Category: Children / Kids / Minors / Teens / Family
Rep. Sharice Davids Promotes Bipartisan Affordable Childcare Act, Aiming to Ease Financial Strain on Families with Expanded Tax Credits
Yesterday, Representative Sharice Davids joined a Shawnee family to pick up their children from day care and discussed her bipartisan Affordable Childcare Act with them. The bill aims to ease the financial burden on parents by doubling three different tax credits, directly increasing their savings. With a report showing that working parents are spending 24 percent of their income on child care, Davids is advocating for urgent measures to reduce these costs.
Representative Sharice Davids’ bipartisan Affordable Childcare Act, introduced earlier this year with Representative Marc Molinaro (R-NY-19), proposes several significant enhancements:
Doubling the Child and Dependent Care Credit: This credit helps families offset child care and dependent care expenses. The Act increases the credit to $6,000 for one dependent and $12,000 for two or more, aiding working families in managing rising child care costs.
Doubling the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit: This credit allows businesses to claim expenses for providing child care facilities or services to their employees. The Act raises the credit to $300,000 per year, covering 25 percent of qualified child care facility expenses and 10 percent of child care resource and referral expenses, to encourage greater business investment in employee child care support.
Doubling Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account Contributions: This benefit allows employees to use pre-tax dollars for eligible dependent care expenses. The Act increases the contribution limit to $10,000, allowing parents to save more for qualifying caregiving costs. “Child care is essential not only for giving kids like Eli and Colby Zigtema a strong start, but also for allowing parents to earn a living and support their families,” said Davids. “Growing up with a single mom, I know how much a little extra money in the bank account can mean. That’s why I introduced bipartisan legislation to help the Zigtemas and other hardworking Kansas families afford the quality child care they need.”
This is what happened to me.
The below is my response to a thread on the Male Survivor site where people were talking about intervening if they saw something suspicious but not outright abuse with a child. One guy commented that what if the adult later took it out on the child. Sorry but these are the memories and never seeming to stop thoughts I am dealing with right now. Hugs. Scottie
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Hi. That is what happened to me. I was driving my snowmobile to a basket making shop to cut up cardboard for the owner. It was a job a kid could do and earn a little money. The owner was friends with my parents. I hit ice, couldn’t completely stop in time, bumped the bumper of a large car. No damage to the car but the cowling / hood of the snowmobile was broken badly. That meant I had to call my AF (the male of the couple who adopted me, the woman is AM, their children are the hell spawn) who showed up at the place while I was inside cutting the cardboard in a separate area of the shop. He came in and started to beat me. My AF is a large man with huge arms and shoulders who was a barroom brawler when younger. The man who owned the shop was a former Marine and taller than the AF but maybe as strong. He heard my cries and AF swearing at me, rushed in to the area I was being beaten, grabbed the AF and pushed him to the wall away from me. It might have got worse but the other workers were now watching. I never saw what happened as very quickly someone grabbed me and took me to the other part of the shop and got me calmed down. I was so relieved. The owner came to tell me that the AF had left and they were going to fix my machine at the shop, so someone would drop me off at home. Then came the time I had to go home.
There was no one there to protect me. I walked through the door and closed it, and the fist smashed into my face throwing me back into the door. He picked me up and slammed me into the door, then turned around still holding me and threw me down on the floor. He was furious raging about me embarrassing him, and he would teach me not to go crying to others. Had I not learned it before never to tell, take like the … I was. The beating was bad with slaps, punches, and kicks, the sexual torture horrible starting with oral and going to hurt rape anal, and the humiliating thing he made me do after he finished in me was just more salt in my wounds. At least after he finished I knew it would be over, he had spent his rage but his anger would simmer until the next time. I was in bed in my little tiny room hardly big enough for a small bunk bed having been warned to keep my sniveling quiet so the AM wouldn’t be upset when she got home. I was told not to come out or let him see me again that day / night. I heard him yelling telling the AM that I was grounded and wouldn’t get supper for smashing the snowmobile and disobeying him. He told her only that he punished me. She never checked on me. The next day trying to move and get up was horrible. The AM seen me and told me to stay home from school. I was terrified because the AF would be home from work soon as he worked nights. As soon as she left I took a small pack with water / soda and stole snacks from the pantry and went into the woods to hide for the day. After the weekend I went back to school. Same story, I got hurt fighting with other kids, or fell off my bike going very fast, or one of the other ones I was practiced at telling such as fell down the stairs in a home that had no stairs. I was terrified to touch the snowmobile after that.
