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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#556

Post by ponchi101 »

ti-amie wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 7:43 pm
ponchi101 wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 7:28 pm No, please. You were one cut above your duty ;)
Thanks. I guess they didn't have the chops to handle this.
:rofl: :rofl:
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#557

Post by ti-amie »

It looks like someone may have taken a Swiss Army Knife on another rampage.

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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#558

Post by Jeff from TX »

Another swiss army knife incident
https://www.yahoo.com/news/woman-opens- ... 47598.html

Woman opens fire on family of 6 heading to vacation in road-rage attack, MO cops say
A family of six came under fire along a stretch of Missouri highway last week while on their way to vacation, and a 22-year-old mother is accused of pulling the trigger.

According to police, the family from Tennessee was heading to Kansas City on I-55 in their Nissan Pathfinder on Friday when a Ford Focus started tailgating the SUV. The Pathfinder driver braked to tell the Focus to slow down or go around, KMOV reported. The Focus sped up, got next to the Pathfinder, and the passenger, Shanyka Fouche, pulled out a gun and began shooting, police told KMOV.

Bullets flew into the cabin of the family’s Pathfinder, striking the dad in his hip, KSDK reported. One round also hit a tire, popping it, the station reported. No one else was hurt, and the dad is expected to recover. The car sped off, but the oldest of the couple’s children, ranging from 2 to 11 years old, managed to memorize the car’s plate number, KTVI reported. Police were able to track the vehicle and pulled it over about an hour later.

“As he was getting shot at he thinks enough to look at the license plate and memorizes the license plate of the car which enabled us to use On Star,” Pevely Police Chief Alan Eickhoff told the TV station. “He is actually the hero of this incident.”

When officers arrested Fouche, they found two small children in the car, including a 2-year-old, outlets report. According to KSDK, the 2-year-old is Fouche’s child. Fouche is facing 10 charges, including assault, endangering the welfare of a child, and armed criminal action, the outlet reported.

She is being held at the Jefferson County Jail without bond.
It seems like time is going backwards towards 1984 . . . :freaking:
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#559

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“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#560

Post by ti-amie »

Something really needs to be done about these Swiss Army Knives.

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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#561

Post by ti-amie »

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#562

Post by ponchi101 »

ti-amie wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 6:31 pm Something really needs to be done about these Swiss Army Knives.

...
You should start selling bumper stickers with this. It summons up perfectly the situation.
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#563

Post by ti-amie »

There was another shooting Swiss Army Knife attack today over masks indoors at a supermarket.
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#564

Post by ti-amie »

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#565

Post by Suliso »

I've been to Portland many times when I lived in Oregon. Don't remember any big safety issues or much homelessness there in my time...

Portland was once a byword for tattooed vegan microbrewers

Now Oregon’s biggest city has become infamous for something else

Plywood windows can be only so inviting. On what seems to be every block, they still decorate downtown Portland a year after racial-justice protests began peacefully, turned violent, and were met with tear-gas and federal shock troops. They have not been removed because of sporadic bouts of anarchy euphemistically called “direct action”. A recent May Day riot left another round of vandalised buildings and broken windows in its wake.

The federal courthouse remains boarded-up; an Apple store has installed fortifications fit for the demilitarised zone (“Apple stands with you in the fight for racial and social justice”, says a sign outside); Tiffany & Co has put up large, rather chic boards that try to lift the mood by declaiming meaningless platitudes like “Love is love”. Colourful social-justice art adorns much of the plywood, endorsing Black Lives Matter or other progressive causes. (“Expression against oppression” declares one; “Capitalism, why are you like this?” groans another.) Homeless encampments spread along the pavements.

Portland’s woes are especially acute, but they resemble those of many prosperous west-coast cities: a febrile political climate where social-justice activism is ascendant, rising crime rates, declining trust in the police and widespread street homelessness. These pose a threat to the cities’ engine of prosperity.

Before covid-19 downtown Portland housed 100,000 jobs, the heart of the city’s (and to a large extent, the state’s) economy. Its reputation has taken a bruising hit. The Urban Land Institute, a think-tank, runs annual surveys ranking the desirability of cities to property developers. In 2017 Portland ranked third. Now it has dropped to 66th out of 80. Polling in May for the Oregonian newspaper found that 53% of residents in the metro area felt safe downtown during the day; only 20% felt safe there at night. More than 60% of residents worry about protests, crime and homelessness. Ratings for the city government’s handling of those are pitiful. As in most American cities, violence is up markedly. There were 55 homicides in 2020, the most in 26 years. This year looks even worse. Already there have been more than 40 murders.

