This could be the next food fight in Congress.  Families in states like Florida that turned down Medicaid expansion, depend on chip to cover their kids.  They pay a small monthly premium for the coverage.  Funding is running out on this program. 

The program serves children from families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. Unlike Medicaid, it’s not an open-ended entitlement program, so states have more flexibility to limit eligibility, which ranges from 100 percent of the federal poverty line to about 400 percent.

Exactly how states structure their programs determines the scale of their budget losses if Congress fails to renew funding after Sept. 30. Fourteen states keep their CHIP programs separate from Medicaid and could collectively lose upwards of $5 billion in funding; eight states have expanded Medicaid to encompass CHIP and could collectively lose $1 billion; others operate a combination of the two depending on income levels.

By Russell Berman, The Atlantic, Feb. 24, 2015

A report on the 2014 election reveals a party that has yet to move past the first stage of grief.

Rudy say Obama doesn't love America. I say Guiliani loves himself more than America. Rudy goes on to say he isn't a racist because Obama's Mom was White. I say if Guiliani was in a White lynch mob in 1948, and the guy with the rope around his neck pleaded 'My Mom was White!', Rudy wouldn't hold up the lynching for a New York nanosecond.

As the Brookings Institution noted, the study can't tell us whether student loans are more stressful than other kinds of debt. The size of the measured effect was also rather small. But with former students holding an estimated $1.2 trillion in student loan debt across the country, and an average debt load of nearly $30,000,college loans are probably one of the biggest sources of debt-related stress in the country. A recent Federal Reserve surveyestimated that student loan debt has increased 250% in the past three decades, even after adjusted for inflation. Americans only owe more on home mortgages.

It is doing more then just stressing out the younger generation. It will keep them from buying homes and starting a family.  45% of young adults are now tied down to students loans.  This will have to be addressed soon or it will bring the economy down.  The next banking crises will be because of student loans. .  

This is a report from Bernie Sanders who is on the Budget Committee.  It is 12 pages long with lots of charts and history.  It is a must read because we are going to see a real messy fight on this before the end of the 2 years.  I would also book mark it and pass it on to others. You will want to refer back too it when the dog fight starts. 

On the very first day of the new Congress, House Republicans manufactured a crisis for SSDI by passing a rule that would prevent Congress from rebalancing funds between OASI and SSDI 12 through a point of order. This rule, which was approved by the House of Representatives, requires any rebalancing to improve the combined 75-year actuarial balance of both trust funds. Absent a deal, DI beneficiaries would face an immediate 20 percent cut in benefits, creating unnecessary anxiety and pain for vulnerable Americans. 

This will cause a 19-20% cut in benefits to the disabled.  This can lead to unnecessary suffering and even loss of life for these Americans.  They don't get enough support as it is.  

For several years now, some Republicans have looked for opportunities to undermine the Social Security program. Either by complaining that it is unsustainable, that it is too generous or as in the case now, that there isn’t enough money to go around between seniors and the disabled. This is patently untrue. In fact, Social Security has a $2.8 trillion surplus in its trust fund and can pay out all benefits to all beneficiaries for the next 18 years. This is the assessment of the Social Security Administration. There is no debate about it and any attempt to argue otherwise is simply an effort to mislead and confuse.

They have been trying to get rid of this program since 1935.  They think they will be able to pit seniors against the disabled by stopping the reallocation and balancing of the trust fund.  It looks like the Democratic members of Congress are not going to roll over on this.  Sanders is going to lead the charge.  He will make this a campaign issue for the 2016 election cycle.  

We are just now beginning to understand the terror that south committed against African Americans after the civil war.  This is a good read.  

For me to see the counties in Florida listed as where the most lynching took place explains how today they are willing to send the bat shit crazy house reps to Congress. 

The mysterious death of an Argentine prosecutor has whipped up new suspicions around the case of who bombed the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in 1994 and whether there was an official cover-up, but the evidence on both counts remains dubious or discredited, says Gareth Porter.

Now that Walker is under the national eye watching him because of his latest polling in the GOP primary rodeo, his over micro management of Wisconsin is going to come to light.  Wisconsin right leaning media has always given him a pass on all his attempts at cover ups.  He tried to change the most famous and well known university mission statement in this country,"The Wisconsin Idea. "  It has been around since Robert LaFollette was governor of Wisconsin a 111 years ago. 

It was not enough for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin suddenly to propose a destructive 13 percent cut in state support for the University of Wisconsin’s widely respected system. His biennial budget plan, released Tuesday, reached gratuitously into the university’s hallowed 111-year-old mission statement to delete a bedrock principle: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.”

The budget — patently tailored for the governor’s conservative campaign for the Republican presidential nomination — inserted language that the university should be more narrowly concerned with meeting “the state’s work force needs.”

Brazenly deleted as well from the mission statement, which is nationally appreciated in education circles as the Wisconsin Idea, were the far from controversial goals “to educate people and improve the human condition” and “serve and stimulate society.” It was as if a trade school agenda were substituted for the idea of a university.

He tried to blame this on everyone else but himself when he met a full force push back from Wisconsin alumni including Republicans. Only fact checkers found his pants on fire and so did the New York Times Editorial find his excuses weak.  

United Nations News Service, 3 February, 2015

The head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voiced alarm today over the reported destruction of thousands of books in museums, libraries and universities across Mosul – the northern Iraq city currently controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).....

Does the legal definition of sexual intercourse apply to homosexual sex? That's the question facing the Florida Supreme Court as it considers the case of a Key West man charged with violating the state's HIV disclosure law. He didn't tell his male partner that he was infected. His attorney asserts that the Florida law as written, which says it's a crime to withhold the information only if "sexual intercourse" takes place, applies specifically to sex between a man and a woman.

The prosecution's case relies on the contention that the term was clearly intended to refer to both heterosexual and homosexual activity.