More jobs? More optimism?  The prospect of more jobs — is  that causing more people to think that the USA is moving in the right direction?
Under Obama – for quite an extended period of time – roughly  70+ percent of  prospective voters  thought that the USA was going in the wrong direction. Those figures have changed recently, i.e.,  how people in general  feel about the direction of the country.
Nearly a majority of voters, 49 percent, approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president, according to a Morning Consult poll.
“Thirty percent of registered voters strongly support President Trump, while 19 percent somewhat approve. Another thirty percent strongly disapprove, while 11 percent somewhat disapprove. Ten percent weren’t sure or had no opinion.”
While 42 percent said the country was on the right track, another 58 percent said it was on the wrong track.
Trump’s approval rating has increased quickly: Four days after assuming office, Gallup found Trump had an approval rating of 45 percent, the lowest since the outfit began polling.
The Morning Consult questioned 1,991 registered voters from Jan. 26 to Jan. 28 with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.
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Monterey Bay Forum: Â Every job created matters: Â About 70 to 100 jobs are created with each local symphony event, so remarked the President of the Santa Cruz Symphony at an event in Watsonville, CA
The  Pipleine camp had been occupied by thousands of environmentalists and Native Americans who were demonstrating against the pipeline project.
It was the Native Americans who requested help with the Pipeline cleanup. Â Massive amounts of garbage, human waste, teepees, and abandoned vehicles must be removed before the spring thaw when flooding is expected.
Clean-up crews are racing to clear acres of debris at the largest Dakota Access protest camp before the spring thaw turns the snowy, trash-covered plains into an environmental disaster area.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Friday that the camp, located on federal land, would be closed Feb. 22 in order to “prevent injuries and significant environmental damage in the likely event of flooding in this area†at the mouth of the Cannonball River in North Dakota.
“Without proper remediation, debris, trash, and untreated waste will wash into the Cannonball River and Lake Oahe,†the Corps said in its statement.
Those involved in the clean-up effort, led by the Standing Rock Sioux, say it could take weeks for private sanitation companies and volunteers to clear the expanse of abandoned tents, tepees,sleeping bags
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Firenze Sage: Â These morons couldn’t even dig a latrine. Imagine walking around in a kennel.
We don’t enforce immigration laws says Santa Cruz County sheriff Sgt. Clark because “that enhances a victim’s willingness to report crime and for us to keep our community safe.”
The TRUTH act effective Jan. 1, 2017 requires that local law enforcement get written voluntary release from detainees before the federal government (ICE) can interview them while they are in custody in jail.
So how many of the 8,700 booked during 2016 have no legal documentation? Â Law enforcement does not keep track.
What say?  Is it time that local  government keeps track of the legal and / or illegal status of those booked into jail?
Federal Laws trump state & local laws on immigration. Â Will sanctuary cities comply?
Immigration and terrorism were top issues in the USA elections. Â Identifying and deporting illegal felons from the USA is a federal government prerogative.
So — if sanctuary cities don’t want to comply with federal laws — yes it’s time to cut off funding. Â Simple. Â The federal government is not telling the sanctuary cities to do anything specific except comply with existing federal laws regarding immigration. Sensible? What do you think? Â This is from the WSJ Monday, Jan. 30, 2017:
 “A thicket of U.S. Supreme Court rulings could limit the reach of the executive order issued by President Donald Trump last week meant to prod “sanctuary cities†into helping the federal government enforce immigration law.
Some local and state officials, including in New York, have promised to fight the order, which says cities that fail to turn over information about illegal immigrants “are not eligible to receive federal grants.â€
Legal experts said the Supreme Court has given them many tools for resistance.
The court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution bars the federal government from commandeering state officials or using federal funds to “coerce†states into doing the bidding of Washington.
As recently as 2012, the court held that the federal government couldn’t expel states from Medicaid if they refused to expand eligibility for the federal-state health program, curtailing a key provision of the Affordable Care Act.
“If the denial of Medicaid funding alone was coercive, the denial of all federal funding of any kind for refusing to cooperate in enforcement of immigration law must be coercive,†said Dale Carpenter, a constitutional law professor at Southern Methodist University.
The federal government can withhold a grant from a city or state, but it must do so for reasons related to that grant’s purpose, legal experts said. For example, the Trump administration likely couldn’t deny grants for highways to a city for defying Mr. Trump’s executive order on immigration, because the two are unconnected, said Michael McConnell, a former federal appeals judge who now teaches at Stanford Law School.
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An executive order to strip federal grant money from sanctuary cities has put the Trump administration on a collision course with Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city mayors. Photo: Reuters
The rules have some flexibility, legal experts said. The U.S. Supreme Court said in a 1987 case that the federal government could withhold highway funding from states that refused to raise their minimum drinking age to 21 years, reasoning that the funding and the condition both promoted highway safety.
Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said the Constitution permits the U.S. government to ensure that “federal money is not undermining the purposes for which that money is allocated in the first place.â€
The Supreme Court has also likened federal-state grant laws to contracts: They are valid only if the state knowingly and voluntarily accepts the terms. Some legal experts interpret that to mean that conditions on federal grants have to be spelled out in the text of a law passed by Congress, while others say cities and states could be put on notice with federal regulations.
Regardless, said Ilya Somin, a constitutional law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, “the president can’t impose additional conditions on its own.â€
Other experts, however, said Mr. Trump’s order bypasses trip wires set down by the Supreme Court, because it demands only information from cities in return for federal money, not action.
David Rivkin, a lawyer at law firm BakerHosteler who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, pointed to a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case involving a federal law that imposed restrictions on the disclosure by states of drivers’ personal information.
