Trump Adminstration's USDA wants to give out Food Packages for half of SNAP benefits without SNAP beneficiaries input. If the USDA cared? They'd give out a menu allowing people to choose what they can eat.

Trump Administration Wants To Decide What Food SNAP Recipients Will Get

The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country's most important "safety net" programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose what food they'll buy with their SNAP benefits.

Me, "The Trump administration wants to stop SNAP recipients from choosing what they can eat. They want the states to give out USDA Food Packages and cut benefits in half. If the Trump administration actually cared, as they say they do, they would keep SNAP Benefits at current levels AND give out these care packages. A lot of people on SNAP do not get enough, as it is, to feed themselves, through the month. They use other forms of income, and handouts to get by. 
 If the USDA wants to give out Food Packages they should ask people what they want to eat. If it is cheaper, to get the food through the states, then give people a menu and let them order. I am not saying for every package, but let them have a general menu of what is available. People have food allergies. People have to be on special diets: Low Salt, Low Cholesterol, Gluten free, Vegetarian, Vegan etc. Are we really going to tell these people they have to eat whatever is provided? Good luck on your health?
I am all for stream lining government programs but people should have a choice as to what they can eat. What are we in the Soviet Union?

*One other thing. 
A lot of SNAP Beneficiaries live in Low Income areas. How will these people receive their USDA Food Package? If they are not home? What is to stop someone from stealing the food box?"


From article, (The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country's most important "safety net" programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose the food they buy with their SNAP benefits.
The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019. It would require approval from Congress.
Under the proposal, which was announced Monday, low-income Americans who receive at least $90 a month — just over 80 percent of all SNAP recipients — would get about half of their benefits in the form of a "USDA Foods package." The package was described in the budget as consisting of "shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables." The boxes would not include fresh fruits or vegetables.

Currently, SNAP beneficiaries get money loaded onto an EBT card they can use to buy what they want as long as it falls under the guidelines. The administration says the move is a "cost-effective approach" with "no loss in food benefits to participants."

The USDA believes that state governments will be able to deliver this food at much less cost than SNAP recipients currently pay for food at retail stores — thus reducing the overall cost of the SNAP program by $129 billion over the next 10 years.
This and other changes in the SNAP program, according to the Trump administration, will reduce the SNAP budget by $213 billion over those years — cutting the program by almost 30 percent.)


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Who would be hurt the Most if the U.S. were to default on its debit holdings?

The Real Owner of the U.S. Debt Will Surprise You

The U.S. debt is $20 trillion. Most headlines focus on how much the United States owes China, one of the largest foreign owners. What many people don't know is that the Social Security Trust Fund, aka your retirement money, owns most of the national debt. How does that work, and what does it mean?

 From article, (The U.S. debt is $20 trillion. Most headlines focus on how much the United States owes China, one of the largest foreign owners. What many people don’t know is that the Social Security Trust Fund, aka your retirement money, owns most of the national debt. How does that work, and what does it mean?

The Debt Is in Two Categories

The U.S. Treasury manages the U.S. debt through its Bureau of the Public Debt.

The debt falls into two broad categories: Intragovernmental Holdings and Debt Held by the Public. 

Intragovernmental Holdings. This is the portion of the federal debt owed to 230 other federal agencies. It totals $5.6 trillion, almost 30 percent of the debt. Why would the government owe money to itself? Some agencies, like the Social Security Trust Fund, take in more revenue from taxes than they need. Rather than stick this cash under a giant mattress, these agencies buy U.S. Treasurys with it.

By owning Treasurys, they transfer their excess cash to the general fund, where it is spent. Of course, one day they will redeem their Treasury notes for cash. The federal government will either need to raise taxes or issue more debt to give the agencies the money they will need. 

Which agencies own the most Treasurys? Social Security, by a long shot. Here's the detailed breakdown as of December 31, 2016.

• Social Security (Social Security Trust Fund and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund) - $2.801 trillion
• Office of Personnel Management Retirement - $888 billion
• Military Retirement Fund - $670 billion
• Medicare (Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund) - $294 billion

• All other retirement funds - $304 billion
• Cash on hand to fund federal government operations  - $580 billion. 

