Guardian and McClatchy.
CNN is unable to independently verify the reports and is seeking comment from the most prominent figures mentioned. They are spread across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/04/world/...ner/index.html

[*Anya*]

Today in the UK, a woman was sentenced for the crime of an abortion - yet we act outraged at Donald Trump

She desperately tried to save up enough money to travel to England to have an abortion, but wasn’t able to. Her housemates reported her to the police

Siobhan Fenton @siobhanfenton Monday 4 April 2016416 comments

Today, in the United Kingdom, a woman has been found guilty of having an abortion. It’s a horrifying idea – one which should have been long relegated to the annals of history, but which is sadly still the reality for a woman living in Northern Ireland in 2016.

The 21-year-old woman was found guilty at Belfast High Court today and given a three month sentence, suspended for two years. She was convicted under ancient laws which were passed under Queen Victoria and have sat untouched on Northern Ireland’s statute books for over 150 years.

The abortion ban makes it a criminal offence, carrying a sentence of anything up to life in prison, even if you have been raped or if the foetus is so severely disabled that it has no chance of surviving outside the womb.

The details which the court heard about this woman’s ‘crime’ reveal a heart-breaking nightmare. She was 19 when she experienced an unwanted pregnancy. She desperately tried to save up enough money to travel to England to have an abortion, but wasn’t able to. Left with no other choice and trapped in Northern Ireland, she bought abortion pills online and performed a DIY abortion on herself at home. Her housemates found blood-stained items and foetal remains in a bin and reported her to the police.

This teenager’s story is nothing short of heart breaking and no right minded person could feel anything but sympathy for this tragic case. But under the ban, she has been arrested, charged, placed in the dock and then criminalised.

Just last week when Donald Trump suggested that women should be “punished” for breaking abortion laws, he caused outrage around the world. In the UK, his comments were roundly condemned by politicians and commentators. How easily the British forget that this happens within the UK, out of sight and out of mind in Northern Ireland.

The especially shocking element of Northern Ireland’s abortion ban is how Westminster supports it through its silence. Regardless of Northern Ireland’s contested constitutional status, when it comes to human rights law we are just as much British citizens as women living in Blackpool or Birmingham. Westminster could easily overturn the abortion ban by passing legislation in the House of Commons. There is a particularly clear case for doing this as a High Court found in November that Northern Ireland’s abortion ban breaches international human rights law.

British politicians’ total disinterest in Northern Ireland’s abortion ban stems partly from indifference and political expedience. Simply put, there are no votes to be won in English MPs getting involved in Northern Irish affairs, meaning they turn a blind eye to many issues there. This enables Stormont to get away with things which they would never been allowed to do to other British citizens.

There is also a continuing attitude among British politicians that because of the Troubles, Northern Irish politics is a messy and complex topic, and they worry about upsetting the status quo of peace-time politics.

There is also a common complacency that women in Northern Ireland aren’t really being discriminated against because we can simply go on a plane or boat to England to access a termination there. However, as today’s trial shows, this is a choice only for socially and financially privileged women. Teenagers who do not have thousands of pounds at their disposal face no real chance of getting out of Northern Ireland in time.

In reality, Westminster’s reasoning for ignoring the issue amounts to nothing more than flimsy excuses which are of no use to Northern Irish women forced to live in fear and terror under the abortion ban.

The horrific ordeal that this young woman has been subjected to today and throughout the trial is utterly indefensible and should not be allowed to continue. Quite simply, British politicians are complicit in torturing and criminalising Northern Irish women through their silence.


http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a6968356.html

[not2shygrrl]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

Today in the UK, a woman was sentenced for the crime of an abortion - yet we act outraged at Donald Trump

She desperately tried to save up enough money to travel to England to have an abortion, but wasn’t able to. Her housemates reported her to the police

Siobhan Fenton @siobhanfenton Monday 4 April 2016416 comments

Today, in the United Kingdom, a woman has been found guilty of having an abortion. It’s a horrifying idea – one which should have been long relegated to the annals of history, but which is sadly still the reality for a woman living in Northern Ireland in 2016.

The 21-year-old woman was found guilty at Belfast High Court today and given a three month sentence, suspended for two years. She was convicted under ancient laws which were passed under Queen Victoria and have sat untouched on Northern Ireland’s statute books for over 150 years.

