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The committee recommended by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the report mandated by Congress would likely be made up of representatives from state and federal government. The report, which is now being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, is already more than seven months lat... |
States are holding off making any welfare information system purchases until they get specifics from the federal government about how to comply with sweeping welfare reform legislation approved last year, according to officials attending the NASIRE conference, which was held Sept. 29 through Oct. 1. |
The legislation limits welfare recipients to 60 months of benefits and excludes people with certain criminal histories. The states will administer the program and be responsible for sharing information with other states to prevent welfare fraud. |
Thomas Davies, vice president of the State & Local Services Group for Federal Sources Inc. of McLean, Va., said investments in new information technology systems by the states will be in a holding pattern for a few years, until welfare system design requirements are figured out. |
"We are still very early in the process of understanding what the information needs and information requirements are," said Larry Singer, president of Public Interest Breakthroughs Inc. of Vienna, Va. "There are assumptions that there is data that exists that can be shared, which really doesn't exist." |
The challenges in creating a coordinated state welfare system will be considerable, according to NASIRE conference attendees. For starters, government officials still must decide what data must be collected and shared between states and with the federal government, and how to accomplish that. |
The new system will need to coordinate welfare databases with those of law enforcement and tax and revenue agencies. "There is no centralized database that can tie welfare and human services recipients to those issues," Singer said. |
The pending report to Congress also evaluated the status of state systems for implementing welfare reform. The department surveyed all 50 states and three U.S. territories in December 1996 and January 1997 and found that their current welfare computer systems are alarmingly old, Ragan said. |
The survey showed that 26 percent of the state systems that run Medicaid, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families were developed in the 1970s, 40 percent were developed in the 1980s and 34 percent in the 1990s, Ragan said. In addition, the 1970s systems were handling 53 percent of the total welfare case... |
"It's not a particularly positive picture to paint," Ragan said. "The point is simply to indicate to Congress that we can't expect miracles given that we are operating with technology that is ... at least very old if not totally out of date." |
The cost estimate for implementing welfare reform from an information technology standpoint is well over $1 billion, Ragan said. |
Most states are focused on networks, technical standards and hardware requirements, when they should be looking at data usage and standardization, Singer said. The information those networks will carry is a much more important issue than the hardware involved, he said. |
"If you don't have a data administrator, you'd better think about getting one, as opposed to a database administrator," Singer said. "If you are a vendor and you are used to selling big mega systems ... slow down your forecasts. [States first] need to figure out what they need." He recommended that companies focus thei... |
To ensure effective sharing of information about welfare recipients, states should look at sharing data that they already collect to provide service or measure outcome, Singer said. "Good data always comes when it is part of administration, not when it is created exclusively for reporting or sharing purposes," he said. |
Mexican filmmakers are making a 3-D animation movie that introduces to a younger generation the life of a Polish monk who laid down his life for a stranger at Auschwitz death camp and was later canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. |
"Max & Me" recounts the story of the Franciscan monk Maksymilian Kolbe but in a modern day setting, focusing on an encounter between teenager DJ and Gunther, an older man. |
Kolbe was arrested and sent to Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1941. At the end of July that year, in reprisal for a prisoner escape, Nazi guards selected several men to die from starvation. |
When one of those picked, Polish Sergeant Franciszek Gajowniczek, began crying for his wife and children, Kolbe stepped forward, offering to die in his place. |
canonized in 1982 by then-Polish Pope John Paul II. |
Mexican film house Dos Corazones is making the film, currently in the final stage of production. |
"Maximilian Kolbe's life was like a testament to humanity.. In the most hopeless places ... he proved that there is always room in our souls, in our heart for boundless good, boundless love," Polish actor Piotr Adamczyk, who provides the voice of Gajowniczek in the film, told Reuters. |
Producer Pablo Jose Barroso said he decided to make a 3-D film to inspire a younger generation of faithful. |
"We thought about whether it should be in live action or animated but [what] really called us to action was the true story of a priest who was an exemplary person and who dedicated all his time to try to preach using alternative means," he said. |
"Max & Me" is set for release next summer. |
Schoolchildren from Norwich are among the first to have registered for a challenge which will put their business skills to the test. |
Millionaire businessman and television presenter Peter Jones is going to lend £20,000 of his own money to young people as part of a competition to see how much money they can make from £10 in one month. |
Notre Dame High School in Norwich is one of the first to have signed up for the competition and assistant headteacher Kevin McNally said it was a success with last year's team. |
The competition is open to anyone under 19 and once the young people have their £10 note they have a month to come up with creative and enterprising ideas to make more money. All the loans have to be returned at the end of the competition, but participants can keep their profits to develop their business ideas or help ... |
Any schools and colleges wishing to take part have until February 11 to register their students by completing an application form at www.enterpriseuk.org/tenner. |
Ambani, also expressed his interest in the e-residency program which will empower him with easy access to the entire European Union for his existing business while sitting in India. |
The announcement was made after Indian business tycoon and Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani, met with a government delegation from the Republic of Estonia comprising of Urve Palo, minister of entrepreneurship and IT, Viljar Lubi, deputy secretary general for economic development and ... |
