The Congressional Budget Office estimates it could actually expand total eligibility for federal food assistance, with the elimination of work requirements for veterans, homeless people and young people leaving foster care.
The legislation also bolsters funds for defense and veterans, cuts back some new money for Internal Revenue Service and rejects Biden’s call to roll back Trump-era tax breaks on corporations and the wealthy to help cover the nation’s deficits. But the White House said the IRS’ plans to step up enforcement of tax laws for high-income earners and corporations would continue.
The agreement also imposes an automatic overall 1% cut to spending programs if Congress fails approve its annual spending bills — a measure designed to pressure lawmakers of both parties to reach consensus before the end of the fiscal year in September.
A Virginia man has been arrested for the murder of New Jersey councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, who was gunned down outside her home in February.
[…]
Officials did not discuss a possible motive and did not take questions from reporters.
Ciccone called it a “complex, extensive case.”
[…]
Dwumfour, a business analyst and a part-time emergency medical technician, was elected as a Republican to the Sayreville Borough Council in 2021, defeating an incumbent Democrat.
I have been trying to be patient. Truly, I have. But what is going on with the Republicans in the state Legislature?
The state has been projecting a major budget surplus for some time. At the beginning of the year, it was expected to be about $7.1 billion. At last count, they have lowered that forecast to about $6.9 billion. In either case, it is a lot of money. It is a lot of money forcibly confiscated from Wisconsinites through taxation far and above what the government budgeted to fund the state government with all of its girth.
When confronted with a pile of unspent cash, politicians are incapable of resisting their desires to spend it. The Democrats are ideologically consistent in this regard. They believe that more government is better government, so any time they can find an excuse to make government bigger, they are going to seize it.
[…]
I ask again, what is going on with the Republicans in the state Legislature? The state has been projecting a major surplus for over a year. The voters returned the Republicans to the state Legislature with even larger majorities than they had the previous session. Those Republicans have had six months since that election to come up with a plan to return the surplus to the taxpayers. Most of those Republicans were in the legislature last session and have had even more time to contemplate.
Where is the Republican plan — coordinated and supported by Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature — to return the budget surplus? Where is the refund? Where is the systemic tax reform? Milwaukee did not elect those Republican majorities. The Brewers did not elect those Republican majorities. Local governments did not elect those Republican majorities.
Plain, old grassroots Republicans elected those Republican majorities, and it is past time for those elected Republicans to deliver on their promises of smaller government. We have been patient long enough.
Other notable declines occurred in major metros like Austin, Boise, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Los Angeles – all of which saw their median home price shed at least $60,000 since April of last year.
San Francisco and Oakland both saw price drops into six figures with the median value decreasing by $220,000 and $174,000 respectively.
I was speaking to a friend who lives in the Minneapolis area. She commented on how home prices in her town were still high with limited supply, but she knew of people moving out of Minneapolis proper who were losing their shorts on their homes. People are sick of the crime and are fleeing. Unfortunately, like what happened in Chicago, there are fewer and fewer people who care about crime living in these cities. What’s left are people who will continue to vote for Marxists who will continue to encourage the carnage with pro-criminal policies. The cities are in a death spiral.
The trap that we must avoid is to bail these cities out. They have made a choice. They should deal with the consequences. There is no rational reason for people who made better choices in other communities to send their hard-earned money to be flushed down the crime sewer.
The deal, if enacted, will boost the nation’s borrowing limit for two years and take the full faith and credit of the US off the negotiating table through the next presidential election, according to a person familiar with the details.
[…]
In the end, Biden and McCarthy agreed to keep overall non-defense spending largely at current levels into next year. Then, in 2025, there will be a small 1% increase in spending.
[…]
Another thorny issue that remained unresolved until the very last hours was what work requirements would be required in return for access to government assistance such as food stamps and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
This deal will make changes to what some Americans need to access those two programs. They are changes that McCarthy said Saturday would “lift Americans out of poverty and into the workforce.”
