MSP Press Release 12-17-13

STATE POLICE INTERNET CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN TASK FORCE INVESTIGATE INCIDENTS OF CHILD EXPLOITATION ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

The Maryland State Police and other law enforcement agencies around the state have received numerous complaints over the last few days involving sexually explicit photographs of juveniles being posted on Social Networking websites, specifically Instagram. As the lead agency of the Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the State Police Computer Crimes Section has been providing technical assistance into these investigations.

These latest images and videos have been posted on several different pages on the Instagram website. At this point, the images do not rise to the level of child pornography under Maryland law, however the Maryland State Police would like to urge the public to be aware of these issues and to report occurrences to Instagram’s Help Center athttp://help.instagram.comor the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Cyber Tip Line at http://www.cybertipline.com.

Additionally, the State Police suggests parents talk with their children and explain to them the possible repercussions and dangers of taking photographs of themselves in a sexually explicit manner and posting on the Internet. The following websites are a good resource for parents in steps to take to help protect children from being exploited on the Internet;www.netsmartz.org or www.ncmec.org.

The Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is comprised of 35 law enforcement agencies from around the state focused on preventing and investigating incidents of sexual child exploitation. A major part of the Task Force’s program is community outreach. Investigators travel around the state providing Internet Safety presentations to children, parents, schools, and community or church groups. If you would like to schedule such a presentation for your group or would like further information, you may email the State Police investigative unit at msp.ccu@maryland.gov.

Sheriff: Co-Worker Shot Up Walmart Employee Of The Month’s Car

At Walmart, the Employee of the Month award comes with no cash or prizes. The title is the honor. That honor was important enough at one Florida Walmart that a co-worker who didn’t get the honor shot at the car of the official Employee of the Month.

We’re guessing that there was more to this feud than just the Employee of the Month contest. However, a sheriff’s department spokesperson told the local CBS affiliate that the feud started with bad feelings after the victim won the honor.

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Who Remembers The Comics?

Blue Shield

Do Vitamins Block Disease? Some Disappointing News

WASHINGTON (AP) -- There's more disappointing news about multivitamins: Two major studies found popping the pills didn't protect aging men's brains or help heart attack survivors.

Millions of Americans spend billions of dollars on vitamin combinations, presumably to boost their health and fill gaps in their diets. But while people who don't eat enough of certain nutrients may be urged to get them in pill form, the government doesn't recommend routine vitamin supplementation as a way to prevent chronic diseases.

The studies released Monday are the latest to test if multivitamins might go that extra step and concluded they don't.
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So God Made A Liberal...

SPD Press Release 12-17-13

The "Other" Anniversary That's Far More Important

Though still a week shy of its centennial anniversary, the US Federal Reserve will hold a celebration this afternoon in Washington DC.

Just imagine the scene - a bunch of current and former central bankers slapping each other on the back, congratulating one another for a job well done over the last 100 years.

Of course, you and I know this is total nonsense… as is the concept of our modern monetary system in which we award total control of the money supply to a tiny central banking elite.

Human beings are fallible. We are not gods. Yet we practically deify central bankers and entrust them with the power to manipulate markets, control prices around the world, and effectively dominate the economy.

This system has proven to be foolish and destructive.

While the Fed engages in its self-aggrandizement this afternoon, there is another far more important anniversary today - the Boston Tea Party.

It was this day in 1773 that dozens of men dumped 342 chests of tea from 3 ships into the water. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that it started with bankers.

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Glaxo Says It Will Stop Paying Doctors to Promote Drugs

The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write, its chief executive said Monday, effectively ending two common industry practices that critics have long assailed as troublesome conflicts of interest.

The announcement appears to be a first for a major drug company — although others may be considering similar moves — and it comes at a particularly sensitive time for Glaxo. It is the subject of a bribery investigation in China, where authorities contend the company funneled illegal payments to doctors and government officials in an effort to lift drug sales.

Andrew Witty, Glaxo’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview Monday that its proposed changes were unrelated to the investigation in China, and were part of a yearslong effort “to try and make sure we stay in step with how the world is changing,” he said. “We keep asking ourselves, are there different ways, more effective ways of operating than perhaps the ways we as an industry have been operating over the last 30, 40 years?”
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Trans Pacific Partnership - Obamatrade - Worse For US Than Obamacare

WASHINGTON, As America reels from one Obamacare blow after another, President Obama, the architect of America’s economic collapse, is preparing yet one more body blow to an America still suffering through the Great Obama Depression.

Obama is pushing hard for something called the Trans Pacific Partnership.

If Obama’s goal was to destroy the American economy and American sovereignty, he could not have picked a better tool than a “free trade” agreement that will make America and Americans subject to laws and rulings from nameless, faceless, soulless bureaucrats who are unelected, unaccountable and, fearfully, anti-American.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is currently being negotiated in secret. Much like Obamacare — which Nancy Pelosi warned us we would have to pass in order to see what was in it — to find out what is in the TPP, we must pass an even worse piece of legislation.

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Senate Goes After Corn Ethanol Targets For Fuel

Senators on both sides of the aisle are pushing measures that would whack the corn ethanol portion of federal biofuel blending targets, unswayed by a recent Environmental Protection Agency proposal to slash next year's goal.

The efforts come as the House remains stalled on its legislative proposal, and after some lobbyists have suggested the EPA action last month could reduce congressional appetite to change the Renewable Fuel Standard.

"The hearing on Wednesday was a bit of a surprise," Michael McAdams, president of the Advanced Biofuels Association, said of a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the Renewable Fuel Standard. "A lot of people thought that when the EPA released the rule that it would cut the legs out of doing anything legislatively."
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BREAKING NEWS: NASA Orders Series Of Spacewalks To Fix International Space Station

NASA orders a series of spacewalks to fix a broken cooling line at the International Space Station.

