A woman desperate for help said she was told she’d have to trade sexual favors to feed her family.
The allegations are at the heart of a lawsuit which raises serious questions about the state’s Food Stamps program.
Shameka Bransford, a pregnant single mother who suffers from sickle cell anemia, claims an employee with the state Department of Human Services wanted something in return when she went to apply for food stamps.
“Basically if I did all these things I would qualify and get my food stamps,” Bransford said.
Bransford’s attorneys, Mary Parker and Stephen Crofford, are now suing the state. They said their client refused the state employee’s alleged demands, which included meeting him under a nearby bridge for sexual favors. (Read more from “Government Worker Tells Woman She Must Trade Sex for Food Stamps” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-16 00:10:322016-04-11 11:01:15Government Worker Tells Woman She Must Trade Sex for Food Stamps
Despite residents’ concerns and a continuing need for services, the 25-bed hospital that served this small East Texas town for more than 25 years closed its doors at the end of 2014, joining the ranks of dozens of other small rural hospitals that have been unable to weather the punishment of a changing national health-care environment.
For the high percentages of elderly and uninsured patients who live in rural areas, closures mean longer trips for treatment and uncertainty during times of crisis. “I came to the emergency room when I had panic attacks,” said George Taylor, 60, a retired federal government employee. “It was very soothing and the staff was great. I can’t imagine Mount Vernon without a hospital.”
The Kansas-based National Rural Health Association, which represents about 2,000 small hospitals across the country and other rural care providers, says that 48 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, the majority in Southern states, and 283 others are in trouble. In Texas alone, 10 have closed.
“If there was one particular policy causing the trouble, it would be easy to understand,” said Mark Holmes, a health economist at the University of North Carolina. “But there are a lot of things going on.”
Experts and practitioners cite declining federal reimbursements for hospitals under the Affordable Care Act as the principal reasons for the recent closures. Besides cutting back on Medicare, the law reduced payments to hospitals for the uninsured, a decision based on the assumption that states would expand their Medicaid programs. However, almost two dozen states have refused to do so. In addition, additional Medicare cuts caused by a budget disagreement in Congress have hurt hospitals’ bottom lines. (Read more from “Obamacare: Rural Hospitals, Beset by Financial Problems, Struggle to Survive” HERE)
By the time Wendy Leeds reached him, the sea lion pup had little hope of surviving.
Like more than 1,450 other sea lions that have washed up on California beaches this year, in what animal experts call a growing crisis for the animal, this 8-month-old pup was starving, stranded and hundreds of miles from a mother who still needed to nurse him and teach him to hunt and feed. Ribs jutted from his velveteen coat.
The pup had lain on the beach for hours, becoming the target of an aggressive dog before managing to wriggle onto the deck of a million-dollar oceanfront home, where the owner shielded him with an umbrella and called animal control. In came Ms. Leeds, an animal-care expert at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which like other California rescue centers is being inundated with calls about lost, emaciated sea lions . . .
Experts suspect that unusually warm waters are driving fish and other food away from the coastal islands where sea lions breed and wean their young. As the mothers spend time away from the islands hunting for food, hundreds of starving pups are swimming away from home and flopping ashore from San Diego to San Francisco.
Many of the pups are leaving the Channel Islands, an eight-island chain off the Southern California coast, in a desperate search for food. But they are too young to travel far, dive deep or truly hunt on their own, scientists said. (Read more from “Starving Sea Lions Washing Ashore by the Hundreds in California” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-16 00:01:192016-04-11 11:01:16Starving Sea Lions Washing Ashore by the Hundreds in California
As Restoring Liberty reported earlier this week, a Navy chaplain with an incredibly distinguished service record has been relieved of his duties and may be forced out of the military just shy of his 20-year mark because he discussed the bible’s view on homosexuality.
Shortly thereafter, General Jerry Boykin appeared on The Joe Miller Show and announced that he had actually spoken with Chaplain Wes Modder that day and described for listeners what was really going on with the case (see interview below).
[Editor’s note: General Boykin’s discussion about Chaplain Wes Modder begins at 9:30 in the below YouTube]
Among other outrages, General Boykin said that the chaplain’s case was a set-up by a homosexual navy officer who is “married to another man.” Apparently, this service member had been temporarily assigned to Chaplain Modder’s office and he sought – on multiple occasions – private counseling from Chaplain Modder on the biblical view of sexuality, specifically homosexuality. The chaplain, an ordained Assembly of God minister, told the junior office that the bible disagrees with all sexual sin: homosexuality, adultery, etc.