Many of the details remained unclear Sunday morning. Medicaid – another assistance program where changes were considered – will not being impacted.
The Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach and immediately suspend Attorney General Ken Paxton on Saturday by a vote of 121-23, with two members present not voting and three absent.
House Speaker Dade Phelan voted “yes” on the resolution.
The matter will now head to the Texas Senate, where lawmakers will hold a trial for the attorney general. Paxton’s wife, Angela, is a senator and could vote on his removal.
“Honesty and doing the right thing matter,” said Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, who chairs the General Investigating Committee that initiated the impeachment proceedings, during closing statements. “They matter to me, and I know that they matter to you.”
A 60-page filing, submitted by the organization earlier this month, shows the foundation spent more money than it earned in its last fiscal year, from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. It ended the year with roughly $30 million in assets, down from the $42 million in assets reported in its filing the previous year.
The BLM nonprofit had raised more than $90 million in the first year that it was a tax-exempt organization, coinciding with the wave of protests over police brutality in the summer of 2020. But with the racial justice fundraising environment quickly returning to norms, the new tax filings show the organization cut operating expenses by nearly 55%.
Cicley Gay, board chair for the foundation, said the belt-tightening was part of an effort to demonstrate that its stewards “have been responsible, proactive decision-makers of the people’s donations.”
“We are building an institution to fight white supremacy and reach Black liberation,” Gay said in a statement about the tax filings. “Every dollar we spend is in order to reach that goal.”
The foundation said it would post the new financial documents to a “transparency center” on its official website.
Last year, the nonprofit gave more than $4 million in grants to Black-led grassroots organizations, including organizations founded by the families of police brutality victims, whose names rally the larger movement. Nearly $26 million had gone to Black organizations and families during the foundation’s 2020-2021 fiscal year.
The ratio of “expenses” to grants seems to confirm that this little more than a graft organization
Here is my full column that ran earlier in the week in the Washington County Daily News.
A couple of weeks ago this column criticized the Shared Revenue bill advancing through the state Assembly. Since then, the bill has gotten worse and the momentum seems to be on the side of disaster. One can only hope that it falls apart under its own craptaculance.
Readers of this column will recall that Assembly Bill 245 was negotiated in private for several months by the Assembly Republican leadership, Milwaukee Democratic leadership, and some other stakeholders — not including the governor’s office. The thrust of the bill is that the state will dramatically increase Shared Revenue for local governments while imposing some restrictions on them. For the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, the state would further allow them to impose a massive sales tax increase if the voters approve and in exchange for further restrictions.
Beyond that, the bill would end the personal property tax in which personal property is subject to property taxes. The personal property tax is a particular burden for businesses that have a substantial amount of equipment. The bill would also limit the power of local health officials to close businesses, grant the legislative Joint Finance Committee and local governments some control over the State Stewardship program, prohibit most advisory referenda for local governments, and a host of other things. As the bill is crafted, Gov. Tony Evers cannot use his line-item veto to carve it up. The governor must either sign the bill or veto the entire thing. After the bill was announced a few weeks ago, feverish negotiations began with Governor Evers’ office to try to incorporate any changes the governor might want to induce him to sign the bill. The root of the contention is fairly simple. The Republicans and the governor seem to agree that a boost in Shared Revenue is a good thing. The notion that Republicans should work for smaller government seems to have been eschewed in favor of filling up the trough. The governor disagrees with some of the smaller provisions in the bill that Republicans favor, but they are somewhat lost in the bigger issues.
The primary bone of contention has to do with the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County. The problem that Republicans are trying to fix is that both local governments are on a trajectory to go bankrupt due to their lavish pension obligations grated to government employees for decades. The Republicans want Milwaukee City and County to ask the voters if they will increase their local sales taxes to meet those pension obligations. If the voters agree, then the money must be used to retire the pension debt and other requirements will be imposed like requiring that new employees join the solvent state retirement system, prohibiting spending more money on the city trolley and maintaining law enforcement.
