Unable to defeat Obamacare in the Senate Donald Trump is just going to starve it to death instead.

Courtesy of Vox:

The Trump administration has let funding for Obamacare’s $63 million in-person outreach program lapse, leading to layoffs and confusion among nonprofits that enroll vulnerable populations in coverage. 

“I have delivered 10 layoff notices to staff members,” says Donna Friedsam, director of Covering Wisconsin. “We don’t have a funding flow anymore.” 

The government had previously announced it would cut the budget for Obamacare’s navigator program by 41 percent. But right now, the program has no funding at all. Last year’s grants ran out on September 1, and the administration still has not awarded next year’s money. 

The sudden funding halt comes at a critical time for the Affordable Care Act. Navigator groups were just beginning to ramp up outreach for the health law’s open enrollment period, which begins November 1. Now, some have done an about-face: They’ve canceled outreach work and appointments with potential enrollees because they have no budget to cover those costs. 

These groups often work with the most vulnerable populations enrolled under the Affordable Care Act. One-third of those who seek in-person help signing up for coverage do not have internet at home, and one in 10 do not speak English. 

You have to add this latest tactic to the ones already in underway to undermine the Affordable Care Act, such as weakening enforcement of the individual mandate, imposing employment requirements for Medicaid recipients, and refuse to do any advertising to bring new clients into the system.

Essentially Trump is working to kill the program through neglect.

However all this really does is to reinforce the need for the Medicare for all program that is now receiving so much support among Democrats.

That is why we need to turn out in huge numbers in 2018 and get as many new Democratic Senators and House members as possible.

There has rarely been a more important reason to get out the vote as we have right now, so if we cannot get our shit together in this midterm than we have nobody to blame for what happens next except for ourselves. 

Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild even as Republicans vote to take a billion out of disaster relief money to pay for his border wall.

Courtesy of TPM:  

President Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild from Harvey-caused epic flooding, but his Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the president’s border wall. 

The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account is part of a massive spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when lawmakers return from their August recess. The $876 million cut, which is included in the 1,305-page measure’s homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump’s down payment on the U.S.-Mexico border wall that the president repeatedly promised Mexico would finance. 

So here's the thing Texas, on the one hand you won't have to worry about all of those pesky Mexicans taking the jobs you don't want to do anyway, but on the other hand you will be submerged under water.

Hey, nothing's perfect. 

However things may not be as dire as all that.

It seems sure that GOP leaders will move to reverse the disaster aid cut next week as floodwaters cover Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, and tens of thousands of Texans have sought refuge in shelters. There’s only $2.3 billion remaining in federal disaster coffer.

Poor Donald. Here is he all ready to finally achieve his xenophobic dream of keeping brown people out of America, and along comes some natural disaster, super sized by the climate change he refuses to believe in, to ruin the whole thing.

Oh well, surely those Mexicans were only kidding about not paying for it, right?

Trump administration wants to strip one billion in funding from UN peacekeeping operations. Gee, how humane.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

The White House is seeking to cut $1 billion in funding for U.N. peacekeeping operations and to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars for other U.N. programs that care for needy children and seek to lift the world’s poorest out of a life of grinding poverty, according to two diplomatic sources briefed on the plan. 

The proposal is certain to face strong pushback from Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, who warned that President Donald Trump’s budget will never be passed. But it reflected the White House’s clear desire to jettison America’s traditional role as the champion of the downtrodden and embrace that of a military powerhouse to be feared. 

The White House budget office informed State Department officials this week that the administration plans to eliminate all U.S. funding to the $326 million International Organizations and Programs account, which provides more than $130 million to UNICEF — a sizable chunk of the more than $500 million the United States contributed to the U.N. agency in 2016 — and around $70 million to the U.N. Development Programme. 

They were also told to brace for a 40 percent cut to the State Department’s U.N. peacekeeping budget. The United States contributed more than $2 billion to the U.N.’s $8 billion-plus peacekeeping budget last year.

I guess Trump is trying to save money to cover the costs of around the clock Secret Service protection for his family and repeated trips to Mar-a-Lago.

