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Superintendent not backing down, defends warrants for 'excessive cheering' at graduation

A group of people in Senatobia, Miss., have been charged with disrupting a high school graduation ceremony by hootin’, hollerin’ and carryin’ on like their mommas didn’t raise ’em right.
Three family members were served warrants for allegedly disturbing the peace at the Senatobia High School graduation ceremony on May 21. The warrants threaten jail time and a $500 bond. A fourth excessive shouter is still on the loose and has not been served.
“It’s crazy,” Henry Walker told television station WREG. “The fact that I might have to bond out of jail, pay court costs or a $500 fine for expressing my love, it’s ridiculous, man. It’s ridiculous.”
Ursula Miller got collared after she gave her niece a shout-out.

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Now Playing Commencement crime? Family charged for cheering at ceremony

“I can understand they can escort me out of the graduation, but to say they going to put me in jail for it. What else are they allowed to do?”
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Foster has been castigated in both the mainstream media and the conservative media. But he said he believes he did the right thing – and I guarantee you that folks will think about misbehaving in the future.

Well, there’s a bit more to this story, according to Jay Foster, the superintendent of the school system – and the man who swore out those warrants.
Four years ago the high school graduation ceremony in Mississippi’s Five Star City resembled an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show.”
“That’s what we felt like our graduation ceremony had been turned into,” Foster told me. “It was who can be the loudest – who can take the attention away from the kids the most.”
That was Foster’s first year on the job, and what happened during that ceremony left an indelible mark.
“There was yelling and catcalling and people would get up and leave while we were calling out students’ names,” he said. “A family came up to me afterwards and said they had enjoyed their 12 years here but it was a shame that their last impression of Senatobia High School was graduation. They didn’t even get to see their daughter or hear their daughter because of all the noise and the way people acted.”
The district implemented a number of policies and procedures meant to restore order and decorum to high school graduation.
“We feel an obligation to all our graduates – not just the ones whose parents decide they want to excessively celebrate,” Foster said.
But that still did not stop a group of four individuals from disrupting this year’s festivities.
“They would get up and move around the coliseum and holler out – knowing someone was coming to get them – but basically they were saying to us, ‘There’s nothing you can do – we’re going to disrupt it anyway,’” he said. “It was a blatant disregard for authority.”
Some folks have tried to make the issue about race, but Foster pointed out that two of the individuals are black and two are white.
Foster has been castigated in both the mainstream media and the conservative media. But he said he believes he did the right thing – and I guarantee you that folks will think about misbehaving in the future.
“I am compelled to do what I think is right for all our graduates,” he said. “That’s part of what’s wrong with our society today. Everything is about ‘me.’ ‘I have a right to disrupt if it’s for my child.’
“But you are not thinking about the other 102 kids sitting there. They have every right to be heard and seen and recognized.”
Remember, folks … It’s a high school graduation ceremony – not a professional wrestling match. So stop acting the fool.

GOP-led states trying bolster budgets by limiting government assistance programs

WASHINGTON –  Kansas is bleeding money.
Lawmakers in the Sunflower State have been scrambling for years to make up a $400 million revenue gap following a 2012 income tax cut that left deep holes in the state budget.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback wants recover some of the money by placing limits on government assistance.
Starting in July, people in Kansas who collect government assistance will be limited to a single ATM withdrawal not exceeding $25 per day. The Kansas law also prohibits public-assistance spending at swimming pools, tattoo parlors and video arcades.
Though it might sound extreme to some, Kansas is just the latest GOP-led state to launch campaigns to cut or limit public assistance.
A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that 73 percent of Republicans and 32 percent of Democrats believe the government can’t afford to spend much more on assistance programs. The number of families receiving cash through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program stood at 1.5 million at the end of 2014.
When Brownback signed the bill in April he defended it by saying the primary focus isn’t a handout but instead to “get people back to work, because that’s where the real benefit is – getting people off public assistance and back into the marketplace with the dignity and far more income there than the pittance that government gives them.”
Shannon Cotsoradis, president of the advocacy group Kansas Action for Children, told Bloomberg News that state lawmakers “acted on anecdotes” about TANF cards being used on cruise ships and casinos and that the information used to sway lawmakers isn’t “data-driven.”
But lawmakers in a growing number of states believe chipping away at a budget shortfall can be done by limiting the amount of government assistance being doled out.
In Michigan, the state Senate recently passed a bill that would put families on the welfare chopping block if their children are regularly absent from school. The “Parental Responsibility Act” would give the state the ability to cut off assistance if a child whose parents are receiving assistance is chronically truant.
If the child is younger than 16, the whole family could lose its cash benefits.
“During the recession there were lots of blue states, for fiscally driven reasons, that were cutting welfare,” Liz Schott, a senior fellow at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, told Bloomberg News. “This year’s cuts feel more ideologically driven.”
In May, Missouri’s Republican legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, to enact a bill that would take away assistance from more than 6,400 children -- 2,600 of them below the age of 5, his office said in published reports.
Nixon described the bill “a misguided measure that punishes poor children” in a “zeal to reduce reliance on government assistance.”
And in Arizona, lawmakers slashed the amount of time residents could stay on assistance to 1 year – the shortest window in the nation.
The Associated Press described the cuts as a reflection of the “prevailing mood” among lawmakers who believe that public assistance programs are what keeps the poor from getting back on their feet permanently.
But not everyone subscribes to the sentiment.
Jessica Lopez, 23, said cutting off benefits isn’t fair.
Lopez, who gets $133 per month, gave birth to her son while living in a domestic violence shelter and has struggled to hold onto jobs because she has dyslexia and didn’t finish high school.
“We’re all human,” she told the AP. “Everybody has problems. Everybody is different. When people ask for help, we should be able to get it without having to be looked at wrong.”