Governor Evers wants all of the money to bail out the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, but he does not want any of the restrictions. Furthermore, the governor does not want to have to ask the voters about raising taxes. He wants to allow Milwaukee City and County to just raise the taxes without asking for fear that the voters might say, “no.”
As a concession to the governor, the bill that finally passed the Assembly kept most of the deal for Milwaukee intact but spends more and watered down some of the restrictions. The Assembly Republicans negotiated and drafted the new version in private and rushed it to a vote without anyone having time to even read it. There is absolutely no reason to rush the bill through and the “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” mentality is exactly the kind of bad governance that gives politicians their slimy reputations.
Through all of this, nobody apparently thought to ask the Senate Republicans what they want in a bill. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu has expressed concerns for the bill and seems to share Governor Evers’ worry about asking the voters in Milwaukee before raising their taxes. It seems unlikely that the Senate will pass an identical bill to the Assembly thus forcing a reconciliation before it ever reaches the governor’s desk.
What are we doing here? Republicans are clamoring for a massive spending increase and trying to bail out the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County for decades of terrible policies? The ornamental conservative policies being hung on the bill are a glittery distraction from the abysmal spending and opening the floodgates for local tax increases.
If the bill ever reached Evers’ desk, let us hope that he will veto it to put an end to the Republicans’ momentary lunacy.
Excellent. Government should not profit on the misery of the citizens.
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously sided with a 94-year-old grandmother who lost her home to foreclosure and then lost the equity she had in the property when the county sold it and kept the profit.
A Minnesota County sold Geraldine Tyler’s condo for $40,000. Instead of returning the $25,000 difference between the sales price and what she owed in back taxes, the county pocketed the balance and used the extra money for forest development, county parks, and recreation programs.
In a unanimous opinion handed down less than a month after the justices heard arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts held that the Tyler had a plausible case that the county violated the Constitution’s takings clause.
“The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but not more,” Roberts wrote.
Lawmakers proposed loosening child labor laws in at least 10 states over the past two years, according to a report published last month by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Some bills became law, while others were withdrawn or vetoed.
Legislators in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa are actively considering relaxing child labor laws to address worker shortages, which are driving up wages and contributing to inflation. Employers have struggled to fill open positions after a spike in retirements, deaths and illnesses from COVID-19, decreases in legal immigration and other factors.
[…]
The Ohio Legislature is on track to pass a bill allowing students ages 14 and 15 to work until 9 p.m. during the school year with their parents’ permission. That’s later than federal law allows, so a companion measure asks the U.S. Congress to amend its own laws.
[…]
Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law last year allowing teens aged 16 and 17 to work unsupervised in child care centers. The state Legislature approved a bill this month to allow teens of that age to serve alcohol in restaurants. It would also expand the hours minors can work. Reynolds, who said in April she supports more youth employment, has until June 3 to sign or veto the measure.
As a kid who worked and the father of kids who worked, some of our child labor laws are just dumb. They are not congruent with modern life. For example, modern, productive kids are busy kids. They have band, sports, theater, etc. after school and often aren’t done until 6 or after. The 7 pm cutoff eliminates their ability to work at all. They could easily work until 9 and still have time to get some homework done and get a decent night’s sleep.
There is an inherent value and dignity in work. If kids don’t learn that early, they may never learn it.
Let kids work. It’s not about fixing a labor shortage. It’s about helping kids mature into productive people who take pride in themselves.
