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The Veteran Bus Project launches campaign to help our homeless veterans!


Shane Johnson Aloma, FL ·
Awesome time at this event! Thank you to Veronica Kemeny for putting this together!

A huge Thank you to Bill Price for the generous donation of $10,000 to the Booyah Veteran Bus Project. I really can't Thank you enough sir!

The Veteran Bus Project is a three phase endeavor to provide a sense of dignity to the countless homeless and transitioning Veterans in our nation. 

Phase 1 is a 360+ mile hike from the Lake Nona, FL VA hospital to Panama City, FL raising awareness for Veteran homelessness and the fact that many of them have to walk just to get to the VA hospital. The hike begins on October 22nd and ends on Veteran’s Day; it will be segmented into 22 mile intervals representing the number of Veterans that commit suicide every day.

Phase 2 involves giving homeless Veterans a place to shower, get a haircut, and a meal to eat, through the use of refurbished transit buses and also providing them transportation to their respective VA Hospitals. Due to the fact that many of our Veterans are taking their lives because they don’t have anybody to talk to, we will be partnering with counselors, pastors, and organizations in their communities that they can speak with and stay connected with long after we are gone. These buses will be turned into mobile showers providing a safe place for Veterans to get clean. By focusing on this segment it gives us a way to help fight back against this epidemic that is plaguing our nation, homelessness.

Helping the Veteran is our concern.

Phase 3 provides a safe place for Veterans as they transition out of active duty service back into the civilian sector. This phase involves Transitional Housing. Too many Veterans are neglected in this stage of your lives and often end up homeless because of a lack of knowledge of resources and education outside of military life. The Veteran Bus Project will put the Veteran into a 13 week housing program, providing them with vocational training in the industry they desire to enter. They will be provided with a mentor and a job opportunity upon graduation.

The Veteran Bus Project will remain steadfast in its vision of having a bus in every major city becoming a beckon of hope for the many that will use its service. As reported in the 2015 CoC Homeless Populations and Subpopulations report, there are over 47000 homeless veterans in the United States. With over 4000 homeless Veterans according to the same report, Florida is an optimal location to launch this endeavor. The Veteran Bus Project will appeal to the Veterans need of honor, dignity, and camaraderie. These are our brothers and sisters and we are here to cover their six.

The Veteran Bus Project will be led by Founder and Marine, Shane Johnson. With his leadership at the helm we are aggressively planning to provide this service where ever the need arises.

As more people join us in this fight by providing funding or donating buses we will be able to expand our reach and help many more Veterans throughout our nation. By creating an “Army” of volunteers and support through the philosophy of "No Veteran Left Behind" we will gain an influence that stretches across the nation helping Veterans.

Booyah Veteran Bus Project is a non-profit organization file under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

For more information on how you can help visit:

Dog who won't leave master's coffin after Italy earthquake




'Longest living human' says he is ready for death at 145



  Mbah Gotho, from Java, has been named as the world's longest lived human at 145 years old.  Credit: CEN

An Indonesian man who claims to be the longest living human in recorded history has described how he “just wants to die”.

Mbah Gotho, from Sragen in central Java, was born on December 31, 1870, according to the date of birth on his identity card.

Now officials at the local record office say they have finally been able to confirm that remarkable date as genuine.

Mbah Gotho's identity card, showing his date of birth as December 31, 1870. He is registered under his official name, Sodimejo; like many Indonesians he was only given one Credit: CEN

If independently confirmed, the findings would make Mr Gotho a staggering 145 years old – and the longest lived human in recorded history.

But despite his incredible longevity, Mr Gotho says he has little wish to remain on this earth much longer.

“What I want is to die. My grandchildren are all independent,” he told local media this week.

Mr Gotho has outlived all 10 of his siblings, four wives, and even his children. His nearest living relatives are grand children, great grand children, and great-great grandchildren.

One of Mr Gotho’s grandsons said his grandfather has been preparing for his death ever since he was 122.

He has even bought a burial site close to the graves of his children.

“The gravestone there was made in 1992. That was 24 years ago,” Mr Gotho’s grandson said.

Members of the family said Mr Gotho now spends most of his time sitting and listening to the radio because his eyesight is too poor to watch television.

He has had to be spoon-fed and bathed for the past three months as he has become increasingly frail.

When asked what his secret to longevity is, Mr Gotho replied: “The recipe is just patience.”

While record office staff say they have confirmed the birth date on his identity card, he will not make it into the record books until the findings are independently verified.

The current record holder, French woman Jeanne Calment, died in 1997 at the age of 122.

Duke, a dog, wins third term as mayor

WDAY
CORMORANT, Minn. —Nine-year-old Duke, a Great Pyrenees, handily won another one-year term as mayor of the small northwestern Minnesota town of Cormorant, Detroit Lakes Online reports.

