https://twitter.com/itsJeffTiedrich/status/1707506920607682585

SNAP Benefits



https://www.reformaustin.org/trib/an-understaffed-and-broken-system-900000-texans-have-lost-medicaid-as-others-struggle-to-access-snap-benefits/



Almost 900,000 Texans have lost Medicaid since April and a backlog of applications has piled up, overwhelming the system and setting off a ripple effect that advocates worry is delaying families’ access to SNAP food benefits.

During the pandemic, federal regulations prohibited states from removing people from Medicaid, and more than 5 million Texans were able to access healthcare continuously. But these protections lifted in April and the state quickly began rechecking the eligibility of every individual in the program. In the months since the state launched this “unwinding,” hundreds of thousands have lost Medicaid coverage.

While some individuals have become ineligible because their incomes increased or they were children who aged out of the program, a majority — more than 600,000 — have been disenrolled in Texas because of procedural errors, according to KFF, a health policy research organization. This includes everything from sending in applications in the mail a day late to not including the correct documentation.

Without access to medical care, those who rely on the state’s health insurance — mainly children, but also women who recently gave birth and disabled adults — are left in anxious limbo where one health emergency could strap them with heavy debt. The reverberations of state employees being overwhelmed has led to Texans also losing access to their SNAP, or the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, after pandemic protections were lifted in March. Around 3.5 million Texans depend on food benefits.

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With over 40 ads and $6 million spent, a group tied to the Club for Growth is no closer to an answer, a memo to donors says. Some ads even gave Donald Trump a boost.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/us/politics/anti-trump-ads-memo.html

https://archive.ph/E3J8Z



A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald J. Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states. The political action committee, called Win It Back, has close ties to the influential fiscally conservative group Club for Growth. It has already spent more than $4 million trying to lower Mr. Trump’s support among Republican voters in Iowa and nearly $2 million more trying to damage him in South Carolina.

But in the memo — dated Thursday and obtained by The New York Times — the head of Win It Back PAC, David McIntosh, acknowledges to donors that after extensive testing of more than 40 anti-Trump television ads, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.” The memo will provide little reassurance to the rest of the field of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals that there is any elusive message out there that can work to deflate his support.

“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh states in the “key learnings” section of the memo. “Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability,” Mr. McIntosh adds. “This includes ads that primarily feature video of him saying liberal or stupid comments from his own mouth.”

For the polling underpinning its analysis, Win It Back used WPA Intelligence — a firm that also works for the super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s chief rival in the race for the presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Examples of “failed” ads cited in the memo included attacks on Mr. Trump’s “handling of the pandemic, promotion of vaccines, praise of Dr. Fauci, insane government spending, failure to build the wall, recent attacks on pro-life legislation, refusal to fight woke issues, openness to gun control, and many others.” (Dr. Anthony S. Fauci led the national response to the Covid pandemic.)

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questions with no fact checks

AOC on MSNBC: "It really cannot be understated how deceptive that was -- to take critical messages out of context, to tear apart the context that they're in, and then to photoshop a text message bubble ... and this is supposed to be the Republican case for impeachment?"

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1707568608866447777

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https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1707029129025999324

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Label: PiL Official – PiL009C, PiL Official – PiL009LP
Format: 2 x Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Album, Stereo, Neon Green
Country: UK
Released: 11 Aug 2023
Genre: Rock
Style: Post-Punk, Experimental, Alternative Rock, New Wave

A Union of Their Own



https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-28-union-of-their-own-flight-attendants/



The first thing to appreciate about the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) is that it was born feminist. Its feminism and its militance have nourished each other. The second thing to appreciate is that AFA is among the most democratic of American unions. Every officer comes from the ranks of working flight attendants, so there is no gap between the lived experience of the rank and file and the union bureaucracy.

“The people who are representing you are people who work your same job, at your same airline, at your same base, and they understand directly what the job is,” says Sara Nelson, who has served as AFA president since 2014. “It also means you can also hold your leaders directly accountable.”

Nelson, 50, is among the most charismatic and admired of union leaders, even though AFA, with just under 50,000 members at 19 different airlines, is a relatively small union. After the death of AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in 2021, Nelson seriously considered running to succeed him, but ultimately decided against it. (The labor federation is now headed by Liz Shuler, its former secretary-treasurer.)

The union is widely admired (or feared, depending on your viewpoint) for the ingenuity and sheer nerve of its tactics. One technique, which AFA has literally trademarked, is called CHAOS, which stands for “Creating Havoc Around Our System.” CHAOS involves having a small number of flight attendants walk off the job just as a flight is boarding, with no advance notice to management. Unlike a conventional strike involving all workers, where management can wear down a union whose strike fund goes only so far, CHAOS disruptions involve only a few workers and hit management where it is most vulnerable.