“Fifty percent of the market will not comply with DOE’s rule. That is a substantial amount of gas cooktops,” said Matthew Agen, chief regulatory counsel for energy at the American Gas Association. “Of the higher-end cooktops, professional-grade cooking products, about 96% will be wiped out. So a large percentage of the desirable products with the features that people are looking for will be wiped out.”
by Owen | 0638, 24 May 2323 | Politics | 2 Comments
Two comments… first, note the hypocrisy of the Democrats who run NYC. Second, I don’t care about Mohamed’s plight. He shouldn’t be here. The fact that he managed to go from Africa to Mexico and then illegally cross our border and make his way to New York does not make his problems America’s problems. Also note that, once again, we have a single man of military age illegally crossing our border. Millions of them are now saturating our society. There are consequences for allowing that.
NEWBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — Before he left Mauritania, the West African nation of his birth, Mohamed thought of New York as a place of “open arms,” a refuge for immigrants fleeing dire circumstances.
Now that he’s here, seeking political asylum from a government he feared would kill him, he doesn’t feel welcome. The 19-year-old has become a pawn in an escalating stand-off between New York City and suburban and upstate communities, which are using lawsuits, emergency orders and political pressure to keep people like him out.
[…]
After a journey that took him across the U.S. border with Mexico, he landed in a shelter system in New York City he found frightening and overcrowded. In one Brooklyn shelter, a room with 40 beds, someone stole his few remaining possessions as he slept.
So when outreach workers offered him the chance to relocate earlier this month, promising more space and chances to work, Mohamed took it. He joined other asylum seekers at two hotels a few miles outside the small Hudson River Valley city of Newburgh, about two hours north of the city.
Policies aimed at curbing the deadly effects of climate change are accelerating, prompting a rise in what experts identify as organised resistance by opponents of climate reform.
[…]
Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and a regular target for abuse by deniers of climate change, said he believed the rise in misinformation was “organised and orchestrated” by opponents of climate reforms.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why companies think that it is their responsibility to use the workplace to correct society’s ills. They should certainly keep bigotry and hate out of the workplace (we call that “professionalism”), but why does Uber and other companies feel like they need to use their time and resources to address societal or cultural issues? Not only is it not their job, it is fraught with professional and market peril – like we see in this story.
CNN —
Uber’s diversity chief is on leave from the company after criticism from some employees related to an internal panel called “Don’t Call Me Karen.”
Bo Young Lee, Uber’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, is on a leave of absence, Noah Edwardsen, an Uber spokesperson, confirmed to CNN on Monday.
Lee oversaw a series of sessions called “Moving Forward” at Uber that focused on issues around race, gender identity and class. One of the more recent sessions was titled, “Don’t Call Me Karen,” and focused on the experiences of a handful of women leaders, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. “Karen” is a slang term that usually refers to a middle-aged white woman with a strong sense of entitlement, often at the expense of people of color.
[…]
According to the New York Times, which was first to report the news, Black and Hispanic workers at Uber first felt that organizers of the event were focusing more on the harms caused by using the moniker “Karen” than the harms white people can inflict on people of color.
In a follow-up listening session, the Times reported, some employees felt their concerns weren’t being heard and that instead of a chance to provide feedback or have a dialogue, they were lectured by Lee about their response to the initial “Don’t Call Me Karen” event.
As a concession to the governor, the bill that finally passed the Assembly kept most of the deal for Milwaukee intact but spends more and watered down some of the restrictions. The Assembly Republicans negotiated and drafted the new version in private and rushed it to a vote without anyone having time to even read it. There is absolutely no reason to rush the bill through and the “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” mentality is exactly the kind of bad governance that gives politicians their slimy reputations.
Through all of this, nobody apparently thought to ask the Senate Republicans what they want in a bill. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu has expressed concerns for the bill and seems to share Governor Evers’ worry about asking the voters in Milwaukee before raising their taxes. It seems unlikely that the Senate will pass an identical bill to the Assembly thus forcing a reconciliation before it ever reaches the governor’s desk.
What are we doing here? Republicans are clamoring for a massive spending increase and trying to bail out the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County for decades of terrible policies? The ornamental conservative policies being hung on the bill are a glittery distraction from the abysmal spending and opening the floodgates for local tax increases.
