USA News and Discussions

weatheriscool
Posts: 12727
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

'A Decent society would not let this happen': 30 million across US face food aid cuts
As of Wednesday, around 30 million people across the United States will have their family's food assistance slashed, despite high prices and expert warnings about a "hunger cliff."

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were initially increased at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although Republicans in 18 states had already ended the emergency allotments (EAs), households in the other 32 states along with Washington, D.C., Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have continued to receive them.
Read more:

https://www.rawstory.com/a-decent-socie ... -aid-cuts/
7
weatheriscool
Posts: 12727
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

weatheriscool
Posts: 12727
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Wyoming Legislature passes bills to ban medication abortion and exempt abortion as health care
Wyoming legislators approved two bills related to abortion this week, including a ban on medication abortion and a bill stating abortion is not health care, as a means of skirting the Wyoming Constitution in a court challenge to its abortion ban.

Voters in Wyoming approved adding a new section to the state’s constitution in 2012 amid criticism of the Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare. The amendment states, “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions. The parent, guardian or legal representative of any other natural person shall have the right to make health care decisions for that person.”

That constitutional provision was the basis for a Wyoming judge to grant a preliminary injunction in August halting enforcement of a trigger law passed by the Wyoming Legislature in 2021 that was set to go into effect following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to return the right to regulate abortion to the states.

The Wyoming Supreme Court is still considering whether to uphold or strike down the trigger law on those constitutional grounds. Until it does, abortion remains legal in Wyoming.

https://www.newsfromthestates.com/artic ... lth-care-1

They're coming after all birth control. These fuckers are insane.
weatheriscool
Posts: 12727
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Trump says an indictment would not end presidential campaign
Source: AP
OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would continue his third presidential campaign even if indicted.

“Absolutely, I wouldn’t even think about leaving,” Trump told reporters ahead of a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

Trump is under investigation by prosecutors probing his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election as well as his handling of classified documents, among other issues.


Trump delivered the conference’s headlining speech Saturday night, telling a cheering crowd of supporters that he was engaged in his “final battle” as he tries to return to the White House.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-AA18eevG
weatheriscool
Posts: 12727
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Florida lawmakers want to drop rifle-buying age from 21 to 18, a change made after Parkland shooting
Sun-Sentinel
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/polit ... story.html
Np paywall


TALLAHASSEE — Two House Republicans on Monday filed a proposal that would lower the minimum age from 21 to 18 to buy rifles and other “long” guns, potentially scrapping a high-profile change passed after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Rep. Bobby Payne, R-Palatka, and Rep. Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island, filed the proposal (HB 1543) as lawmakers prepared to begin the annual legislative session Tuesday.

Lawmakers in 2018 increased the minimum age from 18 to 21 to purchase long guns after former Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Nikolas Cruz, then 19, used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 students and faculty members and injure 17 others.

Federal law already barred people under 21 from buying handguns.
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Biden Proposes Raising Taxes on People Making Over $400,000 a Year to Help Fund Medicare
by Arianna Coghill
March 7, 2023

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a proposal to raise taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 annually in order to continue funding Medicare, marking a new front in the White House’s efforts to position itself as a critical safeguard against efforts to cut the program.

“The budget I am releasing this week will make the Medicare trust fund solvent beyond 2050 without cutting a penny in benefits,” Biden wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times. “In fact, we can get better value, making sure Americans receive better care for the money they pay into Medicare.”

The president will also seek to expand a measure passed last year that allows Medicare to negotiate the prices of specific prescription drugs with pharmaceutical companies.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives is all but certain to shut down any proposals for new taxes on the rich to help pay for entitlement programs they’ve otherwise threatened for years. In fact, several Republican lawmakers, as my colleague Abigail Weinberg has noted, have openly expressed their desire to cut Medicare benefits, a fact Biden called out in his most recent State of the Union address, prompting swift denials from the GOP.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... medicare/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

MAGA Extremists List Hostage Demands to Pay Our Nation’s Bills That Only Hurt Average Families

March 10 , 2023

Entire article:
(Common Dreams) WASHINGTON - Today, the MAGA House Freedom Caucus elevated their threats to hold the debt limit and U.S. economy hostage in exchange for a litany of extreme demands that would punish average Americans and protect their wealthy donors. With a slim 5-seat Republican House majority, the group has more than enough power to manufacture a default crisis that would have catastrophic consequences for Main Street and Wall Street alike.