"I don't know who would run against him because he's done such great things for the community," Cormorant resident Karen Nelson told Detroit Lakes Online.

The locals say Duke has one of the highest approval ratings in the country.

"Everybody voted for Duke, except for one vote for his girlfriend, Lassie," Duke's owner David Rick said.

Detroit Lakes Online reports the dog was unavailable for an interview, but his media people said he's more than ready for a third term.

Duke was elected in 2014, when he defeated Richard Sherbrook, the owner of a local store, ABC News reported in 2014.

Many donors to Clinton Foundation met with her at State


WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money - either personally or through companies or groups - to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton's help with a visa problem and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm's corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.

The meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton. Her calendars and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors.

The AP's findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton foundation donors and people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about their needs.

The 154 did not include U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives. Clinton met with representatives of at least 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity, but they were not included in AP's calculations because such meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties.

Last week, the Clinton Foundation moved to head off ethics concerns about future donations by announcing changes planned if Clinton is elected.

On Monday, Bill Clinton said in a statement that if his wife were to win, he would step down from the foundation's board and stop all fundraising for it. The foundation would also accept donations only from U.S. citizens and what it described as independent philanthropies, while no longer taking gifts from foreign groups, U.S. companies or corporate charities. Clinton said the foundation would no longer hold annual meetings of its international aid program, the Clinton Global Initiative, and it would spin off its foreign-based programs to other charities.

Those planned changes would not affect more than 6,000 donors who have already provided the Clinton charity with more than $2 billion in funding since its creation in 2000.

"There's a lot of potential conflicts and a lot of potential problems," said Douglas White, an expert on nonprofits who previously directed Columbia University's graduate fundraising management program. "The point is, she can't just walk away from these 6,000 donors."

Former senior White House ethics officials said a Clinton administration would have to take careful steps to ensure that past foundation donors would not have the same access as she allowed at the State Department.

"If Secretary Clinton puts the right people in and she's tough about it and has the right procedures in place and sends a message consistent with a strong commitment to ethics, it can be done," said Norman L. Eisen, who was President Barack Obama's top ethics counsel and later worked for Clinton as ambassador to the Czech Republic.

Eisen, now a governance studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that at a minimum, Clinton should retain the Obama administration's current ethics commitments and oversight, which include lobbying restrictions and other rules. Richard Painter, a former ethics adviser to President George W. Bush and currently a University of Minnesota law school professor, said Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton should remove themselves completely from foundation leadership roles, but he added that potential conflicts would shadow any policy decision affecting past donors.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon did not respond to the AP's questions about Clinton transition plans regarding ethics, but said in a statement Tuesday the standard set by the Clinton Foundation's ethics restrictions was "unprecedented, even if it may never satisfy some critics."

GOP Vice Presidential candidate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said the AP analysis was evidence of "pay-to-play" politics at Clinton's State Department. He called for the foundation to be shut down and for an independent prosecutor to be appointed to investigate.

Some of Clinton's most influential visitors donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and to her and her husband's political coffers. They are among scores of Clinton visitors and phone contacts in her official calendar turned over by the State Department to AP last year and in more-detailed planning schedules that so far have covered about half her four-year tenure. The AP sought Clinton's calendar and schedules three years ago, but delays led the AP to sue the State Department last year in federal court for those materials and other records.

S. Daniel Abraham, whose name also was included in emails released by the State Department as part of another lawsuit, is a Clinton fundraising bundler who was listed in Clinton's planners for eight meetings with her at various times. A billionaire behind the Slim-Fast diet and founder of the Center for Middle East Peace, Abraham told the AP last year his talks with Clinton concerned Mideast issues.

Big Clinton Foundation donors with no history of political giving to the Clintons also met or talked by phone with Hillary Clinton and top aides, AP's review showed.

Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering low-interest "microcredit" for poor business owners, met with Clinton three times and talked with her by phone during a period when Bangladeshi government authorities investigated his oversight of a nonprofit bank and ultimately pressured him to resign from the bank's board. Throughout the process, he pleaded for help in messages routed to Clinton, and she ordered aides to find ways to assist him.

American affiliates of his nonprofit Grameen Bank had been working with the Clinton Foundation's Clinton Global Initiative programs as early as 2005, pledging millions of dollars in microloans for the poor. Grameen America, the bank's nonprofit U.S. flagship, which Yunus chairs, has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation - a figure that bank spokeswoman Becky Asch said reflects the institution's annual fees to attend CGI meetings. Another Grameen arm chaired by Yunus, Grameen Research, has donated between $25,000 and $50,000.