The abortion ban makes it a criminal offence, carrying a sentence of anything up to life in prison, even if you have been raped or if the foetus is so severely disabled that it has no chance of surviving outside the womb.

The details which the court heard about this woman’s ‘crime’ reveal a heart-breaking nightmare. She was 19 when she experienced an unwanted pregnancy. She desperately tried to save up enough money to travel to England to have an abortion, but wasn’t able to. Left with no other choice and trapped in Northern Ireland, she bought abortion pills online and performed a DIY abortion on herself at home. Her housemates found blood-stained items and foetal remains in a bin and reported her to the police.

This teenager’s story is nothing short of heart breaking and no right minded person could feel anything but sympathy for this tragic case. But under the ban, she has been arrested, charged, placed in the dock and then criminalised.

Just last week when Donald Trump suggested that women should be “punished” for breaking abortion laws, he caused outrage around the world. In the UK, his comments were roundly condemned by politicians and commentators. How easily the British forget that this happens within the UK, out of sight and out of mind in Northern Ireland.

The especially shocking element of Northern Ireland’s abortion ban is how Westminster supports it through its silence. Regardless of Northern Ireland’s contested constitutional status, when it comes to human rights law we are just as much British citizens as women living in Blackpool or Birmingham. Westminster could easily overturn the abortion ban by passing legislation in the House of Commons. There is a particularly clear case for doing this as a High Court found in November that Northern Ireland’s abortion ban breaches international human rights law.

British politicians’ total disinterest in Northern Ireland’s abortion ban stems partly from indifference and political expedience. Simply put, there are no votes to be won in English MPs getting involved in Northern Irish affairs, meaning they turn a blind eye to many issues there. This enables Stormont to get away with things which they would never been allowed to do to other British citizens.

There is also a continuing attitude among British politicians that because of the Troubles, Northern Irish politics is a messy and complex topic, and they worry about upsetting the status quo of peace-time politics.

There is also a common complacency that women in Northern Ireland aren’t really being discriminated against because we can simply go on a plane or boat to England to access a termination there. However, as today’s trial shows, this is a choice only for socially and financially privileged women. Teenagers who do not have thousands of pounds at their disposal face no real chance of getting out of Northern Ireland in time.

In reality, Westminster’s reasoning for ignoring the issue amounts to nothing more than flimsy excuses which are of no use to Northern Irish women forced to live in fear and terror under the abortion ban.

The horrific ordeal that this young woman has been subjected to today and throughout the trial is utterly indefensible and should not be allowed to continue. Quite simply, British politicians are complicit in torturing and criminalising Northern Irish women through their silence.


http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a6968356.html

When I first heard trump talk about a law being passed against abortions I immediately thought about all the (would be) crimes husbands did even up into the 70's involving their wife and decision making over having the baby or aborting it. Even then women could not make a decision without the husbands approval to the doctor. So I wondered would the husbands who promoted the wife having an abortion be considered criminals? Just another example of men wanting to control and run women in the " do as I say " era. Not surprised this crap spews from trump.

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by not2shygrrl

When I first heard trump talk about a law being passed against abortions I immediately thought about all the (would be) crimes husbands did even up into the 70's involving their wife and decision making over having the baby or aborting it. Even then women could not make a decision without the husbands approval to the doctor. So I wondered would the husbands who promoted the wife having an abortion be considered criminals? Just another example of men wanting to control and run women in the " do as I say " era. Not surprised this crap spews from trump.

After Trump stated that women should be punished for having an abortion, Chris Mathews asked if the men who caused the pregnancy should be similarly punished. Trump said, "No".

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

This April Fools’ Day, Congress will play a cruel trick on the country’s most destitute people: It will make their food disappear. They will lose access to food stamps—not because they’re no longer in need of assistance, but because, in a way, they need it too much.

A twisted legislative quirk embedded in the Clinton-era welfare reform law is timed to go into effect after March 31 in several states, blowing a gaping hole in the already threadbare social safety net.

The cuts purport to impose fiscal discipline on poor people who are “able-bodied adults without dependents” (ABAWD)—meaning adults without young children. The rule sets a three-month limit on food stamps for across a three-year period “when they aren’t employed or in a work or training program for at least 20 hours a week.”