Data on population and unemployment show that the city’s recovery from covid-19 has not been unusually slow, notes John Tapogna of econorthwest, a consultancy. A mass exodus of businesses does not appear to be under way. But a decline in reputation can certainly lead to one. Working out how to recover from a brutal year requires a sense of what went wrong. And yet there is little agreement on that.

The optimists see the tumult as temporary. “Our major employers downtown have said that they’re committed. We’ll start to see people coming back. And as we have more street life, I think we'll have fewer street problems,” says Mingus Mapps, a former urban-politics professor and member of the city council. Hotel bookings are up, he notes, and “we’re demilitarising our public-safety systems”. Andrew Hoan, president of the Portland Business Alliance, the chamber of commerce, is also upbeat: “It's not that there's this moment like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis [but] we’re seeing longer and longer gaps between when we noticed destruction, or bad behaviour occurs, or political violence is breaking out.”

Then there are the pessimists, divided into mutually loathing “woke” and “anti-woke” camps. Portland is a progressive town, with a vocal activist class that sees institutions like policing and capitalism as irredeemably racist and oppressive. Because the unrest is a symptom of legitimate grievance, it may not dissipate unless entire systems are dismantled. “I have never once cried over a window. I do cry over the murder of people who look like me,” Gregory McKelvey, a progressive campaign operative, told the local Willamette Week.

Mr McKelvey was the campaign manager for the progressive challenger Sarah Iannarone, who narrowly lost to the more centrist incumbent mayor, Ted Wheeler, in an election in November. Ms Iannarone’s campaign advocated defunding the police, arguing that “it is time to stop wasting money and stop putting good money after bad” and accusing the force of inflicting “waste and violence” on the community. She got 41% of the vote—just five points shy of victory.

The other pessimists think that Portland’s accommodation of anarchy and lawlessness in the name of social justice augurs bleak times ahead. “What’s happening is unchecked progressivism, resulting in bad governance that is jeopardising the ability of normal citizens to go about normal life,” says Bret Weinstein, a prominent critic of lefty identity politics. “When municipal authorities withdraw the police—because the claim is that the police are the source of violence—what we then get is the emergence of a policing authority among the anarchists, and it is always brutal.”

The police department is similarly despondent. “The message of social justice and racial equality was overrun, it was overtaken by a group of anarchists,” says Daryl Turner, president of the police union. Many police officers have left, either retiring or resigning. Local progressive organisations like Unite Oregon campaigned for the city government to defund the police by at least 50%, rather than the more modest $3m cut (about 1%) already made.

The Oregonian’s polling from May also found that 50% of residents thought policing needed to be increased downtown; only 15% thought it should be decreased. Mr Turner predicts that things will get worse before they get better. “The city is in a state of hopelessness,” he says. In a few months’ time, it will be clear whether such pessimism has firm foundations.

https://www.economist.com/united-states ... crobrewers
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#566

Post by JazzNU »

Very shocked there weren't any dissenters. On to the House.


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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#567

Post by patrick »

That is the upset of the political year especially after they did not want a 1-6 commission.
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#568

Post by the Moz »

Window dressing is far easier to commit to than a substantive reckoning.
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#569

Post by ti-amie »

We'll give you Juneteenth since most of you already celebrate in some way but allow you to vote? No way.
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Re: National, Regional and Local News

#570

Post by ti-amie »

I heard this on the Slate Money podcast last week but Felix Salmon has put this article out with lots of detail.

1 big thing: America's pandemic of unemployment fraud

COVID-19, and the government’s response to it, created a perfect storm for unemployment fraud — which Axios reported could have accounted for half of all the payments made throughout the pandemic.

Why it matters: The government has not officially audited the issue. But there are good reasons to believe that the number is enormous.

At an estimated $400 billion, which is where it's pegged by security company ID.me, the fraud would account for almost 2% of annual GDP.

The big picture: When the pandemic hit, all unemployment applications had to be made online. While going to an office and pretending to be someone is difficult and dangerous, the same kind of impersonation is much easier — and largely risk-free — if you're filing your application from Russia or China.

By the numbers: A successful unemployment application can easily net $20,000, over time. In Washington state, for instance, the regular maximum unemployment benefit is $844 per week. Add on $300 per week in extra federal unemployment benefits during the pandemic, and you get to $20,000 in less than 18 weeks.

