Free Republic

ALBANY — New York lawmakers put the finishing touches on a piece of legislation mandating extensive new workplace health and safety protections in response to the COVID crisis. The New York Health and Essential Rights Act, or NY HERO Act, sponsored by state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) and Assemblywoman Karines Reyes (D-Bronx), calls for fines against businesses that fail to adopt and enact new standards to protect workers and stem the spread of coronavirus or other airborne diseases.

With House Republicans having voted by secret ballot last Wednesday to remove a ban on earmarks within their caucus, capitulating to Democrats’ wishes to reintroduce the practice, that leaves the Senate GOP as the last remaining bulwark between American taxpayers and corrupt congressional spending and pet projects. By the looks of it, that last line of defense is planning to cave. The Federalist has obtained the proposed GOP conference rules, which would allow for earmarks, which have been banned since 2011 and are now being pushed under the monikers “member-directed” or “congressionally directed” spending. If senators successfully pass their proposed...

CARACAS -- The Maduro-controlled National Assembly will legislate to expropriate houses and farms from Venezuelans that have emigrated as well as to incarcerate opposition lawmakers, the Assembly’s Vice President, Iris Valera, reiterated Wednesday. Venezuela sat two National Assemblies January 5th, one answering to Maduro and backed by the military but rejected by the international community, and another led by Juan Guaido and elected in 2015, but which functions clandestinely, with an expired mandate and that can’t meet in public, even if it controls vast assets outside the country. Valera has been talking up the measures even as Maduro’s Assembly President,...

Six city lawmakers are suing to block the Big Apple’s embattled Board of Elections from rolling out a new ranked-choice voting system next year, claiming officials have failed to prepare for the potentially confusing switchover. The lawsuit is the latest salvo lobbed by mainstays of the Brooklyn Democratic Party against the new elections system, which will do away with the runoff elections that Gotham’s political machines have dominated for decades.

At the beginning of the year, it looked like Jeremy Miller and his 9-year-old daughter were finally going to have a home of their own. They’d been homeless and relying on family, shelters and motels for housing. But he’d found stable work in the Kern County oil fields and had enough money for an $875-a-month, two-bedroom rental in Bakersfield. They moved into the apartment in March, and Miller lost his job within days. The pandemic caused a worldwide drop in demand for oil, triggering mass layoffs in the oil patch. Miller tried to find other work through a temp agency,...

In 561 BC, Peisistratos dissolved the Athenian “Ecclesia” (“Assembly”) and seized power in Athens and Attica. The Ecclesia, made up of all adult male landowners in the Athenian city-state, would not rule the city again for more than 50 years. In 1258, Simon de Montfort, in a bid to maintain his shaky control over England, convened the precursor to the modern Parliament (from the French for “a place or occasion to talk”). In the subsequent years, kings and parliaments would joust for supremacy, with the parliament ultimately winning - primarily by executing Charles I in 1649. Across those four centuries,...

A bill to legalize adult prostitution in Vermont was recently introduced by female lawmakers in the state’s legislature. The bill’s text read: This bill proposes to repeal the prostitution laws while retaining felony human trafficking laws that prohibit recruiting, enticing, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a minor for the purpose of commercial sex; patronizing a minor for commercial sex; recruiting, enticing, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining any person through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of having the person engage in commercial sex; compelling any person through force, fraud, or coercion to engage in commercial sex; and patronizing any...

ALBANY, NY -- It may be one of the few taxes in which New York state’s bite doesn’t rank among the nation’s highest. Now, some New York City lawmakers want to more than double the state’s beer excise tax to provide more money for the State University of New York system. The excise tax, paid by beer distributors, is currently 14 cents per gallon. Bills introduced ahead of the upcoming State Legislature session would raise that to 30 cents per gallon (that matches the state’s current excise tax on wine). The Assembly sponsor of the bill, Brooklyn Democrat Harvey Epstein,...

Here’s one thing that unites local pols across the political divide — a gentrification tax. A bipartisan group of city lawmakers is pushing Albany to approve tweaks to the state tax laws that would allow them to hit new homebuyers with tax bills based on the actual market prices of their properties. The coalition of 13 Republican and Democratic city council members says that taxes would not go up for existing owners. New York’s famously opaque property tax system offers big breaks to new homebuyers by taxing them at assessed values that are often millions of dollars less than the...

