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The firm that put out the statement re Covington has ties to Mitch McConnell and KKKarl Rove

Republicans are still convinced that ActBlue won us the 2018 election.

President Donald Trump’s political team and top Republican officials have reached a landmark agreement to reshape the party’s fundraising apparatus and close the financial gap that devastated them in the midterms.

With the deal, Republicans hope to create a rival to ActBlue, the Democratic online fundraising behemoth that plowed over $700 million in small-dollar donations into Democratic coffers in the 2018 campaign.

Republicans have had no comparable centralized platform to cultivate small dollars. Since the election, officials including White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have privately insisted the party needed to come up with an answer.

Following weeks of closed-door discussions, Republicans have agreed to create a new platform dubbed Patriot Pass, which will be used to cultivate and process online donations. The GOP — whose jungle-like ecosystem of vendors has long fought bitterly over contracts and dollars — has struggled in the past to create such a unified system.

The accord, revealed for the first time to POLITICO by officials at the center of the effort, has received the explicit blessing of party leaders. Under the arrangement, Data Trust, the Republican National Committee’s designated clearinghouse of voter information, will form a joint venture with Revv, a donation processor used by the Trump campaign. The two entities will form the nucleus of Patriot Pass.


https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/21/republican-fundraising-patriot-pass-1116642

NY City Council discuss workers 'Right to Disconnect' bill

To respond or not to respond - that was the issue being debated at a City Council Committee on Consumer Affairs hearing Thursday on the so-called “Right To Disconnect” bill.

The proposed legislation, introduced by City Councilmember Rafael Espinal, would prohibit employers from requiring their employees to respond to work-related communications after normal work-hours.

Penalizing workers under the law would lead to hefty fines.

Labor organizations welcomed the bill they say will benefit common targets at the workplace - women and young people.

“We are expected to compete with male superiors and we have to be able to outperform them and out performing means responding to emails 24/7,” said one worker who testified before the committee.

“I think this law is really important especially with Amazon coming to town,” Yulia Laricheva, a self-described freelancer told the committee. “That is a whole huge corporation that is known for timing workers.”

While the notion of having the “right to disconnect” appears simple, business advocacy groups say legislation would open a can of worms.

“For professional employees, they typically don’t have usual work hours – they are available as needed,” Katheryn Wylde, president of Partnership for NYC, said. “This stuff just does not lend itself to legislation or one regimented approach.”

Citing studies that show overuse of technology could take a toll on mental health, proponents of the bill say the time to act is now.




https://pix11.com/2019/01/17/lawmakers-discuss-right-to-disconnect-bill-in-ny/

My current personal rankings of announced and probable Democratic presidential candidates

1. Joe Biden
2. Sherrod Brown
3. Beto O'Rourke
4. Kamala Harris
5. Elizabeth Warren
6. Cory Booker
7. Jay Inlsee
8. Kirsten Gillibrand
9. Amy Klobuchar
10. Julian Castro
11. John Hickenlooper
12. Steve Bullock
13. Eric Garcetti
14. Pete Buttigieg
15. Bernie Sanders
16. Tulsi Gabbard
17. Richard Ojeda

House speaker proposes new tax to fund paid leave for Maine workers

Democratic House Speaker Sara Gideon is proposing a bill to provide Maine workers with up to 12 weeks of paid medical leave for childbirth that would be funded by a 0.5 percent tax on worker earnings.

If passed, Maine would join a handful of states that offer paid family and medical leave to workers, allowing new parents and those suffering from a major illness or caring for a sick relative to collect part of their wages for three months or longer.

The bill would expand on a federal law that requires most employers to give employees unpaid family or medical leave of up to 12 weeks.

Changing the benefit from unpaid to paid will make it more realistic for families to use the benefit, Gideon said. One in four mothers goes back to work within two weeks after childbirth to avoid losing pay, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics.

“We think this is one of the most important policy proposals, not just to help Maine families, but to help us as a state achieve one of our most important goals, attracting a strong, vibrant workforce,” Gideon said in an interview Tuesday. She said paid family leave could give Maine a competitive advantage over states that don’t have the same benefit and help with Maine’s workforce shortage by encouraging more young families to move to Maine.



https://www.pressherald.com/2019/01/15/house-speaker-proposing-paid-family-and-medical-leave-for-maine-workers/

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Echo and the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon (Video)

MAGA hat boy's mother blames 'black Muslims' after son harasses Native American man

The mother of a boy filmed harassing a Native American man along with his friends at a rally in Washington DC has blamed “black Muslims” for the confrontation, without providing any evidence for the claim.

The teenager was among a group of students wearing Make America Great Again (Maga) hats who were criticised for taunting the musician Nathan Phillips, surrounding him and jeering and chanting “build the wall, build the wall”.

But his mother claimed “black Muslims” had been harassing the group of Donald Trump supporters from the private, all-male Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.

In an email to the news website heavy.com the mother of a Covington Catholic student, believed to be the boy prominently featured in footage of the incident, wrote: “Did you hear the names of the people were calling these boys? It was shameful. Did you witness the black Muslims yelling profanities and video taping to get something to further your narrative of hatred??

“Did you know that this ‘man’ came up to this one boy and drummed in his face?”


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/maga-hat-donald-trump-native-american-covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-black-muslims-a8737186.html

Major tornado hits Alabama while FEMA shut down.