How it works: In March 2020, international criminal syndicates already owned — or could easily purchase — massive databases of Americans' personal information, gleaned from thousands of data breaches over the years. New breaches during the pandemic, including one at the Texas DMV, helped to keep up the flow of personal data.

Because the states didn't effectively share information, a single identity could be used for unemployment benefits in dozens of states. In the pandemic, people moving from one state to another after they were laid off was common, so an out-of-state applicant wouldn't necessarily raise red flags.

The easiest program to defraud was Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA, say experts. The program was designed for gig-economy workers and other independent contractors, and therefore didn't require employer confirmation of a layoff.

All unemployment programs have seen large-scale fraud, however, and criminals simply moved to other programs when anti-fraud controls were put in place.
Unemployment Insurance fraud, for instance, is a bit harder to pull off because of the involvement of employers. But it's still rampant. One rapper who was dumb enough to rap on YouTube about the money he was making from UI fraud was charged with stealing $1.2 million in jobless benefits.

2. What the federal government is doing

The U.S. government is clear that unemployment fraud is a huge problem, and has budgeted $2 billion to try to fix it.

Where it stands: The Department of Labor inspector general reported last month that 20 states did not perform what was required of them in terms of detecting improper payments, and 44 states did not do what was recommended (but not required).

The inspector general cites an "improper payment rate" of 10.6% — but that is not an estimate of the amount of fraud that took place during the pandemic. Instead it is a lower bound — the lowest fraud rate that was seen before the pandemic.
The report says that the rate during the pandemic was probably "much higher" but hazards no guesses as to just how high it was.
The Labor Department itself "has not estimated an improper payment rate for UI benefits provided in response to the COVID-19 pandemic," notes the inspector general.

What they're saying: “Widespread fraud at the state level in pandemic unemployment insurance during the previous administration is one of the most serious challenges we inherited," said White House economist Gene Sperling in a statement provided to Axios.

President Joe Biden said last month: "There is perhaps no oversight issue inherited by my administration that is as serious as the exploitation of relief programs by criminal syndicates using stolen identities to steal government benefits. Last year, this type of criminal behavior robbed American families of billions of dollars."

The other side: House Republicans Darrell Issa, James Comer, and Gary Palmer are today demanding a Congressional hearing on this issue.

“As much as $400 billion may have been lost to fraud by way of falsified claims for COVID-related unemployment benefits," Palmer says in a statement provided to Axios. "Identity theft has become rampant and foreign crime rings have stolen hundreds of billions of dollars."
"This is one of the greatest thefts of American tax dollars in history, totaling more than the entire 2021 budgets of the Army and Navy combined, and more than the combined budgets of eight American states. It’s beyond time for Congress to exercise more oversight of these benefit processes to ensure that Americans are never again the victims of fraud on this unacceptable scale."

3. What happened in Arizona

Image

Data: Arizona Department of Economic Security; Chart: Axios Visuals

Arizona has been particularly public about the anti-fraud controls in its unemployment office.

By the numbers: Arizona has said that it saw 570,400 initial PUA claims filed in the week ending October 10, 2020. A month later, after hiring ID.me to filter new applications, that number had plunged by 99% to 6,700.

In December, the ID.me contract was expanded to include continuing PUA claims — which at that point were numbering 268,556 per week. One week later, the number of continuing PUA claims had fallen to 85,174 — a decrease of 68.3%.
Something very similar happened with the main Arizona unemployment insurance program. In the week of February 6, the state saw 75,041 new UI claims. Then it brought in ID.me. The following week, the number of new UI claims fell by 96.3% to 2,759.

What they're saying: “When it became clear that fraud was rising within this program, we added identity verification to the regular UI system February 6,” Arizona Department of Economic Security press secretary Tasya Peterson tells Axios. The move, she says, “has significantly reduced the number of fraudulent claims received.”

4. What happened in other states

Image

Data: Department of Labor; Chart: Axios Visuals

Experiences similar to Arizona's can be seen across the country.

Florida's official dashboard shows 111,904 unemployment claims in the week ending Jan. 30, and then 10,480 the following week, when fraud controls were introduced — a drop of 90.6%.

In Colorado, according to the official state dashboard, 2,107,988 claims have been sent to ID.me for testing. Of those, 268,060 — or just 12.7% — have been verified.

In Nebraska, the overall fraud rate within the unemployment program was 65.97%, according to a report from the state auditor.

The Department of Labor's data site provides information on all the states.