CBP confirms US chopper shot down at Texas border, no injuries

Just going to get worst.

WASHINGTON –  A U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter was fired at and forced to make an emergency landing near the river banks of Laredo, Texas, officials confirmed to Fox News on Saturday.
The incident took place around 5:30 p.m. Friday when the aircraft was patrolling the Rio Grande near the far northwest corner of the border city of Laredo.
“The helicopter was impacted by gunfire, hitting the side of the aircraft and the rotor blade,” a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told Fox News. “The pilot was able to make a safe landing, there were no injuries.  There is an on-going search for the suspects on both sides of the border.”
Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar told the Laredo Morning Times that out of five shots believed to have been fired at the helicopter, only two were confirmed to have hit their target.
Authorities are still investigating on whether the gunfire came from the Mexican side of the river or the U.S. side.

Social Security overpaid nearly half on disability, watchdog says

WASHINGTON –  Social Security overpaid nearly half the people receiving disability benefits over the past decade, according to a government watchdog, raising questions about the management of the cash-strapped program.
In all, Social Security overpaid beneficiaries by nearly $17 billion, according to a 10-year study by the agency's inspector general.
Many payments went to people who earned too much money to qualify for benefits, or to those no longer disabled. Payments also went to people who had died or were in prison.
Social Security was able to recoup about $8.1 billion, but it often took years to get the money back, the study said.
"Every dollar that goes to overpayments doesn't help someone in need," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. "Given the present financial situation of the Social Security Disability Insurance trust fund, the program cannot sustain billions of dollars lost to waste."
The trust fund that supports Social Security's disability program is projected to run out of money late next year, triggering automatic benefit cuts, unless Congress acts. The looming deadline has lawmakers feuding over a solution that may have to come in the heat of a presidential election.
The program's financial problems go beyond the issue of overpayments -- Social Security disability has paid out more in benefits than it has collected in payroll taxes every year for the past decade. But concerns about waste, fraud and abuse are complicating the debate in Congress over how to address the program's larger financial problems.
"Overpayments are bad for everyone -- they are bad for the beneficiary and they are bad for the taxpayer," said Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security. "With the disability program going broke next year, it is especially troubling that Social Security is failing to protect precious taxpayer dollars."
A spokesman for the Social Security Administration said the agency has a high accuracy rate for its payments and a comprehensive debt collection program for overpayments.
"Social Security provides services to over 48 million retirement and survivors beneficiaries and about 15 million disability beneficiaries," Social Security spokesman Mark Hinkle said in an email. "The agency will issue nearly $1 trillion in payments this year. For fiscal year 2013 -- the last year for which we have complete data -- approximately 99.8 percent of all Social Security payments were free of overpayment, and nearly 99.9 percent were free of underpayment."
"That same year, we also achieved high levels of payment accuracy in the (Supplemental Security Income) program despite the inherent complexities in calculating monthly payments due to beneficiaries' income and resource fluctuations and changes in living arrangements," he said.
The inspector general's office examined a randomly selected sample of 1,532 people who were receiving either Social Security disability or Supplemental Security Income in October 2003. SSI is a separately funded disability program for the poor.
Auditors followed the group for 10 years, until February 2014. They determined that 45 percent of the beneficiaries were overpaid at some point during that period. The overpayments totaled $2.9 million, the study said.
They used the results to estimate that Social Security made a total of $16.8 billion in overpayments during the 10-year period.
The study concluded that "the agency could do more to prevent the most common overpayments."
Social Security paid out $142 billion in disability benefits last year. Unless Congress acts, the trust fund that supports the disability program will run dry sometime during the final three months of 2016, according to projections by the trustees who oversee Social Security. At that point, the program will collect only enough payroll taxes to pay 81 percent of benefits.
That would trigger an automatic 19 percent cut in benefit payments. The average monthly payment for a disabled worker is $1,165, or about $14,000 a year.
An easy fix is available. Congress could redirect payroll tax revenue from Social Security's much larger retirement program, as lawmakers have done before. But Republicans in Congress are balking, saying they want to address the program's long-term finances.
About 11 million disabled workers, children and spouses currently receive Social Security disability benefits. About 8.3 million people receive Supplemental Security Income, which is funded separately, through the government's general revenues.
SSI paid out about $54 billion in benefits last year.

