Friday, September 4, 2026
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Maria Becerra joins TINI & Lola Indigo for new music project

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reported by Griselda Flores

Shared from Billboard

 

Rising Argentine singer-songwriter Maria Becerra recruited compatriot TINI and up-and-coming Spanish artist Lola Indigo for her new “High” remix.

Premiering exclusively on Billboard today (Sept. 3), the eclectic, Latin trap-leaning remix finds the three leading ladies trading verses of heartbreak and despair. The minimalist and colorful music video, premiering along with the girl-power remix, was directed by Julian Levy. Becerra’s original “High” music video, released in December, has raked in more than 47 million views on YouTube.

Becerra, a leading voice in Argentina’s urban pop movement, was recently signed to 300 Entertainment, becoming the indie label’s first Latin signee. In a previous interview with Billboard, the rising star described her sound as a fusion of R&B, funk and trap.

 

The set marks the country music band’s first full-length foray into its Hispanic roots

The Mavericks debut at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Latin Pop Albums chart (dated Sept. 5) with En Español. The band concurrently earns its first top 10 on the all-genre Top Latin Albums chart, where the set bows at No. 8. The new album marks the first visit to the Latin album charts by the group, which has notched five top 10 efforts on the Top Country Albums chart dating back to 1994.

“This is an amazing feeling,” Raul Malo, The Mavericks’ lead singer, tells Billboard. “To wake up and receive a text from our manager that we have a No. 1 record. That’s not in the cards, this is beyond us. But you feel good about the work because you’ve put a lot of effort, a lot of love and time into it, so you make sure that you do everything in your power to propel it.” 

En Español bows with 5,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Aug. 27, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Most of the set’s opening sum is attributed to album sales.

 

Rumba and national identity in Cuba at Timbalaye 2020

RONE – Rumba as an essential factor of national identity will be the main theme of the 12th edition of the festival dedicated to this musical genre organized in Cuba by Timbalaye, its main directors highlighted in Rome on Friday.

An international colloquium, concerts, performance of folkloric projects and interviews to legendary ‘rumberos’ (rumba performers) are part of the agenda of ‘Timbalaye-Festival ‘Ruta de la Rumba (Rumba Route),’ which took place virtually from August 27 to 30, in tune with the circumstances generated by Covid-19.

Ulises Mora and Irma Castillo, president and vice president, respectively, of ‘Timbalaye,’ an international promoter of Cuban culture, offered details about the festival in which the participated from Rome due to the movement limitations imposed by the pandemic.

Once again, Timbalaye in neighborhoods interacted with people, even at a distance, especially in the family environment where staying is greater than usual due to the social distancing measures implemented to protect themselves and protect others, Mora stated.

Castillo, Ulises’ partner in life and in promoting Cuba’s culture as folkloric dance teachers in Italy, underlined Timbalaye’s contribution to recognize rumba as UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2015.

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Ron Paul: Coronavirus is the New ‘Terrorism’

Politicians will never resist the temptation to use crises as excuses to gain more power

 

by Ron Paul

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed the next multi-trillion dollar “coronavirus relief” spending bill that will support testing, tracing, treatment, isolation, and mask policies that have been part of a “national strategic plan” she has been advocating. The Trump administration is not opposing Pelosi’s plan on principle. Instead, it is haggling over the price.

But, even if the strategic plan could be implemented at little or no monetary cost, it would still impose an unacceptable cost in lost liberty.

Pelosi’s plan will lead to either a federal mask mandate or federal funding of state and local mask mandate enforcement. Those who resist wearing masks could likely be reported to the authorities by government-funded mask monitors. We can label this the “Stasi” approach to health policy, after the infamous East German secret police force.

Contact tracing could lead to forcing individuals to download a tracing app. The app would record where an individual goes and alert authorities that an individual has been near someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

The strategic plan could eventually include Bill Gates’ and Anthony Fauci’s suggestion that individuals receive “digital certificates” indicating they are vaccinated for or immune to coronavirus. A certificate would be required before an individual can go to work, to school, or even to the grocery store. The need to demonstrate vaccination for or immunity to coronavirus in order to resume normal life would cause many people to “voluntarily” receive a potentially dangerous coronavirus vaccine.