Among the non-starter demands from MAGA extremists are: punishing the poor, rolling back the Biden administration’s popular student loan debt forgiveness plan, and gutting resources in the Inflation Reduction Act for holding wealthy tax cheats accountable. If these Republicans have their way, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found freezing these IRS enforcement resources would add $114.4 billion to the deficit over a decade.

“The MAGA extremists running the House fully intend to manufacture a disastrous default crisis by making demands they know to be non-starters – like letting wealthy tax cheats and big polluters off the hook,” said Liz Zelnick, Accountable.US’ Director of Economic Security and Corporate Power. “These power-hungry lawmakers are so determined to keep the Biden administration from rebuilding the middle class that they’re willing to tank the economy to do it. They demand sacrifice only from everyday Americans while they insist on preserving or even expanding wasteful tax breaks for billionaires and greedy corporations. They’re playing a dangerous game of chicken with the economy and the lives of millions of working families.”
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/m ... families]

caltrek’s comment: Looks like “conservatives” here in the U.S. are trying to do to this country what “conservatives” in Great Britain did to that country. They never learn, or simply don’t care. Ideology takes precedent over what should be learned experience and common sense. Perhaps it is because of the ability of a tiny minority that is in the 1% to fool the rank and file in to following their policy of redistributing wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich and of allowing corporations to externalize costs while internalizing profits. Mechanisms like gerrymandering and the Citizens United decision don’t help.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Did an Email to Sidney Powell from a 'Ghost' Push Fox News' 2020 Election Lies
March 10, 2023

Extract:
(Alternet) …According to The Daily Beast, less than a week after the 2020 election, and "hours after" President Joe Biden was declared winner,"cactus artist," Marlene Bourne, sent Powell, Fox host Lou Dobbs, and conservative activist Tom Fitton an email laying out the case against Dominion as she saw it."

The Daily Beast reports:

But the ideas' origin is even more "kooky" than Bartiromo might realize. In an interview with The Daily Beast, the woman behind that email—a Minnesota artist named Marlene Bourne—said that she based her now nationally prominent ideas about election fraud on a wide variety of sources, including hidden messages she detects in films, song lyrics she hears on the radio, and overheard conversations she hears while in line at the supermarket checkout.
Read more here: https://www.alternet.org/email-ghost-wo ... election/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
weatheriscool
Posts: 12727
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Pence says 'history will hold Donald Trump accountable' for January 6th
Source: CNN

Former Vice President Mike Pence made his most blistering comments yet about former President Donald Trump’s role in the January 6th attack on the US Capitol during remarks Saturday evening at the annual Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington, DC.

Pence began his remarks at the dinner, which traditionally features politicians making jokes about notable Washington figures, with lighthearted comments about Trump, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and several Republicans expected to run for president in 2024, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

He then took a serious tone, noting the attack on the Capitol was “one thing I haven’t joked about” and calling January 6th “a tragic day.”

Pence rebuked Trump for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack, saying he was “wrong” for claiming Pence had the authority to overturn the results of the 2020 election in his role presiding over Congress that day, saying “history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/11/politics ... index.html
weatheriscool
Posts: 12727
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: USA News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

A new poll suggests Ron DeSantis’ 'anti-woke' crusade will backfire
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opi ... -rcna74350
March 12, 2023, 7:35 AM PDT
By Sarah Posner, MSNBC Columnist

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis prepares to run for president in 2024, a new poll suggests that he may be overplaying his hand with his war on “wokeness.”

The poll, conducted by Ipsos and published last week in USA Today, shows that 56% of Americans consider “woke” a positive term, meaning “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.” Even more than a third of Republicans agree. Just 39% agreed with a negative definition: “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.”

Many Republican leaders have made “anti-wokeness” a cornerstone of their political agenda, but DeSantis has led the pack by upending the lives and liberties of Floridians through authoritarian book bans and speech codes. “Florida is where woke goes to die,” DeSantis crowed when he was sworn in for a second term earlier this year.

But if most Americans believe “woke” is a positive term, why would they want a president to suffocate it, and replace it with autocratic power grabs and far right curricula? DeSantis won his gubernatorial reelection handily, but he might be a little high on his own supply.

DeSantis’ increasingly draconian measures give Americans plenty of opportunities to examine exactly what killing “wokeness” entails, beyond the rapturous admiration of GOP primary voters. Following last year’s passage of the Parental Rights in Education Act -- also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law — banning discussion of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity in public schools, countless Floridians have lost their rights. Teachers in same-sex marriages left or lost their jobs. Children of gay parents now fear mentioning their parents’ sexual orientation at school. Librarians must undergo state training on the law, and face losing their livelihood if they lend books blacklisted by the state education board.
Post Reply