Military concerns are come before the health and well being of USA citizens. I completely object to partial funding of the government!

September 30, 2013

Dear TANF and Child Care Officials:

I am writing to provide an update (click here) to you concerning the status of funding for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and the discretionary, mandatory, and federal share of matching portions of the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF).  Even though these two programs are funded in whole or in part by mandatory funding that is not subject to annual appropriation, this year the mandatory funding for these programs (including the federal share of match for CCDF) expires September 30-- at the same time that appropriations end for discretionary-funded programs.  If legislation extending these programs is not enacted before October 1, 2013, then no additional funding will be available for TANF or CCDF until such time as legislation is enacted. 
The Administration views the potential lapse in funding for TANF and child care funding as very serious matters.  These funds support critical programs for poor and low-income families.  If funding lapses, we are committed to doing all we can to work with states, the District of Columbia (DC), territories, and tribes to ensure that vulnerable families and children have access to needed benefits and services during this period....

...We understand that if federal funding for these programs lapses, it creates budgetary uncertainty and strain for states, territories, and tribes.  We are committed to working with Congress to ensure that funding for TANF and child care is extended.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the federal TANF or child care program manager in your region.
We appreciate the work states, DC, territories, and tribes do to deliver these critical services to vulnerable families and are committed to working with you as these matters are resolved to protect the families we all are committed to serving.

Sincerely,
George H. Sheldon
Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families

This move by Hagel is without Congressional approval, isn't it? At least someone is getting creative.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel answers question aboard the USS Stethem DDG 63 at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, a U.S. Naval base in Yokosuka, outside of Tokyo on Friday Oct. 4, 2013. After speaking to sailors on the guided missile destroyer, Hagel is returning to Washington, completing his trip to South Korea and Japan. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool) 

Pentagon: Most furloughed civilians ordered back (click here)

By ROBERT BURNS
AP National Security Writer
October 5, 2013 
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is bringing back to work at least 90 percent of the estimated 350,000 defense civilian employees who were furloughed in the partial government shutdown. The move takes a big bite out of the impact of the political impasse in Washington that has left the government without a budget.

The decision announced Saturday by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is based on a Pentagon interpretation of a law called the Pay Our Military Act. That measure was passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama shortly before the partial government shutdown began Tuesday.

Republican lawmakers had complained in recent days that the Obama administration was slow to bring back those workers even though the law allowed it.

In a written statement explaining his action, Hagel said the Justice Department advised that the law does not permit a blanket recall of all Pentagon civilians. But government attorneys concluded that the law does allow the Pentagon to eliminate furloughs for ‘‘employees whose responsibilities contribute to the morale, well-being, capabilities and readiness of service members.’’...

Frank Lautenberg was a loss to this country. He was a very successful person as a businessman and in government. He never sought corruption to define his reason to be in office. He was intelligent, eloquent and helped define compassion in the USA. The people of New Jersey should be measuring that loss against their choice this election. And when the candidates stand side by side to the Late Senator Lautenberg there is only one man that fills those shoes and that is Cory Booker. He is intelligent, dedicated, ready to lead and defines compassion in our society. Cory Booker has been ready for the US Senate all his life. I am proud of him. He will add to a positive dialogue about this country on the world stage and be respected.

Steve Lonegan doesn't believe in fairness. He isn't a nice man.

He left office as Mayor of Bogota in 2007 to become the Chairman of Americans for Prosperity.

As mayor of Bogota Lonegan ordered the municipality to hire civilian emergency dispatchers at lower pay, he refused to implement Length of Service Awards for which was a reward to volunteer firemen and women as well as volunteer rescue personnel. These men and women dedicated themselves to becoming professionals in every meaning of the word and to serve in a capacity to protect the public without asking for pay. They were purely volunteer. The Length of Service Award Program was to reward them when they retired to enjoy a pension as if they were paid professionals all those year. Those people deserved that and Lonegan took that away from them.

As Chairman of Americans for Prosperity, he fought paid family leave. That is a federal law. What would he seek to do in DC, dissolve The Family Medical Leave Act.

His entire history of political performance is copied from Wikipedia. It is plagiarized. (click here)

There are claims in Wiki and on his website that cannot be validated or substantiated. Basically, the man is lying about his accomplishments to oppose initiatives in New Jersey.

Lonegan fair housing mandates in 2007 just before the global economic collapse. And get this he opposed sprinklers in what was suppose to be fireproof high rise buildings. No one opposes sprinklers in high rise buildings. That is crazy.

Any record about the defeat of a $450 million ballot initiative to address competitiveness of stem cell research is attributed to the awareness of the state's budget problems, not Lonegan.
 

By DAVID W. CHEN and JEREMY W. PETERS

Published: November 8, 2007

...Yet voters approved borrowing $200 million to preserve open space. Explaining the seemingly mixed message, former Gov. Brendan T. Byrne said (click here) that the $450 million sought for stem cell research was “an intimidating figure,” but that the money for open space was approved because New Jersey has always been environmentally aware....

And the reason the ballot initiative was not brought up again is because the delay would remove NJ's ability to compete. So why be late to the process? This ballot initiative happened after the 2008 economic collapse and the public was still realizing the outcomes from it. The Open Space funding is about jobs. New Jersey has tourism and recreation based heavily in Open Space. So, there is no question any movement against the environment would destroy jobs and recreational activities. Fishing is a big pastime along the Jersey Shore. Water quality is very important and ways to improve it and preserve it.