While Illinoisans will be paying higher taxes, Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he’s going to give state lawmakers at least a $1,600 pay increase because they’re hard workers. Pritzker said he’ll sign the budget bills being sent his way, despite the ire from taxpayers that lawmakers gave themselves a raise while doubling the state’s gas tax. Pritzker was asked multiple times in Chicago Tuesday if he’d line-item veto more than $280,000 in lawmaker pay increases when he gets the budget that was passed in overtime session. “Look, this was a highly negotiated budget,” Pritzker said. “We had the Republicans and Democrats...

Lawmakers blocked the Department of Defense's move to transfer $1 billion for the construction of a physical barrier along the US-Mexico border, the latest showdown in the battle over the border wall that President Trump has vowed to build. On Monday, the Pentagon authorized the transfer of funds to Army engineers for projects along the border, which include building 57 miles of 18-foot-high fencing, constructing and improving roads, and installing lighting in support of Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol. The move was carried out under the president's declaration of a national emergency, the department said in...

Next: Retribution and castigation: State agency-conducted sexual harassment investigations punish the falsely accused, improperly prosecuted employees, and payoff the accusers, even after charges are found to be false or retributive While the California Legislature is trying to ban reparative therapy for gays who don’t want to live a gay lifestyle, the sham sexual harassment investigations of predatory lawmakers continue en force with lawmakers still enjoying attorney-client privilege, which I have written about since November 2017.

Two Louisiana lawmakers got into a fistfight at a Baton Rouge bar, evidently over a disputed bill in the Legislature, Greg Hilburn with the USA Today Network reports. State Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette, and Sen. Norby Chabert, R-Houma, were involved in a dispute on the House floor Tuesday (May 15) and squared off later that night at the River Room on Laurel Street. Bishop said Chabert "punched me several times" but he didn't throw any punches back. Chabert said he "loved Stuart like a brother" and regretted the incident. Police were called to the bar, but Bishop and Chabert had...

As thousands of Colorado school teachers get ready to descend on their state capitol this week to demand billions of dollars in education funding, lawmakers are proposing jailing them if they even consider going on strike. The proposed law pitched by two Republican legislators threatens jail time for any educator caught "directly or indirectly inducing, instigating, encouraging, authorizing, ratifying, or participating in a strike against any public school employer."The jail term proposed by the prime sponsors of the bill, state Sen. Bob Gardner and Rep. Paul Lundeen, is six months. "Clearly it's an attempt to limit the voices of educators,"...

Two members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics sent a letter Friday to the Office of Compliance requesting all of their records on claims of impropriety, a move that follows a series of allegations against current members of Congress. The letter, signed by committee Chairman Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Vice Chairman Christopher A. Coons, D-Del., requested "all records" that are "related to any claims of sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, or any other employment practice prohibited by the CAA involving alleged conduct by any current Member, officer, or employee of the Senate." According the letter, “sexual harassment or employment...

Nevada lawmakers and other officials condemned the "senseless" and "horrifying" mass shooting on the Las Vegas strip Sunday night, which left at least 50 dead and more than 400 hospitalized.

The handwritten list was found in a van belonging to James Hodgkinson by the FBI, and the lawmakers named on the list are known to be conservative members associated with the Freedom Caucus: Reps. Scot DesJarlais (R-TN) (pronounced day-zharr-LAY), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Morgan Griffith (R-VA).

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) - Maine’s full Legislature will consider making it a misdemeanor crime for lobbyists to lie or conceal a “material fact” while testifying to lawmakers. The Portland Press Herald reports (http://bit.ly/2nT72rM ) the State and Local Government Committee voted in favor of a revised version of the bill on Monday. The bill no longer includes members of the public, state workers and lawmakers.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Lone Star State lawmakers are cracking down after recent recent attacks carried out against police officers. Abbott on Monday announced the Police Protection Act, which
 aims to strengthen penalties for crimes committed against police officers.

The prospect of running for re-election with Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket was worrying some party lawmakers as they huddled for an annual retreat, where a few forecast trouble if Trump becomes the party's presidential nominee. "Heaven help us," Representative Peter Roskam said when asked about it by a reporter. But the Illinois Republican quickly added, "I'm not going to comment on the presidential candidates at this point." That reticence was shared by many lawmakers asked about running on Trump's coattails during an event in Baltimore where Senate and House of Representatives Republicans gathered to talk...