As a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton, as well as then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and two other senators in 2007 sponsored a bill to award a congressional gold medal to Yunus. He got one but not until 2010, a year after Obama awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Yunus first met with Clinton in Washington in April 2009. That was followed six months later by an announcement by USAID, the State Department's foreign aid arm, that it was partnering with the Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit charity run by Yunus, in a $162 million commitment to extend its microfinance concept abroad. USAID also began providing loans and grants to the Grameen Foundation, totaling $2.2 million over Clinton's tenure.

By September 2009, Yunus began complaining to Clinton's top aides about what he perceived as poor treatment by Bangladesh's government. His bank was accused of financial mismanagement of Norwegian government aid money - a charge that Norway later dismissed as baseless. But Yunus told Melanne Verveer, a long-time Clinton aide who was an ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, that Bangladesh officials refused to meet with him and asked the State Department for help in pressing his case.

"Please see if the issues of Grameen Bank can be raised in a friendly way," he asked Verveer. Yunus sent "regards to H" and cited an upcoming Clinton Global Initiative event he planned to attend.

Clinton ordered an aide: "Give to EAP rep," referring the problem to the agency's top east Asia expert.

Yunus continued writing to Verveer as pressure mounted on his bank. In December 2010, responding to a news report that Bangladesh's prime minister was urging an investigation of Grameen Bank, Clinton told Verveer that she wanted to discuss the matter with her East Asia expert "ASAP."

Clinton called Yunus in March 2011 after the Bangladesh government opened an inquiry into his oversight of Grameen Bank. Yunus had told Verveer by email that "the situation does not allow me to leave the country." By mid-May, the Bangladesh government had forced Yunus to step down from the bank's board. Yunus sent Clinton a copy of his resignation letter. In a separate note to Verveer, Clinton wrote: "Sad indeed."

Clinton met with Yunus a second time in Washington in August 2011 and again in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka in May 2012. Clinton's arrival in Bangladesh came after Bangladesh authorities moved to seize control of Grameen Bank's effort to find new leaders. Speaking to a town hall audience, Clinton warned the Bangladesh government that "we do not want to see any action taken that would in any way undermine or interfere in the operations of the Grameen Bank."

Grameen America's Asch referred other questions about Yunus to his office, but he had not responded by Tuesday.

Earlier this month, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau acknowledged that agency officials are "regularly in touch with a range of outside individuals and organizations, including nonprofits, NGOs, think tanks and others." But Trudeau said the State Department was not aware of any actions that were influenced by the Clinton Foundation.

In another case, Clinton was host at a September 2009 breakfast meeting at the New York Stock Exchange that listed Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman as one of the attendees. 

Schwarzman's firm is a major Clinton Foundation donor, but he personally donates heavily to GOP candidates and causes. One day after the breakfast, according to Clinton emails, the State Department was working on a visa issue at Schwarzman's request. In December that same year, Schwarzman's wife, Christine, sat at Clinton's table during the Kennedy Center Honors. Clinton also introduced Schwarzman, then chairman of the Kennedy Center, before he spoke.

Blackstone donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Eight Blackstone executives also gave between $375,000 and $800,000 to the foundation. And Blackstone's charitable arm has pledged millions of dollars in commitments to three Clinton Global aid projects ranging from the U.S. to the Mideast. Blackstone officials did not make Schwarzman available for comment.

Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder. The meeting occurred before an announcement about a State Department partnership to raise money to finance AIDS education and prevention. The public-private partnership was formed to fight gender-based violence in South Africa, the State Department said at the time.

The MAC AIDS fund donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In 2008, Mahon and the MAC AIDS fund made a three-year unspecified commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. That same year, the fund partnered with two other organizations to beef up a USAID program in Malawi and Ghana. And in 2011, the fund was one of eight organizations to pledge a total of $2 million over a three-year period to help girls in southern Africa. The fund has not made a commitment to CGI since 2011.

Estee Lauder executive Fabrizio Freda also met with Clinton at the same Wall Street event attended by Schwarzman. Later that month, Freda was on a list of attendees for a meeting between Clinton and a U.S.-China trade group. Estee Lauder has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The company made a commitment to CGI in 2013 with four other organizations to help survivors of sexual slavery in Cambodia.

MAC AIDs officials did not make Mahon available to AP for comment.

When Clinton appeared before the U.S. Senate in early 2009 for her confirmation hearing as secretary of state, then- Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, questioned her at length about the foundation and potential conflicts of interest. His concerns were focused on foreign government donations, mostly to CGI. Lugar wanted more transparency than was ultimately agreed upon between the foundation and Obama's transition team.

Now, Lugar hopes Hillary and Bill Clinton make a clean break from the foundation.

"The Clintons, as they approach the presidency, if they are successful, will have to work with their attorneys to make certain that rules of the road are drawn up to give confidence to them and the American public that there will not be favoritism," Lugar said.
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Donald Trump takes a page out of ‘Reaganomics’

Donald Trump called Monday for a “tax revolution” modeled on the vision of Ronald Reagan that would slash income tax rates, cut corporate taxes and create millions of jobs for a new era of prosperity.