Debt Held by the Public. The public holds the rest of the national debt ($14.7 trillion).  Foreign governments and investors hold nearly half of it. One-fourth is held by other governmental entities. These include the Federal Reserve, as well as state and local governments. Fifteen percent is held by mutual funds, private pension funds and holders of savings bonds and Treasury notes. The remaining 10 percent is owned by businesses, like banks and insurance companies. It's also held by an assortment of trusts, companies, and investors.

Here's the breakdown of holders of the public debt as of December 2016:

• Foreign - $6.004 trillion
• Federal Reserve - $2.465 trillion
• Mutual funds - $1.671 trillion
• State and local government, including their pension funds - $905 billion
• Private pension funds - $553 billion
• Banks - $663 billion
• Insurance companies - $347 billion
• U.S. savings bonds - $166 billion
• Other (individuals, government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts and estates, corporate and non-corporate businesses, and other investors) - $1.662 trillion. 

This debt is not only in Treasury bills, notes and bonds but also Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and special state and local government series securities.

As you can see, if you add up the debt held by Social Security and all the retirement and pension funds, nearly half of the U.S. Treasury debt is held in trust for your retirement. If the United States defaults on its debt, foreign investors would be angry, but current and future retirees would be hurt the most.)

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How much Money do we give China, in Interest payments, on the 2017 Federal Debit?

Randy Forbes says the U.S. pays China $73.9 million per day in debt interest

When Rep. J. Randy Forbes voted against the budget compromise between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders earlier this month, he said the measure did not do enough to cut the nation's debt. Forbes, R-4th, said failure to address the nation's borrowing weakens the United States and strengthens China, the largest foreign holder of U.S.

From article, ("[In 2011:] Each day our nation pays communist China $73.9 million in interest on our debt, money that is allowing them to aggressively modernize their military and increase their global influence," Forbes said in an April 14 press release.

Forbes’ number -- $73.9 million a day in interest payments to China  -- left our heads spinning. We set out to see if it was right.

First, a little background. The total federal debt, as of April 22, was $14.29 trillion. Of that amount, about $9.65 trillion is called public debt, which refers to all federal securities held by institutions and individuals outside the U.S. government. That includes China and other foreign nations.

The remaining debt -- about $4.64 trillion --  is held by the Federal Financing Bank, U.S. government trust funds, and other federal funds and accounts. The largest trust fund is the one that endows Social Security.

Our discussion and calculations for this fact check, as well as Forbes’, are based on the public debt.

China buys U.S. Treasury bonds in public auctions, the same way other nations and investment companies purchase our debt.

The Treasury Department said that as of February 2011, China, along with Chinese companies and investment groups, held $1.15 trillion in U.S. debt. Japan was the second-largest foreign holder, at $890.3 billion, with Great Britain third at $295.5 billion. In total, about $3.16 trillion of the U.S. public debt, or 33 percent, is held overseas. The rest is owned by Americans.

Because American debt has long been considered one of the safest investments in the world, the government can borrow money at very low costs, paying less than 2 percent average annual interest on its debt during the past decade.

In fiscal 2010, which ended Sept. 30, the federal government spent $197 billion on interest payments for public debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office. If we divide that by 365 days, we reach an average daily interest payment of $539,726,027. Because the Treasury doesn’t make payments on weekends or holidays, and because debt payments vary depending on when a Treasury note was issued, the actual daily number was probably never that exact amount.

On Sept. 30, 2010, China held about 12.8 percent of the U.S. public debt. If we assume China got 12.8 percent of our interest payments, it would have received roughly $68.9 million per day during fiscal 2010.

Forbes based his comments on fiscal 2011, in which the CBO estimates the government will spend $225 billion, or $616,438,356 per day, on interest payments. China held 12.1 percent of public debt at the end of February. So if the 2011 estimates hold and China holds the same proportion of debt throughout the year, it would receive about $74.4 million per day.

Forbes made his calculations with the March 16 public debt figures. That explains the $500,000 difference between his calculation and ours.

We don’t know the exact mix of debt held by China. If the debt owned there is primarily short-term bonds, then the interest rates would be lower. If China mostly holds 10-year or 30-year bonds, it would stand to receive higher payments. Our calculations, and those by Forbes, assume China’s debt holdings mirror the larger pool of U.S. debt.

Let’s review:

Rep. Randy Forbes says the United States pays $73.9 million per day in interest to China. He based his statistic on the percentage of U.S. debt held by China and the CBO’s estimate of how much we will spend on interest payments during the 2011 fiscal year.