Unless you can get the child or abused person away from the abuser intervening might make it much worse for them when no one is there to stand up for them. Best wishes. Scottie
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Scottiesplaytime.com
The clown doctor will see you now – and you’ll get better, quicker
September 9, 2024 Ellen Phiddian
(Back in the 80s I heard a story of Norman Cousins putting his apple juice in a specimen cup, then later taking a sip while listening to a visitor. I think of Norman Cousins when I see headlines like this one. I don’t believe he was a clown, but others’s mileage may vary, as to humor in the hospital, also Norman Cousins, not to mention clowns.)
Medical clowns are known to have a positive therapeutic impact on kids in hospitals for a range of health issues, and now it’s been shown they can reduce the length of stay and antibiotic use for children with pneumonia.
A study, done on 51 children, found that those visited by medical clowns on average left hospital more than a day earlier than those who weren’t.
“Medical clowns undergo specific training to work in hospitals,” says Dr Karin Yaacoby-Bianu, a researcher at the Carmel Medical Centre and Israel Institute of Technology, Israel.
“They have been shown to reduce pain and alleviate stress and anxiety in children and their families during medical treatment, and have been gradually integrated into many aspects of hospital care.
“But their impact on children being treated for pneumonia has not been investigated.”
Yaacoby-Bianu presented her team’s research at the 2024 European Respiratory Society Congress.
“Community acquired pneumonia is one of the leading causes of hospitalisation in children, globally,” she says.
The team split 51 children, aged between 2 and 18, who had been hospitalised with pneumonia, into 2 groups.
They all received standard care, but one group also had four 15-minute visits from a medical clown from the Dream Doctors Project during their stays.
The clowns did a variety of activities including music, singing, and guided imagination.
The group visited by clowns stayed in hospital for 43.5 hours on average, while the control group stayed in hospital for 70 hours on average.
Children visited by clowns needed an average of 2 days of IV antibiotic treatment, while the control group required 3. Other medical markers, like heart rate and inflammation, were lower in the clown group.
“While the practice of medical clowning is not a standardised interaction, we believe that it helps to alleviate stress and anxiety, improves psychological adjustment to the hospital environment and allows patients to better participate in treatment plans like adherence to oral antibiotics and fluids,” explains Yaacoby-Bianu.
“Laughter and humour may also have direct physiological benefits by lowering respiratory and heart rates, reducing air trapping, modulating hormones, and enhancing the immune function.”
