News Articles
The debt-reduction fight in Washington may shrink federal funding for community clinics at a time when the government is asking them to gear up for an influx of patients, local health officials said Monday.
The Obama administration is counting on community health centers, which currently care for one in six of the nation's uninsured, to play a key role as federal health care reform extends coverage to some 32 million Americans by 2014.
Area Congressman Mike Thompson is furious and he has a perfect right to be. He's been calling for action over the past week by both Congress and the Senate to a short-term extension of FAA funding which expired on July 22.
But the Senate recessed without taking any action. As a result, the government has lost more than $250 million in revenue due to expired ticket taxes and put tens of thousands of jobs at risk during a critical period of our economic recovery.
U.S. airlines have been resisting the request from the IRS, with the Air Transport Association (ATA) noting the IRS was responsible for
refunds when a similar lapse in tax collections occurred in 1996 and 1997.
A legislative solution to an administrative roadblock that threatens one of the most successful energy efficiency programs in Sonoma County history would remove current restraints on the PACE program imposed by housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
PACE, which stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy, is a federal act that gave birth to the Sonoma County Energy independence Program (SCEIP).
Operation Full Court Press is taking place in Lake, Mendocino, Colusa, Glenn, Tehama and Trinity counties, with emphasis on the Mendocino National Forest, according to US Attorney Melinda Haag, who spoke at the Friday morning press conference at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah.
U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag says, "Operation full court press is critically important. An operation that will help bring an end to the illegal marijuana growth sites on public land in California." And they have done just that. Over the past two weeks, Operation Full Court Press, has seized over 460-thousand marijuana plants, raided 56 grow sites, and made a total of 102 arrests..
"It's going to be very important that we take back our public land, identify and prosecute those folks who are responsible," Congressman Mike Thompson says.
Rep. Mike Thompson on Wednesday helped lead a bipartisan effort that prevented the gutting of the federal Endangered Species Act.
Thompson, D-St. Helena, co-authored a successful amendment that stripped what environmentalists had come to call the “extinction rider” from the 2012 interior appropriations bill. The rider would have prevented the Fish and Wildlife Service from funding new listings of animals and plants as endangered species.
On Wednesday, Congressman Mike Thompson (CA-1) successfully offered an amendment to H.R. 2584, the Interior-Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2012, that will preserve essential federal protections for America's endangered and threatened species.
Specifically, Rep. Thompson's amendment removed language - known as the Extinction Rider - that would have prevented the Fish and Wildlife Service from spending any funding to list new plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
As the nation and Congress face an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt limit or face national default, Congressman Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, said he is not willing to balance the budget “on the backs of seniors, the poor or the middle class.”
The White House threatened Tuesday to veto emergency legislation pending in the House to avert a threatened national default.
The debt crisis must be resolved without gutting Medicare or Social Security, North Coast Reps. Mike Thompson and Lynn Woolsey said Tuesday.
Thompson, D-St. Helena, said he is “not afraid to cut spending where it's deserved” and noted that he has voted to cut spending by more than $100 billion this year. But he said in a written statement that he is “not willing to vote to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, the poor or the middle class.”