Exhale and Feed The Plants!!
The Department of Labor on Friday filed notice that it will appeal a ruling by a federal judge that struck down a Trump administration rule letting individuals and small businesses pool together to buy health insurance.
The decision on March 28 by U.S. District Judge John Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, threatens a program the Trump administration created for customers to use as an escape hatch from high Obamacare premiums.
The administration will be appealing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The health insurance alternatives are known as "association health plans," and they let people who are self-employed or who are in small businesses act as a large business for the purpose of buying medical coverage.
Obamacare had ended the plans to encourage more people to go into its exchanges and also because past plans had become insolvent, leaving people holding the bag for costly medical expenses.
But the Trump administration had tried to reinstate them through rulemaking, and they are already up and running in many states: Health insurers have been allowed to run the plans since September 2018, and association-created coverage was only allowed beginning in January 2019. New associations that form were supposed to kick off in April.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/department-of-labor-appeals-ruling-against-trumpcare-plans
Can't have those pesky peasants take control of their own health care plans.
>plans had become insolvent, leaving people holding the bag for costly medical expenses.
Because of fucking insane rules, regulations and plan crushing bureaucracy (almost like it was planned)
Justin Fairfax aide who resigned after sex assault allegations speaks out
A woman who resigned as Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax's policy director in the days after two women accused him of sexual assault said on Thursday that she felt "brainwashed, betrayed and retraumatized" by the way he has handled the allegations against him.
At a Rally Against Rape event in Arlington's Gateway Park Thursday night, Adele McClure spoke for nearly 20 minutes. Her talk was streamed live on Facebook. She recounted how she was sexually assaulted at age 16 by someone she barely knew.
Then she "moved on and buried it deep," she said. "I have not thought about that, or those feelings, or that encounter, for 14 years. I suppressed them, and I pushed them deep down inside. And I convinced myself that it was my fault."
McClure said in an interview Friday that the speech "was one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life. There was still a part of me that wanted to protect (Fairfax). Down to the last minute, I almost scratched everything I was going to speak about (him).
"I just couldn't be silent anymore."
Fairfax has vehemently denied all allegations against him. His spokeswoman said Friday the lieutenant governor would have a comment about McClure's comments later in the day.
https://pilotonline.com/news/government/virginia/article_784691aa-682f-11e9-9e27-0bdcaac97ef2.html
Pentagon prepping $22M expansion to southern border mission, eases migrant contact rules
In an effort to expand the U.S. military presence at the southern border, the Pentagon is expected to ease rules that prohibit some service members’ contact with migrants.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan is preparing to approve a Department of Homeland Security request on Friday that will authorize contact waivers for lawyers, cooks, and drivers in the military so they can deploy to the border to assist with the migrant crisis, defense officials told The Washington Post.
The waivers would be granted for more than 300 troops, bypassing long-term rules that forbid contact between military personnel and the migrants.
The request is part of a $21.9 million military expansion effort on the southern border for 2019.
Cooks would be tasked with distributing food to migrants held in detention centers and as well as occasionally documenting the care received by migrants.
Drivers would transport migrants to and from detention centers while being in a segregated compartment and accompanied by Customs and Border Protection officials.
Military lawyers would be tasked with deportation hearings for migrants in New Mexico, Louisiana, and New York.
Aside from detailing what the troops would be permitted to do, the documents also stipulate what they cannot do. The documents specifically state that military service members cannot conduct law enforcement activities due to the Posse Comitatus Act.
The act, passed in 1898, prohibits U.S. troops from acting in the role of law enforcement while in U.S. territory. The intent of the law was to prevent federal troops from exercising control over states.
The Pentagon has been careful in crafting language so that military personnel’s duties have not encroached on the act, something they also did in Nov. 2018 when authorizing military personnel to protect border agents.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended and blocked more than 103,000 illegal immigrants in March alone, an increase of 38 percent from February, or 148 percent from March 2018, the Washington Examiner reported. It’s also the highest number in a decade.
“Our capacity is already severely strained, but these increases will overwhelm the system entirely,” Former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in March. “This is not a ‘manufactured’ crisis. This is truly an emergency.”
CBP agents have been pulled from ports of entry on the southern border and reassigned to migrant housing where detention centers are overwhelmed. At least 750 border agents were moved from their southern entry ports, and another 100 agents were expected to be pulled from entry ports on the border with Canada.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/04/pentagon-prepping-22m-expansion-to-southern-border-mission-eases-migrant-contact-rules/
RECONCILE
PG&E Proposes New $1.1 Billion Customer Rate Hike
December 14, 2018
http://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/12/14/pge-proposes-new-11-billion-customer-rate-hike/
PG&E's plan to award $235 million in bonuses approved by judge
APRIL 24, 2019
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pg-es-plan-to-award-235-million-in-bonuses-approved-by-judge/
REGULATORS APPROVE $373M PG&E RATE HIKE TO HELP WITH WILDFIRE COSTS
Updated: Apr. 26, 2019
SAN FRANCISCO (CA) — California regulators have approved a $373 million rate hike for Pacific Gas & Electric to pay costs related to a series of wildfires.
KTVU-TV, a Bay Area news station says the California Public Utilities Commission Thursday unanimously OK'd an increase that raises the average bill by $3.50 a month over 12 months.
The station says the money is supposed to be used to pay PG&E's costs for nine fire, wind and rain events in 2016 and 2017, including repairs and clearing brush and trees from under power lines to prevent future fires.
The hike will not cover the billions it will cost PG&E in connection with 2018's devastating wildfires, which KTVU reports, will generate its own, additional, emergency rate request. And on top of that, every three years, PG&E files what's called a General Rate Request and that one, as currently submitted, could add another $20 a month to your bill.
https://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/news/PGE-rate-hike-approved-509110771.html
>The hike will not cover the billions it will cost PG&E in connection with 2018's devastating wildfires, which KTVU reports,
will generate its own, additional, emergency rate request. And on top of that, every three years, PG&E files what's called a General Rate Request and that one, as currently submitted, could add another $20 a month to your bill.