The Trump administration has already spent billions of dollars to support efforts of companies to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Policymakers have stated that once a vaccine is developed it will be rushed into production and onto the market. Supporters of expediting production and use of a vaccine should remember the 1976 swine flu vaccine debacle. The swine flu vaccine was rushed into production in response to political pressure to “do something.” The result was a vaccine that was more of a danger than the flu.

Unfortunately, those who raise legitimate concerns regarding the safety of vaccines are smeared as “conspiracy theorists.” This is the equivalent of stating that anyone who dares criticize our interventionist foreign policy “hates freedom” and is probably a “terrorist sympathizer.”

The coronavirus panic has given new life to the push for a unique patient identifier. The unique patient identifier was authorized in 1996, but appropriations bills since 1998 have contained a provision forbidding the federal government from developing and implementing the identifier. Unfortunately, two weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the ban. The unique patient identifier would aid government efforts to track and vaccinate every American, as well as to infringe in other ways on liberty in the name of “health.”

Politicians and bureaucrats cannot eliminate a virus any more than they can eliminate terrorism. What they can do is use terrorism, a virus, and other real, exaggerated, or manufactured crises to expand their power at the expense of our liberty.

Politicians will never resist the temptation to use crises as excuses to gain more power. Therefore, it is up to those of us who know the truth to spread the message of liberty and grow the liberty movement, A strong liberty movement is the only thing that can force the politicians to stop stealing our liberty while promising phantom security from terrorists and viruses.

This article first appeared at RonPaulInstitute.org.

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The birth of the cashless society

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

 

Dear readers:

 

Once in while people come to me and ask me if I know anything about bit coins – digital money. But the truth is, deep inside me, I don’t like it, because it is the way that the government will control every penny you make, and with a click on the keyboard, can take away all the money you have if it was necessary – for whatever reasons.

Now you can save you ‘dirty, contaminated’ paper dollars hidden under your mattress and taken to whatever destination you choose. I don’t think is good for humanity, is not good for anyone, except the elite. In the following article, investigative journalist, James Corbett, explains it so well, that I bet you will never venture to accept it, but will resist it as much as you possible can. – Marvin Ramírez

 

by James Corbett

 

August 29, 2020 – As we all know by now, the entire corona crisis was and is an excuse for The Great Reset. And, as anyone who has followed the financial prognostication space for the past decade knows, “the great reset” has been used nearly interchangeably with “the global currency reset” to describe the collapse of the old dollar-centric Bretton Woods system and the rise of a new international monetary order.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the post-corona Great Reset being hyped by the World Economic Forum and their globalist fellow travelers is itself predicated on a global currency reset. But this global currency reset has a distinctly 21st-century technocratic flavor.

The form that this currency reset is taking reveals itself in the latest headlines from the world of central banking:

“U.S. Moves Closer To Digital Dollar“.

“Bank of England Governor Signals Central Bank Digital Currency is Coming”

“China To Begin Major Expansion Of Digital Currency Testing”

Yes, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the central banksters are using “The Great Reset” as a smokescreen to smuggle through one of their most cherished fantasies: the cashless society. Soon, central banks will be issuing national digital currencies and tracking every single transaction in the economy in real time.

And if you were able to read that last paragraph without feeling a chill run down your spine, then you need to get up to speed on what the cashless society entails and why it must be resisted with every last fiber of our being.

First, the specifics.

The “digital dollar” that the US senate banking committee is holding hearings about is the same digital dollar proposal that I talked about in my podcast on The Greatest Depression this past March. As you’ll recall, the Digital Dollar Project is being promoted by the World Economic Forum (surprise, surprise) and sold to the public via the old Cold War trick of “the  Chinese are doing it, so we have to, too!”

Specifically, as the globalist crony insiders explained in their Wall Street Journal op ed on the idea last year:

“We propose a digital dollar—a government-sanctioned blockchain protocol, created and maintained by an independent nongovernmental group but administered by banks and other trusted payment organizations. Cash brought into the system would be exchanged for digital U.S. dollars on a blockchain, with the cash lodged in special escrow accounts maintained by the Federal Reserve.”

In other words, the fine folks over at the Fed would be the invisible counter-party watching lovingly over the digital money system. What could possibly go wrong?

The digital dollar being proposed is a type of “Central Bank Digital Currency” (CBDC), which the Bank for International Settlements (aka the central bank of central banks) was writing about back in 2017. In fact, the idea goes back even further, to a proposed Fed-run central bank cryptocurrency called Fedcoin (I kid you not).