The setup was complete when the junior officer marched in to the chaplain’s office with two “equal opportunity officers,” announced charges of “intolerance and bigotry,” and the chaplain was relieved of duty. General Boykin, the former Delta Force Commander, said that it was obvious the “Navy acted unacceptably” in this case.
General Boykin went on to observe how screwed up the military has become with soldiers and retirees not getting necessary colonoscopies, but convicted traitors and others are getting sex changes on the public dime. He also discusses the problem with women in combat. He believes that everyone must get active to save this country.
You can start by signing a petition of support for Chaplain Modder. Click HERE to sign the Family Research Council’s petition.
General William “Jerry” Boykin is Vice President of the Family Research Council. He served as Commander, Delta Force, has received numerous military awards, served in multiple combat missions, and was the US Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Bush Administration.
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More than 40,000 rally for Navy chaplain accused of being anti-gay
By Todd Starnes. Thousands of Americans, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and famed evangelist Franklin Graham, have come to the defense of a chaplain who could be thrown out of the Navy because of his Christian faith.
Lt. Cmdr. Wes Modder has been accused of failing to show “tolerance and respect” in private counseling sessions regarding issues pertaining to faith, marriage and sexuality – specifically homosexuality.
Modder, who is endorsed by the Assemblies of God, has also been accused of being unable to “function in the diverse and pluralistic environment” of the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Goose Creek, S.C.
The highly decorated, 19-year military veteran previously served in the Marine Corps and has had several high-profile assignments – including being named force chaplain of the Navy SEALs.
Just a few months ago, Modder’s commander called him “the best of the best” and a “consummate professional leader” worthy of an early promotion. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-14 03:48:282016-04-11 11:01:18General Jerry Boykin: Navy Forcing out Evangelical Chaplain After he was “Deliberately Set Up” by Homosexual Activist
It’s not only the just-released University of Michigan consumer confidence report and February retail sales on Thursday that surprised economists and investors with another dose of underwhelming news. Overall, U.S. economic data have been falling short of prognosticators’ expectations by the most in six years.
The Bloomberg ECO U.S. Surprise Index, which measures whether data beat or miss forecasts, fell to the lowest since 2009, when the nation was in the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
There’s been one notable exception to the gloom, and it’s a big one: payrolls. The economy added 295,000 jobs in February and 1.3 million over four months, a reflection of a healthier labor market in which the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest in almost seven years. [Editor’s note: these numbers ignore the massive number of Americans who have quit looking for work. Read about that crisis HERE and HERE]
Most everything else? Blah.
This month alone, personal income and spending, manufacturing as measured by the Institute for Supply Management, auto sales, factory orders, and retail sales have all come in a bit weak. (Read more from “U.S. Economic Data is the World’s Most Disappointing” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-14 03:47:342016-04-11 11:01:18U.S. Economic Data is the World’s Most Disappointing
Two Secret Service agents suspected of being under the influence while striking a White House security barricade drove through an active bomb investigation and directly beside the suspicious package, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident.
These and other new details about the March 4 incident emerged Thursday from interviews and from police records obtained by The Washington Post.
The revelations spurred fresh questions Thursday from lawmakers about whether the newly appointed director of the Secret Service, Joseph P. Clancy, is capable of turning around the troubled agency.
Among lawmakers’ questions was whether Clancy, a 27-year Secret Service veteran appointed to his job last month after a string of embarrassing agency missteps, has been aggressive enough in his handling of last week’s incident.
Clancy placed the two senior agents involved in the incident in new “non-supervisory, non-operational” jobs pending an investigation — a less stringent approach than the service has taken in the past, when staffers suspected of misconduct were put on administrative leave or pressed to resign or accept demotion. Also, Clancy did not take action against a senior supervisor on duty that night who, according to officials briefed on the incident, ordered Secret Service officers to let the agents go home without giving them sobriety tests. (Read more from “Intoxicated Secret Service Agents Crashed into White House Disrupted Bomb Investigation” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-14 03:46:552016-04-11 11:01:18Intoxicated Secret Service Agents Who Wrecked into White House Disrupted Active Bomb Investigation
The State Department shut down large parts of its unclassified email system today in a final attempt to rid it of malware believed to have been inserted by Russian hackers in what has become one of the most serious cyber intrusions in the department’s history, U.S. officials told ABC News.
“The Department is implementing improvements to the security of its main unclassified network during a short, planned outage of some internet-linked systems,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement to ABC News.
The outage could last though the weekend, according to officials. But as of now there is no time limit and no real indication of when the system will be back online.
