Study: 15 Percent of US Youth Out of School, Work

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Photo Credit: APAlmost 6 million young people are neither in school nor working, according to a study released Monday.

That’s almost 15 percent of those aged 16 to 24 who have neither desk nor job, according to The Opportunity Nation coalition, which wrote the report.

Other studies have shown that idle young adults are missing out on a window to build skills they will need later in life or use the knowledge they acquired in college. Without those experiences, they are less likely to command higher salaries and more likely to be an economic drain on their communities.

“This is not a group that we can write off. They just need a chance,” said Mark Edwards, executive director of the coalition of businesses, advocacy groups, policy experts and nonprofit organizations dedicated to increasing economic mobility. “The tendency is to see them as lost souls and see them as unsavable. They are not.”

But changing the dynamic is not going to be easy.

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NJ Becomes 14th State to Recognize Gay Marriage (+video)

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Photo Credit: MYFOXNY.COMSome couples in New Jersey had waited decades. At the stroke of midnight the moment arrived as New Jersey became the the 14th state to legalize gay marriage.

The celebrations came three days after the state Supreme Court rejected Gov. Chris Christie’s request to delay the start of the nuptials while he appealed a lower court’s ruling on same-sex marriage.

Weddings were held in several cities and towns across the state in the first minutes of Monday morning, as soon as a court order requiring the state to recognize gay marriage went into effect.

Peter Connell and David Calle have been together 13 years and were among those toasting their commitment at midnight. Now official they say the historic day was made even better when Christie announced Monday morning that he is dropping his appeal in the legal case.

My9 New Jersey

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Americans on Food Stamps Decline–From 47,760,247 to 47,637,497

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Photo Credit: APThe number of Americans enrolled in the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—commonly known as food stamps—declined from 47,760,247 in June to 47,637,407 in July, according to data released this month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At 47,637,407, there are still more Americans taking food stamps than there are people in Spain, which, according to the CIA World Factbook, has a population of 47,370,542.

The number of households benefiting from food stamps also declined from June to July, dropping from 23,116,892 to 23,074,914 in July…

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Police: Man, 68, Shoots At 22-Year-Old Man Upon Finding Him In Bed With Wife

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Photo Credit: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department via Getty ImagesA local senior citizen shot a 22-year-old man after he caught him sleeping beside his wife in their guest house.

According to ABC 15, the unnamed 68-year-old man found Stephen Trevor Chapman, 22, slumbering next to his 63-year-old wife. Authorities told the station that, upon discovering the pair, he woke Chapman by tapping him with a cane and telling him to leave.

Chapman reportedly responded by yelling and refusing to go. Officials with the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office then said that the homeowner, who is said to have Parkinson’s disease, fired what was referred to as a “warning shot” in Chapman’s direction.

The bullet hit a nearby wall, and Chapman sustained a minor hand injury from a stray fragment.

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Internet Breast Milk is Unsafe for Babies (+video)

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Photo Credit: Nationwide Children’s HospitalA study led by Dr. Sarah A. Keim from the Center for Biobehavioral Health at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and colleagues found that 75 percent of breast milk acquired over the internet is not safe for babies according to their report in the Oct. 21, 2013, issue of the journal Pediatrics.

This research is the first to examine the safety and practices used by nonprofit milk banks and individuals that sell breast milk on the internet.

The investigators compared 101 breast milk samples bought online with 20 samples obtained from a milk bank.


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Would Democrats Embrace JFK Today?

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As Democrats begin maneuvering for the 2016 presidential race, there isn’t one who would think of disparaging John F. Kennedy’s stature as a Democratic Party hero. Yet it’s a pretty safe bet that none would dream of running on Kennedy’s approach to government or embrace his political beliefs.

Today’s Democratic Party — the home of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore — wouldn’t give the time of day to a candidate like JFK.

The 35th president was an ardent tax-cutter who championed across-the-board, top-to-bottom reductions in personal and corporate tax rates, slashed tariffs to promote free trade, and even spoke out against the “confiscatory” property taxes being levied in too many cities.

