Former lab technician Annette Helmich is thrilled to have a new, in-demand skill and a full-time job to go with it – welding machinery.
While Ms. Helmich started learning her new craft by spending four weeks
at a local community college, she says she polished her welding skills on the factory floor of her new employer, AGCO Corp.
A decade after the 2007-09 financial crisis and the weak recovery that followed, the U.S. poverty rate has reverted to prerecession levels, but extreme poverty is worsening.
Economists attribute this situation to widening
income disparity, wage stagnation, a scarcity of affordable housing and the growing prevalence of part-time or temporary employment.
Increasing demand for foster care and adoption services is overwhelming state and private child-placement agencies across the country, a trend stemming largely from parental opioid abuse that has shattered families and orphaned thousands of children.
Overworked caseworkers are boarding children in hotels, state offices and even cars while they scramble to find homes for them, even as many states cut spending on programs that benefit children and families.
The latest high-profile prosecution of a police officer for a fatal shooting ended in an acquittal on Wednesday, as jurors cleared a Milwaukee officer of wrongdoing in the death of a 23-year-old man, Sylville K. Smith. The shooting in August touched off two days of protests and violence on this city’s north side. The verdict — the second acquittal in a week of a police officer facing criminal charges for a fatal shooting — was announced in a tense, emotional courtroom after less than 10 hours of deliberations.
Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday promised that people with pre-existing conditions “will have access to the coverage and care they need, no exceptions” under the GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act
Pence declared President Trump “believes in states-based solutions” for Medicare and Medicaid and would urge states to make their own decisions.
Outside a polling place in the suburbs of Detroit, a shouting match between two women escalated into a parking-lot scuffle, ending with one of them
shoved to the pavement. At a community center in southern Florida, a middle-aged woman handing out Republican pamphlets reached frantically for her pepper spray as a man supporting Hillary Clinton charged at her.
Wisconsin voters attending rallies over the weekend proved divided by party affiliation in how worried they were that the presidential election could be “rigged.” But politicians on both sides of the aisle expressed confidence the election will be tallied fair and square. Republican candidate Donald Trump has talked since August of the presidential election’s potential for being rigged and has said he won’t necessarily accept Tuesday’s results if he does not win.
House Speaker Paul Ryan told GOP voters Saturday “it’s time to come home and go out and vote,” while U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson warned there is a “razor-thin margin” in his race with Dem Russ Feingold. Meanwhile, GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence called Donald Trump “a winner, a fighter” during
a rally here. “And until very recently it seemed like he was out there fighting all on his own,” Pence said. “But now this movement is coming together, this party is coming together, Wisconsin is coming together. Let’s elect Donald Trump the next president of the United States.
Like many of his neighbors, Dominic A. Lebourgeois was in disbelief on Sunday at the level of violence that descended on his Sherman Park neighborhood the previous evening. “I’ve lived here for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” said Mr. Lebourgeois, 53, a self-employed handyman. Hours after a police officer shot and killed a fleeing armed man, angry crowds confronted the police and then went on a rampage, destroying property, setting fires and throwing rocks and other missiles at officers.
Violent protests broke out in Milwaukee after a young black man was shot and killed by police. A group of angry residents — fed up with what they see as increasing police brutality against blacks in the city and across the country — set fire to a gas station, auto parts store, beauty supply store and a bank. In the aftermath, most residents in the city’s predominantly black, middle class Sherman Park neighborhood decried the violence and destruction, preferring instead to gather for prayer, but at the same time, confirmed a widespread feeling that poverty and joblessness is replacing the area’s former economic stability, and that racism plays a factor.