What are the lives of a bunch of people who are clearly not Americans in comparison to that?

It is so hard to type while I keep having to face palm in shame.

Conservative groups, including the Koch brothers, spending millions of dollars on media to spread misinformation about climate change.

Charles and David Koch

Courtesy of Desmog: 

Millions of dollars have been pouring into conservative media outlets and student journalism projects from the same groups funding climate science denial, a DeSmog analysis has found. 

Analysis of IRS tax filings shows the funding groups, including some linked to the oil billionaire Koch brothers, are trying to combat a perceived left-wing bias in media with cash to ideologically-aligned projects. 

Many of the funded journalism projects also produce stories that claim human-caused climate change is either a liberal hoax or that policies to mitigate it, such as promotion of renewable energy, are an unnecessary drag on the economy. 

DeSmog found that two linked funds — Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund — have been a key source of cash for organisations attacking climate science and opposing policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

DCF and DT have been described as the “dark money ATM” of the US conservative movement.

Not really a surprise, just a reminder that much of what is broadcast by Right Wing news outlets is propaganda paid for by one conservative group or another. And usually the misinformation is potentially damaging to this country and in this case even to the planet on which we live.

Well this explains a lot.

FACT: State prison spending has grown faster than education spending. Let's fix that. https://t.co/fcgqxCDQAH pic.twitter.com/j4DEMRUhFo

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 23, 2016

Could you imagine how much more successful we would be as a country if these numbers were reversed?

I have been saying for years that our schools are not failing out country, our country is failing our schools.

If every politician who claimed that they were determined to improve education in this country actually meant what they said we would be a nation filled with highly educated, highly motivated young people just aching to take us into the future.

Franklin Graham has quit the Republican party because they are funding Planned Parenthood. How long do you think it will take them to notice?

"That's it I'm out of here unless they beg me to stay. Hey, isn't anybody going to beg me?"

Courtesy of the Facebook:

 Shame on the Republicans and the Democrats for passing such a wasteful spending bill last week. And to top it off, funding Planned Parenthood! A Huffington Post article called it “a big win for Planned Parenthood.” I call it a big loss for America. After all of the appalling facts revealed this year about Planned Parenthood, our representatives in Washington had a chance to put a stop to this, but they didn’t. There’s no question—taxpayers should not be paying for abortions! Abortion is murder in God’s eyes. Seeing and hearing Planned Parenthood talk nonchalantly about selling baby parts from aborted fetuses with utter disregard for human life is reminiscent of Joseph Mengele and the Nazi concentration camps! That should’ve been all that was needed to turn off the faucet for their funding. Nothing was done to trim this 2,000 page, $1.1 trillion budget. This is an example of why I have resigned from the Republican Party and declared myself Independent. I have no hope in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or Tea Party to do what is best for America. Unless more godly men and women get in this process and change this wicked system, our country is in for trouble. I want to challenge Christians, even pastors, across the country to pray about running for office where they can have an impact. We need mayors, country commissioners, city council members, school board members who will uphold biblical values.

Well now that is quite a rant.

Look, he even invoked Nazism.

Sadly for Graham I seriously doubt that anybody gives a shit. 

The Republican party is dying, so obviously the first ones off the ship are the rats.

Alaska lawmaker wants to do away with some rural schools and use online courses instead. Wanna guess where she's from?

Courtesy of Alaska Public Media:

That there are new ideas for changing how the state pays for education isn’t a surprise. That this cost-saving proposal could close 60 schools across the state is. 

“Certainly there has been talk that 10 students is, quite frankly — with the technology that we have today and the options that are available — it’s just too expensive,” Rep. Lynn Gattis said. 

Gattis is a Republican from Wasilla and chairs the House Education Committee. She’s one of the lawmakers considering introducing legislation to change a number of things about how schools in Alaska are funded. One of her ideas is to increase the minimum threshold for schools to receive full funding. She’s considering proposing 25 students as the minimum, but she’s open to a number higher or lower than that. 

“If I was in charge, I would open up those options whether it be virtual schools — I went to school when it was correspondence back in the day and we have come a long way,” Gattis said.

