Tragic legacy: Under Obama, food stamp use jumped 32%, an increase of 10.7 million hungry Americans. In 2016, US taxpayers are forced to pay $66.6 billion per year for food stamp benefits, an increase of $16.3 billion for same dollar amount of monthly benefits received in 2009-Breitbart, Rodriguez

12/27/16, "Under Obama, 10.7 Million More Use Food Stamps—A 32 Percent Jump," Breitbart, Katherine Rodriguez 

"As President Obama prepares to leave office, his legacy will include an increase in the number of Americans using food stamps.

The number of food stamps recipients went up by 10.7 million people, a 32 percent jump, since President Obama took office in 2009, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In 2009, 33,490,000 people received food stamp benefits. As of October 2016, the last month reported for FY 2016, 44,219,123 people received food stamp benefits, an increase of about 10,729,000.

The U.S. population as of October 1, 2016 was 324,607,826, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.  Therefore, the 44,219,123 people on food stamps represented 13.6 percent of the population.

The cost of food stamps to taxpayers also increased over the time Obama was in office.  As of 2009, all food stamp recipients received up to $50.3 billion in benefits.  As of 2016, that number has increased to $66.6 billion, an estimated increase of $16.3 billion. 

The average monthly benefit for food stamp recipients, however, remains almost unchanged.  In 2009, food stamp recipients received an average monthly benefit of $125.31, while in 2016 they received $125.51."






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10,000 workers to be idled by GM, Fiat Chrysler at 7 plants. Additionally, 1300 GM Michigan factory workers will be laid off starting in March 2017-AP, Bloomberg, Zero Hedge

12/19/16, "General Motors to temporarily close five factories next month, move affects 10,000 workers," AP 

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12/19/16, "Car-tastrophe - GM, Fiat Chrysler Idle 7 Plants; Over 10,000 Workers Affected," zero hedge

"Just weeks after Ford idled four plants "due to slowing sales", GM and Fiat Chrysler announced today that they will idle seven plants across Canada and US as they work to reduce near-record high inventories amid weakening sales.

With an inventories-to-sales ratio above historical peaks (only beaten by huge spike in 2008 when sales stopped), the pain for automakers has only just begun...

For example, GM's inventory of vehicles on dealer lots at the end of November stood at 874,162, up 26.5% from the same time a year ago. And so, as AP reports:

DETROIT (AP): "General Motors will temporarily close five factories next month as it tries to reduce a growing inventory of cars on dealer lots.

The factories will close anywhere from one to three weeks due to the ongoing U.S. market shift toward trucks and SUVs, spokeswoman Dayna Hart said Monday. Just over 10,000 workers will be idled.

The company's Detroit-Hamtramck factory and Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas, each will be shut down for three weeks, while a plant in Lansing, Michigan, will be down for two weeks. Factories in Lordstown, Ohio, and Bowling Green, Kentucky, each will be idled for one week.

The factories make most cars in the General Motors lineup including the Chevrolet Cruze, Camaro, Corvette, Malibu, Volt and Impala; the Cadillac CT6, CTS and ATS; and the Buick Lacrosse.

At the current sales pace, GM dealers have enough Malibus to last for 84 days and enough Camaros to last for 177 days, according to Ward's Automotive. Normally automakers like to have a 60-day supply on lots.

Last month, trucks and SUVs made up almost 62 percent of all vehicles sold in the U.S., a record level.

GM, like other automakers, was caught with too many cars on dealer lots as the shift continued, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of forecasting for the LMC Automotive consulting firm. Automakers have started discounting cars, but they need to cut production as the shift continues, he said.

"There's nothing that suggests a move back to cars," Schuster said.
He predicted strong December sales but said it won't be enough "to overcome some of this bloating of inventory."

Buyers are snapping up SUVs largely because they like the high seating position and the ability to haul things.

Gasoline prices around $2 per gallon have helped the sales, but SUVs also have become more fuel efficient in the past five years. GM's inventory of vehicles on dealer lots at the end of November stood at 874,162, up 26.5 percent from the same time a year ago.

Workers at the plants will get company supplemental pay and unemployment benefits that add up to most of their pay."...

"If that were not bad enough, Fiat Chrysler said it is adding four off days to the Jan. 2 observation of New Year’s at its minivan assembly plant in Windsor, Ontario, and its large-car facility in Brampton, Ontario....

And these shutdowns follow Ford Motor Co., which said in October that it was cutting production at plants that make the Escape small SUV and F-150 pickup in the face of slowing sales. 

