PRESENTED BY the Stop The HIT Coalition

 

Good morning! Brrrr, it’s cold. Here’s some hot Daily News to warm you up on this Thursday, November 15.

1. Gary Palmer elected to House GOP Leadership team.

• Congressman Gary Palmer was elected by his House GOP peers to serve as Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, an in-house think tank of sorts that promotes conservative ideas among the House Republican Conference.
• The selection puts Palmer on the House GOP Leadership team for the upcoming 116th Congress alongside Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and Conference Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
• “I appreciate the faith that my colleagues have placed in me and am grateful for their support,” Palmer said after the vote.
• Before his service in Congress, Palmer led the Alabama Policy Institute, a Birmingham-based think tank that studied state problems and proposed conservative solutions.
• Chairing the Republican Policy Committee has been a career springboard for many congressman, including former Rep. Tom Price, who would go on to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Rep. James Lankford, who is now a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, and former Rep. Dick Cheney, who later became Secretary of Defense and Vice President of the United States.
• Full story on Palmer HERE.
• Story on the other House Leadership elections HERE.

2. Pardons & Paroles Plan.

• Remember a few weeks back when controversy at the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles bubbled to the surface?
• Gov. Kay Ivey replaced the chairman and she and Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the Board to come up with a a plan to correct its problems.
• Well that plan was submitted to the Governor’s Office last night.
• To those familiar with the problems, the corrective priorities are somewhat obvious: improve executive leadership, show more respect toward victims and law enforcement, and ensure better notice of parole hearings.
• WSFA’s Jenn Horton has been on this story from day one, and her report on the corrective action plan is worth a read/watch HERE.
• I asked Sen. Cam Ward, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, what he thought of the plan as written. Ward is a proponent of criminal justice reform, but has been critical of the Pardons & Paroles Board behavior.
• “I support whatever it takes to get them to follow their own written policy,” he told me. “Gov Ivey managed this situation well and I support her efforts. I believe ultimately we will have to have a legislative initiative to rein in their abuse of discretion.”

 

A Message from the Stop The HIT Coalition

• What is responsible for shredding billions of dollars more than Banksy?
• That’s right, the 2020 Health Insurance Tax (HIT).
• It will add more than $16 billion to the cost of insurance for middle-class families in 2020.
• Absent immediate Senate action, the 2020 HIT will begin driving up the cost of care for hardworking Alabamians in 2020.
• Senator Doug Jones can help address skyrocketing healthcare costs by co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation (S. 3063) to suspend the Health Insurance Tax in 2020.
• Ask Senator Jones to stop the HIT on Alabama small businesses and hardworking families.

 

3. Marshall critic accused of creepy conduct.

• Billy McFarland, an Alabama Republican donor and former Judson College administrator, is accused of sending sexually harassing messages to a former student.
• In a federal lawsuit, the student says McFarland approached her about starting an online roleplay relationship for which he would pay her $2,000 and a cash bonus.
• It’s not the first incident of this nature for McFarland.
• A Marengo County judge issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of “harassing communications” toward a college-age woman last September. He pleaded no contest and paid restitution.
• And text and Facebook messages shared with ADN show McFarland doing this same type of thing with multiple women.
• If his name sounds familiar, Billy was once named a “Rising Republican Star” by the ALGOP. Yet, this last cycle he made himself useful to Democrats by attacking Attorney General Steve Marshall and supporting his opponent Joe Siegelman.
• Accusing Marshall of misdeeds, McFarland declared, “In today’s politics, nothing is kept secret forever.”
• Indeed. Full story HERE.

 

4. Bentley, Mason spotted in Vegas.

• Alabama’s former governor and the woman who helped lead to his political downfall were spotted in together in Las Vegas Wednesday night.
• Former Gov. Robert Bentley and his senior adviser Rebekah Caldwell Mason were seen walking through the Las Vegas airport where slot machines line the walkways.
• A photo later circulated on Twitter causing many to speculate what the two were doing together in Las Vegas.
• Alabama Daily News confirmed the photo’s authenticity from time and location meta data. A message sent to Mason asking for her comment was not returned.
• Turns out there is a dermatology convention in town this week, which might explain why they are there together. Mason works for Bentley managing his Tuscaloosa dermatology practice.
• I don’t know. I admit feeling a bit icky running this. They are two private people now and can do whatever they want, I suppose.
• Could just be two colleagues on a business trip, right? But also a rash decision being seen in public in this way, no?
• Anyway, put the pieces together and decide for yourself HERE.

5. News Briefs.

• President Donald Trump announced his support for the first major rewrite of the nation’s criminal justice sentencing laws in a generation, but it remains to be seen whether the proposal can pass Congress.
• Trump said the bill “will make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time.”
• No Democrats attended the announcement, but many support the goals of the plan and some like Van Jones are publicly crediting Trump with striking a tone of unity.
• Read more HERE.

• Michael Avenatti, who skyrocketed to fame as a critic of President Donald Trump and the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, was arrested Wednesday and booked on a felony domestic violence charge, Los Angeles police said.
• The alleged victim in the case had visible injuries, according to Officer Tony Im, a police spokesman. But Avenatti slammed the allegation as “completely bogus” and “fabricated and meant to do harm to my reputation” in a statement released by his law firm.
• Avenatti, who has said he’s mulling a 2020 presidential run, posted $50,000 bail and was released about four hours after he was arrested Wednesday on the same block where he lives in a skyscraper apartment.
• Read more HERE.

• Having spent a fortune to help elect Democrats this fall, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared lifetime allegiance to the Democratic Party and outlined an aggressive timeline for deciding whether to run for president.
• “I think January, February would be about as late as you can do it and as early as you can gather enough information,” Bloomberg told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
• The 76-year-old billionaire said his decision would have little to do with other Democratic presidential prospects. He conceded that “it’s much too early to tell” whether he has a legitimate chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and, with it, the chance to take on another New York billionaire, President Donald Trump.
• Read more HERE.

 

Headlines.

Front Pages (images link to newspaper websites, which you should visit and patronize)