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Curse Words In Comments

You curse, it gets rejected. Why you people waste your time writing long comments and then load them up with curse words is beyond me. Maybe you just don't get it.

A Comment Worthy Of A Post 12-17-13

Annie Nonymous has left a new comment on your post "BREAKING NEWS: Budget Bill Clears Key Test Vote In...":

I gather from your comments that you have not been reading the posts Joe and Beezer have been providing us on the job climate here in the county.

Spout your rhetoric, but the fact is there are very few jobs here in Smallsbury. And even fewer reasonably well paying jobs.

It is a wide assumption that I am not employed, I was simply making a statement about those, some of whom I know, who can not find work.

It is a rather complicated issue, since most low level retail jobs will not hire unemployed previous manager, either due to lack of experience or over qualification.
For awhile there, even walmart was not hiring and cut back. So to insult people by saying it is beneath them is rude, when they can't even get hired for a lesser job.

If you do not have work, how do you downsize your home, since you do not qualify for a mortgage? Same for a car loan.

I understand the downsizing concept but it is only feasible to a point.

Comparing the situation to migrant workers is simply crap. They often get paid in cash, no overtime, no benefits and it is only a benefit for the employer. Once they have used them up, they also lay them off.

Until you have walked in their shoes.....

America's Wealth Is Staggeringly Concentrated In The Northeast Corridor

At the county level, America is a tremendously unequal place. The median household income in the poorest county (Wilcox County, Alabama) was $22,126 in 2012. In Falls Church, Virginia, where highly educated defense contractors and federal government workers cluster, the median income last year was $121,250, more than five times higher.

What's most startling, though, in new local income and poverty data released this week by the Census Bureau, is the way these opposing poles of poverty and wealth in America concentrate geographically. The Census map below shows median household income data from 2012 for every county in the country:

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Stop The Ryan-Murray Budget Deal In The Senate

Friends-

A nationalized preschool system.

That's what Barack Obama and the Washington DC Establishment want to create.

And they just slipped it into the Ryan-Murray budget deal.

The Senate will likely begin voting on the Ryan-Murray budget surrender TODAY!

Please call your U.S. Senator ASAP to demand they vote NO on the Ryan-Murray budget deal.

Call the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Let your Senator know that you oppose creation of a nationalized pre-school system and that you oppose the funding of the un-Constitutional Federal Department of Education!

The Obama Administration is hoping that you'll be asleep at the wheel as they quietly burn through $75 billion dollars of your money to create a new federal preschool system in America.

Brainwashing our children from kindergarten through college just isn't enough for the DC Establishment.

For years, the Federal Department of Education has been methodically chipping away at local control of education.

Their mission is to nationalize the education of our children and rob parents of their rights.

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and the Educrat lobbyists in Washington DC couldn't be happier with the Ryan-Murray budget plan.

And they are banking on it passing in the Senate today.

The Ryan-Murray budget deal rubber stamps the Federal Department of Education with a generous helping of your tax dollars.

COUPLE SPENDS MONTH IN PRISON AFTER COPS FIND ‘WHITE POWDERY SUBSTANCE’ – FIND OUT WHY ALL CHARGES HAVE BEEN DROPPED

 

Annadel Cruz, 26, and her companion Alexander Berstein, 30, spent an entire month in prison on cocaine trafficking charges after a state trooper in Pennsylvania pulled them over for traffic violations and found two “bricks” of a white substance they determined was cocaine.

Cruz maintained it was only homemade soap, not cocaine. When the official lab tests came back, officers realized a big mistake had been made. All charges were immediately dropped when it was determined the substance was, indeed, soap.

When a state trooper pulled Cruz over, he claimed he smelled marijuana in the car. Cruz actually admitted that she had smoked some weed before she left New York City, but not while she was driving. The trooper then asked if he could search the car, a request Cruz granted.
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ACA Is A Bureaucratic Nightmare

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Obama has lost credibility as a leader and effective executive with most Americans.

A good CEO must work within the strengths and limitations of his organization — then execute effectively to deliver on the promises he makes.

The ACA website, Healthcare.gov, even with many efforts at improvement, is simply not easy to use or adequately effective.

As of Nov. 30, 365,000 Americans signed up for insurance via that website and the other exchanges set up by the states. This is well short of the administration's target and makes it unlikely that 7 million will sign up by March 31, as expected by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Many who have failed to participate are young and healthy — those whose participation is needed to make the insurance policies offered viable.

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Worcester County Sheriff's Office Traffic Alert

Worcester County Sheriff's Office

Commuters to the Snow Hill area are requested to use additional caution and reduce speed along Route 12 (Snow Hill Road) in the area of the Worcester County Liquor Control building on Wednesday, December 18th as the Santa House distribution will be taking place. Thanks in advance for being cautious; traffic will be slowed from Nassawango Road into the Town of Snow Hill limits.

Meaningful Work — Not Money — Makes People Happy

Social scientists think they've discovered a formula for happiness, writes Arthur C. Brooks in the New York Times, and making lots of money is not a part of it.

Decades of research have boiled human happiness down to just three factors: genes, events, and values. About half of how happy you feel is hardwired into your genetic make up, according to the article. Meanwhile, one-off events like getting married or landing a big promotion can contribute up to 40% of your happiness, but tend to offer just a temporary boost that lasts a few months.

Brooks says the remaining 12% of factors that govern how happy you feel are faith, family, community, and work. Because of the social connection and meaning they tend to create, the first three are likely not too shocking. However, the idea that working may be a significant contributor to your happiness and wellbeing is more surprising. After all, it's something that many people spend their entire lives aspiring to retire from.

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