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https://www.dezeen.com/2023/09/22/ochre-precast-concrete-nightingale-housing-kennedy-nolan-australia/







Australian studio Kennedy Nolan has completed Leftfield, an affordable housing block with a "playful" form of pigmented precast concrete panels in the Brunswick neighbourhood of Melbourne. Part of the Nightingale Village development, the block by Kennedy Nolan is an example of a typology created under the Nightingale development model, which aims to design residential projects that are "environmentally, socially and financially sustainable". The entire village has been longlisted in the Housing project category of the Dezeen Awards.









Acting as a developer for the project, Kennedy Nolan aimed to imbue its building of 28 homes with "personality" to give it a welcoming presence in the urban block in which it sits. "Our methodology always looks to do more with less," said studio founder Patrick Kennedy. "This meant identifying fundamental parts of the building and thinking about ways to manipulate or deploy them to make our Nightingale feel domestic, warm, textural and particular."









Located in an urban block adjacent to a railway line and surrounded by industrial warehouses to the south, single family homes to the west, and larger apartment and office blocks to the north and east, the project is prominently positioned and is visible across Brunswick. Large-scale geometric compositions of oculi on the building's western facade create a generous "urban-scale gesture" to the surrounding neighbourhood, according to the studio.









The warm tint of the ochre precast concrete panels used on the building's facades glows in the afternoon sun, while the inlaid chevron pattern provides texture and contributes to its pictorial imagery. "We were motivated to make the building sober, handsome and warm - qualities which are domestic or which can instil domestic pride," explained Kennedy.

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https://www.dezeen.com/2023/09/21/matharoo-associates-up-to-the-sea-concrete-home-india-residential/







A network of cubic concrete volumes and staircases forms Up to the Sea, a blocky family home that Indian studio Matharoo Associates has added to the coastal town of Dumas, India. Nestled into a grassy site near the coast, the home sits on a stone base and was designed to merge traditional Indian design with modern architecture. The multi-generational home features accommodation for four generations of the client's family, as well as communal spaces that surround a central light-filled stairwell.









Comprising concrete blocks arranged to frame views of the surrounding landscape and nearby sea, the house wraps around a central void illuminated by a skylight. Informed by ancient Indian stairwells, the void features a series of linear staircases bordered by reflective balustrades, which wrap around the edges of the stairwell and connect to balconies on each level.





Around the stairwell, Matharoo Associates arranged a series of private living spaces to house the four generations of the family. Aiming to give each family member a private space, the studio divided the levels into separate suites, while using the staircase to maintain a degree of connection throughout the house.







“Four generations spread across eighty years each have their own set of demands, so they were given their own private domains while remaining connected,” architect Simran Goyal told Dezeen. The first floor contains a guest suite for the client's daughter and her family, while the second floor features two separate areas, including a main couple suite as well as a space for the family's son and his family.

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https://www.dezeen.com/2023/09/24/studio-bright-garden-tower-house-extension-australia/









Architecture practice Studio Bright used patterned breeze blocks to wrap Garden Tower House, an extension in Australia, which peeks out from behind the restored frontage of a workers' cottage. Located in the Melbourne suburb of Cremorne, the project was a response to "unsustainable sprawl" in the area, looking to maximise the awkward, narrow site of the existing home rather than expanding outwards.











"The challenge in Australia for our cities to become more sustainable is that they need to work harder for us – we need to increase the density," said Studio Bright director Melissa Bright. "We don't see this as a negative; we wonder how we might live closer together and get more from it," she told Dezeen.











"Often disused laneways are seen as security problems – we see them as an opportunity, for a borrowed backyard, for a place to connect with neighbours and for a new address and frontage," added Bright. "Even these small spaces can be seen as small urban 'places' that we can enliven with activation and care."









The extension comprises two blocks that step down slightly at the rear of the existing home, containing a large living, dining and kitchen space that wraps a central garden. In the larger "tower" volume, an upper storey contains a bedroom with a large, deep-set window overlooking the central garden.

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Tennessee's top Republican lawmakers are forming a group to consider rejecting federal education funding for the state's K-12 schools.

https://www.axios.com/local/nashville/2023/09/26/tennessee-group-consider-rejecting-federal-education-funding





Why it matters:

Tennessee would be the first state to turn down federal education funding. The new working group of 10 lawmakers could move that concept closer to reality. The group will consider the regulations and requirements that come along with the federal funding, and if the state could step in and fill that funding gap itself, according to a joint announcement from Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge).

What he's saying:

"Any time the federal government sends money, there are always strings attached to those dollars, and there is always a possibility that it opens the state up to other regulations or restrictions," Sexton said in a statement. "This working group will help provide a clearer picture of how much autonomy Tennessee truly has in educating our students."

The other side:

"Federal funds are crucial in supporting students with special needs, English language learners, and those from low-income families," state Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis), who is one of the Democrats on the panel, said in a statement. "The harsh consequences of rejecting this $1.8 billion in funding cannot be overstated," she said. "Through this committee, I will advocate that Tennessee keep accepting these necessary funds."

Of note:

The group includes eight Republicans and two Democrats. They have not set a time for the first meeting.

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