Worst of all, while the rest of the US manufacturing sector has been in secular decline, the auto industry was perhaps the last shining light for battered US manufacturing during the past several years. However, if demand for cars continues to collapse, forcing supply to follow suit, it is only a matter of time before the US manufacturing recession returns with a vengeance, and at the worst possible time: when not even the US service sector can hinder the realization that the US economy is on the verge of contracting."....

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Added: Michigan layoffs in addition to above:

12/20/16, "GM Sends Layoff Notice to 1,300 Michigan Workers as Sales Slow," Bloomberg, David Welch, Jamie Butters

"General Motors said it plans to eliminate a production shift at a Michigan factory starting in March, resulting in layoffs for about 1,300 workers as demand for passenger cars slows. 

The announcement, contained in an official notice to the state of Michigan, goes a step beyond temporary production cuts for January that both GM and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV disclosed earlier Monday. Detroit-based GM said eliminating the second shift at Hamtramck will affect 493 regular production employees, 638 temporary workers, and others covered by United Auto Workers. About 30 salaried workers will transfer to other plants.

The automakers are acting to reduce swelling inventories as Americans turn away from sedans and other passenger cars, choosing instead to buy sport utility vehicles and light trucks. GM said earlier Monday it was idling some production at five U.S. passenger-car plants in January, and Fiat Chrysler said it’s halting output for New Year’s week at two Canadian vehicle factories."...

Increase in US murders in 2015 was largest in nearly 50 years. Brennan Center predicts 2016 murders in 30 largest US cities will be up 14% from 2015. Success of Black Lives Matter has led to drop in proactive policing and rise in crime. Gun murders of police officers are up 68% through 12/23/16 compared with same period in 2015-City Journal, MacDonald

12/23/16, "The Ferguson Effect Lives On," City Journal, Heather MacDonald
 
"Violence in American cities rose again in 2016, as cops backed off proactive policing."

"The Black Lives Matter crusade against the police continued to cost lives and destroy civil peace in 2016. Two recent estimates of violent crime in the nation’s largest cities show that murders and shootings remained on an upward trajectory this year, as officers backed off of proactive policing. The Brennan Center for Justice projects that murders in the 30 largest cities will be 14 percent higher in 2016 compared with 2015, a stunning increase coming as it does on top of 2015’s already massive homicide rise, which was 14.5 percent in all cities with populations over 250,000 and 20 percent in cities with populations from 500,000 to 1 million. The Wall Street Journal found that homicides increased in 16 of the 20 largest police departments in 2016. Meanwhile, gun murders of police officers are up 68 percent through December 23, compared with the same period in 2015.

Medium-sized cities that don’t show up in the Brennan Center or Wall Street Journal analyses are also in distress. Cleveland’s murder numbers, for example, are up again in 2016 over 2015, which, with a 15 percent spike over 2014, was already one of the deadliest years in a decade. By early December 2016, Richmond had logged a 40 percent increase in homicides over 2015, making this year Richmond’s deadliest in a decade. And even in some cities where homicides decreased modestly over the previous year’s violent crime surge, the drop may simply reflect the vagaries of emergency-room treatment, ambulance speeds, and gangbangers’ shooting skills. Non-fatal shootings are up in Baltimore, though homicides are down slightly compared with 2015. Measured on a per capita basis, 2016 will still be Baltimore’s second deadliest year in its history.

The media, academia, and some police officials are again twisting themselves into knots to deny that depolicing is responsible for the ongoing violent-crime increase. None of their alternative explanations fits the timing. The Wall Street Journal cites Yale sociologist Andrew Papachristos for the proposition that the demolition of Chicago’s massive public-housing projects is resulting in more gang violence today: “What we are seeing now is more ‘mom and pop’ type of activity,” he says. But the last of the projects went down in 2011. Chicago’s homicides dropped significantly in 2013 and 2014. It was only in 2015, as race riots and virulent anti-cop protests spread across the country and as Chicago cops went “fetal,” in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s words, that Chicago’s homicides and shootings started spiking. 

The Brennan Center cites “long-term socioeconomic problems (high poverty, unemployment, and racial segregation)” for the 2016 violent crime increase, the same explanation it gave last year for the 2015 crime spike. But such “long-term socioeconomic problems” have not worsened in the last two years. In implicit recognition of that fact, the Brennan Center this year has added an ad hoc supplemental explanation: cities with high poverty “are more prone to short-term spikes in crime,” the Brennan researchers allege without evidence. But last year’s national homicide increase was not some typical short-term blip; it was the largest in nearly 50 years. Virtually every population tranche of cities experienced it. The Brennan Center also cites “gang violence” as a cause of the rising violence in Chicago—a circular explanation.