As I explained last year, the point of these “central bank digital currencies” is to take advantage of The Bitcoin Psyop by presenting the cashless society as the cool, hip new spin on that bitcoin/crypto thing all the cool kids are talking about. Of course, this “Fedcoin” concept utterly subverts the very core impetus for bitcoin and cryptocurrency right off the bat, a point highlighted and underlined in the original “Fedcoin” proposal: “It (Fedcoin) reintroduces one central point of control to the monetary system by granting a central bank the ability to set the supply of tokens on a Fedcoin blockchain.”

In other words: “Hey guys, you know that idea for making central banks obsolete by taking the money creation power completely out of their hands and bypassing all intermediaries in the banking system? Well, this is exactly like that, except we’re going to put all the power over this system in the hands of the central bank.” Sadly, few in the public will even be able to see the blatant contradiction.

And, given that this is now being portrayed as some sort of monetary arms race with those dastardly Chinese and their proposed digital yuan, you can bet that a good portion of the public will embrace this new currency with open arms.

As researcher Steven Guinness has been meticulously documenting at his blog over the last several months, this introduction of central bank digital currencies in England and elsewhere is being fast-tracked by the Bank for International Settlements on the back of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” agenda and is slated to be ready by 2025. The current scamdemic pandemonium only further helps to prepare the public to get ready to trade in their filthy, virus-laden cash for healthy virtual Fedcoins.

But still, this may just seem like a technological upgrade to our payment systems. People increasingly pay with cards or payment apps anyway, so what difference does it make if we eliminate cash altogether?

I have done a lot of work on the cashless society over the years, but it’s one of those concepts that is so large and so difficult to envision in its entirety that it’s worth revisiting here. To get a sense of how the cashless society is not about payment convenience but about control over every aspect of your lives, watch this short video that the ACLU put out a decade and a half ago:

This video wasn’t even meant to warn about the cashless society. The hapless victim of this pizza transaction ends up being forced to pay in cash because his credit card is maxed out. But nonetheless, this is the vision of the cashless society in a nutshell. In the cashless society, your entire payment history and all of the information that is tied into that history will be plainly visible to those who have access to it. And if the government issues a decree about what you are or are not able to purchase, that decree will be enforced at the point of sale. At that point, freedom will only be found in the counter-economy.

If you want to get a handle on what such a future will look like, imagine the following scenario:

You are out for a walk late at night. You come to a red light, but there is no one around. You hesitate a moment, double-check that there is really no one in sight and then dash across the intersection. In the two seconds it takes you to cross the road, a large LED screen above the street lights up with your picture and your name. Two seconds after that you feel a buzz in your pocket. Taking out your phone you find a message from your bank informing you that you have been fined for jaywalking and that your social credit score has been reduced.

The next day, you find yourself at the airport, preparing to board a flight to visit your family on the other side of the country. When you go to check in you receive a message that your social credit score is too low and you will not be allowed to board the plane. Enraged, you curse the airline, the government’s social credit system, its jaywalking laws, and even the government itself.

Unbeknownst to you, someone has recorded your outburst and uploads it to social media, where you are quickly identified. The police come to your home the next day and take you downtown where you are shackled in a chair and made to recant your statements about the government.

Sound like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel? Well, it’s not. It’s just a mundane portrayal of everyday life in current day China.

Facial recognition deployed to monitor the streets and automatically issue fines for jaywalking and other minor infractions? Check.

Social credit scores tied in to your ability to board public transportation or access government services? Check.

Police hauling people in for angrily ranting about the government and shackling them until they recant? Check.

The cashless society is about so much more than just how we pay for things at the store. Tied into a system of persistent technological surveillance, it represents the ultimate control over our lives. Can there be any doubt as to why the World Economic Forum and the Bank for International Settlements are working in concert with the central banks of the world and organizations like the Bill Gates-co-founded Better Than Cash Alliance to pave the way for this nightmare to become a reality.

The Birth of the Cashless Society — Hive

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Hey, gordo, watch those M&Ms

Law cracks down (again) on unhealthy snacks. New labeling rules follow ban on salt shakers, soft drink tax

 

by Carlisle Johnson

 

“Fat-shaming” is a 21st century generational word. In 2013, the United Nations, the world’s biggest NGO, crossed into the Health Maintenance Organization universe by fat-shaming the entire nation of Mexico.

