Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is expected to sign new legislation that will shake up state welfare benefits and food programs. Instead of allowing thousands of state residents to freely access food assistance programs, the state will now require that many of those using the benefits work as well.

This reform is meant to crack down on the system-wide abuse and may come as a surprise to many who have long used the programs. Gov. Walker also sees this added feature as a way to boost the state economy. It seems that there is a shortage of workers in the state and as they just can no longer afford to have anyone not working.

Wisconsin is experiencing a shortage of workers. For the first time, state unemployment has reached 3%. This means that as of December 97% of those seeking full-time work can find it.

In 2017, the workforce in the state grew by 1.2%. By the end of the same year, there were 100,000 jobs in the state that sat empty.

The state needs workers, and there is no reason that an able-bodied adult cannot be working in the state. Walker is hoping to motivate those living on food benefits to return to work by adding in a requirement for parents to work.

The republican has taken a very realistic and no-nonsense approach to the much-needed reforms.

While many states already require single adults who use food supports to work, parents are often allowed not to work. The idea is that some parents cannot work because they do not have access to childcare or have other responsibilities within the home.

Even for single adults without children, the requirement to work can be waived for those living with some form of a disability.

The current food program in the state does require those getting food assistance to attend classes to prepare them to enter the workforce. Parents often can find a way to have this requirement waived as well.

The new welfare requirements mandate that parents of children ages 6 and up have to work at least 30 hours a week. This allows parents with small children that are not old enough to attend school the time to stay home.

Classes offered to prepare parents to return to work also count towards the 30 hours a week requirement.

As Gov. Walker shared, the state “…can’t afford to have anybody on the sidelines. This is as much as anything a workforce issue.”

This is not the first time that the state has toyed with the idea of requiring welfare program recipients to work.

Before the efforts of Democratic Gov. Jim Boyle to ease up on the guidelines in 2008, all adults without children were required to work at least 20 hours a week.

Gov. Walker put those same guidelines back in place in 2015. Again, adults without children were required to work. The same mandates that pushed welfare users to work also required that they attended and complete training programs put on by the state.

As a result of the change in 2015, 25,000 welfare recipients returned to the workforce. Even with those numbers, many liberals argued that this type of mandate does not work.

Having a work requirement goes a long way to help food program users to see it as a short-term solution and quickly transition beyond the need for the services.

It is often seen as a positive way to encourage those using social services to get back to being self-reliant. After the new requirements went into effect in 2015, 86,000 people came off the food benefit program.

Of the 86,000 people who no longer got benefits, some were able to return to work full-time and no longer qualified for social services. There are others that merely declined to meet the new requirements and went without the program benefits.

As the requirements expand to include those with children in the group that need to return to work, the state is estimating it will need to screen 61,300 customers. They will be looking for those who can opt out of the work requirement.

Adults with children who are also pregnant fall into the group that will not be required to work. As mentioned above, adults with disabilities are also not required to work if they are not able.

State leaders are estimating that 27,000 of the parents on food assistance will quickly meet the new requirement.

The change in work requirements for the state was fully supported by the republican majority in the state legislature. It did not receive any support from the 49 Democrats in the state.

Republicans in the state are hopeful that this new law will continue to return workers to the job force. It worked in the past with adults without children.

(conservativedailypost.com)

This week at about 10:00 pm the stars of the constellation Gemini (The United) will be directly overhead at the zenith point in the Southern U.S.

Gemini is one of the zodiacal constellations and is the tenth chapter of the Star Bible. The name means "the twins" in Greek but in the ancient Hebrew it means "the united." It is a picture of two men standing together who are united as one. The first contains the bright star Pollux, meaning "He who comes to suffer" at its head, with the Star Alhena, meaning "wounded" at its feet. This figure corresponds to the first half of Genesis 3:15, where the seed of woman will be wounded in the heel, and is clearly a picture of the crucifixion and first coming of Christ. The second figure has Castor, "the ruler" as its head and Mebsuth, "treading under foot" at its feet. This speaks to the second half of Genesis 3:15, where the seed of woman crushes the head of the serpent, and represents the return of Christ. Together, the stars of Gemini tell us that the one who suffered will return to rule.

The bright stars of Gemini, Castor and Pollux, are also part of the prophetic calendar which produces signs in the sun, moon and stars surrounding both appearances of Christ. In 6 BC the precession of the equinoxes carried the star Pollux "He who comes to suffer," directly overhead at zenith in Jerusalem. This was a sign of the coming advent of Christ and described His sacrificial death on the cross. That same year, the constellation Gemini entered the summer season. It was in the summer of 6 B.C., nine months before the star of Bethlehem appeared in the spring of 5 B.C., that we believe Gabriel appeared to Mary and Christ was conceived.

