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Small Business Funding

County Council discusses ways to pay for roads [Video]

Members of the Greenville County Council are discussing ways to move forward with paying for road improvements after a proposed 1% sales tax referendum failed to pass on Election Day. A day after the ballot question was tabulated, council members began sharing their own ideas on how to pay for the infrastructure.Council member Ennis Fant said that at the next council meeting, he will introduce a measure to repeal the $25 road maintenance fee on all cars registered in the county.”This forces everybody that’s for the penny and against the penny to sit down at the table and come up with a viable, meaningful, substantive solution to fixing the roads in Greenville County,” Fant said. “It is not fair, nor is it practical to think that only people who live in Greenville County with a car registered in Greenville County should bear the entire burden.”Fant said the fee generated around $12 million for the county last year, which helped pave around 17 miles of roadway. If the referendum had passed, county officials said it would have added 1% to the county’s sales tax for all purchases except gas, unprepared groceries, rent, mortgages and pharmaceuticals. In total, they said it could have created around $1 billion in revenue.”For me, the penny was a really impactful way that we could have made a difference quickly, but clearly, we’re going to have to go back to the drawing board,” County Council member Liz Seman said. However, other members of the council said there are alternative means to raise money for road improvements.Member Benton Blount and member-elect Curt McGahhey are among several members on the council who are advocating for an audit of the county’s budget to see where more money could be allocated toward roads. They also raised the possibility of potentially cutting funding to county programs, such as affordable housing and conservation.”There’s a potential that we may have to, at least for a temporary amount of time, look at making cuts there,” Blount said. “If that’s the only places that we can find the additional funds, we put close to $15 million extra into several different initiatives like that in the last budget.”Both Blount and McGahhey said they are in favor of adding an impact fee to new development within the county to help pay for road projects.”The developers come in, build a bunch of neighborhoods and move out, and they make a ton of money, so if we can take some of that and say, ‘Hey, now the people moving here have to help us build our infrastructure out,'” McGahhey said. “I know the council wants to take a hard look at impact fees, and I’m sure we’re going to do that in the upcoming future.”However, some council members said impact fees are a nonstarter for them and pushed back against cutting any funding for programs.”I think if we really want to control growth and improve mobility for our residents, all those things have to work in concert together,” Seman said. “I don’t really see where we’re cutting one of those items actually really helps our cause in the long run.””Nobody likes to make cuts in general, but when it comes down to it, if the citizens are very concerned about roads, they expect us to deal with that with our budget and working within our means,” Blount said.Council members said they could be in favor of another future referendum for road infrastructure if their constituents would like to see one on their ballots.

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Small Business Funding

Gov. Maura Healey reacts to Donald Trump’s victory in election [Video]

AGO. WHAT DID SHE HAVE TO SAY? SHARMAN WE SPOKE WITH THE GOVERNOR. SHES REALLY STRIKING A TONE OF UNITY AT THIS HOUR, SHE SAID. PEOPLE REALLY NEED TO COME TOGETHER IN THE WAKE OF THIS GOVERNOR HEALEY SAYS SHES FOCUSED ON HER JOB, ADVOCATING FOR THE PEOPLE AND BUSINESSES IN MASSACHUSETTS. NOW. WHEN SHE WAS ATTORNEY GENERAL, SHE ACTUALLY SUED THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ALMOST 100 TIMES. I ASKED HER HOW SHED WORK WITH A NEW TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, AND SHE SAID SHE WOULD WORK WITH ANYONE TO MAKE LIFE BETTER IN MASSACHUSETTS. I THINK IVE SPOKEN QUITE A BIT ABOUT DONALD TRUMP AND MY FEELINGS ABOUT HIM. WE HAVE TO SEE WHETHER HE MAKES GOOD ON WHAT HE PROMISED AND RAN ON. IN TERMS OF PROJECT 2025 OR OTHER THINGS NEEDED HEALTH CARE. NOW, THE GOVERNOR SAYING THE LESSON FROM THIS ELECTION, THE ECONOMY, ADDING SHES TAKEN STEPS TO TRY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER, INCLUDING CUTTING TAXES AND MAKING CHILD CARE MORE AFFORDABLE. SHE ALSO GAVE PROPS TO THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION. SHE SAYS MASSACHUSETTS HAS BENEFITED FROM BILLIONS. IN FACT, $8 BILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDING THANKS TO THE BIDEN-HARR

