Random Politics & Religion #00

I'm the most american american that ever america'd

Germany said on Thursday it was sending 20 police officers to the border between Hungary and Serbia to help control a surge in the number of asylum seekers heading into the European Union and ultimately to Germany with its generous welfare benefits.

The EU has seen a sharp rise in the number of Kosovo citizens smuggling themselves into the bloc especially since a relaxation of travel rules allowing them to reach EU borders via Serbia. Some 10,000 Kosovars filed for asylum in Hungary in just one month this year, many fleeing from poverty and unemployment.

Immigration has shot up the political agenda in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, with many voters angry about the cost and fearful that migrants and refugees will take their jobs.

"To ensure the long-term stability of Kosovo and the whole region and to guarantee ... protection and acceptance among the population for those who are politically persecuted .. we have taken a range of measures," said the ministry in a statement.

One step is for 20 German police officers to go to the Hungarian-Serbian frontier immediately to support long-term border management, said the ministry.

The EU's border control agency Frontex would also be strengthened there and Germany will support additional measures to protect the bloc's external borders.

It said authorities would prioritize asylum applications of Kosovo citizens, deciding on them within two weeks and stepping up efforts to show Germany is not an easy place to get applications through.

Germany rejected about 99 percent of asylum applications from Kosovars last year and in January the approval rate was even lower, at 0.3 percent, said the ministry. To gain asylum, applicants must show they would faced persecution if they returned to their home country

The number of refugees from Kosovo jumped by 86 percent in January alone to 3,630, said the ministry.

The interior ministry has also signaled it is open to changing the law - possibly making it easier to deport asylum seekers from Kosovo by making it a country of safe origin - but it has said that this is not the priority for now.

I'm the most 'Murican 'Murican that ever 'Murica'd

All these guys like lordgrim think they know what is best for everyone they have all the answers for everything they this and they that

he sounds like every other crackpot back before 9/11 in those stupid militias getting drunk and shooting the empty beer cans with automatic weapons.

In pursuit of small government and personal liberty, let's criminalize male nipples.

proposed the bill in reaction to a group of naked bicyclists who pedaled through Missoula in August 2014.

They at least had balls.

As for the Yoga pants:

But then we wouldn't have this;

President Barack Obama is expected to announce an executive order directing the government and companies to share more information about cybersecurity threats in response to attacks like that on Sony Entertainment.

As in other policy areas where Obama has been unable to get legislation through the now Republican-controlled Congress, the White House is turning to more limited administrative actions to advance its agenda as much as it can.

The announcement could be tonight or tomorrow, when the U.S. president speaks at a daylong conference on cybersecurity at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley, according to three participants in the conference.

The move comes as big Silicon Valley companies prove hesitant to fully support more mandated cybersecurity information sharing without reforms to government surveillance practices exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

"We are certainly hearing that an executive order may be announced," Nuala O'Connor, president of the technology lobbying group Center for Democracy & Technology, said as she boarded a plane en route to the event.

A new government center for cybersecurity, announced earlier this week by Obama's top homeland security advisor, could play a key role in the process. But the Stanford attendees said they did not have details.

The White House declined to comment.

Cybersecurity industry veterans said Obama's anticipated order would be only a modest step in one of the president's major priorities - the defense of companies from attacks like those on Sony and Anthem Inc.

Administration officials have said they would prefer legislation that would require more information sharing and limit any legal liability for companies that share too much. They have said that an executive order could not limit liability.

But getting anything through Congress on the subject has proven a daunting task. That is unlikely to get much better without at least the support of big Silicon Valley companies such as Google Inc and Facebook Inc.

Those companies, however, have refused to give full-throated support to cybersecurity bills without some reform of surveillance practices exposed by Snowden that have hurt U.S. technology companies' efforts to win business in other countries.

No grand bargain between the administration and the Valley companies has been reached, according to O'Connor and an executive at a major technology company.

For that reason, and the fact they have not seen the text of the planned executive order, top companies Google, Facebook and Yahoo are not sending their chief executives to the Stanford conference, the executive said. Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook is one of the few household names that is speaking, and that company declined to comment.

In a private meeting with Obama Friday, though, some of the leading executives are expected to press again for surveillance reform and support for strong encryption, which some in the administration have faulted recently on the grounds that it enables criminals and terrorists to hide their activity.

Big technology companies and a host of startups have been beefing up encryption in Snowden's wake to make blanket intelligence collection overseas more difficult.

NBC has expanded its probe into embattled news anchor Brian Williams to examine his expense accounts, New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reports.

Williams, whom NBC suspended for six months without pay on Tuesday, has come under fire since admitting last week that he misled the public by claiming to have come under enemy fire aboard an Army Chinook during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The “NBC Nightly News” anchor also faces scrutiny over claims he’s made about his experiences during Hurricane Katrina and the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.