Naming it the world’s fattest nation, knocking the United States off its No. 1 perch as the world’s fattest with a seismic thud, the UN ignited a national reaction from the Rio Grande to the Rio Suchiate, Mexico’s northern and southern borders, respectively.

Since 2013 the Mexican government, with a notable lack of success, has crusaded to change that image if not that reality.

The word “fat” is by nature subjective. Few would call Dutch painter Reubens’ models fat, most would prefer voluptuous. Although history is silent on the issue, it is unlikely that any of King Henry VIII’s surviving wives used the 16th century F-word in his presence.

Yet for most of the 20th century many newspapers’ comic pages carried a strip called simply Gordo, created by a Mexican American. Judging by its widespread use, gordo, or fat, is still a common, almost affectionate nickname in Mexico, the government’s best efforts notwithstanding.

Those efforts included banning salt shakers on restaurant tables, a measure that lasted about 30 days and may have generated a never-caught-on Ranchero ballad called Where Have All the Salt Shakers Gone?

Undeterred, the government escalated the battle, slapping a special tax on soft drinks. “How’d that work out?” I asked Bruno (not a nickname), my local Walmart manager. “Great,” he said, “We sold out completely of soft drinks,” presumably thanks to canny Mexican shoppers racing to beat the tax.

The Mexican government has continued on the same course.

With effect October 1, the Mexican government has dropped the Big One, employing the Nuclear Option and turning America’s favorite M&Ms and Mexico’s favorite Mamuts (Mammoths) into collectors’ treasures, if not fossils.

Uncatchily-named NOM-051, legislation to fat-shame the packaged food industry and its customers, passed the Mexican Congress by a hefty —anything but a Weight Watchers — margin.

Accordingly, as of October 1 the packaging in which M&Ms and Mamuts are sold will be illegal. In a country where guns are generally illegal and selling stolen or smuggled gasoline is universally illegal, both iconic sweets feloniously use caricatures and mouth-watering words to lure Mexico’s Hansel and Gretels into a witch’s calorie cage.

How it will work out this time around is speculative. I foresee consumers stripping the shelves of their favorite packaged foods, cartels adding M&Ms and Mamuts to their product lines, and tourists from abroad being strip searched by zealous customs officials, but I hope the movement stops short of turning Mexico into the world’s thinnest nation: North Korea.

(Carlisle Johnson is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily. He writes from his home in Guatemala.)

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Lawyers for ex-cartel boss ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán file appeal

Jury misconduct, isolation from his attorneys cited as grounds

 

by Mexico News Daily

 

Lawyers for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán have filed a second appeal to overturn his conviction and sentence of life plus 30 years handed down last year after he was found guilty of drug trafficking, money laundering, homicide, kidnapping and other charges.

The 245-page appeal was filed with the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday night. “Chapo Guzmán’s prosecution was marred by rampant excess and overreach, both governmental and judicial,” lead attorney Marc Fernich wrote in the motion.

Last summer lawyers for the imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel leader filed an initial appeal the day after his sentence was handed down, arguing that a member of the jury told Vice News that several jurors regularly followed the case on social media during the trial in violation of the judge’s orders.

The appeal was denied.

“This request is the textbook definition of a fishing expedition, rather than clear, strong, substantial and incontrovertible evidence that a specific, nonspeculative impropriety has occurred,’” the judge wrote at the time.

Mariel Colón Miró, a 27-year-old attorney who is part of Guzmán’s legal team, hopes the latest motion will result in a new trial for the former cartel kingpin. “We are very optimistic that something positive will come out of this,” she told reporters, noting that the process could take from two to five years.

Guzmán, 63, is serving out his sentence in Florence, Colorado’s “Supermax” prison, the most secure penal institution in the country and known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

The new appeal repeats the allegations of jury misconduct and also argues that because Guzmán was maintained in total isolation following his extradition to the United States in January 2017 he was prevented from collaborating with his lawyers on his defense before and during his trial.

“These measures of total confinement, extreme torture even when his innocence had to be presumed (before his conviction) violated his fifth and sixth amendments,” Colón said.