We looked into the numbers and discovered that based on CBO and Treasury Department data, China likely received about $68.9 million per day during the 2010 fiscal year. Based on the nation’s February holdings and the CBO data, China should receive about $74.4 million per day in payments during the current fiscal year.)

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From Google, (The U.S. debt to China is $1.2 trillion as of November 2017. That's 19 percent of the $6.3 trillion in Treasury bills, notes, and bonds held by foreign countries. The rest of the $20 trillion national debt is owned by either the American people or by the U.S. government itself.)

From, https://www.thebalance.com/interest-on-the-national-debt-4119024

 The interest on the national debt is how much the federal government must pay on outstanding public debt each year. The current interest on the debt is $266 billion. That's from the federal budget for fiscal year 2017 (October 1, 2016, through September 30, 2017).

Me and article, (If we divide 266 billion into 365 days, we reach an average daily interest payment of $728,767,123.

On Sept. 30, 2017, China held about 19 percent of the U.S. public debt. If we assume China got 19 percent of our interest payments, it would have received roughly $138,465,753 million per day during fiscal 2017.

So, for the whole year it would $138,465,753 x 365= $50,539,999,845

So we give China $51 billion dollars a year in Debit Interest.)

Me, "Not a bad deal for China. Even if it stopped buying U.S. Debit, it could sit back and get $51 billion dollars a year, between 10-30 years, without doing anything."

China's population gets around more by High Speed Rail then by Plane. Considered non-existant a decade ago. High Speed Rail Now stands at 16,000 miles built and expanding to 93,000 miles.

Bullet Trains Are Transforming the World's Biggest Migration

Millions of Chinese cram onto trains to make the annual pilgrimage home for the Lunar New Year holiday. It's a crowded and often uncomfortable experience that is rapidly being transformed by the country's push into the world of high-speed rail.

From article, (Millions of Chinese cram onto trains to make the annual pilgrimage home for the Lunar New Year holiday. It’s a crowded and often uncomfortable experience that is rapidly being transformed by the country’s push into the world of high-speed rail.

China already has the globe’s longest bullet-train network, but it’s plowing 3.5 trillion yuan ($556 billion) into expanding its railway system by 18 percent over the next two years, to 150,000 kilometers, or more than 93,000 miles.

Much of that will be spent on extending the high-speed network westward, which includes parts of the country that ancient Chinese poet Li Bai once lamented were so mountainous that getting there was as challenging as reaching the sky.

Almost 400 million people -- that’s more than the U.S. population -- will travel by train over the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival. China’s factories and offices shut down for the week-long holiday, which unleashes the largest migration of humans on the planet. Many of the country’s 1.4 billion citizens return to their hometowns for family gatherings, or, increasingly, are taking the chance to be tourists both at home and abroad.

While the advent of cut-price flights has dimmed the appeal of rail travel in other parts of the world, in China it’s on the rise. Last Spring Festival saw a record 10.96 million trips on one day, and for the first time more people took bullet trains than conventional ones, according to official data.

Almost nonexistent in China a decade ago, high-speed rail has exploded, with more than half of the 25,000-kilometer network built between 2013 and 2017. The plan is to expand it by more than 50 percent by 2025, with eight main bullet-train lines running from east to west by 2030. China intends to have another eight main lines running from north to south as well.

That will open up the network -- which was initially focused on setting up high-speed connections in major economic hubs along China’s wealthier east coast -- to the less developed west.

“These lines provide ample capacity during peak travel periods such as the Lunar New Year and in other times can stimulate growth in tourism and other businesses in the service sector in western China,” said Sun Zhang, a railway expert at Tongji University in Shanghai. “High-speed rail will help to bridge economic imbalances between China’s east and west.”

The latest of the westward bullet-train lines opened in December, and connects Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, to Xi’an, a city in China’s northwest famed for the Terracotta Warriors.

With a top speed of 250 kilometers an hour, the high-speed rail cuts through the region’s mountainous terrain in a quarter of the time taken by a regular train. The cost -- which starts at 263 yuan ($42) for a single-trip ticket -- is about half that of a one-way flight.)

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Building a two level Bridge 6.8 miles long would be considered impressive, but then add on the environmental conditions, and you're in a whole new ballpark of awe.

