Quick half-hour overview,but please note Q&A can be viewed on this blog in the preceding post
Published on Feb 8, 2018
Views: 1,521
Recorded live on February 7, 2018 Last month, the Opportunity Zones Program was enacted as part of tax reform to provide private investors certain tax benefits on long-term investments made in rural and low-income urban communities throughout the nation.
In this 30-minute webinar, Enterprise staff:
* Provide an overview of the Opportunity Zones Program, details on implementation, as well as what states and advocates should be considering in the coming months as Opportunity Zones are designated.
* Demonstrate Enterprise's new mapping tools created to identify which census tracts are eligible for Opportunity Zone designation. Forthcoming state maps will incorporate data and insights from Opportunity360 (https://www.enterprisecommunity.org/o...) to help inform strategic decision-making.
Enterprise will continue to cover the implementation of the Opportunity Zones Program over the coming year. Stay tuned! More information can be found at the Economic Innovation Group's website (http://eig.org/).
On Friday, February 23rd, LISC hosted a webinar on Opportunity Zones. Speakers included Matt Josephs, senior VP of LISC Policy, John Lettieri, senior director for Policy and Strategy at the Economic Innovation Group, and Kevin Boes, president and CEO of New Markets Support Company.
FOCs provide employment and career counseling, one-on-one financial coaching and education and low-cost financial products that help build credit, savings and assets. They also connect clients with income supports such as food stamps, utilities assistance and affordable health insurance. The cornerstone of the FOC model is providing these services in an integrated way—rather than as stand-alone services—and with a long-term commitment to helping clients reach their goals.
Financial Opportunity Centers (FOCs) are career and personal finance service centers that help low- to moderate-income people build smart money habits and focus on the financial bottom line. LISC has a network of more than 80 FOCs across the country, embedded in local community organizations that are trusted, known for their history of providing quality services, and convenient to where people live and seek out services.
We’ve learned that integrated or “bundled” services lead to concrete gains in net income and job retention.
What LISC offers:
Grants that help community organizations establish, staff and run FOCs in neighborhoods that need them, covering everything from start-up to operating costs
Technical assistance and training to help FOC staff reach out to potential clients and offer effective coaching and job counseling
Data collection tools that help FOCs tailor support for individual clients and inform the work at large
Professional networking support in the form of national and regional meetings, collaborative groups and an online library of resources on FOCs and similar integrated service delivery models
Financial Opportunity Centers provide an integrated or “bundled” set of three core services: employment services, financial education and coaching, and access to income supports. The. Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) supports a Financial Opportunity Center network that began in Chicago in 2004 and has ...
A Financial Opportunity Center, in its inherent design, requires an agency or organization to provide interconnected programming to clients, which often requires a complex process and organizational structure. These materials and resources can help create and maintain operations in a way that will help clients succeed in ..
Economic opportunity program set to expand outreach in 11 cities
State Farm provides $4 million grant to help LISC grow businesses, jobs, safety
NEW YORK (March 21, 2018)—A national effort to boost economic opportunities for underemployed workers and underserved communities got a major boost this week, as State Farm announced a $4 million grant to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to fuel work in 11 cities.
Blogger Note:Since 2000, State Farm has provided more than $132 million in grants andinvestments to support LISC’s work benefitting low-and-moderate income people and places.
The new grant will help LISC strengthen its national Financial Opportunity Center (FOC) program, which is proven to help people increase their incomes, build credit, and save for the future. FOCs help people work toward economic stability through education, long-term financial coaching, and employment support, such as literacy and numeracy training needed to secure work and advance in key local industries. . . .
“We know that healthy, sustainable communities are made up of people who have living wage jobs and feel confident about their economic futures,” said Annette Martinez, vice president – human resources for State Farm. “The FOC program offers multiple interventions to help people develop good fiscal habits and skills needed to be financially stable over the long term.”
In select LISC markets, State Farm funding will also help seed business growth and improve safety—both vital to quality of life in areas struggling to attract economic activity—and advance LISC’s model that builds partnerships between law enforcement, community leaders and residents to increase community safety and stability.
An Assessment of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s Financial Opportunity Centers
September 19, 2016
. . . The results suggest that FOCs tend to have positive short-term impacts on employment and wages, negative impacts on credit score outcomes, and positive impacts on net worth. Cost analysis suggests that FOC services deliver short-term wage-differential benefits to jobless clients that narrowly exceed the costs of delivering the services . . .
Clue: White Helmets are crisis actors in the staged videos gone viral
Published on Apr 17, 2018
Views: 953 to upload time
A war of propaganda is nothing new if one looks at what the Nazis did prior to and during the Second World War to justify their wartime atrocities. It is a difficult comparison with the pre-emptive missile strikes against Syria to punish the Assad government on charges of using chemical weapons. Fakes, fallacies and fiction do mislead. That is why good journalism has to help clarify the White Helmets and its nasty role in compromising the principle of good journalism.