The attorney, who joined the defense team right after passing the bar exam, says her last visit with her client was in March before visits to the prison was banned due to the coronavirus. She said solitary confinement has left him anxious and depressed.

“He’s even more alone now after Covid-19,” Colón told CNN last month. “They completely canceled all visits, legal and social. He was allowed three hours a week of outdoor exercise but that has also been suspended in order to limit his contact with the guards, so of course this has been hard, or harder on him and it has affected Mr. Guzmán emotionally and psychologically in my opinion.”

Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Ray Donovan, who spent years investigating the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel, had little sympathy for the drug lord, who he said was convicted on a “mountain” of evidence.

“Thousands of people died or were ordered killed because of the Sinaloa Cartel. So yeah, he doesn’t leave his cell. It is boring. It’s monotonous. It’s a daily routine. It is very sad but here’s the difference. He’s alive.”

Source: El Universal (sp), CNN (en)

 

Despite an uptick, Health Ministry sees 6-week downward trend in virus cases

New data shows that deaths overall were up 59 percent in 24 states between March and August

New coronavirus case numbers declined or remained stable for six consecutive weeks between mid-July and late August, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Sunday.

He told the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing that new case numbers have generally trended downwards since epidemiological week 30, which ran from July 19 to 25.

Between weeks 33 – August 9 to 15 – and 34, “there wasn’t a reduction but at least there wasn’t an increase,” he said.

López-Gatell noted Friday that the reduction in new case numbers had stalled between weeks 33 and 34 and attributed the “disconcerting” leveling off to the further reopening of the economy.

The deputy minister told reporters Sunday that data currently shows that new case numbers declined 15 percent between weeks 34 and 35, which concluded on Aug. 29.

However, a decline of that size is unlikely to be maintained because the Health Ministry is still registering coronavirus data for the latter week.

“This number won’t remain 15 percent, it might be 14, 13 or 12; we can’t predict by how much it will reduced,” López-Gatell said, adding that final data might show that case numbers actually plateaued between weeks 34 and 35.

“But it’s important to have the expectation that [new case numbers] won’t rise,” he said.

López-Gatell also said that the positivity rate – the percentage of Covid-19 tests that come back positive – declined continuously in recent weeks.

The positivity rate reached 57 percent in epidemiological week 29 – July 12 to 18 – but by week 35 it had declined to 40 percent, he said.

Mexico’s positivity rate is still very high compared to most other countries because testing is mainly targeted at people with serious coronavirus-like symptoms.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp).

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Assange is back to the dock, extradition trial resumed

by the El Reportero’s wire services

 

London, Sept. 7 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is back to the dock on Monday at the London Criminal Court as the trial to determine whether he will be extradited to the United States was resumed.

As happened before, during the first part of the trial in February, Assange is in a glass cubicle at a side of the courtroom, protected by two security guards and apart from the defense team.

The Australian journalist, whom the United States wants to try for leaking thousands of secret files from US diplomacy and the military on WikiLeaks, only spoke when Judge Vanessa Baraitser, in charge of ruling on his extradition, asked him to confirm his identity.

At the beginning of the trial, one of Assange’s defense attorneys, Edward Fitzgerald, told the judge that it was the first time he had seen his client over the last six months.

The extradition hearing must last at least three weeks, and the losing party can appeal the sentence.

If Assange is handed over to US justice, he might be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

Brazilians defend life on Independence Day

BRASILIA, Sept. 7 – Popular, social and union movements will hold rallies throughout Brazil as part of the so-called Cry of the Excluded, following the Independence Day celebrations on Monday, under the slogan ‘Life in first place.’

According to a note published by the Brazilian Labor Union (CUT), the request for ‘work, land, shelter and participation’ also accompanies that phrase.

The protests will also raise flags against the project of wage and social austerity by the government of Jair Bolsonaro and the lack of a national command to fight Covid-19 that has so far claimed about 127,000 deaths and more than four million cases in the country.

The event, organized by the Popular Movement Organization and supported by CUT Sao Paulo, will now be held at Plaza Oswaldo Cruz.

Since 1995, the Cry of the Excluded has been mobilizing citizens across Brazil on September 7 as a counterpoint to that of Independence.

Brazil proclaimed its emancipation from Portugal on September 7, 1822. Prince of Portugal, Pedro I of Brazil, liberator and father of the Brazilian nation, announced the Cry of Independence on the banks of the Ipiranga River, in Sao Paulo.