China builds high-speed rail in 'Bermuda Triangle of Asia'

Pingtan Strait Railroad Bridge spans across rough sea off south-east China The area is a 'no-go zone' for bridge builders due to high winds and huge waves Workers are using a team of monster bridge-building machines for the project The bridge is a part of a £2.6 million railway and set to be complete in 2019 Chinese workers are constructing an impressive railroad bridge in an area that has been considered a 'no-go zone' for bridge builders.

 From article, (Last November, Chinese state media announced that they successfully laid the foundation of Pingtan bridge - after drilling 1,895 pillars into the ocean.  

Pingtan bridge is a part of the £2.6 million Fuping Railway Line, a new member of China's fast-growing railway network that covers 88 kilometres (54 miles).

In the past 20 years, the length of China's railway lines has nearly doubled, growing from 66,000 kilometres (41,000 miles) to 127,000 kilometres (78 miles).

China is also the country with the most railway bridges in the world. 

The country's workers have built over 60,000 railway bridges.

The mammoth Pingtan Strait Railroad Bridge connects Pingtan Island and its nearby islets to the mainland of Fujian Province.

The marvelous engineer feat is a project of superlatives.

According to stats provided by Chinese state media, the two-level structure is a whopping 11 kilometres long (6.8 miles) - 45 times longer than the Tower Bridge in London, or six times longer than the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

To build the entire bridge, workers will need to use 300,000 tonnes of steel and 2,660,000 cement - enough for building eight Burj Khalifa towers in Dubai, the world's tallest skyscraper.

Set to have an eight-lane highway on the top and a high-speed railway at the bottom, the two-level structure would be the first railroad bridge in China built over the sea and is designed to support bullet trains travelling as fast as 200/kmh (124/mph).

The construction conditions, however, are unprecedentedly challenging. The Pingtan strait, a part of Taiwan Strait, is infamous for its high winds. For more than 300 days a year, strong gusts blowing as quickly as 13.8 metres per second (30 miles per hour) create towering waves as tall as 10 storeys.

The underwater drilling machines will have to withstand immense pressure up to 87 tonnes created by the ocean currents.

Fan Lilong, the chief engineer of the bridge, told China Central Television Station that Pingtan bridge was the most challenging project he had undertaken in his 20 years of experience.

Mr Fan said: 'Pingtan Strait Railroad Bridge is the most difficult railroad bridge that is being built in the entire world.')

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Going beyond a Computer Map to guide Drones, And, Yes, Autonomous Cars.

A little uncertainty can help drones dodge obstacles at high speeds, says MIT

For drones trying to navigate a busy environment like a warehouse or a forest at high speed, the ability to know exactly where they are at all times would seem pretty essential. Not so, say researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), who have a devised a new, efficient way to guide drones around obstacles.

From article, (With most drones — and, indeed, most self-driving vehicles — navigation starts with a map. To draw one, depth sensors are used to scan the immediate environment which is compiled into a single 3D model. This then tells the vehicle not only where they are at any given moment, but also how to get to their destination. It’s a method commonly known as “simultaneous localization and mapping,” or SLAM.

SLAM has served the community pretty well to date, but it has its downsides. For one, it’s a very intensive process, that needs lots of high-fidelity data and computing power to process it. This is why Waymo and Uber’s recently settled lawsuit was all about LIDAR — the laser-firing sensors used to collect and process depth data. Data is important.

But, this process creates problems at high speeds and with small crafts like drones. They don’t have the time to collect all the data they need, and giving them the processors to understand it all is expensive.

But one way to bypass these requirements, says CSAIL’s Peter Florence, is to plan less and react more. Florence and his team have developed an alternate method of navigation and obstacle avoidance that is tuned to these demands, which they call NanoMap. It still works by collecting 3D data about the environment, but this information is never fused into a single map and is instead stored in a series of snapshots. This allows for faster reaction times: the drone is processing less information each second (that’s the uncertainty aspect), and so crunches the data with ease.

 “Because we’re not taking hundreds of measurements and fusing them together, it’s really fast,” Florence tells The Verge. “And when we want to plan our way around the world, we just search back through the views we already have.”

There are drawbacks to this method, too, and Florence says NanoMap isn’t great for applications that need high-quality maps of their surroundings (think, drones doing surveying work in agriculture or helping with search-and-rescue missions). Similarly, the makers of self-driving cars will likely be happier with SLAM, given that its hardware demands are less of a burden in vehicles that are going to be big and expensive anyway.