So Gattis was educated through a correspondence school, well that answers a lot of questions. 

And of course, of course, she is representing Wasilla.

Where else?

We have already closed a number of rural schools due to the fact that they did not have the minimum number of students available to keep them open, increasing the number to 25 would see many more close as well. That should be the opposite of what we are trying to do for our children.

As for online courses, well besides the fact that the students would not have personal interactions with an actual teacher, the largest internet provider up here, GCI, only covers this much area.

That's pretty good considering how bad things were in the past, but that is still a lot of communities left in the dark.

No this Gattis person is an idiot, and I would assume that nobody is paying any real attention to her concerning this issue.

After all she's from Wasilla!

Any ideas on improving education opportunities that come from Wasilla should be dismissed out of hand.

E-mail proves Exxon knew about man made climate change back in 1981 yet still spent millions to promote denial of that truth.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial. 

The email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago – factoring that knowledge into its decision about an enormous gas field in south-east Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time. 

“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2,” or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change. 

However, Exxon’s public position was marked by continued refusal to acknowledge the dangers of climate change, even in response to appeals from the Rockefellers, its founding family, and its continued financial support for climate denial. Over the years, Exxon spent more than $30m on thinktanks and researchers that promoted climate denial, according to Greenpeace.

It should be noted that recently Exxon stated that they no longer fund climate change denial, which of course would be more impressive if it did not come 27 years too late.

There are of course other fossil fuel companies still spending millions to undermine the scientific findings, and I think we can all assume that they know the truth just like Exxon did way back in 1981.

They are murdering our planet in the name of profits, and we are still allowing it to happen.

Stephen Colbert decides to fund every grant request made by public school teachers in South Carolina. Why? Because he's a damn hero, that's why.

Courtesy of Greenville Online: 

Comedian Stephen Colbert announced Thursday that he would fund every existing grant request South Carolina public school teachers have made on the education crowdfunding website DonorsChoose.org. 

Colbert made the announcement on a live video feed Thursday at a surprise event at Alexander Elementary School in Greenville. 

Colbert partnered with The Morgridge Family Foundation 's Share Fair Nation and ScanSource, which is headquartered in Greenville, to fund nearly 1,000 projects for more than 800 teachers at over 375 schools, totaling $800,000. 

"Using the proceeds of the sale of my old set on The Colbert Report which we auctioned off, and with the generous matching funds from The Morgridge Family Foundation and ScanSource, DonorsChoose is going to flash-fund all 1,000 projects in South Carolina," Colbert said. "Enjoy your learning, South Carolina." 

The event was attended by local and state school officials, including state schools Superintendent Molly Spearman. 

"There are going to be some happy, happy teachers across the state," Spearman said. "This is Teacher Appreciation Week, so what a great way to say 'thank you teachers for what you're doing every day.'"

Wow! Just wow!

Not to brag, but when I decide to idolize somebody they usually continue to provide multiple reasons why they deserve to be idolized.

And this guy deserves all of the adulation coming his way.

I swear if Colbert ever seriously decides to run for office in South Carolina he is going to win that election in a landslide. 

John Boehner blinks, House passes clean DHS bill with no attempt to defund Obama's immigration executive order.

Courtesy of CNN:  

The House cleared legislation Tuesday that will keep the agency operating through the end of September after a standoff last week threatened to shutter the agency and furlough thousands of workers. The 257-167 vote sends the bill to President Barack Obama for his signature. 

Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who rarely casts votes, backed the bill, along with his top lieutenants. A majority of House Republicans opposed the bill. Just 75 GOP lawmakers joined with 182 Democrats to push it across the finish line. 

The legislation does nothing to rein in Obama's immigration executive orders -- a top priority of conservatives. That issue was a sticking point for weeks as Republicans tried to tie DHS funding to the repeal of the orders but the party couldn't overcome Democratic filibusters in the Senate.

Seriously who didn't know that eventually the Republicans were going to have to cave on this?

I mean how did the so-called "party of fighting terrorism" think they were going to be able to justify refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security?