In New York, weekly PUA claims averaged 43,863 in the four weeks to March 20. Then fraud-prevention measures were put in place, and the average immediately dropped to 3,421 — a fall of 92.2%.
In California, PUA claims hit 405,878 in the week of August 29, and 440,882 in the week of September 5. After October 1, when it became harder for fraudsters to game the system, the numbers immediately crashed — there were just 14,843 in the week ending October 3 — and have stayed low ever since.

The big picture: Fraud doesn't happen evenly. Every state has a different system for claiming benefits, and tends to see a surge in fraudulent claims when a criminal syndicate manages to hack that particular system. (Pennsylvania, for instance, saw a large spike in fraudulent claims in May 2020.)

If fraud rates fall dramatically in one program or in one state, that doesn't mean fraud overall has fallen — it is just as likely to have moved to a different program or location.

5. How fraud shows up in economic statistics

Image

Data: BLS, The Century Foundation; Chart: Axios Visuals

The fraud is not hard to see in economic statistics, once you realize it's there.

By the numbers: Before the pandemic, continued unemployment claims — the number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits for two weeks or longer — were counted at 2,152,733. That was one-third of the official number of unemployed Americans, as measured in the monthly household employment survey, which was 6,504,000.
Since the CARES Act boosted unemployment benefits, however, continued claims have consistently been significantly higher than the total number of unemployed. In August, for instance, there were 29,570,321 continued claims, well over double the official unemployment count of 13,742,000.

The excess number of claims is theoretically possible, since certain Americans are eligible for unemployment even if they're not counted as officially unemployed. The number of unemployed, for instance, is generally undercounted.

The new federal unemployment benefits were also large enough that many Americans applied for them even if they might not have filed for unemployment in the past.
Nevertheless, the economic statistics are entirely consistent with widespread unemployment fraud.

How it works: During the pandemic — between the week of March 21, 2020, and the week of June 5, 2021 — there have been a total of 83,506,986 initial claims for unemployment insurance. On top of that, there have been 27,315,075 initial claims for PUA, according to data compiled by The Century Foundation.

Add them up, and you get more than 110 million layoffs over the course of the pandemic — out of a total workforce of about 15o million people.

Where it stands: Recently, America has been experiencing a period of massive labor shortages, where employers have been desperate for workers and certainly haven't been laying them off in large numbers. Yet initial unemployment claims are still running at more than three times their pre-pandemic level.

There were 5,230,478 initial claims between April 3 and June 5 of this year, plus another 924,627 PUA claims, for a total of 6,155,105 layoffs.
Compare that to the same period in 2019, when there was much less talk of a labor shortage. Back then, initial claims totaled 2,001,137 — less than a third of this year's number.

6. The anti-fraud software provider: ID.me

ID.me, a private company founded to make it as easy as possible for individuals to prove who they say they are, was most recently valued at $1.5 billion. It has emerged over the course of the pandemic as the leading provider of anti-fraud software for state unemployment offices.

How it works: The company says it does not directly profit from fraud. Quite the opposite: CEO Blake Hall tells Axios that it costs his company $7 for each video chat session, and makes $0.50 for every applicant who goes through the system without needing to talk to one of his employees.

At the moment, about 14% of applicants end up in video chat. "We signed contracts and will follow through with the government," he says, but "I’m losing money on all these deals."

The big picture: ID.me, like all fraud prevention, inevitably makes it harder for some people to claim benefits. In an ideal, fraud-free, world, it wouldn't need to exist.

Fraudsters can and do get past ID.me's defenses — that's statistically inevitable. But they also naturally gravitate to where their fraud is easiest. And with roughly half the states still having very weak protection against this kind of fraud, that is where the criminals are concentrating their efforts.

Axios contacted ID.me as part of the reporting on our last story, because the company is a key part of the states' anti-fraud architecture. We received no PR pitch or press release from them.

Of note: The big budgetary win for the information security sector has already happened as part of the American Rescue Plan, which earmarks $2 billion for cybersecurity funding for unemployment programs.

What they're saying: "The American Rescue Plan is the first time we've felt like help is on the way," Hall says in a statement to Axios. "The current administration and Congress could not have done more in the time they have had to address the fraud plaguing these programs."

7. When Tupac Shakur and Dianne Feinstein filed for unemployment

Image

Tupac Shakur was real. Dianne Feinstein, not so much.

One footnote about the Arizona claims data: I'm using the state's own numbers, rather than the Labor Department numbers for Arizona, which aren't identical but have much the same shape. I can't explain the discrepancy.

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios ... m=business
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