August 5, 2015

Budget committee approves cutting Alabama Medicaid by $156 million

Source: al.com

It would cut the General Fund appropriation for Medicaid from $685 million to $529 million, a 23 percent reduction.

State Health Officer Don Williamson said the cuts would be compounded because state dollars are used to draw down federal money.

Williamson said the state would no longer be able to run a Medicaid program that complies with federal requirements.

He said that would mean a loss of federal funding, which would end the state program. That could lead to lawsuits and federal court intervention, he said.

Read more: http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/08/budget_committee_approves_cutt.html

July 4, 2015

My questions to some of the 2016 cnadidates

posted to rand pauls facebook page:

i'm not too confident i will get any response as they are tough questions that most presidential hopefuls don't want to put hard answers to.

i will post the same to clinton's, jebbers, sanders, and trump's pages as well.

[quote]

"here is a few questions for you.

i do not see a contact link or a way to create a new topic on your page so i will type the question here.

where do you stand on entitlements as a whole? just between medicare and medicaid the health care industry is propped up by 65% probably on the economy as a whole when you account for all the entitlement spending from Workers Comp to UI, SSDI, SSI, and all the anti poverty programs the entire economy is probably propped up by 80% and this figure is just an educated guess, what will you do to replace that lost economic activity and keep that huge loss from severely crashing our economy?

i am disabled suffering from numerous mental and physical health issues requiring regular doctors visits, medications and therapies to remain stable. i can and work part time and do work part time in the nursing home where my girlfriend is a registered nurse who i also worry about if entitlements were suddenly severely abruptly cut or eliminated. my mom is an Occupational Therapist.

all of us in the healthcare field and all directly and/or indirectly dependent on entitlement spending in one way or another. how do you intend to keep people in the healthcare field employed when entitlements get severely cut or eliminated?

how do you intend to address people in my circumstances, suffering from severe mental illness( schizoaffective disorder) , and multiple physical (diabetes, complex sleep apnea) disabilities?

how do you intend to handle high unemployment part time low wage no benefits jobs?

how about obscene CEO pay?

on taxes how will you address corporations such as GE who not only pay zero in taxes but get a rebate check from the government all while shipping some 57,000 jobs overseas?

how about the H1B visa people like what almost happened at Disney before bad publicity made them change their mind?

how do you intend to keep people like my girlfriend (52), and mom (61) employed post entitlement cuts and/or elimination?

how will you address mass immigrant migration and reform / get immigration under control?

how will you handle the over militarization of our local police?

how will you address the failing infrastructure, bridges, roads, rails?

how about education, how will you go about investing in our youth?

how about lost jobs due to increasing automation and robotization which is slated to hit even the long haul trucking and rail fields in the coming years?

how about these poor one sided free trade deals that allow other countries and private corporations sue sovereign governments in an international tribunal run by corporate lawyers?

how about these exercises by the us military on us soil such as jade helm 15? and many government agencies buying up millions of hollow point ammunition which according to many is to be used on us citizens during the coming martial law?

these are just a few of the many questions myself and many people i talk to have.

July 4, 2015

How does the USA compare to France?

i saw a video somewhere on the internet about the Great Brain Drain and mass exodus of business and wealthy from France, how does the USA compare to France as far as keeping the wealthy and business from leaving en masse like has happened in France?

How do we compare to Greece?

how About Puerto Rico?

is this the united states future?

are we headed down the same path?

seems there is a great collapse going on starting with these smaller countries and to a limited extent the bigger ones.

How do we maintain a balance between government spending (infrastructure, entitlements, education, military, etc?) and private sector spending while maintaining a healthy sustainable economy?

June 22, 2015

What?!? Private prisons suing states for millions if they don’t stay full

I find this appalling!!!! legislators have no shame!!!

http://rollingout.com/political-scandals/what-private-prisons-suing-states-for-millions-if-they-dont-stay-full/

Low crime rates bad for business for white-owned private prisons; they demand states keep them full
The prison-industrial complex is so out of control that private prisons have the sheer audacity to order states to keep beds full or face their wrath with stiff financial penalties, according to reports. Private prisons in some states have language in their contracts that state if they fall below a certain percentage of capacity that the states must pay the private prisons millions of dollars, lest they face a lawsuit for millions more.

And guess what? The private prisons, which are holding cash-starved states hostage, are getting away with it, says advocacy group, In the Public Interest.

In the Public Interest has reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning “quotas” for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those contracts reviewed. Those quotas can range from a mandatory occupancy of, for example, 70 percent occupancy in California to up to 100 percent in some prisons in Arizona.

It is very interesting and telling that so few major national news organization are willing to report on the monstrous, ravenous and criminal system that is devouring hundreds of thousands of black and brown boys. Even those who do not subscribe to conspiracy theories have looked askance at this shocking report.

Welcome to the greatest manifestation of modern-day slavery, ladies and gentlemen.

One of those private prisons, The Corrections Corporation of America, made an offer last year to the governors of 48 states to operate their prisons on 20-year contracts, according to In the Public Interest.

What makes these deals so odious and unscrupulous? Take a look:

1) The offer included a demand that those prisons remain 90 percent full for the duration of the operating agreement. You know what that means: if there are not enough prisoners then there will be an unspoken push for police to arrest more people and to have the courts send more to prison for petty, frivolous and nonviolent crimes. There will also be a “nudge” for judges to hand down longer or maximum sentences to satisfy this “quota.”

2) Private prison companies have also backed measures such as “three-strike” laws to maintain high prison occupancy.

3) When the crime rate drops so low that the occupancy requirements can’t be met, taxpayers are left footing the bill for unused facilities.

The report found that 41 of 62 contracts reviewed contained occupancy requirements, with the highest occupancy rates found in Arizona, Oklahoma and Virginia.

In Colorado, Democratic Gov. John Hinklooper agreed to close down five state-run prisons and instead send inmates to CCA’s three corrections facilities. That cost taxpayers at least $2 million to maintain the unused facilities.

It is getting more difficult to rationalize the societal cost of keeping prisons full just to satisfy private investors who treat prisoners as commodity and cattle .

June 11, 2015

Tenants Run Apartment Network (Jul, 1940)

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/tenants-run-apartment-network

I find this article interesting as I run a very low power am / fm radio station under part 15 of the FCC rules. the signal is very localized to my apartment complex where i live and i use professional broadcast grade studio equipment as well. what is pictured in that article is what would have passed as professional broadcast grade equipment in the 1940's.