From minimum wage hikes to stricter gun control measures and Me Too-inspired legislation, 2019 will usher in thousands of new laws in various states.
2019 will see the enactment of a slew of new laws across the country (in California alone, more than 1,000 will be added to the books). In some states, minimum wages will go up, guns will be harder to obtain, plastic straws will get the boot and hunters will get to wear pink for a change.
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New laws
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A woman dies at age 65 before collecting one benefit check. She and her employer paid into the system for almost 50 years and she collected NOTHING. Keep in mind all the working people that die every year who were paying into the system and got nothing.
And these governmental morons mismanaged the money and stole from the system, so that it’s now going broke. BEAUTIFUL! And they have the audacity to call today’s seniors “vultures” in an attempt to cover their ineptitude. DISGRACEFUL!
The real reason for renaming our Social Security payments is so the government can claim that all those social security recipients are receiving entitlements thus putting them in the same category as welfare, and food stamp recipients.
THIS IS WORTH THE FEW MINUTES IT TAKES TO READ AND DIGEST!
F.Y.I. By changing the name of SS contributions, it gives them a means to refute this program in the future. It’s free money for the government to spend under this guise. The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a Federal Benefit Payment ? I’ll be part of the one percent to forward this. I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.
Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it. The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.” This is NOT a benefit. It is OUR money , paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too ! It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.(This should be enough for you to forward this message, If not read on.)
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security. If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you’d have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved.
This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it’s a fact). And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you’re 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts. Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did (or Lyndon Johnson). They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot”(oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them … and they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer. (Isn’t it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments?) But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a benefit, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. This is stealing! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn’t mean that our investments were for charity! Let’s take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government. Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of the 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income . 90% of people won’t forward this. PLEASE! Will you?
The US Surgeon General just declared youth vaping an epidemic, and called out e-cigarette giant Juul as part of the problem in an advisory today. The Surgeon General’s declaration isn’t a new policy or enforcement action against vape companies or retailers. But it is a call to action that follows news that teen vaping is skyrocketing.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams’ advisory lays out why teen vaping is a public health concern: nicotine can mess with the developing brain, it’s addictive, and the chemicals in e-cigarette vapor may be unhealthy to inhale. The advisory says a recent surge in teen vaping “has been fueled by new types of e-cigarettes that have recently entered the market,” and calls out vape giant Juul for its high nicotine doses.
Update (Dec. 27): Although Pixar’s Bao is no longer available to watch online, Weekends is now available, so you can still watch eight of the ten shorts for free.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its shortlists for several Oscar categories last week, including best documentary, best foreign language film, and best original song. The academy also revealed the 10 animated short films still in the running, and eight of them are available to watch online for free.
The overwhelming frontrunner is Disney-Pixar’s Bao, an eight-minute short that played before Incredibles II in June and is about an empty-nester who’s overjoyed when her aggressively cute dumpling magically comes to life. Written and directed by Chinese-Canadian storyboard artist Domee Shi, Bao is the first Pixar short directed by a woman in the company’s 32-year history. Pixar last won the award in 2016 with the short film Piper.
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From an animated short film
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On day three of Lowell Cauffiel’s final detox from alcohol, a giant rabbit in a tuxedo and top hat tapped on the window of his second-floor bedroom.
Cauffiel, a bestselling true crime author, Hollywood screenwriter and producer purposely didn’t go to rehab 34 years ago. When he abruptly stopped drinking two fifths of bourbon a day, he wanted to experience the full effect of withdrawal.
The week-long process started with the feeling that his “guts were being pulled out.” He shook. He sweat. He suffered some very vivid hallucinations.
Kira Johnson’s presence is everywhere in her two young sons’ lives. Poster-sized pictures of her fill their house. They regularly watch home videos of her. And their father, Kira’s husband Charles Johnson IV, brings her sense of adventure and determination into everything they do as a family.
“I try to do Kira-style, like Mommy would do it,” Johnson said. “My mantra is just wake up and make Mommy proud.”
And while Johnson loves to talk about Kira with his sons, 4-year-old Charles Johnson V and 2-year-old Langston, there are some questions they ask about their mother — who died hours after giving birth to Langston — that he struggles to answer.
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Kira Johnson, 39, died hours after giving birth to her son, Langston, in what her husband, Charles Johnson IV, describes as a death that hospital staff could have prevented. “This was not just a medical tragedy” he said. “This was a medical catastrophe.”Courtesy of Charles Johnson IV
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Penny Marshall, the nasal-voiced co-star of the slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley” and later the chronically self-deprecating director of hit films like “Big” and “A League of Their Own,” died on Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 75.
Her publicist, Michelle Bega, said the cause was complications of diabetes. Ms. Marshall had in recent years been treated for lung cancer, discovered in 2009, and a brain tumor. She announced in 2013 that the cancer was in remission.
Ms. Marshall became the first woman to direct a feature film that grossed more than $100 million when she made “Big” (1988). That movie, a comedy about a 12-year-old boy who magically turns into an adult (Tom Hanks) and then has to navigate the grown-up world, was as popular with critics as it was with audiences.
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Penny Marshall, left, and Cindy Williams as the title characters in the ABC sitcom “Laverne & Shirley.” Ms. Marshall’s success on the show paved the way for her directing career. ABC
Nancy Wilson, an award-winning singer whose beguiling expressiveness in jazz, R&B, gospel, soul and pop made her a crossover recording star for five decades and who also had a prolific career as an actress, activist and commercial spokeswoman, died Dec. 13 at her home in Pioneertown, Calif. She was 81.
Her manager and publicist Devra Hall Levy confirmed the death but did not know the specific cause.
Ms. Wilson resisted the label of “jazz singer” for much of her career, although jazz was the form to which she returned time and again and in which she had her greatest critical and popular success. She considered herself above all “a song stylist,” she once told The Washington Post. “That’s my essence,” she said, “to weave words, to be dramatic.”
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Singer Nancy Wilson performs in 2007. (Rick Maiman/AP)
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Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
New laws
Kavanaugh among others
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Penny Marshall
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James' World 2 