Don't worry folks they'll just print more FRN's....

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...-pension-deal/

Union leaders in Detroit want $100 million in federal funding earmarked for homeowner assistance to help make up a $3.5 billion shortfall in the retirement system for city workers, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Under the plan being discussed by federal and state officials, Michigan would give Detroit $100 million earmarked for the state from a U.S. Treasury Department fund established in 2010 to provide relief to struggling homeowners in the wake of the housing crisis, according to the report.

Officials familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal that Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr could use the unspent funding earmarked for blight elimination to help reduce pension cuts for city employees.

The Obama administration previously announced nearly $300 million in federal and private funding for Detroit, largely drawn from existing resources. The city filed for bankruptcy last July, citing $18 billion in unmanageable long-term liabilities.

"There is no bailout coming from Washington, but we continue to support the efforts by state and local officials as they work on Detroit's revitalization," the White House said in a statement Wednesday.

Under the proposed deal for federal money, many officials at the local and state level in Michigan would need to agree with transferring $100 million to free up additional money for the pension system, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Full story: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...-pension-deal/

Going postal has just been given teeth....

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/USP.../14/id/565541/

Add the U.S. Postal Service to the list of federal agencies seeking to purchase what some Second Amendment activists say are alarmingly large quantities of ammunition.

Earlier this year, the USPS posted a notice on its website, under the heading "Assorted Small Arms Ammunition," that says: "The United States Postal Service intends to solicit proposals for assorted small arms ammunition. If your organization wishes to participate, you must pre-register. This message is only a notification of our intent to solicit proposals."

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Washington-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said: "We're seeing a highly unusual amount of ammunition being bought by the federal agencies over a fairly short period of time. To be honest, I don't understand why the federal government is buying so much at this time."

Jake McGuigan, director of state affairs and government relations for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said widely reported federal ammunition purchases have sparked conspiracy-type fears among gun owners, who worry that the federal government is trying to crack down on Second Amendment rights via the back door by limiting the ammo available to owners.

Full story: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/USP.../14/id/565541/

More information on the issue...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...cmp=latestnews


The Obama administration has conducted warrantless searches of Americans' communications as part of the National Security Agency's surveillance operations that target foreigners located outside of the U.S., the administration's top intelligence official confirmed in a letter to Congress disclosed Tuesday.

These searches were authorized by a secret surveillance court in 2011, but it was unclear until Tuesday whether any such searches on Americans had been conducted.

The recent acknowledgement of warrantless searches on Americans offers more insight into U.S. government surveillance operations put in place after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The government has broadly interpreted these laws to allow for the collection of communications of innocent Americans, practices the Obama administration maintains are legal. But President Barack Obama has promised to review some of these programs to determine whether the government should be conducting this type of surveillance at all.

"Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans' emails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant," Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado said in a joint statement. "However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading, and that intelligence agencies have indeed conducted warrantless searches for Americans' communications."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-pri...s-stand-still/

NEW YORK - Writer Jen Singer, the mother of two teenage boys, wrestles with her grocery list every week to keep the household budget from getting away from her.

"I'd like the government to stop by my house, come food shopping with me and see where the real costs are," she said.

The adage "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is impossible thanks to apple prices, she said.

"We go through one of these every few days," she said, holding a loaf of bread. "It's a big part of my take home pay."

It's is not her imagination. While the government says prices are up 6.4 percent since 2011, chicken is up 18.4 percent, ground beef is up 16.8 percent and bacon has skyrocketed up 22.8 percent, making it a holiday when it's on sale.

Full story: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-pri...s-stand-still/

From his bungalow on the side of a hill in western Jamaica, Willie Thompson surveys the same lush valley that one of his great-great-grandmothers was forced to harvest for sugar cane more than 180 years ago.
“I am an African descendant,” he said, whippet-thin and grizzled at the age of 78. “She came here with the chains on her feet, on a slave trade ship”.
Mr Thompson knows that when Parliament voted in 1833 to abolish slavery in Britain’s colonies, Earl Grey’s government was made to pay out compensation worth almost £2 billion in today’s money.
And after an exhausting day spent scratching out a living by farming yams, he wonders what might have been if Nana Bracket and her comrades, rather than the ancestor of David Cameron who owned them, had received £4,101 of it - the equivalent of £415,000 today.
“The English made a lot of money back then. A lot of money,” he said, with a sigh almost long enough to reach Dudley, West Mids, where he worked as a labourer in the 1960s before returning home. “I think it is fair for we to get a bit of compensation for what all our people been through."

[snip]

The sight of all the torture implements, death warrants, and solitary confinement cells tends to prompt an unexpected reaction from a lot of those who stop by, he said. “How could you possibly put a price on what was done?” they ask.
For Willie Thompson, though, it would be a start. “I don’t say that giving us money would make it all right,” he said. “What’s happened has happened already. But I think it is on the side of justice that we deserve something.”

Full story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...parations.html

This fine example of humanity has taken it upon himself to charge this child with a felony.