In upholding the law, the court noted approvingly that it didn’t “require state officials to assist in the enforcement of federal statutes regulating private individuals.â€
Mr. Rivkin said Mr. Trump’s order, likewise, passes muster because “it’s not telling city officials to carry out any particular actions.â€
Swiss welfare pays for  refugee migrants  to holiday home to  Eritrea, Africa. Picture of beach in Eritrea.
Swiss cheese and immigration policy have holes:
Swiss cheese & immigration policies have holes.
 Migrants allowed  to remain in Switzerland because  they  risk death in their homelands are using welfare money to fund holidays back home in Eritrea.  That’s wht  the Basler Zeitung reports.
The Swiss newspaper notes that thousands of migrants each year go to Eritrea for their holidays each year — despite their having supposedly fled the northeast African nation in fear of their lives.
Although a large proportion of Eritreans in Switzerland have been refused asylum, authorities are powerless to deport them because their homelands are deemed to be too dangerous by the country’s refugee policy.
While there are no direct flights to Eritrea, the Basler Zeitung says it found that up to fifty people a day are leaving Switzerland in order to holiday in the African country.
It typically costs around 599 Swiss Francs (£475) in January or 650 Swiss Francs (£516) in high season for a return journey to Eritrea according to the German language daily.
The paper  notes that taxpayer stipends to migrants must be quite generous as the vast majority of Eritreans residing in Switzerland live on welfare.
Firenze Sage: Â Has the whole world gone nuts? Â This scam is standard fare now. Taxpayer funded holidays to alleged war zones.
$2 BILLION ‘error’ re cost of CA healthcare for poor not reported ’til after Nov. elections
Aptos Lawyer:  Two BILLION  bucks  ‘error’  for cost of  Medic-Aid health care  for poor in California.Â
The California Department of Finance told Breitbart News that they did not discover a negative $1.8 billion cost error in calculating the state budget, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on June 27, until after the November 8 elections.
In a testy hearing in front of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee on January 17, Gov. Brown’s Chief Deputy Finance Director, Amy Costa, tried to explain away a negative $1.4 billion understatement of California’s portion of the cost to fund healthcare for the poor as, “The math was wrong.†[Breitbart News has discovered the wrong math is actually an additional $1.8 billion cost.]
Under questioning from the Senate committee, Ms. Costa stated that the Brown administration discovered the Medi-Cal error last fall, but she acknowledged that they did not tell the legislature until January 10, and only learned of the math at the hearing.
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Firenze Sage: Â Is there anyone out there who thinks govt is for the people. What 2 billion error? Â Save the bureaucracy.
Parishioners at All Saints episcopal  will no longer pray by name for the president  over fears that  the name “Donald Trump” might cause trauma for those  in the congregation who disagree with Trump’s views.
“If you come to All Saints this Sunday, you’ll notice that we have removed the proper names from our prayers for those in authority. Whereas before we prayed for ‘Barack, our president,’ we are now praying for “our president, our president-elect, and all others in authority.â€
“This practice — not praying for President Trump —  will continue for at least the near future,”  Rector Kinman  wrote.
Rector Kinman went on to say the safety of the congregation could be jeopardized by the mere nation of the president-elect’s name.
Kinman stated  that  — should issues arise — that  they have a priest trained as a therapist who  specializes  in trauma.  The Rector then added that  he believes the church should be a “safe space.â€
“We are in a unique situation in my lifetime where we have a president elect whose name is literally a trauma trigger to some people – particularly women and people who, because of his words and actions, he represents an active danger to health and safety,” he wrote.
“As I have said before, for some it could be as if we demanded a battered woman pray for her abuser by name. It’s not that the abuser doesn’t need prayer – certainly the opposite – but prayer should never be a trauma-causing act,” he wrote.
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Firenze Sage: Â Â “but prayer should never be a trauma-causing act…”
Imagine all the martyrs who would never have prayed in this church.
Try Muslim countries for prayer and trauma.  Never stand up for your faith.
John Lewis – for 30 years he’s represented Atlanta, GA in Congress.  Lewis  takes other congressmen to visit  1960 era civil rights sites.  What has Lewis accomplished?
Education  — Jobs  — Crime in Atlanta, GA:
Education: Â In Atlanta, GA Â the high school graduation rate is much lower for blacks than whites — Â a little over half the blacks graduate compared to over 80 percent of whites.
Jobs: Â The unemployment of blacks is three times that of whites.
What about crime? Â Sunday, May 6, 2012
Black People Responsible for Virtually All Crime in Atlanta — Judge Marvin Arrington Confirms
 OD has done the tremendous task of compiling the COLOR OF CRIME for the city of Atlanta (looking at statistics from April 2011 to April 2012). The results:
In Atlanta, African-Americans are 54 percent of the population, but are responsible for 100 percent of homicide, 95 percent of rape, 94 percent of robbery, 84 percent of aggravated assault, and 93 percent of burglary. Source: APD Uniform Crime Reports, Apr 2011 to Apr 2012
freedom award for who just as Obama leaves office — VP Biden. Oh?
A maudlin moment by Obama:
Latest who gets Medal of Freedom: Â Joe Biden
Matt Lauer  (so we hear)  was in tears when Barack Obama awarded Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a surprise ceremony Thursday.
“I’m glad there were no cameras in my apartment yesterday because I was just sitting there weeping,†Lauer said Friday morning on the “Today†show. “I just burst out crying when I saw that moment.â€
†It was incredible.
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Oh C’mon Matt buck up it’s only another cheap political move like Obama getting the Secy of Defense to give him an award. Little kids and merit badges huh?
More jobs? More optimism?  The prospect of more jobs — is  that causing more people to think that the USA is moving in the right direction?