The formula, which suggests a lack of “work ethic,” does not account for how long you’ve been searching for a job, or local social conditions. The main defining characteristic of the “able-bodied” is apparently that they’re breathing—and hungry. “These are not people who are sitting on their sofas eating bonbons,” says Margarette Purvis, head of Food Bank for New York City. “Our system does not have the adequate resources for all of these ‘able bodies’ to do exactly what the government is supposedly saying what they want them to do. The systems are not there. Plain and simple.”

The cuts are one component of the Clinton administration’s infamous 1996 welfare reforms, which imposed harsh limits on benefits through bureaucratic “sanctions” and onerous work requirements, which exacerbated extreme poverty and pushed many out of the welfare system altogether.

...those private charities that conservatives praise as a surrogate for public assistance for the hungry are themselves resource-starved.

According to Food Bank surveys, in the city’s shadow sector of food aid, roughly half of the food pantry network is running on empty: driven by volunteer labor alone, or struggling with dwindling stocks and budget deficits.

“If the average soup kitchen or food pantry in this city was a person, they too would be low income,” Purvis says. “And that’s where we’re telling these people, who have nothing, to go.”

So on April 1, an unknown number of able bodies will be told the government has no relief left for them. Then, perhaps, their bodies will line up at their local church pantry, only to find empty shelves. That’s what they get for being too able, yet too poor, while living amid too much wealth.

http://www.thenation.com/article/con...le-in-america/

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

Well, tomorrow is April 1st. States nation wide have been fairly quiet about the major shift in how the SNAP program will be administered from here on out, unless there's an massive change in social policy affecting hunger and poverty for millions of Americans.

More on this quiet little development in the world of the unemployed. So you can't find a job? Well no food for you. See if that doesn't motivate you.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/food...-are-strapped/

New restrictions in the federally funded food stamp program have begun affecting hundreds of thousands of needy families throughout America, as revived rules designed to incentivize people looking for work result in the loss of benefits for 500,000 to 1 million people in 21 states. The Department of Agriculture program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, implemented a rule Jan. 1 that reinstates a three-month time limit for those receiving benefits who don’t have children or a disability and haven’t found a minimum 20-hour-a-week job, a requirement that was previously suspended thanks to recession-induced unemployment levels.

For many Americans, the three-month deadline came April 1.

“We can only serve people so much food,” says Travis Niemann, program manager at the Portland pantry. “Right now it’s SNAP changes, before that it was the housing crisis.”

Food banks across the country are expecting an uptick in demand, as clients lose their benefits. The timing is particularly bad in states such as Florida, where the tourist season and the temporary jobs associated it with it draw to a close.

“Shortly, we’ll have kids out of school, and families who rely on school lunch are going to be facing that pinch as well,” Richard LeBer, president and CEO of the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, tells Newsweek. And there’s no way to keep up with the hole the SNAP cutbacks will leave. “If you added up all the food banks in the country and put all their food together, it’s not efficient to meet the need,” LeBer says. “The SNAP program dwarfs the combined capacity of the food bank network. We’re doing our best to be a stopgap.”

In states such as Oregon, some counties are exempt from the rules thanks to high unemployment. Only two of the state’s 36 counties have a low enough unemployment rate to be affected by the changes. But in others, like in Missouri, lawmakers passed a bill that prevents its counties from seeking the waiver. The state legislature overrode a governor’s veto last year to enact Senate Bill 24, which “tied our own hands,” Jeannette Mott Oxford, executive director of Empower Missouri tells Newsweek. “There’s a belief here that somehow punishment works,” Oxford said, that by punishing families receiving benefits, they’ll be more inspired to find a job. “Hunger just doesn’t achieve anything good. Our food pantries are already stressed. Adding this on top of it will be a real challenge.”

The SNAP changes won’t help anyone, Rebecca Vallas, managing director of the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress, tells Newsweek .

“It’s not just a cruel policy, it’s a stupid policy,” she said.

“It’s premised on the idea that somehow making jobless people hungrier is going to help them find work faster. What it’s really going to do is push hundreds of thousands, maybe millions looking for work into deeper hardship, and for no good reason.”

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

More on this quiet little development in the world of the unemployed. So you can't find a job? Well no food for you. See if that doesn't motivate you.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/food...-are-strapped/

New restrictions in the federally funded food stamp program have begun affecting hundreds of thousands of needy families throughout America, as revived rules designed to incentivize people looking for work result in the loss of benefits for 500,000 to 1 million people in 21 states. The Department of Agriculture program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, implemented a rule Jan. 1 that reinstates a three-month time limit for those receiving benefits who don’t have children or a disability and haven’t found a minimum 20-hour-a-week job, a requirement that was previously suspended thanks to recession-induced unemployment levels.