Dr Stefan Unger, a paediatrician at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People Edinburgh, UK, who wasn’t involved in the research, says the study shows the positive effect humour can have in healthcare. (snip-MORE)
https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/body-and-mind/medical-clowns-pneumonia/
Peace & Justice History for 9/9:
| September 9, 1862 Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey declared that “The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” The previous month the Dakota, or Santee, Sioux, long burdened by treaty violations and late or unfair payments from Indian agents, killed four settlers and decided to attack settlers throughout the Minnesota River valley. The number killed was estimated between 300 and 800, until 9/11 the largest civilian death toll in the U.S. The number of Indian deaths was not recorded. |
| September 9, 1944 Religious conscientious objector Corbett Bishop was arrested after walking out of a Civilian Public Service Camp. During subsequent trials and imprisonments, he refused any type of cooperation with the government until he was released 193 days later.  “I’m not going to cooperate in any way, shape or form. I was carried in here.If you hold me, you’ll have to carry me out.War is wrong. I don’t want any part of it.” – Corbett Bishop, 1906-1961 |
| September 9, 1963 Students at Chu Van An boys’ high school in Saigon tore down the government flag and raised a Buddhist flag to protest the corrupt Diem regime in South Vietnam; 1,000 were arrested. |
| September 9, 1971 The Attica (New York) State Penitentiary revolt began. The interracial revolt was led by blacks but featured cooperation between prisoners of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.  It was finally brutally suppressed by the state five days later, upon orders from Governor Nelson Rockefeller who refused to become directly involved. 29 prisoners and 10 guards were shot and killed by attacking state troopers in the bloodiest prison confrontation in U.S. history.  The prisoners had been demanding improvements in their living and working conditions at the increasingly overcrowded facility. |
| September 9, 1980 Eight activists from the Atlantic Life Community were arrested after hammering the nose cones of two missiles at the General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Read about Plowshares 8  The Plowshares 8 (in alphabetical order): Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Anne Montgomery, Molly Rush, and John Schuchardt.  This action would become the first of an international movement of dozens of “Plowshares” anti-nuclear direct actions. A chronology of Plowshares actions |
| September 9, 1997 Sinn Fein (pronounced shin fayn), the Irish Republican Army’s allied political party, formally renounced violence by accepting the principles put forward by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell (D-Maine) who was mediating the talks between the Irish Republicans and the British Unionists on Northern Ireland’s future.  Senator George MitchellThe Mitchell Principles: • To democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues; • To the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations; • To agree that such disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission; • To renounce for themselves, and to oppose any effort by others, to use force, or threaten to use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party negotiations; • To agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree; and, • To urge that “punishment” killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps to prevent such actions. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september9
Did I just duplicate a post?
As a reminder, Trump has publicly floated Loomer to be his next White House press secretary and he has reposted hundreds of her tweets on Truth Social.
Molson Coors joins Ford, Harley Davidson, Lowes, Tractor Supply, John Deere, and the maker of Jack Daniel’s in retreating from diversity and pro-LGBTQ programs.
Coors beer, once the subject of a nationwide boycott by gay bars over its founder’s anti-LGBTQ stance, has been prominent at Pride events in recent years. Last year, for example, Coors Light was the main sponsor of Denver Pride despite attacks by the cult.
In 2015, when the company was called MillerCoors, its chairman and then-US Senate candidate Pete Coors, dropped out of a speaking gig at the convention of Legatus, the ex-gay and pro-ex-gay torture Catholic group, after widespread criticism.
The company’s current brands include Coors, Coors Light, Blue Moon, Icehouse, Miller, Miller Light, Keystone, Molson, and dozens of others.
Peace & Justice History for 9/7:
(Really!)
| September 7, 1948 3,000 attended a rally to publicly launch the Peace Council in Melbourne, Australia. |
September 7, 1957 Barbara Gittings leading a picket in the ’60sBarbara Gittings organized the first New York meeting held for the Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneer lesbian organization. The group was founded two years earlier in San Francisco. Barbara Gittings: Mother of the Gay Rights Movement (This link requires a sign-in on Medium, so I’m going to post it in another entry on its own.) Cover from their magazine “The Ladder”, October,1968  |
| September 7, 1990 Two British peace activists, Stephen Hancock and Mike Hutchinson known as the Upper Heyford Plowshares were sentenced to 15 months in prison for disabling an F-111 bomber in Oxford, England. A brief History of Direct Disarmament Actions |
| September 7, 1992 South African troops killed at least 24 people and injured 150 more at an African National Congress (ANC) rally on the border of Ciskei, in South Africa. 50,000 ANC supporters had turned out to demand Ciskei’s re-absorption into South Africa. Ciskei was one of ten black “homelands,” so designated to keep blacks from claiming citizenship in South Africa itself. They were a legal fiction, not recognized by any other country, that was part of the racially separatist apartheid regime.  News at the time BBC |
| September 7, 1996 Two women were arrested for trespass at the Norfolk (Virginia) Naval Base after walking into the base with a banner reading, “Love Your Enemies.” |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september7
Back To School…RUN!!!!!! | Georgia School Shooting | Christopher Titus | Armageddon Update
Own Jones and Israel and Gaza
‘ERASE All Palestinians’ – Popular Israeli Podcasters Claim Most Share Their Genocidal Fantasy
Georgia shooting: father of teen suspect charged with second-degree murder
(Now that things have calmed down media-wise, and there is solid information, here’s a post. I’m glad to see the parent and gun owner held accountable; for this, and always. I am never in favor of charging a minor as an adult, though there should be consequences laced heavily with rehabilitation. But the parent and gun owner should be fully responsible because they’re actual adults, and the parents (some child shooters will not have parents, so this goes to the caregiver.) Gun owners should always know that their guns are secure, and tell law enforcement when they’re not secure. Others’s mileage with these things may vary, and you’re welcome to chime in!)
