Given robust job growth in the state and the prosperity generated by several industries, especially the supercharged tech sector, the question arises as to why California has so many poor people, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased roughly twice as much as the US average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5 percent, compared with 6.27 percent).

California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and “other public welfare,” according to the US Census Bureau. Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.

Self-interest in the social-services community may be at work here. If California’s poverty rate should ever be substantially reduced by getting the typical welfare client back into the workforce, many bureaucrats could lose their jobs. As economist William A Niskanen explained back in 1971, public agencies seek to maximize their budgets, through which they acquire increased power, status, comfort, and job security. In order to keep growing its budget, and hence its power, a welfare bureaucracy has an incentive to expand its “customer” base — to ensure that the welfare rolls remain full and, ideally, growing.

With 883,000 full-time-equivalent state and local employees in 2014, according to Governing, California has an enormous bureaucracy — a unionized, public-sector workforce that exercises tremendous power through voting and lobbying. Many work in social services.

Trump had stepped up his criticism of NATO ahead of the organization’s annual meeting scheduled for 11-12 July in Brussels. “Germany has to spend more money. Spain, France. It’s not fair what they’ve done to the United States,” he told reporters on Friday aboard Air Force One. Earlier, he lashed out at Berlin on Twitter, saying the American army is defending Europe “at great financial loss.”

Trump’s harsh stance had alerted European officials, with some speculating whether it might be just a negotiation tactic ahead of the key talks in Brussels, the Post writes. “Germany pays 1% (slowly) of GDP towards NATO, while we pay 4% of a MUCH larger GDP. Does anybody believe that makes sense? We protect Europe (which is good) at great financial loss, and then get unfairly clobbered on Trade. Change is coming!”

The US is already at loggerheads with Europe over tariffs that Washington placed on aluminum and steel. According to a recent report by Axios, Trump compared the alliance to his favorite ‘punching bag,’ free-trade deals, at a highly contentious G7 summit two months ago. “NATO is as bad as NAFTA. It’s much too costly for the US,” the president reportedly said during a private meeting.

You actually believe The New York Times is too nice to him, so you understand why a Manhattan woman urged a reporter there to stop covering Trump to protest his presidency. And now this — Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring, and Trump gets another Supreme Court pick. The court might tilt right for the rest of your life. He’s winning. NOOOOOOOOO!!!

Their loathing for Trump is bone-deep and all consuming. This is war and they take no prisoners. For most marchers, border policies offer a chance to vent. They didn’t make a peep when Obama did the same thing. If children are their main concern, they could help the 23,000 New York City kids living in shelters. Or they could have attended the funeral of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, the innocent Bronx teen hacked to death by a Dominican gang.

Instead, they give in to Trump Derangement Syndrome, which causes them to immediately and absolutely adopt the opposite position of the president’s — facts and common sense be damned.

It depends on who you ask and - in an increasingly fractured US society - their partisan proclivities. The recent round of actions and reactions, accusations and recriminations, began last week when a group protesting against the administration's policy of separating undocumented migrant families at the border forced Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to cut short a dinner in a Washington Mexican restaurant.

There have been protests since the start of the Trump presidency, of course, but the audio recordings and first-person accounts of crying children and despondent parents have sent a shock of crackling anger through already frayed nerves of those on the left.

In World War II, military conflict expanded into "total war" - where entire nations and peoples were mobilised and consumed in the flames of battle. There was no escape from the carnage. What US society now may be experiencing is total political war, where - thanks to media and technology - partisan discord is inescapable, whether in the corridors of power in Washington and theatres in Florida, the border with Mexico or restaurants in rural Virginia.

Chicago is a terrible place to do business given the layers of permits, licenses, regulations, taxes, fees and corruption. Small businesses and the middle class left long ago. Faced with that decline, the Chicago solution is to impose higher taxes and more regulations.

A Chicago politician can always blame the Trump economy for Chicago’s failures and its violence… except that the current economy is setting new record highs and taking millions of people off of food stamps. There is even record low unemployment for young minority men… except in Chicago.

This is Chicago. You’re not hindered by the facts. The reporters won’t correct you. If some reporter presses you for answers, you can blame racism… even though minority members make up more than half of the Chicago City Council. Racism is a good enough answer for most reporters.

Unable to recycle waste in line with the targets imposed on them, rich countries have chosen to dump it — plastic, paper and cardboard — on poor ones, especially China. Lower environmental standards in much of Asia has made it cheaper to manage waste there and low-quality recycled plastic can sometimes be profitably produced from these waste streams, albeit in highly polluted conditions.