For many Americans, the three-month deadline came April 1.

“We can only serve people so much food,” says Travis Niemann, program manager at the Portland pantry. “Right now it’s SNAP changes, before that it was the housing crisis.”

Food banks across the country are expecting an uptick in demand, as clients lose their benefits. The timing is particularly bad in states such as Florida, where the tourist season and the temporary jobs associated it with it draw to a close.

“Shortly, we’ll have kids out of school, and families who rely on school lunch are going to be facing that pinch as well,” Richard LeBer, president and CEO of the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, tells Newsweek. And there’s no way to keep up with the hole the SNAP cutbacks will leave. “If you added up all the food banks in the country and put all their food together, it’s not efficient to meet the need,” LeBer says. “The SNAP program dwarfs the combined capacity of the food bank network. We’re doing our best to be a stopgap.”

In states such as Oregon, some counties are exempt from the rules thanks to high unemployment. Only two of the state’s 36 counties have a low enough unemployment rate to be affected by the changes. But in others, like in Missouri, lawmakers passed a bill that prevents its counties from seeking the waiver. The state legislature overrode a governor’s veto last year to enact Senate Bill 24, which “tied our own hands,” Jeannette Mott Oxford, executive director of Empower Missouri tells Newsweek. “There’s a belief here that somehow punishment works,” Oxford said, that by punishing families receiving benefits, they’ll be more inspired to find a job. “Hunger just doesn’t achieve anything good. Our food pantries are already stressed. Adding this on top of it will be a real challenge.”

The SNAP changes won’t help anyone, Rebecca Vallas, managing director of the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress, tells Newsweek .

“It’s not just a cruel policy, it’s a stupid policy,” she said.

“It’s premised on the idea that somehow making jobless people hungrier is going to help them find work faster. What it’s really going to do is push hundreds of thousands, maybe millions looking for work into deeper hardship, and for no good reason.”

I have no idea who Travis Niemann is, but here is something I know first hand about, even though I'm employed and do not meet criteria for SNAP assistance: I live in am greater metro area where there is an huge network for anyone needing food. The untold story about the situation is that even if you spend hours at any single place to receive some small parcel of food supplies, depending on which agency you visit, it might be only enough food to last for a few days. Some places only give you a sack of food, mostly canned in tin cans, fresh food is scarce. Few places give you enough food to last more than an week. Of the few places that do that, if you can prove you have an large family of children to feed, they will give you more. If it's just you (single) you'll spend your time and what little bit of money you have going from agency to agency, depending on hours of operation and food availability. No agency runs their agency by an set style of criterion that makes it easy to get assistance for food.

For example, my son and I both work, we don't qualify for food assistance of any kind. So if we find that we don't have any money for food, it costs us an day of work to go in search for an place to help us with food - and even when we've been backed into am corner to have to do this, lose an day of work to go find food, we also run the chance of not getting enough food to sustain us until the next time pay day comes around.

So, for those who don't have an job earning any kind of income, it's probably far scarier to have to go on search for food because it's an time consuming activity, not to mention if you don't have a car to transport food from the agency back to your home.

Very scary situations people face daily.

Thanks for the update!

[Corkey]

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/04...cart_2box_news


This is YUUUUUUUGEEEEEEEE

[BullDog]

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will announce Wednesday that the Treasury Department will remove Andrew Jackson's face from the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman, Politico reports.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/1146944...20-dollar-bill

[MsTinkerbelly]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will announce Wednesday that the Treasury Department will remove Andrew Jackson's face from the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman, Politico reports.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/1146944...20-dollar-bill

It's about time!

[Kätzchen]

Within 24 hours of the New York state primary, New York state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has opened an full investigation into the 100K+ voter disenfranchisement. The top official in charge of the borough- The Bronx, has been removed from office, suspended without pay, pending results of an full audit and investigation. If voting affidavits of disenfranchised voters in New York are admitted into the certified count, it will rock the vote.

LINK:

http://www.inquisitr.com/3015960/pro...eW76AQFhbvK.99


----☆------☆-----☆------.

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

Within 24 hours of the New York state primary, New York state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has opened an full investigation into the 100K+ voter disenfranchisement. The top official in charge of the borough- The Bronx, has been removed from office, suspended without pay, pending results of an full audit and investigation. If voting affidavits of disenfranchised voters in New York are admitted into the certified count, it will rock the vote.