“These reforms will offer the biggest tax revolution since the Reagan tax reform, which unleashed years of continued economic growth and job creation,” the GOP presidential nominee told the Detroit Economic Club.

“I want to jump-start America. It can be done, and it won’t even be that hard,” he said.
 
In an hour-long address that also called for toughening trade policies and easing regulatory directives, Trump proposed to simplify the tax code to just three brackets from the current seven — 12, 25 and 33 percent.

“I am proposing an across-the-board income tax reduction, especially for middle-income Americans,” Trump proclaimed, though the highest wage earners would see their rate fall from 39.6 to 33 percent.

“The rich will pay their fair share, but no one will pay so much that it destroys jobs or undermines our ability as a nation to compete.”

Trump’s proposal from last year had envisioned four brackets: zero, 10, 20 and 25 percent.

The mogul also called for capping corporate taxes at 15 percent, down from the current 35 percent rate, a move long advocated by Republicans.

And he repeated common campaign themes of scrapping ObamaCare, renegotiating NAFTA, and rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership to stop the flow of US jobs overseas.

The speech also included a temporary moratorium on new federal regulations and revival of the Keystone pipeline project, which was killed by President Obama.

“President Obama has issued close to 400 new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the American economy of $100 million or more,” Trump charged.

He said he would “cancel all illegal and overreaching executive orders.”

The Detroit remarks were Trump’s first on the economy since he announced a 13-man team of economic advisers last week, but he also said he consulted with his daughter Ivanka on how to make child care less expensive.

Trump advocated allowing parents to fully deduct the average cost of child care from their taxable income.

The current Child and Dependent Care tax credit is capped at 35 percent of qualifying expenses, or up to $3,000 for one child or $6,000 for two or more.

He favored repealing the estate tax, or “death tax,” as critics call it.

“No family will have to pay the death tax. American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death. It’s just plain wrong,” Trump said.

Hedge-funders would take it on the chin, as Trump vowed to end the “carried interest loophole,” which allows them to pay the lower capital gains tax rate instead of the regular income tax rate.

But, along with everyone else, they would also get a lower overall income tax rate.

Moving from taxes, Trump proposed stronger protections for American intellectual property, pointedly accusing China of being the worst offender.

Trump repeatedly used Detroit as an example of how Democratic policies — supported by his opponent, Hillary Clinton — have devastated American manufacturing.

“The city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda. Every policy that has failed this city and so many others is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton,” he said.

“She supports the high taxes and radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community . . . and 
the immigration policies that have strained local budgets and the trade deals like NAFTA . . . that have shipped your jobs to Mexico and other countries,” he charged.

The speech came after Trump got tangled up in a week-long dispute with the Gold Star parents of a Muslim-American soldier who was killed in Iraq and sparred with GOP leaders including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Stephen Moore, one of Trump’s top economic advisers, said the expansive proposals should put those episodes to rest.

“When he speaks with the Teleprompter and stays on message, he’s very effective . . . I was highly impressed. Hopefully, it’s the start of a new Donald Trump,” Moore told The Post.

But Clinton, campaigning in Florida, mocked the speech as nothing new.

“Trickle-down economics does not help our economy grow, it does not help the vast majority of Americans, but it does really help the most wealthy. We’re going to make the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes for a change,” Clinton said.


Michael Phelps Wins His 19th Gold Medal

Photo
Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

RIO DE JANEIRO — Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic gold medal as the United States won the 4x100 relay at the Olympics on Sunday. The Americans’ traditional rival in the event, France, was second, and Australia third.

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Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Credit Francois-Xavier Marit/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The gold was Phelps’s 23rd medal: 19 golds, 2 silvers and 2 bronzes. The final time was 3:09.92.
Phelps swam the second leg for the Americans, taking over from Caeleb Dressel in second place behind France and swimming into the lead. His split time was a strong 47.12. Ryan Held and Nathan Adrian brought the U.S. home; Adrian’s split was an even better 46.97.
Usually the American 4x100 team is made up of the top finishers from the 100 free at the Olympic Trials. Phelps chose not to contest that event, but was put on the relay team anyway.

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Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Credit Patrick B. Kraemer/European Pressphoto Agency

Phelps retired after the 2012 Games but decided to return in part because of disappointment with how the American men swam in the 4x100 relay at the 2013 world championships, losing to France.
The relay was the most unpredictable event of the night in swimming, with Australia, France, the United States and Russia all having claims to a gold medal. France and the United States split the last two Olympic gold medals, with Yannick Agnel of France outdueling Ryan Lochte in the anchor leg to win four years ago. Phelps was on both of those American teams.


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Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times