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Experts lament collapse of marriage in America, warn of deadly consequences

by Calvin Freiburger

 

The number of children born out of wedlock grew from just 5 percent in 1960 to 40 percent in 2019. This can’t continue, experts insist

 

American civil society is facing a serious domestic threat: Marriage is declining and family stability with it.

Between 1962 and 2019, the percentage of women ages 15 to 44 who were married fell by nearly 30 percent, according to a recent report from the Social Capital Project of the congressional Joint Economic Committee Republicans.

The number of children born outside of wedlock grew from just 5 percent in 1960 to 40 percent in 2019.

“Stable two-parent families in a community are some of the most powerful predictors of the health of the American Dream for poor kids,” W. Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociology professor and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, told The Daily Signal in an email.

The Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, examined the strength of American families Thursday in the report, “The Demise of the Happy Two-Parent Home.” The committee’s findings reveal a steady decline in stable two-parent households across the nation.

“It’s important to remember that there is no such thing as ‘parenting,’ Ryan Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “There is mothering, and there is fathering, and children do best with both.”

Though it’s not possible to know how a child’s life may have been altered if raised in a happy two-parent home, “what is self-evident — without consulting research — is that more children would fare better if more were raised by their married parents within a healthy relationship,” the committee’s report states.

Children who are raised in a home with two married parents are less likely to live in poverty or experience physical, mental, or sexual abuse, according to the joint committee. They are also more likely to succeed academically and financially.

Children raised by a mother and father are also less likely to exhibit behavioral issues, such as aggression.

From 1970 to 2019, the percentage of children living without one or both parents doubled from about 15 percent to 30 percent.

The number of children living with unmarried, cohabiting parents has also increased by more than 10 percent in the past 50 to 60 years.

In February, Wilcox, the University of Virginia sociology professor, gave a statement to the Joint Economic Committee, “Family Stability and the American Dream,” in which he addressed concerns over the growing trend of cohabiting couples.

“Children born to cohabiting couples are almost twice as likely to see their parents break up, compared to children born to married couples, even after controlling for confounding sociodemographic factors, such as parental education,” Wilcox said in his statement.

There is a direct link between the stability of a home and a child’s rate of success, Wilcox explained. Children raised in a single-parent home are at least twice as likely to live in poverty compared with children from a two-parent household.

Family stability is “the most significant factor among blacks — not only for poverty, but also for affluence,” Wilcox said, giving credit to the research of John Iceland, a sociology professor at Penn State University.

The committee report noted that although marriage rates have declined across racial groups over the past 60 years, the most dramatic decline is within the African American community.

While the share of married white women between the ages of 15 and 44 has fallen by about 25 percentage points since the 1960s, the decline has been far much more dramatic among black women.

About 65 percent of black women between the age of 15 to 44 were married in the 1960s, but by 2019, it had fallen to just 24 percent.

The disparity between white and black babies born to single mothers doubled between 1960 and 2018, according to the joint committee’s report. Twenty-nine percent of white children were born to unwed mothers in 2018, while 70 percent of black children are born to single moms. In 1960, only 1 percent of white babies and about 20 percent of black babies were born to single moms.

Experts cite the broad expansion of welfare programs as part of the reason for the marriage rate decline, especially among African Americans. The fear of losing Medicaid, food stamps, and cash welfare programs discourages marriage, Wilcox said.

The majority of welfare programs “penalize marriage,” the Joint Economic Committee report agrees.

The committee drew four conclusions with respect to ways in which marriage and family stability can be encouraged in civil society:

– “Messaging,” such as through media campaigns, can have positive effects on societal activity. Ads explaining the consequences of teen pregnancies could alter the sexual behavior of young people, for example.

– “Social programs” offering education and skill development on how to “build and maintain healthy marriages” may also strengthen families across socioeconomic backgrounds.

– “Financial incentives” would “reduce marriage penalties and otherwise discourage family instability, providing additional tax benefits for married couples, and strengthening child support enforcement.”

– “Other policies” the committee recommends to increase family stability include “improving career prospects for younger Americans, especially young men,” or even examining the effects of pornography on adult partner relationships.

A young person’s future is not necessarily doomed to failure because of the lack of family structure. However, children raised by a single parent do face greater adversity when compared with children raised in a happy two-parent home, the Social Capital Project report concludes.

