The steady stream of impeachment related news has made it difficult to hear about anything else is going on in D.C. these days. Something you may have missed is the passing of the Secure Act, a new bill which aims to get more Americans saving for retirement and increasing the amount they are able to save.

The Secure Act stands for Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act. The Secure Act was introduced as part of the government’s year-end spending bill. The bill has already been approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate. It will now go to the president for the final signing into law.

Experts have been warning Congress for years that Americans are ill equipped for retirement. About a third of U.S. adults have never had a retirement account. The Secure Act is bringing a slate of changes to current retirement contributions that are aimed at changing this trend.

The Secure Act aims to improve retirement in many ways including making it easier for small businesses to provide benefits for their employees. Small businesses will now be able to participate in multiemployer 401(k) plans. Businesses will also enjoy tax credits for participating in these plans and offering automatic enrolment to new employees. The hope is that less people will opt-out of a retirement plans or forget to opt-in altogether.

In order to improve retirement prospects for part-time workers, businesses will now be required to let long-term, part-time workers become eligible for retirement benefits depending on how many hours they’ve worked in a given year.

There are also changes to the way retirees can manage their plans. Previously, retirees needed to begin withdrawing from their retirement accounts immediately, but under the new bill they will be able to wait until age 72 which should ease some of the tax burden.

Smaller but notable changes include:

• The maximum contribution age for retirement accounts has been repealed. This means workers will be allowed to continue contributing to their accounts past the age of 70.5.
• Over 500 types of college savings plans will now allow funds to go toward student-loan debt.
• Workers with a 401(k) plan will now be able to withdraw up to $5,000 from their account, penalty- free to cover the cost of having a child or adopting a child.

The Secure Act is the biggest legislative change to the American retirement system in over a decade.

Show of hands, how many of you believe people eating tide pods was this year? Seems at least five years ago, right? That’s because 2019 was a humdinger when it comes to the pace of the news cycle. And due to that, you might have missed this little tidbit about The Wall, Steve Bannon and hemp, of all things.

After President Trump legalized hemp almost a year ago, this plant started sprouting up in farms across the country. According to Quartz, hemp experienced a planting surge of 368 percent in 2019 as compared to 2018 planting data. Of course, you can chalk that up to the explosion of the CBD industry. But there are other industrial uses for this hearty plant. Enter hempcrete and The Wall.

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is reportedly enamored with hempcrete, a concrete compound made with 40 percent hemp byproducts. Bannon is on record telling Vice News that “I’m obsessed with the hempcrete. I think this plant has got tremendous entrepreneurial aspects to it, and it’s innovative.”

There’s more evidence to suggest Bannon considered hempcrete for The Wall. After Bannon raised millions of dollars to build his own private border wall in May, he told Politico reporters that, “Do you understand the irony of using hempcrete to keep out marijuana?” That got us wondering: could there be a hempcrete border wall? Some analysts say that it could be possible, in theory.

“One million acres of hemp builds Trump’s wall and $700 million buys the hemp, a pittance compared to overall construction estimates ranging from $15 billion to $70 billion,” wrote Chris Bennett in reporting for Ag Web Farm Journal.

$700 million would be a huge boon for cannabusiness — that is if supply could keep up with demand. US Farmers have only grown a little under 130,000 acres of hemp this year. For a hempcrete wall to be even slightly feasible, farmers would have to massively step up supply OR import the crop from overseas. That doesn’t gel well with Trump and Bannon’s trade agenda, does it? Plus, the price point, while much better than non-hempcrete construction estimates, is still much more than the 22 million managed to raise during Bannon’s GoFundMe effort this year.

Looks like without funding assistance from the feds and an incentive for farmers to grow more hemp, hempcrete border wall is just another pipe dream.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently suing two U.S. Homeland Security agencies due to stingray controversy. Not to be confused with the sea creatures, the stingrays in question are a type of surveillance equipment – equipment that might very well be recording your information.

Stingrays are used to track cell-phones, collecting information on location, calls and even text messages. As you might suspect, this can come in very handy with investigations, but stingrays don’t just collect data from criminals. In fact, a stingray can pick up information from every cell-phone within their radius.

Seems sketchy, right? Just wait, it gets worse; we actually don’t know all that much about how stingrays operate. We do know the basics – stingrays mimic cell phone towers in order to trick phones into connecting to their network – but that’s about it. This is on purpose: stingrays are sold directly to government agencies, which range from police departments to ICE, and come with strict non-disclosure agreements.

We still don’t know the full extent of what these devices can do, or what agencies are doing with them.

To shine a light on this problem, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act to collect information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Unfortunately, two years have passed since this initial action and both agencies have continued to refuse access to documentation.

Which is why the ACLU is now suing both organizations.

The ACLU is hoping to find information on when/where the stingrays are being used across the United States, as well as how employees are primed to utilize the machines. It’s possible that everything is above board, but without at least some transparency, there’s a real risk that this equipment could be used to violate the rights of US citizens.

As of November 2018, the ACLU had identified the use of stingray technology in 27 states by 75 different U.S. agencies; it’s a number that is likely to continue to grow. In order to fully hold these agencies accountable for their use of stingrays, we first need to have a clear understanding of the technology and practices surrounding them.