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At least 17 Texas National Guard members have died while deployed on the state’s three-year-old mission to deter criminal activity at the U.S. border with Mexico, according to state military officials.

Of those, the families of four service members received the newly authorized $500,000 death benefit and six families are waiting for a determination on whether they are eligible for the money. The remaining cases were denied the benefit or the service member had no eligible relative to receive the money.

The Texas Military Department has been tightlipped about troops serving at the border, though how many troops have died in connection to the mission came out during a hearing last week of the Texas House Committee on Defense and Veterans’ Affairs. Members heard from state officials regarding implementation of a new law to provide death benefits for troops who die while on state missions.

Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-08-27/texas-national-guard-death-benefits-border-mission-14993111.html Source - Stars and Stripes

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240829114658/https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-08-27/texas-national-guard-death-benefits-border-mission-14993111.html

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Former Stoughton police detective Matthew G. Farwell was indicted Wednesday on a federal charge that he killed a 23-year-old pregnant woman in 2021 after she claimed he fathered her unborn baby and initiated sexual contact when she was a teenage participant in a law enforcement youth program.

The arrest of Farwell, 38, marked a dramatic turn in the case of Sandra Birchmore, whose body was found on Feb. 4, 2021, in her apartment in Canton. State authorities initially ruled her death a suicide, though Birchmore’s family and friends have raised questions about the investigation over the last several years.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240829114642/https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/08/28/metro/stoughton-police-department-matthew-farwell-death-sandra-birchmore/

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Under the 1849 Wisconsin abortion ban, Bennett, an associate clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, needed two other physicians to attest that Ashley was facing death.

But even with an arsenal of medical documentation, Ashley’s health insurer, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, did not cover the abortion procedure. Months later, Ashley logged in to her medical billing portal and was surprised to see that the insurer had paid for her three-night hospital stay but not the abortion.

“Every time I called insurance about my bill, I was sobbing on the phone because it was so frustrating to have to explain the situation and why I think it should be covered,” she said. “It’s making me feel like it was my fault, and I should be ashamed of it.”

Eventually, Ashley talked to a woman in the hospital billing department who relayed what the insurance company had said.

“She told me,” Ashley said, “quote, ‘FEP Blue does not cover any abortions whatsoever. Period. Doesn’t matter what it is. We don’t cover abortions.’”

...

In response to an interview request, FEP Blue emailed a statement saying it “is required to comply with federal legislation which prohibits Federal Employees Health Benefits Plans from covering procedures, services, drugs, and supplies related to abortions except when the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or when the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.”

Those restrictions, known as the Hyde Amendment, have been passed each year since 1976 by Congress and prohibit federal funds from covering abortion services. But the Hyde Amendment has exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, as the health insurer noted in response to questions from KFF Health News and NPR.

...

What tripped up Ashley’s bill was the word “abortion” and a billing code that is insurance kryptonite, said Salganicoff.

“Right now, we’re in a situation where there is really heightened sensitivity about what is a life-threatening emergency, and when is it a life-threatening emergency,” Salganicoff said.

The same chilling effect that has spooked doctors and hospitals from providing legal abortion care, she said, may also be affecting insurance coverage.

...

Recently, the bill for $1,700 disappeared from Ashley’s online bill portal. The hospital confirmed that eight months later, after multiple appeals, the insurer paid the claim. When contacted again on Aug. 7, FEP Blue responded that it would “not comment on the specifics of the health care received by individual members.”

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240828140134/https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/08/26/nx-s1-5068276/abortion-ban-exception-health-insurance

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The Nebraska Voting Rights Restoration Coalition was ready for July 19. A new state law, Legislative Bill 20, would take effect that day, instantly granting voting rights to some 7,000 people with past felony convictions.

...

[But] two Republican elected officials in Nebraska—Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen—halted implementation of the new law, shutting down new registrations for people with past felonies and throwing into question the voting rights of tens of thousands of other Nebraskans who, until last month, were legally, unambiguously eligible to vote.

...

On July 17, less than 48 hours before LB 20 was to take effect, Hilgers issued an advisory opinion stating that the new law was unconstitutional. But Hilgers didn’t stop there; he also declared unconstitutional a 2005 reform law ending lifetime disenfranchisement of anyone convicted of any felony; the 2005 law, Legislative Bill 53, allowed Nebraskans to vote two years after completing their sentences, a waiting period that LB 20 was set to eliminate.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240828114456/https://boltsmag.org/nebraska-voting-rights-restoration/

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In June, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) signed an acquisition plan for a 5-year, nearly $5.3 million contract for a controversial surveillance tool called Tangles from tech firm PenLink, according to records obtained by the Texas Observer through a public information request. The deal is nearly twice as large as the company’s $2.7 million two-year contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Tangles is an artificial intelligence-powered web platform that scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark web. Tangles’ premier add-on feature, WebLoc, is controversial among digital privacy advocates. Any client who purchases access to WebLoc can track different mobile devices’ movements in a specific, virtual area selected by the user, through a capability called “geofencing.” Users of software like Tangles can do this without a search warrant or subpoena. (In a high-profile ruling, the Fifth Circuit recently held that police cannot compel companies like Google to hand over data obtained through geofencing.) Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.

WebLoc can even be used to access a device’s mobile ad ID, a string of numbers and letters that acts as a unique identifier for mobile devices in the ad marketing ecosystem, according to a US Office of Naval Intelligence procurement notice.