But you know this is REALLY going to piss off the teabaggers and they are going to work non-stop to remove Boehner from his leadership position.

House Republicans are so obstinate that they cannot even bring themselves to agree with other Republicans.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

The House of Representatives voted Friday night to avert a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, so they can come back and have the same fight in a week. 

The vote was the result of a divide between Republicans in the House and Senate over whether to surrender now or hold out for one more week. The GOP had been hoping to use the DHS funding battle to block President Barack Obama's latest executive actions on immigration. Senate Democrats successfully pushed Republican leaders to allow a full-year DHS bill without immigration riders. That legislation passed the Senate 68 to 31 earlier on Friday, after even the most hardline Republicans said the effort to kill Obama's plans through the funding bill was futile. 

But House Republicans weren't ready to cave. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) brought a three-week continuing resolution to a vote Friday afternoon, only to be blocked when 52 Republicans joined the majority of Democrats in opposing it. House GOP leaders had to regroup, apparently reaching a deal with the more conservative members of their caucus to bring up a smaller stopgap measure that would keep operations running at DHS for just one more week. 

The Senate first passed the one-week continuing resolution by a voice vote, just hours before DHS was poised to shut down. The House then approved the measure by a roll call vote of 357 to 60. President Barack Obama signed it into law just before midnight. A majority of Democrats joined Republicans to vote for the short-term fix, after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told her colleagues that the passage of the one-week resolution would assure a vote on a full funding bill next week.

This is of course nothing but really bad Kabuki theater, because when a week is up and the Republicans try to force through a funding bill that strips funding for the immigration piece, the President will veto it, and they will be back at square one.  

I know the Republicans are hoping that the American people will blame any government shutdown or defunding of Homeland Security on Obama, but history has proven that is unlikely to be the case.

Right now the American people are watching is disgust as the Republicans, who now control both the House and the Senate, fight among themselves while the President pushes to do something significant about our broken immigration policies.

This seems like a lose/lose for the GOP, and a huge win for the man in the Oval Office.

Pennsylvania's Teabagger Governor has drained education funds so badly that at least one school is charging parents $613 per student to help them to provide a public school education to their children.

Courtesy of Alternet:

Want to see a public school system in its death throes? Look no further than Philadelphia. There, the school district is facing end times, with teachers, parents and students staring into the abyss created by a state intent on destroying public education. 

On Thursday the city of Philadelphia announced that it would be borrowing $50 million to give the district, just so it can open schools as planned on Sept. 9, after Superintendent William Hite threatened to keep the doors closed without a cash infusion. The schools may open without counselors, administrative staff, noon aids, nurses, librarians or even pens and paper, but hey, kids will have a place to go and sit. 

The $50 million fix is just the latest band-aid for a district that is beginning to resemble a rotting bike tube, covered in old patches applied to keep it functioning just a little while longer. At some point, the entire system fails. 

Things have gotten so bad that at least one school has asked parents to chip in $613 per student just so they can open with adequate services, which, if it becomes the norm, effectively defeats the purpose of equitable public education, and is entirely unreasonable to expect from the city’s poorer neighborhoods. 

The needs of children are secondary, however, to a right-wing governor in Tom Corbett who remains fixated on breaking the district in order to crush the teachers union and divert money to unproven experiments like vouchers and privately run charters. If the city’s children are left uneducated and impoverished among the smoldering wreckage of a broken school system, so be it.

To be clear, the schools are in crisis because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania refuses to fund them adequately. The state Constitution mandates that the Legislature “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education,” but that language appears to be considered some kind of sick joke at the state capital in Harrisburg.

I think that this is a very troubling example of how the Republican politicians are approaching their jobs these days.

Whether they are Senators and Congressmen blocking every policy put forward by the President, governors refusing to work to help implement Obamacare, or State Senators working hard to destroy Roe Vs Wade one draconian bill at a time, the Republicans seem to be on a mission of slash and burn politics. If they don't like it, or fear that the American people will and give credit to their opposition, then their job is to destroy it or make it unworkable.

