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And mimic some of the tea party's tactics: Stay local and organize around the goal of thwarting President Donald Trump.

That's what Organizing for Action -- the group that evolved from President Barack Obama's political campaign structure -- is teaching 25,000 liberal activists in a series of six webinars and calls ahead of next week's congressional recess. Another webinar is set for Thursday night, where the organization plans to train thousands more.

Progressives see the recess as their best opportunity to capitalize on the surging energy in the Democratic base and convince Republicans to break from Trump and back away from their pledge to repeal Obama's health care law.

Some Republicans -- including Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz and White House press secretary Sean Spicer -- have cast the massive turnout at recent town halls one reliant on out-of-state, professional activists. But those activist organizations are telling their members to take just the opposite approach.

"If you're not a member of Congress's constituent, they don't actually care what you think," Matt Traldi, one of the five co-founders of Indivisible, said during a recent Organizing for Action webinar.

Traldi and Angel Padilla, a former congressional staffer and another Indivisible co-founder, urged those listening -- many of them newly engaged in politics and preparing to attend their first town halls -- to arrive with direct asks for their lawmakers.

"How to ask a solid question -- something like, can you guarantee that no one through your vote will lose coverage?" Padilla said.

The goal, Traldi said, is to show that members of Congress are "out of touch with the rest of our congressional district -- you can tell by the way they're acting."

"If there's no recording, if there's no pictures, if there's nothing in the press, then it's almost like it didn't happen from the perspective of everybody who wasn't there at the time," Traldi said.

As Congress heads into its week-long break, progressive groups are scrambling to push their members toward town halls and events in their districts.

MoveOn.org has launched a website -- ResistanceRecess.com -- that's serving as a hub for events, from congressional town halls (based on former Hillary Clinton field organizer Jimmy Dahman's TownHallProject.com) to events organized by local chapters of the Indivisible movement.

"The most important thing is for people to come equipped with a knowledge of how this stuff affects their lives," said Mike Wikler, MoveOn.org's Washington director.

"Telling your own story -- yourself, your family member, what it would mean for your mother, your grandmother, if Medicaid support for nursing homes were cut off -- giving people the confidence to go and be authentic about speaking the truth," he said.

And there's one more important component MoveOn is telling its members via emails and texts, he said: capture it all on Facebook Live.

Wikler said the idea is to send Republicans from an uncertain posture on how they'll repeal and replace Obamacare "into full-blown retreat."

The liberal blog DailyKos.com is directing members to the site, Wikler said. And MoveOn is working with Protect Our Care, a coalition of pro-Obamacare groups that is directing doctors, nurses, patients and others affected by the Affordable Care Act to events to speak to their personal experiences.

Other left-leaning groups are similarly trying to halt Republican actions.

Planned Parenthood is planning a major push across the country during the congressional recess -- aiming to mobilize the 139,000 people who have signed up as volunteers since the election.

After the election, it launched a "Planned Parenthood Defenders" digital tool to train its most committed volunteers, with more than 50,000 people signed up so far, 2,300 of whom have committed to hosting a meet-up for local activists and set a time and date. Already, 330 groups have met.

"A lot of folks that are really pissed off that this administration and Republican extremists are targeting Planned Parenthood," said Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood's deputy national organizing director.

Supporting the organization, she said, "also means standing with all the communities they serve -- that means standing with immigrants, standing with refugees, standing with LGBT people."

Planned Parenthood is also scheduling several of its own events targeting Republicans who did not schedule town halls during the break.

In Nevada, Planned Parenthood has organized an "empty chair" town hall where it invited Republican Sen. Dean Heller, a Democratic target in the 2018 midterms.

On February 25, Planned Parenthood is planning a rally in Milwaukee -- where patients from House Speaker Paul Ryan's district will be featured.

"What our task is to do over recess," Robinson said, "is to really give these folks a megaphone -- making clear that there is a price to pay for what they do to women's health care."

CNN's MJ Lee contributed to this report.

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How liberals are preparing for next week's town halls - CNN

Journalist Jeremy Scahill, a frequent panelist on Real Time With Bill Maher, was booked to appear this Friday but canceled after he found out Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos would also be a guest. Yiannopoulos is known for his provocative stories with such headlines as Gay rights have made us dumber, its time to get back in the closet. He was also permanently banned from Twitter last year a feat that takes some doing. Among his transgressions was targeting SNL comedian Leslie Jones, calling her barely literate, and rallying his hundreds of thousands of followers to direct racist, sexist missives to her. (She briefly quit Twitter over the abuse.)

