Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

In the News: It’s cold out there

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Found on the Internets …



A series of tubes filled with enormous amounts of material

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This week is National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. Follow the hashtag #NHHAW and this Twitter account for more information.

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America’s Shameless Child Homelessness Record

A record 2.5 million children in the U.S. were homeless at some point in 2013, according to a new report from the National Center for Family and Homelessness.

This amounts to one in 30 children and an 8 percent increase in child homelessness between 2012 and 2013. Nearly half the children are under the age of six. While the problem is most prevalent in Alabama, Mississippi, and California, it exists in every city, county, and state in the country.

Why does this matter?

Chilly temperatures and cold on tap



– The arctic chill dominates the Midwest with highs in the 10s and 20s for most areas.

– Slightly less cold 30s are confined to eastern Kentucky and the upper Ohio Valley.

– Record low temperatures are likely Monday night from the eastern Plains through the Ohio Valley as the mercury drops into the single digits and lower teens.

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More …

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I bet you didn’t know that the House of Representatives actually passed a bill this year that could help people. Now it awaits Senate action …

Feeding America Calls for Senate Passage of the America Gives More Act

“We know that 70 million pounds of food that is safe for consumption ends up in landfills every year, and we also know that our network of food banks is now providing food to 46 million people each annually – so this is food that is much-needed by those we serve.

“Because of the uncertainty surrounding the food donation tax deduction, potential donors will often send surplus food to landfills or to be used as animal feed, instead of donating to their local food bank.  We are grateful for the food we now receive from our donors and the federal government, but we are not currently able to keep up with the need.” […]

This legislation was passed by the House in July 2014 as part of the America Gives More Act (H.R. 4719) by a bipartisan vote.

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Health care news …

Doctor Shortage Looming? Maybe Not

… while there may be agreement that the U.S. needs more primary care providers, it’s not clear to everyone considering the problem that all those people need to be doctors.

“There are a lot of primary care services that can be provided by a lot of people other than primary care doctors,” says health economist Gail Wilensky. […]

Nonphysician primary care providers can include physician assistants, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and social workers, for example – often working together in teams with a medical doctor. Teams are thought to provide more cost-effective care, according to some health policy analysts. And, says Wilensky, more nonphysician health practitioners, each providing a different set of services, might lessen the need for more primary care doctors.

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Obamacare Started Accepting New Signups Again – And Four Good Things Happened

The second open enrollment period for the health insurance law kicked off this past weekend to relatively little fanfare. After its highly publicized first round of enrollment, the law isn’t commanding quite as much attention this time around. That’s partly because fewer people are expected to sign up in 2015. And it also may reflect the fact that the general atmosphere surrounding enrollment is different now.

While the beginning of last year’s enrollment period was marked by catastrophic website glitches that prevented people from signing up, as well as general uncertainty about how the law was going to work, the outlook is a little brighter this year. Here are four pieces of good news going into the law’s second sign-up period:

1. There haven’t been major issues with HealthCare.gov so far.

2. Shoppers have significantly more plans to choose from.

3. Premiums haven’t skyrocketed.

4. Business owners are more optimistic now that they’ve seen how Obamacare works.

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Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 8 Comments

8 comments

  2. princesspat

    Boehner’s immigration inertia forces Obama to act

    Oh, please. All the melodramatic Republican outrage isn’t fooling anybody. The only reason President Obama has to act on immigration reform is that House Speaker John Boehner won’t.

    ~snip~

    The president has not just the right but also the obligation to “use all the lawful authority that I possess,” as he promised last week in a long-deferred effort to repair an immigration system that both parties agree is broken. Law and precedent give Obama wide latitude, and at this point he can hardly be accused of acting rashly.

    Instead of debating what kind of hissy fit they want to pitch, Boehner and his flock ought to be reading the Senate bill. They would find much to like.

    It’s been so long I’ve forgotten the main points in the Senate bill. Now (for my own partisan reasons) I hope the President will take actions that will help even more families than the proposed bill would.

  3. JanF

    New York City Will Turn Every Payphone Into A Free WiFi Hotspot

    New York City announced plans Monday to reconfigure all of the city’s decrepit payphones into WiFi hot spots starting in 2015, a move that reinforces President Obama’s net neutrality proposal: That internet access is a basic right, not a privilege.

    The LinkNYC plan replaces the city’s payphones with up to 10,000 standalone towers that offer passersby free WiFi and nationwide calling, and a charging station. […]

    Twenty percent of New Yorkers don’t have high-speed internet access at home and 11 percent don’t have a computer, according to 2013 Census data. […]

    Minorities disproportionately use mobile devices as a primary means to access the Internet. Only 62 percent of African Americans have a broadband Internet connection at home, compared to 87 percent of white households, Pew found. But while only half of African-Americans and Hispanics own smartphones, they’re significantly more likely to use the devices to access the Internet over their white counterparts.

  5. JanF

    Brown County hosting events to recognize Hunger & Homeless Awareness Week

    Brown County is joining a nationwide effort this week to recognize the needs of folks struggling to put food on the table and find a safe place to live.

    It’s National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week.

    “As much as I’d like to say it’s getting better, we’re not seeing it getting better yet,” said Dean Aherns with the Brown County Food and Hunger Network. “And it’s different people that it’s happening too, it used to be that it was less common, now it’s a lot more common.”

    The statistics:


    –    During the 2013-14 school year, 1,368 students in Brown County schools were identified as being homeless, or lacking a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.

    –    In Brown County, five shelters, 13 transitional living programs, five crisis programs and two rapid rehousing programs reported serving a total of 262 adults and 155 children on September 24, 2014. Currently, these programs have waiting lists resulting in delayed service delivery to individuals and families.

    –    There are currently 104 families on the waiting list at Freedom House. This includes 108 adults and 226 children.

    –    In 2013, the Brown County United Way 211 identified the top five unmet needs included: electric service payment assistance, rent payment assistance, community shelters, food pantries and gas money.

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