Ambani, also expressed his interest in e-residency program which will empower him with easy access to entire European Union for his existing business while sitting in India. According to him, e-Residency is the gateway to do business in Europe. Taking ease of business to new heights, Estonia became the first country in... |
“You have made so much progress in such a short time. We wish to learn from your experience, so that we can make lives of ordinary Indians better. We believe your solutions are easily scalable to India. We wish to have a very close cooperation with your talent in Estonia.” Said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing dire... |
Estonia is probably the only country in the world where 99 percent of the public services are available online 24/7. Thanks to a safe, convenient and flexible digital ecosystem, Estonia has reached an unprecedented level of transparency in governance and built broad trust in its digital society. As a result, Estonia sa... |
Estonia is the first country in the world to offer e-residency, a government-issued digital ID available to anyone in the world. It offers the freedom for every world citizen to open and run a global EU company fully online from anywhere. e-residents have access to the European Union business environment and can use pu... |
What is Trump hiding in tax returns? |
Presidential candidate offers flimsy excuse for keeping tax returns from public. |
Running for president is the longest, toughest job interview in the world. That’s why all serious candidates release information about their health, through notes from their physicians, and about their finances, through releasing their tax returns. |
When I ran for president in 2004, I released my tax returns to the public. So did John Kerry, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Hillary Clinton has released an astonishing 33 years of her tax returns, the last eight of which are all available on her website. |
In fact, since 1976, every major party’s nominee has released his or her tax returns, because that’s what the American people expect of their prospective leaders. |
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump thinks the rules don’t apply to him. He vacillates between stalling the release of his returns and rejecting it outright. His most common excuse is that he cannot release the returns because he’s in the midst of an audit. |
• The IRS has stated that nothing is preventing him from releasing them. Even Richard Nixon released his returns under an audit. |
• Trump himself has released his returns in the middle of an audit before. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he handed them over to state authorities to obtain gambling licenses. The American people should matter to Trump as much as his casinos did. |
• What’s stopping him from releasing all the years of returns that are not being audited? |
His own campaign admits that Trump has something to hide. Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge fund manager and a member of Trump’s national finance committee, has acknowledged that Trump is afraid of what opposition researchers might uncover. |
Perhaps Trump isn’t worth what he says he is. Despite claiming to be worth more than $10 billion, experts have noted that he appears to make less income than they’d expect. In one case, he described his income as including $4.3 million in “golf-related revenue’’ from a course he owns in Scotland, but the course lost mo... |
Perhaps Trump isn’t paying what he should. Some tax experts suspect he might have used loopholes to avoid paying his fair share. There’s a good chance that Trump is paying a lower tax rate than struggling middle-class families. |
Perhaps he’s afraid of revealing his charitable donations – or lack thereof. The causes that people decide to support often reveal much about their values. Trump has told the Associated Press that he does most of his philanthropy in his own name. Releasing his returns would show whether that’s really the case. |
Trump shouldn’t be treated differently than every other nominee of the past four decades. His refusal to release his tax returns raises fundamental questions about his business career, his ethics and his ability to tell the truth. |
Howard Dean is a former governor of Vermont. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and has endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. |
If Idris Elba had a younger gay brother who looked similarly like him, then Michael Wright would be your guy. The part-time model and business owner has become a huge social media influencer on his Facebook and Instagram which amounts for more than 10,000 followers total who enjoy seeing this gorgeous man both in and o... |
Michael, who lives in Philadelphia by ways of South Carolina, hasn't always had it easy in his journey before and during the gay community. He grew up poor in the south, where racism was very prevalent for him and dealt with issues at home as well. |
Regardless, Michael was able to prevail, come out of the closet and be his authentic self as time has gone by. With the modeling and business world on his horizon, he sat down with me here at Instinct to discuss how he became so popular on social media, his tough childhood, why he loves being in the bear community and ... |
How were you able to develop such a big social media following? |
Back in 2008 I started on Facebook. I did some modeling before I got on the social media platform. The pictures came out great and I thought the site would be a tool to show them off. Plus, living in Fort Lauderdale at that time, which is a huge gay destination, I was able to meet a lot of people on there and connect w... |
Do you plan on doing anything with that like going into modeling or acting? |
I will love to act or get a big movie role. I would love to start my modeling career back up because in the years since I had some personal life situations that shifted my focus a bit. Now things are coming together for me and I can put myself out there again to get some gigs. |
What has been your experience in the gay community down in South Carolina? |
Being gay in South Carolina was tough. Growing up I knew I was gay. I have 4 brothers and 2 sisters, where all of my brothers happened to be straight, so it was challenging. I had to pretend I liked girls throughout high school. When I went to college was when I started to experience gay-related activities. I was still... |
On the plus side, things are getting much better there, as the state is slowly becoming more open to the LGBTQ community. |
Is racism still a big thing not only there, but in general? |
Racism is still a big problem there, well everywhere but definitely more so in the south. I grew up poor so living in the projects my brothers and I had to fight while also dealing with our parents constantly fight. My father was very verbally and physically abusive to my mother. That being said, my parents decided it ... |