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Small Business Funding

Increasing representation of women in society leads to more balance and effective policies [Video]

Deputy Director of the Department of Gender at the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Sabia Kpekata, has emphasized the importance of increasing women’s representation in society, noting that it leads to more balanced and effective…

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Small Business Funding

Bozeman voters reject fire station bond and first responder mill levy [Video]

BOZEMAN, Mont. Residents of Bozeman have voted against two significant funding measures aimed at enhancing local emergency services. The first measure, the General Obligation Bond Election for Fire Station 4, was intended to finance the design, construction, furnishing, and equipping of a new fire station. The bond would have allowed the City of Bozeman

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Small Business Funding

Donald Trump’s criminal and civil cases: What happens now [Video]

Donald Trump has been reelected to the White House while awaiting sentencing in his hush-money case in New York where he was convicted on 34 counts and still working to stave off prosecution in other state and federal cases. It’s an extraordinarily unique position for him to be in: Never before has a criminal defendant been elected to the nations highest office, just as an ex-president had never been criminally charged until last year.Trump has said multiple times he plans to fire special counsel Jack Smith and end the federal cases against him for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and mishandling classified documents.As of Wednesday, Smith is in active talks with Justice Department leadership about how to end the federal cases against Trump, a DOJ official familiar with the discussions told CNN and The Associated Press.”It clearly paid off to aggressively push to delay these cases as long as possible,” said Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School.In the meantime, a judge in New York is set to sentence the former president later this month after holding off on handing down the punishment ahead of Election Day to avoid any appearance of affecting the outcome of the presidential race though Trumps lawyers are expected to ask the judge to put off the sentencing now that he’s the president-elect.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Heres what to know about the four criminal cases:New York sentencingTrump is scheduled to appear in a New York courtroom on Nov. 26 to receive a sentence for his conviction earlier this year on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment made during the 2016 campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged a prior affair with the president-elect. Trump denies the affair.Whether that sentencing happens at all remains an open question.Judge Juan Merchan has given himself a Nov. 12 deadline to decide whether to wipe away the conviction because of the Supreme Courts decision this summer granting a president some presidential immunity. If Merchan does that, the charges would be dismissed, and Trump would not be sentenced.But if the judge decides to keep the conviction intact, the former presidents lawyers are expected to ask Merchan to delay Trumps sentencing so they can appeal. And if thats not granted, his attorneys are planning to appeal the immunity decision to state appellate courts and potentially all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to ask the courts to delay Trumps sentencing until all appeals are exhausted, which could take months.Should Merchan move ahead with sentencing, Trump could be ordered to serve as much as four years of prison time, but the judge is not required to sentence the president-elect to prison, and he could impose a lesser sentence, such as probation, home confinement, community service or a fine.Any sentence, of course, will be complicated by the fact that Trump is set to take office on Jan. 20, 2025. Trumps lawyers are likely to shape their appeals to raise constitutional issues challenging whether a state judge can sentence a president-elect, which could tie the case up in courts for years.Since it is a state case, Trump does not have the power to pardon himself next year after he is sworn into office.Federal cases in DC and FloridaTrumps election victory is poised to have the greatest impact on the two federal criminal cases brought against him by Smith in Washington, D.C., and Florida.Since the cases were brought in 2023, Trumps main legal strategy has been to delay the trials until past the election so that, if elected, he could fire Smith, leading to the end of the two cases. In late October, the former president said he would take such a step without hesitation.”Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy,” Trump said when asked by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt whether he would “pardon yourself” or “fire Jack Smith” if reelected.”I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said.Dismissing Smith would allow the Department of Justice and Trumps attorney general to move to drop the charges against him and end the court cases.But until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, Smith has time to weigh his options on issues the department has never had to confront before.One early hurdle is whether the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel considers a president-elect to be covered by the same legal protection against prosecution as a sitting president. That guidance would determine the next course of action, people briefed on the matter told CNN.More than half a dozen people who are close to the special counsels office or other top Justice Department officials told CNN they believe Smith doesnt want to close shop before being ordered to do so or being pushed out by Trump.Under federal law, Smith must provide a confidential report on his office’s work to the attorney general before he leaves the post.In the D.C. case, Smith charged Trump over his efforts to overturn his election loss in 2020. The case was stalled for months as Trump pressed federal courts to grant him presidential immunity, and in July, the Supreme Court issued a historic ruling that said he had some immunity from criminal prosecution.The federal judge overseeing the trial has been deciding how much of Trumps conduct at the center of the case is shielded by immunity after prosecutors last month laid out their arguments for why the ruling should have no impact on the case.The charges brought by Smith against the president-elect in Florida accuse Trump of illegally taking classified documents from the White House and resisting the governments attempts to retrieve the materials. That case was thrown out in July by Judge Aileen Cannon, but prosecutors have appealed her ruling, which said that Attorney General Merrick Garlands appointment of Smith violated the Constitution.Georgia RICO caseThe immediate fate of Trump’s criminal case in Georgia largely hinges on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, is disqualified from prosecuting the matter after her prior romantic relationship with a fellow prosecutor. But even if she is allowed to continue prosecuting Trump, the case would almost certainly imperiled now that he has been elected.The criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results are effectively on hold while the appeals court decides whether to disqualify Willis, a decision that is not expected until 2025.If Willis is removed, sources told CNN they think its unlikely another prosecutor will want to take up the case, and it will effectively go away.Sources familiar with the case said it is unlikely that a state-level judge would allow proceedings to continue when Trump is president and, in that scenario, Trump’s attorneys would certainly move to have the case dismissed.There is no clear answer as to whether a state-level prosecutor, like Willis, can prosecute a sitting president. Trump’s victory now forces Willis to confront that constitutional question in addition to the existing legal issues that have already cast uncertainly over the Georgia cases future.Civil suitsThe former president is also defending himself in a litany of civil lawsuits, including ones concerning his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, two E. Jean Carroll defamation cases, and a civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general where Trump was ordered to pay nearly $454 million in damages.In September, state and federal appeals courts in New York heard arguments for two of Trumps civil appeals.Trump lost two defamation cases to Carroll in 2023 and 2024 in federal court after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing the onetime columnist and subsequently defaming her. Two juries awarded Carroll $5 million and $83 million.A federal appeals court heard Trumps appeal to dismiss the first Carroll verdict in September. The court has yet to issue a decision.Later in the month, a state appeals court heard arguments in Trumps efforts to dismiss the $454 million civil fraud judgment against him, in which a judge found he, his adult sons and his company fraudulently inflated the value of Trumps assets to obtain better loan and insurance rates.The five-judge appeals court appeared open to at least lowering the fine levied against Trump, though it also has yet to issue a decision. That ruling can be appealed to New Yorks highest appellate court.Trump is also still facing civil lawsuits brought by Democratic lawmakers and others over his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.Its possible that all these cases continue to play out even as Trump serves his second term in the White House. In a 1997 Supreme Court ruling stemming from a civil lawsuit in which then-President Bill Clinton was involved, the justices unanimously decided that sitting presidents could not invoke presidential immunity to avoid civil litigation while in office.