PUBLIC NOTICE | Call for Comments on the proposed 2018 Impaired Water's List
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) invites stakeholders to review and provide comments on the proposed 2018 303(d) List of Impaired Waters. The List of Impaired Waters provides a list of Arizona lakes and streams that do not meet water quality standards and includes waters that were listed in the 2016 List of Impaired Waters minus waters that can be delisted. The 2016 List of Impaired Waters can be found in the ADEQ 2016 Clean Water Act Assessement. The 2018 List of Impaired Waters does not include new impairments. A full assessment of Arizona’s lakes and streams including identifying new impairments will be completed as part of the 2020 assessment after the completion of an assessment calculator. The new assessment calculator will speed up the comparison of water quality data to standards and will provide detailed information about what additional information is needed to make impairment and attainment decisions for Arizona’s lakes and streams.
ADEQ Jason Jones Water Quality Division 1110 West Washington Street Phoenix, AZ 85007
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) invites stakeholders to review and provide comments on the proposed 2018 303(d) List of Impaired Waters. The List of Impaired Waters provides a list of Arizona lakes and streams that do not meet water quality standards and includes waters that were listed in the 2016 List of Impaired Waters minus waters that can be delisted. The 2016 List of Impaired Waters can be found in the ADEQ 2016 Clean Water Act Assessement. The 2018 List of Impaired Waters does not include new impairments. A full assessment of Arizona’s lakes and streams including identifying new impairments will be completed as part of the 2020 assessment after the completion of an assessment calculator. The new assessment calculator will speed up the comparison of water quality data to standards and will provide detailed information about what additional information is needed to make impairment and attainment decisions for Arizona’s lakes and streams.
ADEQ Jason Jones Water Quality Division 1110 West Washington Street Phoenix, AZ 85007
About ADEQ
Under the Environmental Quality Act of 1986, the Arizona State Legislature established the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in 1987 as the state agency for protecting and enhancing public health and the environment of Arizona. For more information, visit http://www.azdeq.gov/.
ADEQ will take reasonable measures to provide access to department services to individuals with limited ability to speak, write, or understand English and/or to those with disabilities. Requests for language interpretation services or for disability accommodations must be made at least 48 hours in advance by contacting: 7-1-1 for TDD; 602-771-2215 for Disability Accessibility; or Ian Bingham, Title VI Nondiscrimination Coordinator at 602-771-4322 or idb@azdeq.gov.
ADEQ tomará medidas razonables para preveer acceso a los servicios del departamento a personas con capacidad limitada para hablar, escribir o entender inglés y / o para personas con discapacidades. Las solicitudes de servicios de interpretación de idiomas o para adaptaciones por discapacidad se deben realizar con al menos 48 horas de anticipación contactando: 7-1-1 para TDD; 602-771-2215 para accesibilidad de discapacidad; o Ian Bingham, Coordinador de No Discriminación del Título VI al 602-771-4322 o idb@azdeq.gov.
We are not done with dry, windy weather yet! There are two Pacific storm systems for us to contend with before the workweek is done. First one arrives today... [View Full Forecast]
“A Higher Loyalty” is the first no-holes-barred BIG MEMOIR by a key player in the alarming melodrama that is the Trump administration. The fired-up former FBI Director Jim Coomey's newly-released book underscores just how outside presidential norms Trump’s behavior has been — how ignorant he is about his basic duties as president, and how willfully he has flouted the checks and balances that safeguard our democracy, including the essential independence of the judiciary and law enforcement.
A HIGHER LOYALTY Truth, Lies, and Leadership By James Comey 290 pages. Flatiron Books. $29.99.
"In his absorbing new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey calls the Trump presidency a “forest fire” that is doing serious damage to the country’s norms and traditions.
“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Comey writes. “His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty. . .
The central themes that Comey returns to throughout this impassioned book are the toxic consequences of lying; and the corrosive effects of choosing loyalty to an individual over truth and the rule of law. Dishonesty, he writes, was central “to the entire enterprise of organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic,” and so, too, were bullying, peer pressure and groupthink — repellent traits shared by Trump and company, he suggests, and now infecting our culture. . . .
“A Higher Loyalty” also provides sharp sketches of key players in three presidential administrations: Vice President Dick Cheney’s legal adviser David S. Addington, George W. Bush's national security adviser and later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama’s attorney general Loretta Lynch . . . "
Michiko Kakutani, former chief book critic for The New York Times, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump.” Follow her on Twitter: @michikokakutani
A HIGHER LOYALTY 
