Credit: Common Dreams
A legal assault against paid sick leave laws is raging throughout the U.S. and the Koch brothers are secretly behind it all.
The National Federation of Independent Business, a Koch Brothers-backed lobbying group, leads the way in campaigning against paid sick leave throughout the U.S. While the group tried to stall the decision of lawmakers in Maryland’s to override the governor’s veto of a bill that would allow workers to earn sick leave, the NFIB’s efforts came up short as the bill, which gives 700,000 workers the benefit, went into affect on Sunday.
Now the group is lobbying to get lawmakers in Austin, Texas to vote no on Thursday on an ordinance that would require paid sick leave be provided by private employers. The NFIB is “wrongly claiming” that the ordinance “has no provision for reasonable notice to employers regarding the employee’s absence” and “does not set a limit on accrued time,” according to The Guardian.
But the ordinance clearly states that verification must be provided by the employee if he or she […]
Ratings of U.S. leadership fell in nearly every part of the world in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, dragging median approval to a record-low 30%. (emphasis added)
Curious about the true depth of a “Trump effect” on U.S. leadership ratings, we created a model to estimate the change in the probability that a similar respondent who approved of U.S. leadership in Barack Obama’s last year also approved in Trump’s first year. The model revealed evidence of a Trump effect in all major demographics, but the effect was more acute among some groups than others.
Shifts in U.S. Approval Largest Among Educated, Higher-Income, Urban Dwellers
Approval of U.S. leadership dropped across all demographic groups during Trump’s first year, but groups that typically give U.S. leadership higher approval ratings — those with more education, those earning higher incomes and those who live in urban areas — registered the largest declines.
Holding other demographic variables at mean values, the probability that a respondent with a tertiary education (12 years or more of formal education) approved of U.S. leadership fell from 60.7% in 2016 […]
attribution: Getty Images
Incidents of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents asking for the citizenship status of passengers on Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses are terrifying—and not even remotely new. Advocates have condemned reports of immigration agents demanding papers from passengers as far back as the Bush and Obamaadministrations. What advocates note is new, however, is the frequency at which these questionings are now happening, most recently in Florida. But how, you might ask, does Border Patrol have the authority to do this? Because of an “obscure law” passed by Congress decades ago:
Legislation from 1946 gives agents the authority to search any vehicle near an “external boundary” of the United States, and subsequent regulations defined that area as within 100 air miles of a land or sea boundary. While that may sound like just a sliver of the United States, 9 of the country’s 10 most populated cities lie within the so-called 100-mile zone, and about two-thirds of Americans live inside of it, according to the ACLU. Ninety-seven […]
Kentucky Democratic state Rep. Kelly Flood casts a “no” vote on a bill that would pay residential solar power generators less for their excess energy on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, in Frankfort, Ky. The bill passed the committee and will next be co soldered by the full House of Representatives.
Credit: AP /Adam Beam
FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY — People with solar panels on their homes would get less credit for the excess energy they generate under a proposal moving through the Kentuckylegislature.
The measure marks the latest effort to scale back a popular incentive program for renewable energy in this coal-producing state.
People with solar panels on their homes generate their own electricity. Sometimes they don’t generate enough, so they buy power from the utility company like everyone else. Sometimes they generate more than they need and sell the excess power to the utility company for the same price as they bought it, a program called “net metering.” The power company then gives the person a […]
Sean Hannity Credit; FOX
Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday came completely unglued over what he claimed was a “secret sperm” hidden within former President Barack Obama’s official portrait.
Writing on Twitter, Hannity said that Obama’s portrait, which was unveiled on Monday, was loaded with “inappropriate sexual innuendo” that showed “a stark contrast to predecessors.”
Obama’s portrait – a stark contrast to predecessors with inappropriate sexual innuendo https://t.co/YupamDxqKt
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) February 13, 2018
As evidence for this claim, Hannity posted a link to an article on his own website titled, “PORTRAIT PERVERSION: Obama Portrait Features ‘SECRET SPERM.’”
The article then zooms in on a portion of the Obama portrait that it believes depicts a sperm swimming on the former president’s head, just around the area of his left temple.
The Hannity article said that the purported […]