In recent years, the stream of waste delivered to China expanded vastly. Annual imports reached 85 million tons, including 8 million of plastic. The quantity was so huge that inspection at ports became impossible, and the unscrupulous found that even mixed or hazardous waste could profitably be sent, disguised as “recycling” to avoid landfill tax or high management costs in rich countries. Unable to handle this tsunami of refuse, the Chinese were forced to either burn or dump vast quantities. An unknown amount found its way to the oceans.

Paunio’s report says the opposite of what environmentalists want to hear. Where plastic pollution is concerned, he says, they are making the problem worse, not better. The problem is their quasi-religious devotion to recycling –  which feels good, but achieves little of any practical use.

The bloc focused on immigration and Brexit at the most recent EU summit, but Europe’s real threat stands somewhere else, according to Lorenzo Codogno, macroeconomist and former general director at the Treasury Department of the Italian Ministry of Economy. Mr Codogno said the eurozone is facing three factors similar to those that triggered a sharp acceleration of the government bond crisis in Europe during the summer of 2011, causing the European debt crisis.

In the run-up to the crackdown of several financial institutions within the EU during that year, the bloc saw private investors actively involved with Greece’s economy to lighten the country’s debt burden, a process that became known as Private Sector Involvement (PSI). During the same year, Italy’s government led by Silvio Berlusconi wanted to introduce a hefty reform of the pension system. 

In July 2011 expectations about global financial growth were not met after the US issued non-farm payroll figures, blasted as “awful” by Mr Codogno. Seven years later, Mr Codogno says similar issues have arisen within the eurozone during the last months. Mr Codogno said: “All ingredients seem to be present this time around as well.” Mr Codogno fears the trade war between the US and the EU may lead to a catastrophic outcome. 

The European debt crisis had its root in the global crisis that started in the US in 2008. In 2011 the crisis peaked, when five of the bloc's countries - Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal - failed to generate enough economic growth, risking an economic default. And in October 2011, the then-head of the Bank of England Sir Mervyn King referred to it as "the most serious financial crisis at least since the 1930s, if not ever". 

Similar statements have been produced by Poland and the Czech Republic, which also denied reaching any agreements on the matter. “There are not any new agreements regarding the reception of asylum seekers from EU countries, we confirm (that), like the Czech Republic and Hungary,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Artur Lompart said.

Earlier on Saturday, media reported that, during the EU summit, 14 European countries, including some outspoken opponents of German Chancellor’s ‘open door’ policy, had allegedly “consented on a political level” to make a deal on taking migrants back. The document on the deal has been sent by Merkel to her coalition partners, according to Reuters.

The looming EU deal on migrants is vastly perceived as “Merkel-saving,” since her key ally and new Interior Minister Horst Seehofer threatened to start rejecting undocumented migrants at Germany’s border. In the worst-case scenario, the disagreement between them might spell the end for 70-years-long union between Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Seehofer’s Christian Social Union (CSU), which would effectively lead to the downfall of Germany’s government and Chancellor.

Iran has also opened a uranium feedstock plant in the absence of the nuclear agreement. The nuclear plant that remained closed for nine years has now reopened, Iran’s atomic energy agency (AEOI) said on Wednesday.  Tehran prepares to increase uranium enrichment capacity if a nuclear deal with world powers falls apart, reported Reuters. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the AEOI to start the necessary preparations to upgrade the country’s enrichment capacity in case the European efforts at a world deal fail.

The UF6 factory is part of the Isfahan uranium conversion facility, according to AEOI’s statement on its website.  The AEOI said on Wednesday that in response to Khamenei’s order and Trump’s renunciation of the deal, a plant for the production of UF6, the feedstock for centrifuge machines that enrich uranium, had been relaunched and a barrel of yellow cake has been delivered there.

“The Luftwaffe is at a low point,” Reuters quoted Gerhartz as saying.  Gerhartz said this assessment was based on a series of inspections of the country’s air force sites and discussions with military personnel.  “Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren’t even on site since they’re off for maintenance by the industry,” he noted, adding that an inspection of Eurofighter multirole combat jets had taken a whole 14 months, twice as long as originally planned, which he said was unacceptable. 

In May, the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported, citing military sources, that most of Germany’s 128 Typhoon multirole fighters were unavailable for training and combat use.