Last November, the State Department conducted similar repairs to its system stemming from a cyber-attack it suffered the month before. The attack targeted the unclassified email system and is believed to have been executed by Russian hackers. (Read more from “State Department Shuts Down Email After One of the Most Serious Cyber Attack’s in Department History” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-14 03:44:222016-04-11 11:01:19State Department Shuts Down Email After One of the Most Serious Cyber Attacks in Department History
Several teams of researchers around the world are believed to be working on ways of modifying the chromosomes of human egg cells with a view to moving towards “germ-line” gene therapy, as the process is called. Germ-line refers to the “germ” cells – sperm and eggs – that pass on genes to future generations.
However, other scientists have called for a moratorium on editing the human germ-line, arguing that it is ethically unacceptable because it is too unpredictable and too risky.
Nevertheless, researchers at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have attempted to use the Crispr (pronounced “Crisper”) gene-editing technique on human ovarian tissue cultured in the lab to see if it might be possible to correct the defective BRAC1 gene involved in inherited breast and ovarian cancer. As ovarian cells develop into egg cells, the research is likely to have involved the altering of some immature egg cells, known as oocytes.
The work was carried out last year by Luhan Yang, a researcher working in the lab of the veteran Harvard geneticist George Church. But the study has not been published in a scientific journal and Dr Yang was unavailable for comment.
Professor Church emphasised that the work was purely experimental. He said that it was carried out on human ovarian cells cultured in a laboratory dish and there was no intention of fertilising any eggs or transplanting them into a woman. (Read more from “American Scientists Are Trying to Genetically Modify Human Eggs” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-14 03:40:162016-04-11 11:01:19American Scientists Are Trying to Genetically Modify Human Eggs
By Amy Chozick. She has been the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, a senior adviser to a Republican presidential nominee and a candidate for the United States Senate. But Carly Fiorina recently took on her boldest role yet: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s loudest critic.
Over the past few weeks, Ms. Fiorina has mocked Mrs. Clinton’s globe-trotting as secretary of state, assailed Mrs. Clinton’s use of only a private email account to do official business, and even accused Mrs. Clinton of stealing intellectual property. From her. Twice.
Ms. Fiorina insists she has no problem with Mrs. Clinton personally — only with her liberal philosophy and policies, and what she dismisses as an unimpressive record on getting things done.
“Like Hillary Clinton, I too, have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe, but unlike her, I have actually accomplished something,” she told conservatives in Iowa in January. “Mrs. Clinton: Flying is an activity, not an accomplishment.” (Read more from “Carly Fiorina Shapes Herself as the Republican Foil to Hillary Clinton” HERE)
State Department Challenges Clinton Claim That Emails to Officials ‘Immediately’ Saved
By Fox News. A State Department spokeswoman said Friday that the department did not start automatically archiving emails from senior officials until February of this year — raising questions about Hillary Clinton’s claim that her emails were “immediately” saved whenever she corresponded with colleagues.
The former secretary of state made that assertion during her press conference earlier this week — and in a lengthy statement put out by her office — as she defended her exclusive use of personal email. Clinton downplayed concerns that official emails could have been lost by suggesting anytime she emailed anyone with a “.gov” address, that email would be stored for posterity.
“The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department,” she said Tuesday.
But department spokeswoman Jen Psaki made clear on Friday that this was not the way the system worked.
She said the department only started automatically archiving emails for other senior officials in February. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-14 03:38:242016-04-11 11:01:20Carly Fiorina Shapes Herself as the Republican Foil to Hillary Clinton
In the wake of recent attacks targeting Muslims on American college campuses and around the world, ASUNM unanimously passed a cautionary resolution at Wednesday’s meeting urging UNM administration to state their opposition to Islamophobia.
Sen. Udell Calzadillas Chavez, who introduced Resolution 6S, said there is a widespread culture of fear and ignorance that perpetuates violence against Muslims. The purpose of the resolution is to provoke better understanding of Islam in the UNM community.
“This is a proactive approach to events in the United States and around the world,” he said.
Citing domestic attacks against Islam such as the February killing of three Muslim students at the University of North Carolina and a Molotov cocktail being thrown at the Albuquerque Islamic Center last year, as well as the continuing fight against ISIS in the Middle East, the legislation states that UNM “should stand strong in opposition of Islamophobia and related hate crimes.”
The document defined Islamophobia as “dislike or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.” (Read more from “University Passes Sharia Resolution, Bans Criticism of Islam” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-03-13 03:56:502016-04-11 11:01:20U.S. Public University Passes Sharia Resolution, Bans Criticism of Islam