Colin Gray faces four involuntary manslaughter, two second-degree murder and eight cruelty to children counts
The father of the teen suspected in the Georgia school shooting has been arrested, the Georgia bureau of investigation has said.
Colin Gray, 54, was arrested by the bureau in connection to the shooting at Apalachee high school. Colin is the father of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old who is suspected of fatally shooting two students and two teachers with an assault-style rifle at the high school on Wednesday.
He is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the Georgia bureau said.
“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia bureau of investigations, told reporters on Thursday evening.
“What are we facing? Heartbreak. A young person brought a gun into a school, committed an evil act and took lives, and injured people not just physically but mentally,” said the Barrow county sheriff, Jud Smith, during the news conference.
The teenager has been charged as an adult in the deaths of the school students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and educators Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, Hosey said.
At least nine other people – seven students and two teachers – were taken to hospitals with injuries and all are expected to make a full recovery, Smith said.
Colin Gray is being held at the Barrow county detention center.
More than a year ago, the alleged shooter was interviewed by Georgia police after they received tips about online posts threatening a school shooting. Police did not have enough probable cause to arrest him then, according to the Georgia bureau of investigation.
In that 2023 inquiry, the father said he had hunting guns in the house but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them, and the son denied making the threats online, the FBI said.
Georgia state and Barrow county investigators say the younger Gray used an “AR platform style weapon”, or semiautomatic rifle, to carry out the attack in which two teachers and two 14-year-old students were killed.
It remained unclear how the shooter obtained the weapon.
Investigators have yet to comment on what may have motivated the first US campus mass shooting since the start of the school year.
Jackson county sheriff’s investigators closed the case after being unable to substantiate that either Gray was connected to the Discord account where the threats were made, and did not find grounds to seek the needed court order to confiscate the family’s guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office on Thursday.
“This case was worked, and at the time the boy was 13, and it wasn’t enough to substantiate,” Janis Mangum, the Jackson county sheriff, said in an interview. “If we get a judge’s order or we charge somebody, we take firearms for safekeeping.”
The younger Gray was taken into custody shortly after the shooting and was being held without bond at the Gainesville regional youth detention center, Glenn Allen, the Georgia department of juvenile justice communications director, said on Thursday.
His arraignment is set for Friday morning before a Georgia superior court judge in Barrow county by video camera.
While parents are not usually held criminally liable if their child shoots someone, recent high-profile events are evidence that they could face charges in the future. In November 2023, Deja Taylor of Virginia was sentenced to 21 months on two federal charges after her then six-year-old son shot his teacher in January.
The elder Gray’s arrest also comes months after the unprecedented conviction of the parents of a Michigan high school student who shot and killed four students on 30 November. In February, Jennifer Crumbley was convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter. The next month, her husband, James Crumbley, was convicted on the same charges. The pair was sentenced to serve at least 10 years in prison.
“I didn’t really think about what precedent it was setting,” Karen McDonald, the prosecutor for Oakland county who brought the case against the Crumbleys, told CNN on Thursday. “If nothing else I would’ve hoped that the highly publicized details of this case would steer parents and make them think twice.”
“It’s enraging that this could still happen when it’s so easily preventable,” she continued.
This article was amended on 6 September 2024. An early version said Deja Taylor was sentenced to 21 years, not 21 months.
Scottie's Playtime 