LINK:

http://www.inquisitr.com/3015960/pro...eW76AQFhbvK.99



----☆------☆-----☆------.

If only the Supreme Court had allowed this back in 2000, our world might be very different today. We can't ever forget how important a balanced (i.e., liberal or at least fair) Supreme Court is to all of us.

Regardless if the vote count favors Hillary or Bernie, it is the right thing to do.

Headline from NYT back then:

BUSH PREVAILS; BY SINGLE VOTE, JUSTICES END RECOUNT, BLOCKING GORE AFTER 5-WEEK STRUGGLE
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: December 13, 2000

[Cin]

Always a fresh hell for the hapless.

Houses bought up that were foreclosed on during the housing crisis are being sold to investors in bulk at distressed prices, and the investors, in turn, sell them to people too poor to qualify for mortgages. The homes are sold by using contracts for deed and do not require legal proceedings to be followed before an owner can be forced out of their home. The seller can not only charge a high rate of interest, but is not encumbered by the need to go to court in order to retake possession of the house and force the buyer out.

It sounds like a natural progression of easy credit rip offs that people without good credit or just the income to qualify for credit are often forced to use. It's a step up from buying your refrigerator or your TV at Rent-A-Center and a lot more inconvenient when they repossess.

http://commondreams.org/views/2016/0...essed-are-poor

Houses are the gifts that keep on giving to rich and poor alike. Just ask Dan Sparks-or the poor. The gift for Mr. Sparks is the opportunity to increase his wealth and the gift for the poor is shelter. Years ago that was accomplished by selling a house to the less fortunate using the subprime mortgage, and today it is accomplished by selling the same house to the same people using the contract for deed.

Until a recent New York Times story and editorial once again brought him to our attention, Mr. Sparks was remembered, if at all, for his last years at Goldman Sachs during 2007 and 2008. Mr. Sparks is not remembered for the Goldman Sachs activities that were brought to mind in April 2016, when Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $5.1 billion as a civil settlement because of its participation in the subprime mortgage market. During that period Goldman Sachs was bundling and selling securities that had been created by companies that specialized in converting subprime loans into bonds and selling them to unsuspecting investors. When the loans went bad, Goldman Sachs was left holding the money it had received from the sale of the bonds, purchasers of the bonds were left holding the bag, and former homeowners went from owning homes to becoming renters or homeless. Mr. Sparks, however, was remembered for something else.

During his last 1 ½ years at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Sparks was involved in creating something called a “synthetic collateralized debt obligation.” Unlike the securities Goldman Sachs sold to unsuspecting investors, the debt obligations Mr. Sparks helped create did not include actual bonds but, instead, instruments whose value was based on the performance of sets of junk bonds. Those instruments were sold to unsuspecting investors by Goldman Sachs knowing they were worthless. (For those who would like more detail than is provided by the foregoing, that practice is described in some detail in a report on Mr. Sparks’ testimony before Congress) What both activities had in common, however, was that both were part and parcel of the financial collapse that took place in 2007-2008. As a result, in hundreds of thousands of cases, buyers defaulted on their mortgages and lost their homes. And that brings us to the present.

Many companies have been formed that are buying up houses that were foreclosed on during the housing crisis. Those houses are being sold to investors in bulk at distressed prices, and the investors, in turn, sell them to people too poor to qualify for mortgages. One of the companies that has been formed to buy and then resell these houses is Shelter Growth Capital Partners, a company founded by Mr. Sparks and two of his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs. That firm was founded in 2014. The word “shelter” in its name, describes the product it is buying and selling. The word “growth” refers to the increased wealth Mr. Sparks and his colleagues hope to enjoy from their new business. Shelter Growth has bought more than 200 distressed homes and resold them to low income buyers. Since subprime mortgages have fallen out of favor, the homes are sold by Shelter Growth using contracts for deed. Unlike a mortgage, the contract for deed is a better vehicle for getting rich quick than was the mortgage. A contract for deed does not offer the protection for the buyer that a mortgage provides. Whereas a mortgage requires certain legal proceedings to be followed before an owner can be forced out of the house, and there is some supervision by a court in most cases, contracts for deeds offer no such protections and the seller can not only charge a high rate of interest, but is not encumbered by the need to go to court in order to retake possession of the house and force the buyer out. That, from the seller’s perspective, is a big advantage. It is less of an advantage for the buyer. And here is a curious coincidence.