But, says Florence, for small drones, NanoMap could be the perfect way to give them obstacle-sensing abilities without overtaxing their digital brains. Early tests in both real-life environments and simulations are promising.)

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All country's have spy/inteligence programs. The thinking goes, why create it when you can steal it? But Russia has gone too far.

Russian hackers hunt hi-tech secrets, exploiting U.S. weakness

Tue., Feb. 6, 2018, 10:33 p.m. WASHINGTON - Russian cyberspies pursuing the secrets of military drones and other sensitive U.S. defense technology tricked key contract workers into exposing their email to theft, an Associated Press investigation has found.

 From article, (Russian cyberspies pursuing the secrets of military drones and other sensitive U.S. defense technology tricked key contract workers into exposing their email to theft, an Associated Press investigation has found.
What ultimately may have been stolen is uncertain, but the hackers clearly exploited a national vulnerability in cybersecurity: poorly protected email and barely any direct notification to victims.
The hackers known as Fancy Bear, who also intruded in the U.S. election, went after at least 87 people working on militarized drones, missiles, rockets, stealth fighter jets, cloud-computing platforms or other sensitive activities, the AP found.
Employees at both small companies and defense giants like Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Co., Boeing Co., Airbus Group and General Atomics were targeted by the hackers. A handful of people in Fancy Bear’s sights also worked for trade groups, contractors in U.S.-allied countries or on corporate boards.
“The programs that they appear to target and the people who work on those programs are some of the most forward-leaning, advanced technologies,” said Charles Sowell, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who reviewed the list of names for the AP. “And if those programs are compromised in any way, then our competitive advantage and our defense is compromised.”


Hackers predominantly targeted personal Gmail, with a few corporate accounts mixed in.
Personal accounts can convey snippets of classified information, whether through carelessness or expediency. They also can lead to other more valuable targets or carry embarrassing personal details that can be used for blackmail or to recruit spies.
Drone consultant Keven Gambold, a hacking target himself, said the espionage could help Russia catch up with the Americans. “This would allow them to leapfrog years of hard-won experience,” he said.
 the hackers clearly had broader aims. Fifteen of the targets identified by the AP worked on drones – the single largest group of weapons specialists.
Countries like Russia are racing to make better drones as the remote-control aircraft have moved to the forefront of modern warfare. They can fire missiles, hunt down adversaries, or secretly monitor targets for days – all while keeping human pilots safely behind computer controls.

The U.S. Air Force now needs more pilots for drones than for any other single type of aircraft, a training official said last year. Drones will lead growth in the aerospace industry over the next decade, with military uses driving the boom, the Teal Group predicted in November. Production was expected to balloon from $4.2 billion to $10.3 billion.
So far, though, Russia has nothing that compares with the new-generation U.S. Reaper, which has been called “the most feared” U.S. drone. General Atomics’ 5,000-pound mega-drone can fly more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to deliver Hellfire missiles and smart bombs. It has seen action in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
The hackers went after General Atomics, targeting a drone sensor specialist. He did not respond to requests for comment.
They also made a run at the Gmail account of Michael Buet, an electronics engineer who has worked on ultra-durable batteries and high-altitude drones for SunCondor, a small South Carolina company owned by Star Technology and Research. Such machines could be a useful surveillance tool for a country like Russia, with its global military engagements and vast domestic border frontier.
“This bird is quite unique,” said Buet. “It can fly at 62,000 feet (18,600 meters) and doesn’t land for five years.”
The Russians also appeared eager to catch up in space, once an arena for Cold War competition in the race for the moon. They seemed to be carefully eyeing the X-37B, an American unmanned space plane that looks like a miniature shuttle but is shrouded in secrecy.
In a reference to an X-37B flight in May 2015, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin invoked the vehicle as evidence that his country’s space program was faltering. “The United States is pushing ahead,” he warned Russian lawmakers.
Less than two weeks later, Fancy Bear tried to penetrate the Gmail account of a senior engineer on the X-37B project at Boeing.
Fancy Bear has also tried to hack into the emails of several members of the Arlington, Virginia-based Aerospace Industries Association, including its president, former Army Secretary Eric Fanning. It went after Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford, who has served in the military and aerospace industry as a corporate board member. He has been involved with major weapons and space programs like SpaceX, the reusable orbital rocket company founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Along another path, the hackers chased people who work on cloud-based services, the off-site computer networks that enable collaborators to easily access and juggle data.)


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