Iraqi troops reportedly advance against ISIS in key refinery town

Iraqi troops and Shiite militias recaptured key parts of the refinery town of Beiji from ISIS Sunday, a general said.
The victory comes a day after Iraqi forces were able to withstand two attacks from ISIS in the hotly contested Anbar province Saturday.
The commander of the Interior Ministry's Quick Reaction Forces, Brig. Gen. Nassir al-Fartousi, told state TV that the Iraqi flag was raised on a local government building in Beiji and that troops were advancing to other areas, without elaborating.
The spokesman of Joint Operations Command, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim, said the security forces "are now controlling" the downtown Beiji area, describing the advance as an "important victory."
"The enemy has suffered a defeat and has sustained heavy losses and we hope that the whole city will be cleared within few days," Maan told The Associated Press in a brief interview, saying "dozens" of IS militants had been killed.
Beiji, some 155 miles north of Baghdad, fell to ISIS during its blitz across northern Iraq nearly a year ago, but parts of the town and nearby refinery have since been retaken by government forces. The town is strategically significant as it lies on the road to ISIS-held Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces have managed to roll back ISIS in many parts of the country with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes, and recaptured the northern city of Tikrit in April. But last month ISIS captured Ramadi, the provincial capital of the western Anbar province, in the extremists' most significant advance since last year.
ISIS has declared an Islamic caliphate in the territories it controls in Syria and Iraq, and has used oil facilities and smuggling to finance much of its operations.
In neighboring Syria, the U.S.-led coalition carried out airstrikes against ISIS positions in the northern town of Souran, which ISIS captured last week from Syrian rebel groups and members of Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front.
The Local Coordination Committees and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes occurred Saturday night. The Observatory said the airstrikes killed eight ISIS members, including a local Syrian commander, and wounded 20.
The coalition airstrikes against ISIS in Souran were the first in the area since the extremist group launched an offensive last month on the northern parts of Aleppo province close to the border with Turkey. IS has captured several villages and towns from the Nusra Front and Syrian rebels.
Since September, the coalition has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. The coalition has also carried out a handful of airstrikes against the Nusra Front. The U.S. says it has targeted a Nusra Front cell plotting attacks on Western interests.
The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, says government warplanes have been attacking rebels in Aleppo province, claiming that the "terrorist interests" of President Bashar Assad's government and the IS group are aligned.
In the northeastern city of Hassakeh, government forces have launched a counteroffensive and regained ground lost to IS last week, state media said. State news agency SANA said government forces have retaken the power station south of Hassakeh as well as the juvenile prison that had been recently seized by the ISIS.
In Saturday's attack, government forces and Shiite militiamen used anti-tank missiles to stop four would-be suicide car bombers, officials said.
ISIS fighters attacked the government held town of Husseiba with heavy mortar fire early Saturday, police and military officials said. They say attackers retreated after an hours-long battle, leaving behind three destroyed vehicles and five dead fighters. At least 10 troops and militiamen were wounded in the clash.
Elsewhere in the Anbar province, officials said Iraqi troops using Russian anti-tank Kornet missiles destroyed four incoming suicide car bombs during an attack in the Tharthar area.