California Hopes to Tax Text Messages: What? Who? Why?
California residents may be facing yet another tax….this time for every text they send. Soon, Californians may have to think twice before texting. The proposal was filed by California's Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), a group that regulates public utilities operating in the state. In addition to communications services, such as cell phone carriers, the group is also responsible for regulating energy, water, and transportation over rail systems, and passenger cars. “From a consumer’s point of view, surcharges may be a wash, because if more surcharge revenues come from...
Langley Air Force Base Employee Cheated the Department for 17 Years Until Trump's Audit
VIRGINIA - December 13, 2018 A former employee at Langley Air Force Base admitted Wednesday that she bilked the federal government out of $1.46 million — mainly by faking the amount of overtime she worked over 17 years — 42,847 hours between December 2001 and July 2018. She came up with a way to bypass any checks that would refute her words. Michelle M. Holt, 52, was a civilian secretary at the base, where she worked in the communications support squadron of Air Combat Command. According to court records, in 2001 the woman used a co-worker's login information without th...
11-Year-Old Forced to Change “Trump” Last Name Due to Bullying at School
An 11-year-old boy’s parents raised their fears with staff at Talley Middle School in Delaware about their son’s safety last week. The elementary school student had to leave school, get homeschooled for a year, and then change his “Trump” last name in order to stop relentless bullying that lasted for more than two years, his parents have revealed. Joshua Trump, a student at Talley Middle School in Wilmington who is not related to the 45th president, started getting teased by classmates when Donald Trump first announced plans to run for the White House in June 2015. Megan...
The Silent Epidemic
NEW YORK – December 13, 2018 Gun deaths in US have spiked to their highest level in 20 years. After some of the worst mass shootings in history, American gun laws are more flexible than ever. The ability to access, buy, and now, print guns is easy, even for criminals. No wonder that the rate of gun deaths in the US has spiked to its highest point in more than 20 years, with almost 40,000 people killed in shootings in 2017, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The credit for the success is largely owed to a steady rise in suicides...
Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Gets 3-year Prison Sentence
WASHINGTON, DC – December 13, 2018 Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations involving hush payments to two women and for lying to Congress. He said Donald Trump "led me to take a path of darkness instead of light." US District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan sentenced Cohen to three years for the payments, which violated campaign finance law, and to two months for the false statements to Congress. The two terms will run concurrently. The judge set March 6 for Cohen’s voluntary surrender. Cohen pleaded guil...
Racism Has Gone Too Far: 9-year-old Girl Commits Suicide After Being Bullied at School
It seems like news from another reality, a made-up world of madmen where everything’s been turned upside down. An Alabama 9-year-old girl took her own life on Monday night, leaving her family in shock. Unfortunately, in the modern U.S., it doesn’t take long to figure out the reason… McKenzie Nicole Adams was a fourth grader at U.S. Jones Elementary School in Demopolis, AL — where she had transferred after her mother and grandmother told the school that she was being bullied at her previous school. On December 3, the 9-year-old’s grandmother found the child at their home...
Trump Says He Could Weigh in on Huawei CFO Case
VANCOUVER, CANADA – December 12, 2018 President Trump said on Tuesday he would intervene with the Justice Department in the case against a Chinese telecommunications executive if it would help secure a trade deal with Beijing. “If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters in the Oval Office. At the request of US auth...
Shale gas: an additional source of energy and problems
MIDLAND – December 12, 2018 The U.S. government has become a pitchman for the natural gas industry. That could raise profits — and temperatures. But cheap gas appeared to be too expensive for America in terms of environmental safety. Three states — Louisiana, Texas and Pennsylvania-are on the verge of an environmental disaster. American gas production is projected to account for almost 40% of the world’s gas growth through 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. Countries like China are buying up tank loads of LNG — natural gas that has been supercooled to l...
Fed Decides to Replace Key Rate
NEW YORK – December 12, 2018 The debate to replace the Federal Reserve’s key interest rate has begun, Bloomberg reports. Spurred by declining volumes and the dominance of a few participants in the market for Fed funds, the central bank has started discussing potential alternative policy benchmarks as it seeks firmer control over the nation’s short-term interest rates. While the deliberations have been largely overshadowed in recent weeks by speculation over a shift in the Fed’s tightening trajectory and the fate of its $4.1 trillion balance sheet, where they lead could...