Va. Teen Faces Child Porn Charges For Tweeting Nude ‘Selfie’
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/...hotos-of-self/

JAMES CITY COUNTY, Va. (CBSDC) – A local teenager is facing child pornography charges after police say she shared nude photographs of herself on the social networking site Twitter.
According to WAVY, the unnamed 16-year-old suspect took “selfies” in which she was not wearing clothing, then shared them online at the end of last month.
Officials with the James City County Police Department told the station that teenagers sometimes fail to grasp the severity of the situation when publicly sharing private materials.
“It’s not just friends that see what they post but also strangers and everyone else out there,” Stephanie Williams-Ortery, a representative of the department, told WAVY. “You have no idea who’s out there watching. You never know who’s going to see what you post.”
A school resource officer was informed of the then-publicly available photographs’ lewd nature, and talked with both the teen and her mother about the situation.
Authorities then confiscated her phone and charged her with one count of distribution of child pornography.
The matter could become a criminal one with the potential of jail time, though experts who spoke with WAVY said that she will likely have to complete a Sexting Education program.
Officials hope a lesson has been learned by the teenager — and by others around her age — either way.
“I would hope that they would not then forward it on to their friends because then they become guilty also of distribution of child pornography, whether they know that or not,” Williams-Ortery was quoted as saying.

This article wasn't worth copying so I've only included the parts where they give numbers relevant to SSI.

If a person adds in the segment of society that sucks the federal tit for a "job" it's gotta be way more than half the population!

No wonder we've got problems......

Social Security benefit increase could be among lowest in decades

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...cmp=latestnews

More than a fifth of the country is waiting.

Nearly 58 million retirees, disabled workers, spouses and children get Social Security benefits. The average monthly payment is $1,162. A 1.5 percent raise would increase the typical monthly payment by about $17.

The COLA also affects benefits for more than 3 million disabled veterans, about 2.5 million federal retirees and their survivors and more than 8 million people who get Supplemental Security Income, the disability program for the poor.

It may not rise to the level of the NSA surveillance scandal, but each week more cases alleging privacy breaches by police and government employees snooping into Minnesotans' personal driver license data without cause come to light and go to court.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety database contains personal information such as addresses, Social Security numbers and health conditions, according to court documents. The federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act protects individuals from unwarranted "lookups" or "pings" of their records and levies a penalty that dwarfs any speeding ticket -- $2,500 per violation.

Yet one newly minted case filed by 18 Wabasha County conservative activists - a state representative and two sitting county commissioners among them - ups the ante by raising accusations of prying into driver license data for political purposes.

"You line up dates and start to look at what was I doing around those different times and why are these particular pings concentrated here and it's pretty clear," said Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, whose records were accessed 94 times. "There's definitely activity that coincides with political activity. I had a good number of pings that happened on and before and right after announcing for office in two different general elections and one special election."

The onslaught of legal claims follows a high-profile $1 million-plus settlement for a former police officer who documented hundreds of breaches of her personal data across multiple jurisdictions. A Twin Cities news anchor and her journalist husband recently filed a lawsuit in federal court against several local governments in connection with more than 1,400 allegedly illegal inquiries.

Full story: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...cmp=latestnews

“I am now occupying the building at this time.”

And with that one decision – restaurant owner Glenn Helseth joined the ranks of Americans who’ve decided to defy the strong-arm tactics of the National Park Service.

For the past 11 years Helseth and his wife have operated the Carrot Tree Kitchens Restaurant inside the historic Cole Digges House in Yorktown, Va.

At least 20 of Helseth's longtime employees are facing unemployment. They can’t make rent and some are faced with choosing between buying food or buying medicine.
The National Park Service owns and operates the building. So when the government shut down on Oct. 1, the Helseths were given 48 hours to pack up and move out.

Full story:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/...r-defies-feds/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-8864935.html

'Clock is ticking', says Chinese minister, as US fails to break deadlock over government shutdown and fast-approaching ‘debt ceiling’ deadline

China, the biggest foreign creditor of the United States, has waded into the American budget crisis, warning Congress that it must resolve the political impasse over the debt ceiling without further delay.

1st Amendment battle over ‘gun-walking’ expose

By John Solomon
Sunday, October 6, 2013

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is blocking the main whistleblower in the Fast and Furious case from publishing a book, claiming his retelling of the Mexico “gun-walking” scandal will hurt morale inside the embattled law enforcement agency, according to documents obtained by The Washington Times.

ATF’s dispute with Special Agent John Dodson is setting up a First Amendment showdown that is poised to bring together liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservatives in Congress who have championed Mr. Dodson’s protection as a whistleblower.

The ACLU is slated to become involved in the case Monday, informing ATF it is representing Mr. Dodson and filing a formal protest to the decision to reject his request to publish the already written book, sources told The Times, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.

The battle also could have repercussions on Capitol Hill, where the two lead investigators who helped uncover the Fast and Furious scandal, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, Calif. Republican, had written a foreword to the book, the sources said.

...

more:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...=all#pagebreak