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Small Business Funding

Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration [Video]

Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in a second administration.The former president and now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America’s international role.Trump’s agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers.A look at what Trump has proposed:Immigration”Build the wall!” from his 2016 campaign has become creating “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for using the National Guard and empowering domestic police forces in the effort.Still, Trump has been scant on details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure that it targeted only people in the U.S. illegally. He’s pitched “ideological screening” for would-be entrants, ending birth-right citizenship (which almost certainly would require a constitutional change), and said hed reinstitute first-term policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting migrants on public health grounds and severely limiting or banning entrants from certain majority-Muslim nations. Altogether, the approach would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall.Video below: World leaders congratulate TrumpAbortionTrump played down abortion as a second-term priority, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending a womans federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trumps insistence, the GOP platform, for the first time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level.Still, Trump has not said explicitly that he would veto national abortion restrictions if they reached his desk. And in an example of how the conservative movement might proceed with or without Trump, anti-abortion activists note that the GOP platform still asserts that a fetus should have due process protections under the 14th Amendments equal protection clause. That constitutional argument is a roadmap for conservatives to seek a national abortion ban through federal courts.TaxesTrump’s tax policies broadly tilt toward corporations and wealthier Americans. Thats mostly due to his promise to extend his 2017 tax overhaul, with a few notable changes that include lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15% from the current 21%. That also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Bidens income tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping Inflation Reduction Act levies that finance energy measures intended to combat climate change.Those policies notwithstanding, Trump has put more emphasis on new proposals aimed at working- and middle-class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security wages and overtime wages from income taxes. It’s noteworthy, however, that his proposal on tips, depending on how Congress might write it, could give a back-door tax break to top wage earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as tip income.Video below: Trump gives acceptance speechTariffs and tradeTrump’s posture on international trade is to distrust world markets as harmful to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods and, in some speeches, has mentioned even higher percentages. He promises to reinstitute an August 2020 executive order requiring that the Food and Drug Administration buy “essential” medications only from U.S. companies. He pledges to block purchases of “any vital infrastructure” in the U.S. by Chinese buyers.DEI, LGBTQ and civil rightsTrump has called for rolling back societal emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government institutions, using federal funding as leverage.On transgender rights, Trump promises generally to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is widespread. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.Regulation, federal bureaucracy and presidential powerThe president-elect seeks to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. He pledges precipitous drops in U.S. households utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for exploration even though U.S. energy production is already at record highs. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations though most construction rules come from state and local government. He also says he would end “frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists.”The approach would in many ways strengthen executive branch influence. That power would come more directly from the White House.He would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. That could weaken the governments power to enforce statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees engaging in the work and, potentially, impose a chilling effect on those who remain.Trump also claims that presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers budget actions “set a ceiling” on spending but not a floor meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.As a candidate, he also suggested that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Though he has not offered details, any such move would represent a momentous change to how the U.S. economic and monetary systems work.EducationThe federal Department of Education would be targeted for elimination in a second Trump administration. That does not mean that Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still proposes, among other maneuvers, using federal funding as leverage to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling federal funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”In higher education, Trump proposes taking over accreditation processes for colleges, a move he describes as his “secret weapon” against the Marxist Maniacs and lunatics he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts. That almost certainly would end up in protracted legal fights.As in other policy areas, Trump isnt actually proposing limiting federal power in higher education but strengthening it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated endowment money into an online “American Academy” offering college credentials to all Americans without tuition charges. “It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowednone of thats going to be allowed,” Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.Social Security, Medicare and MedicaidTrump insists he would protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older Americans and among the biggest pieces of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal not to tax tips and overtime wages might affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only income taxes, the entitlement programs would not be affected. However, exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the funding stream for Social Security and Medicare outlays. Trump has talked little about Medicaid, but his first administration, in general, defaulted to approving state requests for waivers of various federal rules, and it broadly endorsed state-level work requirements for recipients.Affordable Care Act and Health CareSince 2015, Trump has called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance marketplaces. But he still has not proposed a replacement: In a September debate, he insisted he had the “concepts of a plan.” In the latter stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and pesticides used in U.S. agriculture. Trump repeatedly told rally crowds that he would put Kennedy in charge of “making America healthy again.”Climate and energyTrump, who claims falsely that climate change is a “hoax,” blasts Biden-era spending on cleaner energy designed to reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels. He proposes an energy policy and transportation infrastructure spending anchored to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and combustion-engine vehicles. “Drill, baby, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he does not oppose electric vehicles but promises to end all Biden incentives to encourage EV market development. Trump also pledges to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.Workers rightsTrump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket as favoring Americas workers. But Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. In discussing auto workers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Bidens push toward electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, it was often to lump “the union bosses and CEOs” together as complicit in “this disastrous electric car scheme.” In an Oct. 23, 2023, statement, Trump said of United Auto Workers, “Im telling you, you shouldnt pay those dues.”National defense and Americas role in the worldTrump’s rhetoric and policy approach in world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, non-interventionist militarily and protectionist economically than the U.S. has been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He pledges expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield an old idea from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russias war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, without explaining how.Trump summarizes his approach through another Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and top U.S. military brass. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans “see on television.”