That is when I really felt the hate. I thought we didn't have to fight anymore but that was false. We were the first black family that moved into the neighborhood and they wanted us out. It got to the point someone spray painted the N-word on my father's truck. The cops called on us a lot because we used to defend ours... |
What are your thoughts of the bear community today seeing as you are such an integral part of it? |
My thoughts on the bear community is that as time has gone by, I found that the group overall has been accepting of not only me, but many others like me. The community as a whole is a group of really nice guys who are accepting of all different races. I have immersed myself in this world and love going to the events, a... |
I know you are an owner of an adult day care center, which is awesome. Has this type of work always been your passion? |
My mom started an assisting living home in 1991. I grew up in the industry taking care of people at a very young age. It made me think how most of us are very fortunate in this world. I was really hot and cold about this type of work. I went to college and got my BA in Graphic Arts, because I had a love for arts and ph... |
There’s been many road blocks into getting it open. I tell friends it’s going to open at such and such and then it doesn’t. It made me feel embarrassed, but I (we) are learning as we go. We are young and starting up our own company with our own money, which has been very stressful, but the wait has been a blessing. Yes... |
I also have a T-shirt business called BeardedIkon, which is slowly take off i will get going, also a nutrition diet program that I am going to promote very soon. |
What's next for Michael Wright? |
What's next for Michael Wright is to change the world. I want to be a nominee for CNN heroes someday, fingers crossed. I believe my business is going to become very successful because I already have building owners calling me to start others up around the community. Hopefully we can take our idea into other states, whi... |
For more information on Michael, check out his IG here. |
Christian Keyes Is Demanding Gay Men To Stop! |
The Obama administration announced June 8 it would halt the deportation of young, undocumented immigrants brought to this country by their parents. |
The executive order, Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children, lays out quite plainly those eligible for deferred prosecution by age, years of residence, education and criminal record. |
In a manner to bring them "out of the shadows," undocumented residents are granted deferred prosecutorial action for a period of two years if they are at least 15 years old and pass a background check. |
If everything clears, individuals can apply for work authorization during their period of deferment and be eligible for renewal after said period. |
Is this political piecemeal of immigration reform to bring Latino voters back on the Obama campaign bandwagon and hopefully to the voting booths come November? |
What effect will this executive order have on Latinos and for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign? |
Is this a political move by Obama? An emphatic yes! |
We cannot be naive to think Obama finally had the resources needed to issue some kind of immigration initiative. I strongly believe the resounding voices of protest and dissatisfaction in his lack of immigration reform played a major role in the president's decision. |
The right to voice dissenting opinions regarding the president's inaction, especially among eligible Latino voters, yielded an executive order circumventing an ineffective Congress and renewing, at least modestly, the president's commitment to immigration reform. |
Politically, this initiative has already paid the president dividends. Recent polls show Latino voters solidifying their support for the president despite past dissatisfaction with his administration's inability to pass immigration reform. |
As we have learned in Washington, everything is political. |
Nevertheless, despite Obama's intent, we should respect the fact it is a step in the right direction but acknowledge it is a very modest one. |
As it indicates in the official memo from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, it is NOT a pathway to citizenship or legal residency. |
The 800,000 or so young people affected will still live in the shadows without rights or protections afforded through legal standing. |
This is simply a deferment and not a dismissal from prosecution, and this substantial shortcoming is a staunch reminder of the Obama administration's harsh and steadfast approach to immigration enforcement. |
The executive order is simply a meager shift from his immigration policy, since this will only affect a fraction of the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants residing in the country. |
We cannot ignore his lack of "enforcement discretion" since his presidency started Jan. 20, 2009, and the resulting record deportations, increase in prison facilities for unauthorized immigrants awaiting trial and the breakup of families. |
Again, the "dream" is still fantasy and is short of becoming reality as long as comprehensive immigration reform and reasonable pathways to citizenship remain stalled in the political quagmire that is Congress. |
Despite the executive order's shortcomings, it does argue a very essential and important point. The "Dreamers" are American. |
They were raised in this country and call the United States home. They are as American as apple pie and Taco Bell. |
The 14th Amendment does not require of us any compulsory obligations, such as military service, to "earn" citizenship. We simply have to be born in the United States (or to an American) or be naturalized. These young people may not have been born here, but their acculturation and assimilation into American society is r... |
Dream on, Mr. President! If the numbers prove to be true, Latino voters will once again serve as a major factor in your bid for reelection in November. |
I just hope piecemeal legislation grows into true comprehensive immigration reform. and reasonable pathways to citizenship are realized. |
Miguel A. Levario, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history at Texas Tech University. |
Oshkosh Mayor Steve Cummings was defeated by Deputy Mayor Lori Palmeri in Tuesday's election for the city's top elected official. |
OSHKOSH - Voters decided to go in a new direction Tuesday in the race for the city's top elected official. |
Deputy Mayor Lori Palmeri beat incumbent Mayor Steve Cummings in Tuesday's election with 51.4 percent of ballots cast in her favor and will take the reins of the council for the next two years. According to unofficial vote totals, Palmeri took home 4,681 votes, compared to Cummings' 4,359. |
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