University of Missouri, St. Louis, criminologist Richard Rosenfeld continues to propose that a loss in police legitimacy has made residents of high-crime areas less willing to cooperate with the police in solving crimes, and more likely to turn to retaliatory shootings in search of justice. But the no-snitch ethic has been the code of the streets for decades in minority areas. The young men who are gunning each other down in black ghettos at elevated rates were no more likely three years ago to fulfill their civic duties by helping solve shootings. What has changed is their likelihood of getting stopped and questioned by the police as they hang out on the corner; with the police backing off, they are more likely to carry and use guns.

The head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, Darrel Stephens, cites the easy availability of firearms as a possible cause of the crime increase. Firearms were just as available in 2013 and 2014, however, before the Michael Brown police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited the Black Lives Matter movement and its fawning media coverage. Stephens also cites the usual alleged root causes of violence: “high poverty, high unemployment, low educational achievement.” Again, however, they have not worsened since Ferguson.

The strong version of what I have called the Ferguson Effect—a drop in proactive policing leading to rising crime—is the only explanation for the crime increase that matches the data. The country has just elected a new president who understands that the false narrative about the police has led to the breakdown of law and order in inner cities. If the crime situation improves in the coming year, it will be because Black Lives Matter calumnies no longer have an echo chamber in the White House and because cops on the beat believe that they will now be supported for trying to restore order where informal social control has broken down."
 

"Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The War on Cops."

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The Little Drummer Boy, Harry Simeone Chorale

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Trump remarks on the UN in 3/21/16 AIPAC speech: "The United Nations is not a friend of democracy. It's not a friend to freedom. It's not a friend even to the United States of America, where as all know, it has its home. And it surely isn’t a friend to Israel."

Donald J. Trump twitter

Trump comments about the UN in his 3/21/16 speech at AIPAC:

"The United Nations is not a friend of democracy. It's not a friend to freedom. It's not a friend even to the United States of America, where as all know, it has its home. And it surely isn’t a friend to Israel." 

3/21/16, "Donald J. Trump Remarks at AIPAC," Donald J. Trump

"Which brings me to my next point – the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations. 

The United Nations is not a friend of democracy. It's not a friend to freedom. It's not a friend even to the United States of America, where as all know, it has its home. And it surely isn’t a friend to Israel.

With President Obama in his final year, discussions have been swirling about an attempt to bring a security council resolution on the terms of an eventual agreement between Israel and Palestine.

Let me be clear: An agreement imposed by the UN would be a total and complete disaster. The United States must oppose this resolution and use the power of our veto. Why? Because that's not how you make a deal.

Deals are made when parties come to the table and negotiate. Each side must give up something it values in exchange for something it requires. A deal that imposes conditions on Israel and the Palestinian Authority will do nothing to bring peace. It will only further delegitimize Israel and it would reward Palestinian terrorism, because every day they are stabbing Israelis – and even Americans.

Just last week, American Taylor Allen Force, a West Point grad who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was murdered in the street by a knife-wielding Palestinian. You don't reward that behavior, you confront it!

It's not up the United Nations to impose a solution. The parties must negotiate a resolution themselves. The United States can be useful as a facilitator of negotiations, but no one should be telling Israel it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that don't even really know what's happening. When I'm president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state....

We know Israel is willing to deal. Israel has been trying to sit down at the negotiating table, without pre-conditions, for years. You had Camp David in 2000, where Prime Minister Barak made an incredible offer – maybe even too generous. Arafat rejected it. 

In 2008, Prime Minister Olmert made an equally generous offer.

The Palestinian Authority rejected it. Then John Kerry tried to come up with a framework and Abbas didn't even respond, not even to the Secretary of State of the United States of America!

When I become President, the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on Day One. I will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately. I have known him for many years and we will be able to work closely together to help bring stability and peace to Israel and to the entire region.

Meanwhile, every single day, you have rampant incitement and children being taught to hate Israel and hate the Jews. When you live in a society where the firefighters are the hero’s, little kids want to be firefighters. 

When you live in a society where athletes and movie stars are heroes, little kids want to be athletes and movie stars. In Palestinian society, the heroes are those who murder Jews - we can't let this continue. You cannot achieve peace if terrorists are treated as martyrs. Glorifying terrorists is a tremendous barrier to peace. In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you’ve got a culture of hatred that has been fermenting there for years, and if we want to achieve peace, they’ve got to end this indoctrination of hatred.