He was anything but a big-spending, welfare-state liberal. “I do not believe that Washington should do for the people what they can do for themselves through local and private effort,” Kennedy bluntly asserted during the 1960 campaign. It was a message he memorably restated in his inaugural address: “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” One of his first acts as president was to institute a pay cut for top White House staffers, and that was only the start of his budgetary austerity. “To the surprise of many of his appointees,” longtime aide Ted Sorensen would later write, he “personally scrutinized every agency request with a cold eye and encouraged his budget director to say ‘no.'”…

Since that terrible day in Dallas 50 years ago, popular mythology has turned Kennedy into a liberal hero. Some of that mythmaking, as journalist and historian Ira Stoll argues in a new book, JFK, Conservative, was driven by Kennedy aides, such as Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who had always wanted their boss to be more left-leaning than he was. Some of it was fueled by the Democratic Party’s emotional connection to the memory of a martyred president, and its understandable desire to link their priorities to his legacy.

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With New Budget Deadlines, Top Hill Lawmakers Appear as Far Apart as Ever

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsTop Washington lawmakers appeared no closer Sunday to reaching deals on upcoming budget negotiations than they were on the recent ones — disagreeing over an entire range of issues including taxes, spending and ObamaCare.

Among the key issues is whether negotiators for the Republican-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate can agree on an alternative to the indiscriminate cuts know as sequester, a result of the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Such a deal seemed unlikely considering Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt told “Fox News Sunday” the act was “better than anything we’ve had before to control spending.”

And Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said later on the show that Democrats “won’t trade” reducing cuts on defense spending for deep cuts to entitlement, as Republicans have proposed.

Democrats want to increase spending levels next year above the sequester caps and replace them with more long-term budget savings through spending cuts and tax increases, which Republicans have rejected.

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The President Asked Oprah to Help Him Promote Obamacare ‘But She Refused Because She Feels Burned by the White House’

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Oprah Winfrey has been notably distancing herself from President Obama and First Lady Michelle and apparently her latest slight came against Obamacare.

The media icon was asked to attend a meeting at the White House along with other celebrities to see how they could help create some positive publicity for the Affordable Care Act.

Rather than jumping on board like Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson, Oprah reportedly quickly said that she would not be attending the meeting.

‘All of Oprah’s top people thought she would go, because when the president invites you to the White House, most people automatically say yes, but Oprah said she didn’t have the time or inclination to go. It wasn’t like she had to think it over. It was an immediate, flat-out, unequivocal no,’ an Oprah advisor told journalist Ed Klein.

Klein wrote a book, The Amateur, about President Obama’s first term in office and is currently working on a second.

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House Tea Partiers Snub GOP in 2014

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Photo Credit: AP Hard-line conservatives aren’t just sticking it to the national GOP by shutting down the government and bringing the nation to the brink of default – they’re also refusing to pony up to help their party defend the House in 2014.

With a little more than a year until the midterm election, many leaders of the shutdown strategy have yet to donate to the National Republican Congressional Committee, records show. At least eight of the debate’s 20 or so most outspoken figures have not given any money to the NRCC, and others have forked over token amounts.

Their refusal to contribute to the House GOP’s political arm, coming as Republicans are getting thumped by Democrats in the money race, is causing heartburn and frustration among Republican strategists charged with laying the groundwork for next year’s races. They say it is reinforcing a perception of the conservative gang that they’re only out for themselves and don’t much care about advancing the party’s larger cause.

Take Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, the libertarian acolyte of Ron Paul and one of the most outspoken lawmakers for a hard line on the budget and debt negotiations. Amash, who voted against the final deal to reopen the government, hasn’t contributed to the NRCC this year, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Nor has he given to the committee at any point during his two terms in Congress.

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Tech ‘Surge’ to Tackle Obamacare Websites

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Photo Credit: APThe Obama administration Sunday said it’s called on “the best and brightest” tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems.

The unusual Sunday 600-word blog post from HHS was the first update in more than a week on the many failings of an expensive website that HHS itself described as “frustrating for many Americans.” But it didn’t specify who the administration had called in, or when the American people would see clear-cut results on Healthcare.gov.

“We’re kind of thinking of it as a tech ‘surge,’” an HHS official told POLITICO.

The Health and Human Services statement didn’t explain everything that’s wrong, or give technical details about the repairs underway. It outlined some steps being taken to fix the site, including updates with “new code that includes bug fixes.” The department also says it’s installing monitors to catch parts of the website that are proving the most troublesome for consumers. And it also said it had seen some improvements in wait times and consumer access to the website, the online portal to health insurance exchanges or marketplaces the federal government is running in 36 states.

The administration said one essential component — the federal data hub — is working as hoped. That hub is crucial. It links federal agencies to determine an applicant’s eligibility for Obamacare coverage and subsidies. States running their own exchanges have to be able to draw on that data as well, and some of them have been doing so successfully.

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