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Get Access to ‘Fridays at Five’ SFJazz

Compiled by the El Reportero‘s staff

 

Starting at just $5 a month ($60 annually), you can sign up for or gift a digital membership and tune in with friends each Friday at 5 p.m. (PT) for the latest concert. Proceeds will help the SFJAZZ team prepare to reopen the SFJAZZ Center and bring you the same breadth of live concert and educational programming you’re used to. The music will outlive the virus.

Upcoming Artists 
Sept. 11 – Red Baraat
Sept. 18 – Wayne Shorter Celebration Pt. 5
w/ Wayne Shorter, Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, & Terri Lyne Carrington
SEP 25 – John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: A 50th Anniversary Celebration
w/ Ravi Coltrane, Joe Lovano, Geri Allen, Drew Gress, & Ralph Peterson Jr.
Oct 2 – Bobi Céspedes
Oct 9 – Thelonious Monk Birthday Celebration
w/ Joanne Brackeen, Kris Davis, & Helen Sung
Oct 16 – Mary Stallings & Bill Charlap Trio Oct 3 Taj Mahal Quartet
Oct 30 – Lila Downs

Become a Digital Member

https://www.sfjazz.org/membership/digital-memberships/

 

Think Big, Dream Big, Believe Big, and the results will be BIG!

Eleven days to sign up for the 11th annual Time to Wonder!

Dream Big 2020 will be the same fabulous event, with a twist!

We invite our entire large family of members, friends, patrons, supporters, parents, and children to join us for our first ever virtual gala.

Interact with the Children’s Museum with never before seen footage

Learn about new exhibits from Collette Michaud, Founder & CEO.

Experience first-hand stories from members on the valuable impact the Children’s Museum.

Peruse and bid on auction lots gathered locally; from wine to books, there is something for everyone. Come celebrate the wonder of the Children’s Museum.mHear transformative stories, see the joy, and experience the life-changing moments. Join us for the free LIVE EVENT. Stories, celebrations, and plans for the future

Children’s Museum of Sonoma County, On Sept. 13, 2020, 4:30 p.m., 1835 West Steele Lane Santa Rosa, CA 95403

 

Learn Before You Vote: D1, D7, D11 Candidate Forums

A NOTE FROM THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS IN SF

 

Interested in San Francisco’s local and state ballot measures for the November 2020 election? Unsure what each charter amendment proposal means? Join the League of Women Voters of San Francisco for our virtual “Ballot in Brief” event!

In our LWVSF hosted online forums, candidates for D1, D7, & D11 Board of Supervisors will answer questions submitted in advance about issues important to San Francisco voters:

District 1: Thursday, Sept. 17, 7 p.m.

District 7: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 7 p.m.

District 11: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 7 p.m.

Registration is required; Zoom details will be emailed prior to the forum. Please register and share with your friends, family, colleagues, and online communities by forwarding this email or sharing the event on Facebook!

This event is free and open to the public. Register now!

 

National Small Business Week to Kick-off September 22-24

SBA Hosts Virtual Event to Honor America’s Small Businesses

 

WASHINGTON – Today, Jovita Carranza, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, announced the kick-off for National Small Business Week. The virtual event, rescheduled from May due to the coronavirus pandemic, will be held September 22-24. National Small Business Week honors the nation’s small businesses, many of which are veteran, women and minority-owned, for their achievements and dedication to their communities.

This year’s National Small Business Week activities will include numerous educational panels providing retooling and innovative practices for entrepreneurs as our nation’s small businesses look to pivot and recover toward a stronger economy. The event will recognize the national award winners, including the naming of this year’s National Small Business Person of the Year.

Details and registration information will be posted on sba.gov/NSBW  as events are finalized.

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Cervantino International Festival will hold its first-ever online edition

Shared from Yucatán Times

 

The 48th edition of the Cervantino International Festival (FIC) has been canceled due to the COVID-19. Instead, it will be held in an online format from October 14 through 18 “to protect the integrity of the public, the artists, and the participants.” Meanwhile, Cuba and Coahuila, the guests of honor of this edition, will be part of the cultural festival until the 49th edition, as informed by the Culture Ministry through a statement.