More and more it seems that the GOP, and especially their Teabaggger contingent, are dedicated to the idea of destroying government, public education, and health care by sabotaging them from within and then standing back and pointing out the "fact" that they are failures.

The ONLY solution to this problem is to vote every Republican possible out of office and give the party that understands how to make government work to do just that.

Essentially if YOU are voting for the Republican candidate, YOU are part of the problem, NOT part of the solution.

Churches threaten to pull funding if Boy Scouts of America drop anti-gay policies.

Courtesy of Salon:  

The Boy Scouts of America announced earlier this week that they are considering an end to their decades-long ban on gay members, leaving it to regional and local councils to dictate membership guidelines on sexuality. 

The news was met with cheers from scouts across the country who have been banned from the organization after coming out, but many conservative and religious leaders are angry about what they see as the organization abandoning its long-standing commitment to biblical principles. 

“If that is what the leadership is doing, then I think it will be a sad day in the life of the Boy Scouts of America,” Fred Luter, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told the Baptist Press. “This is a tradition that so many of us across the country grew up in. We were in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in elementary school, and this organization has always stood for biblical principles — all the things that grounded our lives as a young kid growing up. To now see this organization that I thought stood on biblical principles about to give in to the politically correct thing is very disappointing.” 

About 70 percent of all Boy Scout troops are sponsored by faith-based organizations, with the Southern Baptists, Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, United Methodist Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints representing the most troops, according to Fox News. 

And many are suggesting they will break financial and membership ties with the organization if the policy goes through. 

“Churches of all faiths and denominations, including Southern Baptist churches, will be forced to reevaluate whether they can, in good conscience, continue to host Scout troops given that the Scouts appear poised to turn their backs on this clear biblical and moral issue,” Roger Oldham, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention, said. 

Kay Godfrey, a spokesman for Boy Scouts in the Great Salt Lake Council, told NPR: “We’ve had 100 years of a very conservative approach to scouting. A major shift along these lines could change the face of scouting, but we’ll have to just wait and see.”

Is anybody else simply sick and tired of watching Christian organizations attempting to stop progress in this country, time and time again? Because I certainly am!

You are free to believe whatever you want, that is your right, but forcing your religious views onto organizations, at the detriment of young children, just seems completely indefensible to me.

And these people need to face the facts. Progress IS coming.

And no amount of threats, or coercion, or shaming is going to keep it from coming. It never has, and it never will.

Schools in England to lose funding if they do not teach evolution. Excellent idea!

Courtesy of the BBC:  

Failing to teach evolution by natural selection in science lessons could lead to new free schools losing their funding under government changes. 

The new rules state that from 2013, all free schools in England must teach evolution as a "comprehensive and coherent scientific theory". 

The move follows scientists' concerns that free schools run by creationists might avoid teaching evolution. 

Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, said he was "delighted". 

Sir Paul told BBC News the previous rules on free schools and the teaching of evolution versus creationism had been "not tight enough". 

He said that although the previous rules had confined creationism to religious education lessons, "the Royal Society identified a potential issue that schools could have avoided teaching evolution by natural selection in science lessons or dealt with it in a such a perfunctory way, that the main experience for students was the creationist myth". 

So far 79 free schools have opened in England with 118 more due to open in 2013 and beyond. They are funded directly by central government but unlike other state-funded schools are run by groups of parents, teachers, charities and religious groups and do not have to abide by the national curriculum. 

The new rules mean if a free school is found to be acting in breach of its funding agreement - for example, teaching creationism as a scientific fact or not teaching evolution - the Department for Education will take "swift action which could result in the termination of that funding agreement"

Right now in several states all over this country there are charter schools, which accept state funding in the form of school vouchers (Most famously Louisiana), and which teach only a perfunctory version of evolution, or no evolution at all, in favor of stressing the completely non-scientific Creationist myth.

Personally I believe that there should NEVER be a time when a religious based curriculum is introduced into a science classroom, however if that is not possible due the vast number of idiots in our country, than at least I would like to see a law passed similar to this one in England, which insists that a comprehensive approach to evolution be taught to children, or risk losing their federal funding.

After all they are in school for education, not indoctrination.