The house Mr. Sparks is now selling pursuant to a contract for deed, is almost certainly one of the millions of houses that were foreclosed on during the heyday of foreclosures that took place because of the subprime crisis that was caused by Mr. Sparks and his fellow bankers. Indeed, it might even be one of the houses whose mortgage was part of a worthless bundle of mortgages sold by Goldman Sachs to unsuspecting investors. And now that house is once again being used to enhance the wealth of Mr. Sparks and his colleagues and to provide shelter to the less fortunate. Here is another part of the same coincidence.

If a buyer defaults on the terms of the contract, the people at Shelter Growth who kick the buyer out of the house, are the same people whose subprime mortgage activities caused there to be lots of cheap houses available for Shelter Growth to buy and resell. And Shelter Growth may very well be selling those houses to the same people who lost them in foreclosures 10 years ago. Were that to happen it would merit an entry in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!

[Cin]

Following the Pentagon getting to absolve itself for bombing a hospital and because US policies in these countries is a "recipe for disaster" Doctors Without Borders is fed up and withdraws from humanitarian summit.

http://commondreams.org/further/2016...summit-rips-un

Doctors Without Borders Rejects World Aid Summit, Rips U.N. For Ongoing War Crimes

Having watched in aggrieved horror the last year as over 75 of its hospitals were bombed and hundreds of its patients and health workers were killed "in violation of the most fundamental rules of war," Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières, has withdrawn from the World Humanitarian Summit slated for later this month in Turkey. The action comes just days after an MSF-supported hospital in Aleppo, Syria was attacked, killing at least 50 people, including one of the city's last pediatricians. It also follows last week's almost entirely redacted, predictably egregious Pentagon report finding that 16 U.S. military personnel involved in the grisly bombing of a MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in October 2015 - killing 42 and injuring many more - committed "errors" worthy of “disciplinary measures,” but no war or any other kind of crime. The bombings have led many to charge that U.S. so-called policy in those countries is a murky "recipe leading to disaster" born of massive political confusion, and that in the wake of its inevitable disasters, "the Pentagon shouldn't get to absolve itself for bombing a hospital."

Citing these atrocities and many more connected to them - from civilians wounded and killed in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, Afghanistan to mistreatment of some of the world's nearly 60 million refugees in Turkey, Greece and elsewhere - MSF acknowledged that an international humanitarian summit seeking solutions has never been more needed. But even after spending months preparing for the Turkey summit, and after the U.N. urged global attendance by proclaiming, “We will not accept the erosion of humanity which we see in the world today,” MSF has regretfully withdrawn.

“We no longer have any hope that the WHS will address the weaknesses in humanitarian action and emergency response, particularly in conflict areas or epidemic situations,” it said in a statement last week. “As shocking violations of international humanitarian law and refugee rights continue on a daily basis, WHS participants will be pressed to a consensus on non-specific, good intentions to ‘uphold norms’ and ‘end needs.’ The summit has become a fig-leaf of good intentions, allowing these systematic violations, by states above all, to be ignored."

In a blistering speech before the U.N. Security Council last week, MSF president Dr. Joanne Liu further voiced the group's anger over the world's persistent failure to act to "stop the carnage." Citing last week's "murderous airstrike" in Aleppo that "blew apart at least 50 men, women and children" and the almost 300 airstrikes there over the last 10 days, she furiously asked, “What are individuals in wars today? Expendable commodities, dead or alive.” She went on, “Hospitals are routinely bombed, raided, looted or burned to the ground. Medical personnel are threatened. Patients are shot in their beds. Broad attacks on communities and precise attacks on health facilities are described as mistakes, are denied outright, or are simply met with silence. In reality, they amount to massive, indiscriminate and disproportionate civilian targeting in urban settings, and, in the worst cases, they are acts of terror.” Noting that four of five permanent members of the Council have ties to coalitions connected to these attacks - including the US-and-NATO coalition in Afghanistan - she insisted, "Medicine must not be a deadly occupation" and states must live up to their "extraordinary responsibilities." "You will be judged not on your words today, but on your actions," she said. "Your work has only begun."