Lonegan bases his credentials in being angry and in opposition. He simply does not have the capacity Booker has in the depth of his preparedness or experience. 

I don't believe he is a nice man. I mean who would want to see people in volunteer service deprived of a reward after decades of service? That's crazy. 

Steve Lonegan is not a Chris Christie. Christie has credentials that places him in a valued class of people with political aspirations. He was a very valued US Attorney. He fought for the little guy. 

Cutting of pension benefits for long serving volunteers is not fighting for the little guy. Lonegan is in a completely different class of politician. He is not qualified to lead. Just because he is on the ballot next to someone very qualified and desirable does not place him in the same class. That simply means he is available to fill a spot on the ballot, it is not at all about abilities to carry out the responsibility of the office. He plagarized his website. Hello? I would think when a candidate exhibits UNETHICAL behavior on his campaign website that might reflect values no one wants to reward.

Lonegan led efforts to defeat a plan to borrow $450 Million to fund embryonic stem cell research. The New Jersey vote marked the first time this kind of spending had been defeated at the polls and has not been put before the public since then. - See more at: http://constitutionalrightspac.com/constitutional-candidates/steve-lonegan-for-senate#sthash.RPIehQDq.dpu

Cory Booker is a gifted person. It would be a loss to the nation if he didn't replace Frank Lautenberg.

Vote for a man who can actually make a difference without rhetoric (click here).

What I like about him is that every person he meets is his friend. This is a picture of him during his mayoral race in Newark.

He would seek to raise the minimum wage, be cautious about government surveillance and it's necessity, support environmental protections, support non-proliferation initiatives, seek economic improvements in foreign relations without compromising American labor as in NAFTA and CAFTA, support Ports security, would support bills for gun control, infrastructure improvement and safety as well as guarantees for civil rights. 

He is the man for New Jersey in the US Senate. He would be a great asset to the country. He needs to ask the voters to come out and vote for him. He never should forget unless he asks for them to come out and vote they may get the message they aren't needed in the turn out. It would be a disappointment to them if they weren't reminded how important they are.

Cory Booker has been a hero all his life and should have the opportunity to be a hero for New Jersey in the US Senate.

His parents, (click here) Carolyn Rose (née Jordan) and Cary Alfred Booker, were among the first black executives at IBM. Booker graduated from Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan and was named to the 1986 USA Today All-USA high school football team.

Booker went on to Stanford University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1991 and a Master of Arts in sociology the following year. While at Stanford, he played varsity football, and also made the All–Pacific Ten Academic team and was elected senior class president. In addition, Booker ran The Bridge Peer Counseling Center, a student-run crisis hotline, and organized help from Stanford students for youth in East Palo Alto, California.

After Stanford, Booker was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, where he earned an honors degree in U.S. history in 1994 as a member of The Queen's College. He earned his Juris Doctor in 1997 from Yale Law School, where he operated free legal clinics for low-income residents of New Haven, Connecticut. At Yale, Booker was a founding member of the Chai Society (now the Eliezer Society), a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and was active in the National Black Law Students Association...

A sharpshooter couldn't shoot out the tires of the car? Ram the car. Block the forward movement of it? Something.

I don't understand how a woman in a car with her child, unarmed yet out of control of her own thoughts is dead.

There was one point where the officers even got a good look at the car and the people inside and they still killed her.

I am glad the family is speaking out on Miriam's behalf.

By John Marzulli , Erik Badia , Dan Friedman AND Corky Siemaszko / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Friday, October 4, 2013, 9:50 AM 
Updated: Saturday, October 5, 2013, 5:17 AM

...“Deadly force was not necessary,” (click here) said the grieving sister, a retired NYPD transit police sergeant who lives in Bushwick. “They could have rammed the car or disabled the car.”
“There had to be something else they could have done,” chimed in Amy Carey, a registered nurse who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “She didn’t have to die. To know a child was in the car, too, why did they shoot?”...

There are six officers standing there with guns drawn and not one had an answer as to how to deal with her. A woman and child confused and upset, unable to pose herself as a threat to any of the officers, in plain sight and the police were at a complete lose to stop her. All the guns are pointed at her and that was the only solution they had.

After Miriam was dead, the chief of police stated the barriers worked. Not. It looks like nothing worked to me. There was no preventing her death in the face of her own unreality. 

Guns. 

Kill, kill, kill. 

The guns worked.  

Eventually. 

The entire scenario is tragic. The police never had control. The death of that unarmed woman was their only answer to stopping her. 

At no point in time did anyone step back from the scenario to realize there was something very wrong and it needed an intervention different than what the police were engaged in. Six officers had already assessed the circumstances inside that car and had no answer beside shooting her.

At least seven separate vehicles are involved in this tape and they could not block her movement?  After she backed into one car they never thought to inhibit the movement of Miriam's car. Never once attempted to disable the car, puncture the tires to inhibit forward movement or break a back window to gain access to the inside of the car. They could obviously see she wasn't reacting to their presence in a reasonable way so she was a dead woman after that. 

Wow. The police were never in danger. She never assaulted them and tried to disable them. She wanted to leave the area she never understood. She had driven hundreds of miles in a delirium only to be shot by DC police. That is a successful intervention, huh? Killing unarmed people is the only answer in DC.

If this is the response to someone like Miriam, the nation needs better police training. She should be alive today, in custody and in a mental health facility. Those officers lives were never in danger. And they could have killed a child besides. I take it the child was in a child restraint in the car. Well fed. Well clothed. She was a good mom. She loved her child. She believed she was acting rationally. This entire police response is a failure. Abject failure.