Wolfie Christl, a public interest researcher and digital rights activist based in Vienna, Austria, argues that data collected for a specific purpose, such as navigation or dating apps, should not be used by different parties for unrelated reasons. “It’s a disaster,” Christl told the Observer. “It’s the largest possible imaginable decontextualization of data. … This cannot be how our future digital society looks like.”

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240827115133/https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-dps-surveillance-tangle-cobwebs/

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 111 points 4 weeks ago

Racism is the only reason why the entire Republican party is so popular

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 103 points 1 month ago

Attacking capital is great, it's attacking capitols I have a problem with

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 91 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 92 points 1 month ago

This is exactly why they need to destroy it, the "free" market can't compete with the economic efficiency of a well run government program

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 108 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

He's an Ivy League educated social climber who hobnobbed with Peter Theil and lawmakers before he got famous writing a book where he cosplayed as a poor person so he could tell rich people exactly what they want to hear about poor people

From a quick glance at my résumé, you might think me an older, female version of Vance. I was born in Appalachia in the 1960s and grew up in the small city of Newark, Ohio. When I was 9, my parents divorced. My mom became a single mother of four, with only a high school education and little work experience. Life was tough; the five of us lived on $6,000 a year.

Like Vance, I attended Ohio State University on scholarship, working nights and weekends. I graduated at the top of my class and, again like Vance, attended Yale Law School on a financial-need scholarship. Today, I represent people who’ve been fired illegally from their jobs. And now that I’m running for Congress in Northeast Ohio, I speak often with folks who are trying hard but not making much money.

A self-described conservative, Vance largely concludes that his family and peers are trapped in poverty due to their own poor choices and negative attitudes. But I take great exception when he makes statements such as: “We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy. . . . Thrift is inimical to our being.”

Who is this “we” of whom he speaks? Vance’s statements don’t describe the family in which I grew up, and they don’t describe the families I meet who are struggling to make it in America today. I know that my family lived on $6,000 per year because as children, we sat down with pen and paper to help find a way for us to live on that amount. My mom couldn’t even qualify for a credit card, much less live on credit. She bought our clothes at discount stores.

Thrift was not inimical to our being; it was the very essence of our being.

With lines like “We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs,” Vance’s sweeping stereotypes are shark bait for conservative policymakers. They feed into the mythology that the undeserving poor make bad choices and are to blame for their own poverty, so taxpayer money should not be wasted on programs to help lift people out of poverty. Now these inaccurate and dangerous generalizations have been made required college reading.

[Bolding added]

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 85 points 1 month ago

Gosh, I can't believe Forbes whiffed on a social justice issue, they've been so deeply committed to those principles throughout their publication history /s

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 86 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The auditing firm for Trump Media and the auditor’s owner were charged Friday with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission for work that affected more than 1,500 SEC filings, the federal regulator announced.

The auditor, BF Borgers CPA and its owner Benjamin Borgers have agreed to be permanently suspended from practicing as accountants before the SEC, and also agreed to pay a combined $14 million in civil penalties, without* admitting or denying the allegations, the SEC said.

So we didn't find out that the SEC thought this auditor committed criminal conduct until the SEC had already negotiated this settlement where they don't have to admit any wrongdoing? Bang up job enforcing the laws there guys, that will definitely deter this kind of conduct from other bad actors in the accounting industry /s

*The article actually says "with" there, but the SEC post it links to says "without," so I'm fairly certain that was a typo in the news article

e; It really should go without saying, but since the conversations on this website have effectively reduced my whole personality to "why aren't more people talking about how this Democratic administration's handling of the federal government is falling short of what that party says they stand for," I feel like I should say I doubt we'd see even this pittance of enforcement out of a Republican government, so, yeah, I sincerely hope these pathetic losers get another four years to keep disappointing me because the alternative is still a hell of a lot worse

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 92 points 6 months ago

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Stephen Jay Gould

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 88 points 8 months ago

lawmakers are pushing for tougher penalties for low-level and nonviolent crimes

Oh joy, when we did this in the 90s it ended with the Supreme Court saying there's no issue with giving a life sentence to a father of three for stealing VHSs of children's movies from a K-Mart. I imagine some details will change this time around, but not the important one.

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 100 points 8 months ago

I'm probably just speaking for myself, but this particular dynamic actually makes me feel better about supporting Biden. I think Joe Biden himself is a contemptible dumbass whose policy imagination is stuck in a past that never even actually existed, but I think he's had to surround himself with a lot of staffers in their 20s 30s and 40s who aren't so terminally dense on things like Israel and student loans and reproductive healthcare and labor unions, and they can actually make him evolve and be a little bit less of a boomer than he otherwise would be. Hopefully they're able to keep the pressure up.

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 83 points 1 year ago

Yeah, if an unelected CEO can tell a democratically elected government what it can and can't do we're no better than medieval peasants who had to bow and scrape for the nobles' favor

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 105 points 1 year ago

these are vicious animals

Ah yes, the subtle but ever present dehumanization of opponents and implicit calls to violence (you don't deal with a "vicious animal" by just handing it some paperwork, right?), that's what makes this guy one of the biggest pieces of shit of all time, he is just always working at it and always finding ways to be a disrespectful piece of trash every time he opens his mouth

Can not wait to see him get a fraction of what he deserves

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gAlienLifeform

joined 1 year ago