Now, over 2,000 years later, the precession of the equinoxes has carried the star Castor, "The Ruler", close to the zenith point over Jerusalem. This star is a sign of the Second Coming of Christ, when He will return to rule on Earth. It will move to zenith over Jerusalem in A.D. 2121, as Gemini moves out of the summer season and Taurus (the bull), the sign of Christ's s second coming, moves in. While no one knows the day or hour of Christ's return, we believe that the rebirth of Israel, likened to a fig tree by Jesus (Matt. 24:22), tells us that the prophetic summer season of His return is near. The movement of Castor toward Jerusalem zenith, along with the other signs in the sun, moon and stars, confirms that the prophetic calendar is counting down zero hour.

So look overhead tonight to Castor and Pollux, which mark the time between the first and second coming of Christ. And tell someone that there may only be a short time left to accept God's offer of eternal life.

(charismanews.com)

March 10, 2018

Sometime in the early 2030s, the largest submarine ever built in the United Kingdom will slip into the waters off Barrow-in-Furness, pass through a series of docks and make for the Irish Sea. HMS Dreadnought will be the ninth ship to bear that historic name, and by far the most lethal. The Dreadnought-class submarines will be the custodians of the UK’s nuclear arsenal for at least thirty years, preventing the country from falling victim to surprise attack.

The United Kingdom’s first ballistic-missile submarines were launched in the 1960s. The four Resolution-class submarines, two of which were also built at Furness, were built around the American Polaris submarine ballistic missile. The Resolutions were the sea-based leg of England’s nuclear deterrent force, and under a plan calledContinuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD) the country has kept at least one nuclear-missile submarine on watch every day for the last forty-nine years.

The Resolution class was eventually replaced by the Vanguard-class submarines, which serve the CASD mission today. In 2011, anticipating the Vanguard would begin aging out in the late 2020s, London has authorized the construction of the new Dreadnought-class ballistic-missile submarines. The program will cost $43 billion over thirty-five years, including the construction and maintenance of four submarines. Lead contractor BAE Systems began construction of the first submarine in 2016.

On paper, the Dreadnoughts are highly impressive submarines. Each will be 501 feet long, nine feet longer than their predecessors, and will displace 17,200 tons—1,300 more tons than the Vanguard boats. The submarines will have a crew of 130 officers and enlisted personnel.

The submarine’s nuclear armament will be reduced from that of earlier submarines, but still pack a formidable punch. The Dreadnoughts will carry twelve ballistic-missile launch tubes as opposed to the Vanguard’s sixteen, and will carry, at least at first, the same American-built Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The Vanguard class carries eight Trident II D-5s, with a range of 4,600 miles. Each Trident has eight one-hundred-kiloton nuclear warheads, giving each submarine a total of 6.4 megatons of nuclear firepower.

The Ministry of Defense’s 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review stated that, despite the twelve tubes for ballistic missiles, each Dreadnought will carry just eight Trident IIs with up to five one-hundred-kiloton warheads each, for a grand total of no more than forty operational warheads. While this represents a decrease of more than a third in yield, it’s still safely in the multi-megaton range and sufficient to overcome the missile defenses of any potential adversary.

Although the Dreadnoughts will initially carry recycled Trident II missiles, the ships are being built with the new Anglo-American Common Missile Compartment (CMC) to allow them to use the same new missiles as the U.S. Navy’s new Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines, also in the early stages of construction. The CMC uses a quad pack design, loading and offloading ballistic missiles in packs of four. Since the Dreadnoughts will carry eight missiles, this will make loading and unloading missiles much easier.

Further U.S.-UK cooperation is believed to have inspired London’s new PWR-3 nuclear reactor, which will drive turbo steam generators, providing energy for the submarines. The PWR-3 is believed to have taken know-how from the U.S. Navy’s S9G reactor powering the Virginia-class attack submarines. The PWR-3 should not require refueling over the thirty-year life of the submarine.

The new HMS Dreadnought carries on an illustrious name that goes back to the sixteenth century and the days of the Tudor Navy. The name was also lent to a new class of fast battleships at the dawn of the twentieth century so inspirational that the name Dreadnought became synonymous with the massive battlewagons.Dreadnought VIII was the UK’s first nuclear-powered submarine. DreadnoughtIX, the largest submarine class, will serve as the UK’s silent protector, promising swift nuclear vengeance in the event of nuclear attack. “Fear God and Dread Nought” indeed.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.