[Just how offensive did Milo Yiannopoulos have to be to get banned from Twitter?]

Scahill, a founding editor of the Intercept, explained himself on Twitter. He took great pains to express his admiration for the producers and writers of the show. He even sang the praises with a few big caveats of host Maher. But he called Yiannopouloss appearance many bridges too far.

He has ample venues to spew his hateful diatribes, Scahill wrote. Appearing on Real Time will provide Yiannopoulos with a large, important platform to openly advocate his racist, anti-immigrant campaign.

Maher responded to Scahills criticism and doubled down on his decision to have the provocateur as a guest.

Liberals will continue to lose elections as long as they follow the example of people like Mr. Scahill whose views veer into fantasy and away from bedrock liberal principles like equality of women, respect for minorities, separation of religion and state, and free speech, Maher said in a statement, according to Entertainment Weekly. If Mr. Yiannopoulos is indeed the monster Scahill claims and he might be nothing could serve the liberal cause better than having him exposed on Friday night.

Maher also addressed Scahills criticism of his views on Islam. My comments on Islam have never veered into vitriol, Maher said.

Scahill isnt the first person to take issue with the way Maher discusses Muslims. During one episode, Ben Affleck attacked the host and panelist Sam Harris for their racist comments about the religion. (Harris called Islam the mother lode of bad ideas.)

Maher, a champion of free speech, often builds his shows around guests with widely varying views to promote lively debate. Earlier this month, he hosted staunch Trump supporter Tomi Lahren alongside Republican strategist Rick Wilson and Missouri Democrat and Afghanistan veteran Jason Kander. Ann Coulter, another specialist in inflammatory rhetoric, has also been a frequent guest.

[Bill Maher hosted conservative Tomi Lahren on Real Time. They were both preaching to their own choirs.]

The University of California at Berkeley canceled a talk by inflammatory Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos and put the campus on lockdown after intense protests broke out on Feb. 1. (Video: The Washington Post / Photo: AP)

Yiannopoulos is no stranger to boycotts. Earlier this year he was scheduled to make an appearance at University of California, Berkeley, but violent protests broke out around the campus with demonstrators setting off fireworks and throwing bricks. University police ultimately canceled the event, which in turn prompted President Trump, in an early morning tweet, to threaten to pull the public universitys funding.

So far Yiannopoulos hasnt weighed in on the controversy on Facebook a social media account hes still allowed to have.

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'Liberals will continue to lose': Bill Maher defends Milo Yiannopoulos booking after panelist boycotts - Washington Post

CBS News

Liberals Matriculate at Calhoun College Wall Street Journal (subscription) Over the weekend Yale announced that the university will rename its undergraduate Calhoun College to expunge the memory of John C. Calhoun, the 19th-century South Carolina statesman. Yale says it is acting in the name of social justice amid campus ... Yale to change Calhoun College's name to honor Grace Murray HopperYale News all 44 news articles »

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Liberals Matriculate at Calhoun College - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Updated February 15, 2017 17:21:57

The Barnett Government has pledged to lift the payroll tax threshold for business to $900,000, claiming the change will boost jobs and save small businesses millions.

The change would take effect from January 1 next year, lifting the threshold from the current level of $850,000, meaning any organisation with a total payroll below that figure will not pay the tax.

Treasurer Mike Nahan announced the planned change at a Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) function in Perth, telling the audience of about 200 the Government was committed to further reductions.

"We will look to increase that threshold even further subject to our revenue and expenditure control," he said.

"So we will commit to further tax reductions in payroll tax by increasing the threshold as we have done in the past and as the CCI has argued the case for repeatedly."

The CCI has long argued that payroll tax is a tax on jobs, and reducing or removing it will free businesses to expand and employ more people.

Treasurer Nahan and Premier Colin Barnett toured the depot of West Australian bus company Horizon West buses in Welshpool on Wednesday.

Company spokesman Greg Balla told the Premier and Treasurer payroll tax relief would allow him to expand his staff.

"There's the potential for us to put on another apprentice. Currently we have three apprentices. So this is an opportunity to give us some relief in the payroll tax and employ more people," Mr Balla said.