[Cin]

Obama Chugs Flint Water, Dodges Federal Responsibility, Delivers Another Cynical Lecture to Black Folks
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

“When I was five, six, seven,” the First Black President told an audience in Flint MI last week, “a lot of homes still had lead paint in them. I might have ingested some lead paint when I was two or three years old...” President Obama spoke those words just after chugging a glass of filtered Flint water, and just before assuring residents that a little lead in their children's bodies was less of a life obstacle than some might think. Sure, get your kids tested. But if possible childhood lead poisoning didn't stop baby Barack, he seemed to tell his listeners, why should it stop your child, your family from success? The president admonished locals and others not to point fingers, specifically not at Michigan governor Rick Snyder, who the president said was working with the feds to remedy the situation.

The president's act was tailor made for Flint, a black Michigan city only an hour north of Detroit, and aimed at African Americans around the country. It was quite a performance, reminiscent of his quip after the exoneration of the vigilante murderer of Trayvon Martin in Florida, when Obama observed that he “might have been” Trayvon 35 years go.

In both cases the president cynically leveraged his blackness to obscure the fact that he was refusing to go after the guilty parties, while proposing no measures to ensure it didn't happen again.

By the time President Obama dropped in on Flint, months after the deliberate poisoning of 100,000 people became national news, Democratic presidential candidates Clinton and Sanders had already come and gone. Congressional Democrats, led by members of the Congressional Black Caucus had staged their own denounce-a-Republican hearing in DC. For all of them, and for their allies in the corporate media, the mass poisonings were a unique case of evil Republicans whose ideology of privatization, small government and white supremacy empowered them to poison a mostly black city of 100,000. It's a simple and compelling story for this presidential campaign year, one that lets Democratic party activists keep the party's base voters aroused with demands to indict Governor Snyder and his minions.

That's their story. But it's not the real story.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency, as Black Agenda Report's Dr. Marsha Coleman Abedayo, a former EPA official and whistleblower has repeatedly pointed out, has always possesed the legal power under the Nixon era Clean Water Act to seize the water systems of Flint and dozens of other cities around the country which are known to be poisoning local residents, arrest the parties responsible, and operate those systems itself. But although regional EPA officials were fully aware of the Flint situation months before it became public, they chose not to act. The EPA is part of the executive branch of government, under the president and charged with enforcing existing laws.

First, Obama's regional and national EPA officials didn't decline to protect Flint's citizens by seizing the water works because they feared Republican opposition. Congressional Republicans simply don't have the power to stop the executive branch from enforcing a law already on the books. Then the White House and top EPA officials chose not to punish the EPA officials whose failure to act prolonged the poisonings.

Instead, the White House preferred to score cheap election year points against Republicans for the same privatizing acts that Democrats carry out all over the map. The Obama administration's Race To The Top program used billions of federal stimulus dollars to privatize thousands of public schools across the country. The Obama administration has likely privatized more public schools than any other president has ever built. The discredited notion of running schools and government agencies like businesses belongs to Democrats every bit as much as it does Republicans.

The last president named Clinton introduced what was called the “Reinventing Government” initiative, compelling state and local governments to begin privatizing dozens of types of government services.

The infrastructure projects of local governments everywhere in the US aren't funded by taxing the one percent, but instead by borrowing from the billionaires via bond issues that scoop up the taxes paid by poor people to repay bondholders at rates that street level loan sharks would envy. When the local tax revenues are insufficient to keep up the payments, local governments are turned into collection agencies, with emergency managers like those in Flint and Detroit appointed to cut services and pay the bondholders on time. In the more extreme cases, local governments are forced to sell off public land and other assets at pennies on the dollar to well connected investors.

The root of the crisis in Flint isn't racist Republicans or devious Democrats. It's a property of present day capitalism. The system does work, this is how it works, and both parties are committed to keeping it that way. This matrix of borrowing from the billionaires instead of taxing them, then turning local governments into collection agencies to repay the loans out of poor people's taxes is what brought us the mass poisonings in Flint. Democrats bear just as much responsibility for it as Republicans. But while the Democratic party's main funders are on Wall Street, its base voters are in places like Flint and Detroit.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/node/5112

[Kobi]

Police have confirmed mass casualties after a gunman opened fire at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday.

The shooting at Pulse Nightclub occurred just after 2 a.m. About four hours later police confirmed that a gunman was dead. The circumstances of the shooter's death are not yet clear, and it is unknown whether they acted alone.