“The pandemic that is being experienced at a global scale has opened new opportunities to explore formats adapted to our reality: It’s not only about moving the cultural expressions to the screen but to adjust the digital resources to the needs of the artistic expressions and their creators,” as asserted Mariana Aymerich Ordoñez, the general director of the Cervantino International Festival.

According to the organization, the 48th edition of the festival will be focused on “a new format to adapt to the new condition stemmed from the presence of COVID-19 and will look to generate new cultural experiences through digital media at a distance to be close to the public.”

In recent days, the Guanajuato’s Health Ministry itself told El Universal, through its public chat, that it was unlikely the festival would take place due to a surge in COVID-19 cases in the state.

“Follow the measures of health authorities and under the premise of favoring people’s lives and health, the Cervantino International Festival’s Organizer Committee (COFIC) agreed, in a unanimous decision, that the FIC’s 48th edition will be held in a digital format from Oct. 14 through 18, to protect the integrity of the public, the artists, and the participants,” says the statement.

During five days, the artistic presentations in digital formats, as well as the conferences, workshops, and masterclasses will be available from everywhere in the world, including all the contents at the official website of the FIC, its app, and the platform Contigo en la Distancia.

In order to support Guanajuato, which has been the home of the festival for 47 years, “there will be a program to support the capital through tourism campaigns and there will be economic resources through programs of Mexico’s Culture Ministry while the relationship with the University of Guanajuato is strengthened, an institution that is a key element of the operation and definition of the festival. There will be supports to different sectors that collaborate in each edition at the organization of the festival, which will be announced by federal and state authorities.”

The program for the 48th edition of the FIC will be soon available on its official website and its social media accounts.

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Trump must back Iraq withdrawal promise with action

Trump’s promise to bring troops home from overseas wars sounds very good. But it’s time to see some real action

 

by Ron Paul

 

Earlier this month, while meeting with the Iraqi Prime Minister, President Trump reaffirmed his intent to remove all US troops from Iraq. “We were there and now we’re getting out. We’ll be leaving shortly,” the president told reporters at the time.

Although President Obama should never have sent US troops back into Iraq in 2016, it is definitely well past time to remove them as quickly as possible.

Over the weekend, the Administration announced it would be drawing down troops currently in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,500. That’s a good start.

One big roadblock to finally leaving Iraq alone is President Trump’s de facto Secretary of War, Mike Pompeo. Although he’s supposed to be the top US diplomat, Pompeo is a bull in a china shop. He seems determined to start a war with Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, and probably a few more countries.

Unfortunately there is a pattern in this Administration where President Trump announces the withdrawal of troops from one of the seemingly endless conflicts we are involved in and an Administration official – often Pompeo – “clarifies” the president’s statement to mean the opposite of what the president has just said.

When the president was questioned over the weekend about a timetable for the US withdrawal from Iraq, he turned to Pompeo for an answer. Pompeo’s response did not inspire much hope. “As soon as we can complete the mission,” said Pompeo. What is the mission? Does anyone know? Aside from “regime change” for Iran, that is.

At his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for re-election last week, Trump declared, “unlike previous administrations, I have kept America OUT of new wars — and our troops are coming home.” That sounds good, but how can he achieve that goal if the people he hires to carry out that policy not only disagree with him but seem to be working against him?

The US invasion of Iraq 17 years ago was correctly described at the time by the late NSA Director Bill Odom as “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” After a relentless barrage of lies about former US ally Saddam Hussein having “weapons of mass destruction,” the US attack and destruction of Iraq did not bring the peace and prosperity promised by the neocon war promoters.

Instead, the US “liberation” of Iraq killed a million Iraqis, most of whom were civilians. It destroyed Iraq’s relatively prosperous economy. It did not result in a more peaceful or stable Middle East. The US had no idea how to remake Iraqi society and in picking and choosing who could participate in post-invasion Iraq the US helped facilitate the rise of al-Qaeda and ISIS. A secular Iraq had been turned into a sectarian incubator for terrorists and extremists. And the biggest winner in the war was Iran, who the US has demonized as an enemy for over four decades.

Yes, General Odom was right. It was a strategic disaster. Turning the US into a global military empire is also a strategic disaster. Trump’s promise to bring troops home from overseas wars sounds very good. But it’s time to see some real action. That might mean some people who disagree with the president need to be fired.

(Ron Paul is a former U.S. congressman from Texas. This article originally appeared at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity).

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