Sherman, a media reporter best known for his deeply-reported biography of Fox News president Roger Ailes, writes that NBC insiders have expressed concern for years over Williams’ alleged pattern of embellishing stories. Among those said to have confronted Williams on the subject are former network president Steve Capus and Tom Brokaw, Williams’ predecessor as anchor of “NBC Nightly News.”

But, Sherman reports, Williams could face problems on other fronts. NBC’s Richard Esposito will continue the network’s fact-checking inquiry into Williams during his suspension, and according to one source, that probe now includes Williams’ expense accounts.

“In the meantime,” Sherman writes, “NBC executives will be poring over [substitute anchor] Lester Holt’s ratings data to gauge his strength as a possible full-time replacement.”

Some 200,000 Obamacare enrollees are about to be kicked off their insurance policies after they failed to confirm that they are legally living in the United States administration officials announced Thursday. Under the health law, people enrolled in exchange policies must be able to prove legal status.

Last summer, the administration announced that there were significant discrepancies in hundreds of thousands of Obamacare applications—specifically dealing with citizenship. Health officials sent out letters in August to about 300,000 enrollees with application discrepancies asking them to send in relevant documents to confirm their legal status and resolve the issue.

About 112,000 of those people never responded and got dropped from their plans in September.

The new wave of people responded to the administration, but didn’t provide sufficient evidence to conclude they legally reside in the United States.

Most of these people had been enrolled on policies for at least a year—and many of their plans were automatically renewed for this year. Officials said their coverage will be officially terminated on Feb 28.

The announcement came just as health officials are making their final push to enroll as many people as possible in health coverage through Obamacare’s state and federal exchanges before the Sunday deadline. Last week, officials said some 9.9 million people had selected policies on both the state and federal exchanges—that will be revised down once these plans are terminated.

Most of these people received federal subsidies last year to make their coverage more affordable. It is unclear if the Internal Revenue Service will try to recoup that money.

Separately, the administration will be taking action to resolve other applicant discrepancies for people who listed incorrect information about their income on their application. This is important because enrollee income determines whether they qualify for federal subsidies, and how much they should receive.

The number of people getting kicked off their policies is likely to increase—since the administration’s figures only account for people who enrolled on the federal exchange. It does not include people with application discrepancies on the state run exchanges.

Good news for tax thieves! Their income is estimated to go up 262 percent this year, from a mere $5.8 billion to $21 billion in stolen tax returns. Federal auditors just ranked the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to combat identity theft and fraudulent tax returns as one of the top weaknesses in the government.

The Government Accountability Office on Wednesday released this year’s edition of the agency’s “High Risk List” – which details the most vulnerable areas in the federal government for waste, fraud and abuse. A new addition this year is the IRS’s effort to weed out identity theft and tax fraud at a time when the problem is becoming more prevalent.

In the first half of 2014, The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reported that 1.6 million taxpayers were affected by identity theft – compared to just 271,000 in 2010. The increase is likely attributed to the uptick in electronic filing. Although this option is convenient for taxpayers, it’s also easier for fraudsters to file fraudulent returns at a faster clip.

The IRS paid out more than $5.8 billion in fraudulent refunds related to identity theft during the 2013 filing season. The agency investigated at least 1500 cases of identity theft during that same time period. Since then, the IRS has been ramping up efforts to combat identity theft, but it still remains a serious problem.

In August, the GAO called it an “evolving threat, one that imposes a serious financial and emotional toll on honest taxpayers and threatens the integrity of the tax administration system.”

The IRS is certainly no stranger to the GAO’s High Risk List – its tax enforcement efforts have been called a weakness every year since 1990. The GAO credits that to the widening tax gap (the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid), which was some $385 billion the last time data was available, according to the report.

The heightened identity theft threat comes as the IRS is reeling from massive budget cuts. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has routinely warned that the $346 million in cuts will hamper the agency’s ability to do its job this year, including enforcing 40 new provisions under Obamacare as well as combating identity theft and handling its customer service responsibilities.

Still, the IRS says it’s committed to preventing fraud. One way of doing this is issuing identity protection “pins” to victims that they can use to file future tax returns. The GAO says more needs to be done to catch tax thieves in the first place.

In pursuit of small government and personal liberty, let's criminalize male nipples.

Trouble mounts for Brian Williams: NBC reportedly looking into his expense accounts

Identity Theft through Internal Revenue Service will most likely increase by 262% this year compared to last year


So, it's ok for the IRS to police people for having health insurance, but nobody is addressing the real problem with IRS: security and identity theft.

Obamacare isn't restricted to US citizens only. Permanent Residents are required to have coverage also.

NBC, its shareholders, its subsidiary GE, and their shareholders.

Everyone is required* to have health insurance.

However, not everyone gets the premium credit to pay for it. Only US citizens (not permanent residents, but actual citizens) get the credit.

That's why the article classified these insurance policies as "Obamacare" policies, and not healthcare policies.

*Some restrictions apply.