The Liberal-National government has already twice increased the threshold for payroll tax, from $750,000 to $800,000 and then from $800,000 to the current level of $850,000.

The change will hit the cash-strapped government's bottom line, costing $55 million in tax revenue.

But Dr Nahan said that money would be recouped through additional savings in government expenditure in other areas.

He said it would not be funded by additional debt.

The Government has also announced an increase in the land tax threshold from $301,000 to $360,000 which will cost $24 million over the next four years.

The Treasurer said that would also be funded through additional yet-to-be announced savings.

But WA Labor rejected the Treasurer's assurance the tax cut would be funded through savings rather than debt.

In a statement, shadow treasurer Ben Wyatt said after trashing the state's finances with record debt and deficits, the Barnett Government's claims on tax could not be believed.

"Mr Barnett has delivered an extraordinary increase in state debt and a record budget deficit - mark my words, any tax cuts offered by the Liberals will become just another broken promise," he said.

"This is just a desperate ploy, by a desperate Premier, looking to buy his way back into power."

Topics: elections, political-parties, small-business, tax, wa

First posted February 15, 2017 16:15:50

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WA election: Liberals push payroll tax cut to entice business - ABC Online

Ordinary black people cannot afford to go along with the liberal agenda that calls for undermining police authority. That agenda makes for more black crime victims. Let's look at what works and what doesn't work.

In 1990, New York City adopted the practice in which its police officers might stop and question a pedestrian. If there was suspicion, they would frisk the person for weapons and other contraband. This practice, well within the law, is known as a Terry stop. After two decades of this proactive police program, New York City's homicides fell from over 2,200 per year to about 300. Blacks were the major beneficiaries of proactive policing. According to Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald--author of The War on Cops--seeing as black males are the majority of New York City's homicide victims, more than 10,000 blacks are alive today who would not be had it not been for proactive policing.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other leftist groups brought suit against proactive policing. A U.S. District Court judge ruled that New York City's "stop and frisk" policy violated the 14th Amendment's promise of equal protection because black and Hispanic people were subject to stops and searches at a higher rate than whites. But the higher rate was justified. Mac Donald points out that while blacks are 23 percent of New York City's population, they are responsible for 75 percent of shootings and 70 percent of robberies. Whites are 34 percent of the population of New York City. They are responsible for less than 2 percent of shootings and 4 percent of robberies. If you're trying to prevent shootings and robberies, whom are you going to focus most attention on, blacks or whites?

In 2015, 986 people were shot and killed by police. Of that number, 495 were white (50 percent), and 258 were black (26 percent). Liberals portray shootings by police as racist attacks on blacks. To solve this problem, they want police departments to hire more black police officers. It turns out that the U.S. Justice Department has found that black police officers in San Francisco and Philadelphia are likelier than whites to shoot and use force against black suspects. That finding is consistent with a study of 2,699 fatal police killings between 2013 and 2015, conducted by John R. Lott Jr. and Carlisle E. Moody of the Crime Prevention Research Center, showing that the odds of a black suspect's being killed by a black police officer were consistently greater than the odds of a black suspect's being killed by a white officer. And little is said about cops killed. Mac Donald reports that in 2013, 42 percent of cop killers were black.

Academic liberals and civil rights spokespeople make the claim that the disproportionate number of blacks in prison is a result of racism. They ignore the fact that black criminal activity is many multiples of that of other racial groups. They argue that differential imprisonment of blacks is a result of the racist war on drugs. Mac Donald says that state prisons contain 88 percent of the nation's prison population. Just 4 percent of state prisoners are incarcerated for drug possession. She argues that if drug offenders were removed from the nation's prisons, the black incarceration rate would go down from about 37.6 percent to 37.4 percent. The vast majority of blacks in prison are there because of violent crime--and mostly against black people.

That brings us to the most tragic aspect of black crime. The primary victims are law-abiding black people who must conduct their lives in fear. Some parents serve their children meals on the floor and sometimes put them to sleep in bathtubs so as to avoid stray bullets. The average American does not live this way and would not tolerate it. And that includes the white liberals who support and make excuses for criminals.

Plain decency mandates that we come to the aid of millions of law-abiding people under siege. For their part, black people should stop being pawns for white liberals and support the police who are trying to protect them.

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Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

Editorial on 02/16/2017

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Pawns of liberals - Arkansas Online