"We can confirm this is a mass casualty situation," Orlando Police tweeted. At least 20 people were killed.

Dozens of police vehicles, including a SWAT team, swarmed the area around the club. At least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center, The Associated Press reported.

NBC affiliate WESH reported that a crisis negotiator was at the scene, and Orlando Police said an explosion heard around 5 a.m. ET was a controlled event.

Revelers described scenes of horror from inside the club. One witness told MSNBC that they had to crawl over bodies to escape.

A post to the club's Facebook page at around 2 a.m. warned "everyone get out of Pulse and keep running." Witness video from outside showed dozens of first responders at the scene, and several victims on the ground.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...0446?cid=sm_fb
----------------


News is trickling out on this. Police and FBI involved. Shooter is dead. Aside from the gun involved, a "device" was found on his body and possibly in his car.

At least 20 people were killed and 42 were taken to local hospitals after the shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub, police said Sunday. The gunman was killed after exchanging fire with police.

[morningstar55]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Police have confirmed mass casualties after a gunman opened fire at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday.

The shooting at Pulse Nightclub occurred just after 2 a.m. About four hours later police confirmed that a gunman was dead. The circumstances of the shooter's death are not yet clear, and it is unknown whether they acted alone.

"We can confirm this is a mass casualty situation," Orlando Police tweeted. At least 20 people were killed.

Dozens of police vehicles, including a SWAT team, swarmed the area around the club. At least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center, The Associated Press reported.

NBC affiliate WESH reported that a crisis negotiator was at the scene, and Orlando Police said an explosion heard around 5 a.m. ET was a controlled event.

Revelers described scenes of horror from inside the club. One witness told MSNBC that they had to crawl over bodies to escape.

A post to the club's Facebook page at around 2 a.m. warned "everyone get out of Pulse and keep running." Witness video from outside showed dozens of first responders at the scene, and several victims on the ground.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...0446?cid=sm_fb
----------------


News is trickling out on this. Police and FBI involved. Shooter is dead. Aside from the gun involved, a "device" was found on his body and possibly in his car.

At least 20 people were killed and 42 were taken to local hospitals after the shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub, police said Sunday. The gunman was killed after exchanging fire with police.

more info ........ as I'm hearing it

The local news here in Orlando is saying up to 20 killed and another 42 with injuries...
The shooter was wearing a device so at this time they fear there maybe more explosive devices in the building or in the cars
They are not able to get in to the bodies out of fear there maybe explosive devices
The official news feed right now is Orlando police department twitter.
They are stepping up security at the airports.
Many night clubs are reported they will stay closed

someone posting a comment on the original post report .....
i just read this in one of the comments on the original posting from this news post...... ....................
William Brown : our church group were in ihop having breakfast and a memeber of our church heard the guy in the blck shirt trying to convince the younger college student in the white shirt (whos an american) to purchase a weapon for him (the guy in black) and let him know tht he was trying to get a pilots license. Told him to not have any felonies and to keep his grades up so nothing would look suspicious. Younger guy kept telling him no

ok i just been listening to an update.. as of NOW ......... this shooter had a well planned out thing here.. had multiple guns of different types .. and islamic ties ... and going by so many people killed ... are claiming it as terrorism

for all the victims and families.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by morningstar55

more info ........ as I'm hearing it

The local news here in Orlando is saying up to 20 killed and another 42 with injuries...
The shooter was wearing a device so at this time they fear there maybe more explosive devices in the building or in the cars
They are not able to get in to the bodies out of fear there maybe explosive devices
The official news feed right now is Orlando police department twitter.
They are stepping up security at the airports.
Many night clubs are reported they will stay closed

someone posting a comment on the original post report .....
i just read this in one of the comments on the original posting from this news post...... ....................
William Brown : our church group were in ihop having breakfast and a memeber of our church heard the guy in the blck shirt trying to convince the younger college student in the white shirt (whos an american) to purchase a weapon for him (the guy in black) and let him know tht he was trying to get a pilots license. Told him to not have any felonies and to keep his grades up so nothing would look suspicious. Younger guy kept telling him no

ok i just been listening to an update.. as of NOW ......... this shooter had a well planned out thing here.. had multiple guns of different types .. and islamic ties ... and going by so many people killed ... are claiming it as terrorism

for all the victims and families.

How can the police possibly know so much about the shooter when your statement above indicates they haven't even been able to go inside where the shooting took place?