There is no moral equivalency. Israel does not name public squares after terrorists. Israel does not pay its children to stab random Palestinians. 

You see, what President Obama gets wrong about deal making is that he constantly applies pressure to our friends and rewards our enemies. That pattern, practiced by the President and his administration, including former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has repeated itself over and over and has done nothing but embolden those who hate America. We saw that with releasing $150 billion to Iran in the hope that they would magically join the world community - It's the same with Israel and Palestine. 

President Obama thinks that applying pressure to Israel will force the issue, but it's precisely the opposite. Already, half the population of Palestine has been taken over by the Palestinian ISIS in Hamas, and the other half refuses to confront the first half, so it’s a very difficult situation but when the United States stands with Israel, the chances of peace actually rise. That's what will happen when I’m president.

We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem - and we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel.

The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable. They must come to the table willing and able to stop the terror being committed on a daily basis against Israel and they must come to the table willing to accept that Israel is a Jewish State and it will forever exist as a Jewish State."... 


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Added:

12/23/16, "Benjamin Netanyahu – Christmas Message to Christians Around The World," tcth, sundance


 



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Over 500,000 rejected asylum seekers still live in Germany, countries of origin don't want citizens back among other issues. Individual German states can choose not to enforce deportations. Rejects can appeal to European courts-local.de, Sept. 2016

Deportations delayed because countries of origin won't take their citizens back among other reasons. Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria have been particularly unhelpful.

9/22/2016, "Over 500,000 rejected asylum seekers still live in Germany," thelocal.de, Emma Anderson

"A new report shows that more than half a million people who had their asylum applications rejected are still living in Germany, three-quarters of whom have been in the country for more than six years. 
 
In a parliamentary inquiry from Die Linke (the Left Party), the federal government revealed that as of the end of June, there were 549,209 people living in Germany who had had their asylum application rejected, Bild reported on Thursday.

About three quarters of them had been living in Germany at least six years.

The largest group came from Turkey (about 77,600), followed by Kosovo (68,549) and Serbia (50,817). Serbia and Kosovo were declared safe countries of origin by the German government in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

About half of the total number had an unlimited permit to stay, and another third had a temporary permit to stay.

Bild also reported that there were 168,212 people living as “tolerated” immigrants - 100,000 of whom had had their asylum applications rejected. And another 37,020 “tolerated” immigrants were allowed to stay because they lacked travel documents.

What happens when asylum is rejected

Even if someone has their asylum application rejected, the government may still recognize that there is another reason to protect them inside the country.

Asylum seekers who have their applications rejected may appeal their decisions, all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights, which can take months.

Another option if someone has their asylum application turned down is that they may receive “subsidiary protection” from deportation if they do not meet the requirements for gaining refugee or asylum status, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).

“There may be reasons that prevent him or her from being deported. These include the threat of the death penalty, torture, inhumane or degrading treatment or other existential threats - meaning that the foreign national is to be regarded as vulnerable,” the BAMF website states.

If someone is not granted refugee protection, asylum or subsidiary protection, they may also be granted a ban on deportation. This is issued in the case where a “foreigner faces a substantial concrete danger or an extreme general danger on return to the destination state,” including poor health care if they are ill, BAMF states.

“Protection against deportation... is asserted in particular (but not exhaustively) if for instance the danger of a considerable worsening of an existing illness is likely because of inadequate medical treatment in the destination state, or if such treatment is not available at all.”

If someone is not granted any of these protections, BAMF then issues a request for the person to leave Germany with a deportation notice. They are then given a week to 30 days to leave, depending on the reason for deportation. BAMF also notifies the country of origin and it then becomes the responsibility of the German state [not the fed. gov.] where the asylum applicant resides to enforce the deportation.

But Germany has struggled with getting people to leave voluntarily and for countries to take them back.

In February, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière urged Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to speed up their process of taking back their citizens whose asylum applications had been rejected in Germany. 

These countries had been refusing or delaying the processing of taking people back because they were missing identification documents.

It was also reported in February that Germany was paying refugees to go back home, covering travel costs and even sometimes giving them cash for when they return.

Push for swifter deportations

Conservative politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and sister party CSU (Christian Social Union) have continued to push for swifter deportation processes for rejected asylum seekers.

In response to Bild’s report, chair of the CDU/CSU Union in German parliament Hans-Peter Friedrich called for a reform of the deportation laws.

“Whoever allows rejected asylum seekers to dance circles around the state is destroying the people’s trust in the capabilities of the government,” Friedrich told Bild.

“The laws urgently need to be changed.”"







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Blue Christmas, Elvis Presley live in 1968

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