If the bill ever reached Evers’ desk, let us hope that he will veto it to put an end to the Republicans’ momentary lunacy.
Agents from the Ajo Border Patrol Station were involved in the shooting while assisting the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The FBI and the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department are investigating the shooting, according to Customs and Border Protection. Tribal chairperson Ned Norris Jr. identified the dead man as Raymond Mattia.
“Our hearts go out to his family and all those impacted during this difficult time,” Norris Jr. said Saturday in a written statement. “As the investigation proceeds, the Nation expects full consideration of all related facts of the incident and an appropriate and expeditious response from relevant public safety agencies.”
Mattia was 2 feet from his front door when he was shot approximately 38 times, according to Tucson TV station KVOA. Mattia had called the Border Patrol because he had multiple migrants trespassing in his yard and he wanted help getting them off his property, KVOA reported.
The shooting happened in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which has the highest number of use-of-force incidents across the agency, with 158 incidents reported so far in fiscal year 2023, according to CBP data.
In March, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a U.S. citizen near Sasabe after a vehicle chase. The shooting was ruled a homicide by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The new law, also known as extreme risk protection orders, is expected to go into effect next spring. It will allow family members, police, mental health professionals, roommates and former dating partners to petition a judge to remove firearms from those they believe pose an imminent threat to themselves or others.
The judge would have 24 hours to decide on a protection order after a request is filed. If granted, the judge would then have 14 days to set a hearing during which the flagged person would have to prove they do not pose a significant risk. A standard order would last one year.
So if an ex-girlfriend accuses you of being unstable and a judge buys her line, it’s on you to prove that she’s wrong? This is modern American jurisprudence.
Teachers from around Wisconsin gathered at the state Capitol Saturday to ask for more education funding. They described their large class sizes, lack of mental health support for students and colleagues leaving the profession.
They called on lawmakers to support Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $2.6 billion funding boost for public schools, as the state contends with an unprecedented budget surplus most recently projected at $6.9 billion.
In addition to general aid for schools, Evers’ plan would support free meals for all students, more special education funding and more mental health support. Lawmakers, who have already tossed some of those provisions, are now crafting their own budget proposals through the Joint Finance Committee.
[…]
“It’s a desperate situation,” Strieker said. “The needs are higher than ever. And then from the teacher side, the cost of living goes up.”
According to the DPI, here’s the average per-student spending in the past decade.
In the past decade, spending is up a whopping 33.88%. If we are spending a full third more on schools than we did a decade ago and the teachers are still complaining about a lack of resources, where is all the money going? Yes, I do know the answer…
‘Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private,’ he wrote.
‘They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too.’
[…]
Referring to the broader issue of strict lockdown policies during the pandemic, Gorsuch added: ‘Doubtless, many lessons can be learned from this chapter in our history, and hopefully serious efforts will be made to study it.
‘One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.
‘A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force.’
He concluded: ‘Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others.
‘And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.’
Remember that Wisconsin’s Governor Evers was in the vanguard of Medical Totalitarianism until the Republican legislature and right-leaning Supreme Court yanked on the reins. The results would be different if it happened today after two liberal wins to the court.
EV drivers in Texas don’t pay at the pump, but will have to start paying a significant annual fee that critics are calling “punitive.”
Driving an electric vehicle in Texas is soon to become more expensive. Governor Greg Abbott signed a law (SB 505) on May 13 instituting new fees for registering and owning EVs in the state. Under the bill, electric car owners will have to pay $400 upon registering their vehicle. Then, every subsequent year, EV drivers will have to shell out an additional $200. Both of those fees are on top of the cost of the standard annual registration renewal fees, which are $50.75 each year for most passenger cars and trucks.
The law exempts mopeds, motorcycles, and other non-car EVs, and goes into effect starting on September 1, 2023.
Really, though, this is coming everywhere. Funding our road infrastructure with a gas tax doesn’t work in an EV world.
