Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 1-3-20

Political News
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is delivering more than $1 billion worth of federal spending and tax breaks to his Kentucky constituents, just in time for Christmas and ahead of a potentially tough reelection campaign.
McConnell’s biggest ob- stacle to getting the deal done was not Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), but President Trump, who proclaimed last year that he was not going to sign another omnibus spending bill and whose White House made rumblings about backing a year-end spending freeze in- stead.
NBC News reports that the Governor of Illinois granted over 11,000 pardons for low- level marijuana convictions. This is only the first step as thousands more expunge- ments are anticipated a new law legalizing marijuana goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. State officials have estimated that 116,000 convictions for possession of 30 grams of marijuana or less are eligible to be pardoned under this new law. People who have been convicted for offenses that involved more than 30 grams of marijuana can file court petitions to have their
Federal Judge Allows Georgia Law To Continue Voter Purge
McConnell Flexes Reelection Muscle With $1B Gift For Kentucky
Chicago Governor Pardons 11,000 Marijuana Convictions
MITCH MCCONNELL
The windfall will likely boost his political standing at home in the face of a well-fi- nanced Democratic opponent and his perennially low ap- proval ratings.
Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by Stacy Abrams to address voter suppression, led a noble effort to restore 98,000 voters who were removed from the state’s voter rolls due to non participation in any recent elections. Unfor- tunately, they were unsuc- cessful.
U. S. District Judge Steve Jones made a ruling, in fed- eral court, upholding the re- moval of these inactive voters under Georgia’s “use it or lose it” law. This is a law al- lowing election officials to re- move people who haven’t voted in eight years or failed to respond to mailed notifica- tion letters.
Jones wrote a 32-page order saying that the plain- tiffs in the case (FFA) had failed to show how any con-
On Christmas Day, Rev. Jackson Jackson Sr. posted the bonds of a handful of inmates at Cook County Jail in Chicago so they could spend the holiday with loved ones.
After Jackson paid the bonds, cameras captured him walking arm-in-arm with the released men, ABC News re- ports.
“This is just a good feel- ing. It brings a warmness to my heart,” released detainee Aaron Kinzer told ABC News. His mom, Eileen Thomas Kinzer, agreed, saying, “It’s a blessing be- cause this would’ve been his first Christmas locked up— ever,” she told reporters.
Because a reverend is al- ways gonna bring a word, Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition brought a worship service to the jail, with Rev. Marshall Hatch of New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church delivering a
GEORGIA VOTER PURGE
stitutional rights had been vi- olated through these cancel- lations. He also wrote, however, that the plaintiffs could still take the matter up with the Georgia Supreme Court.
Purging voters by the tens of thousands of people from the rolls just seems like an in-
teresting way to “ensure every eligible voter can vote.” In all, close to 287,000 regis- trations were canceled in this month alone because regis- tered potential voters either moved away or had been in- active since 2012. An addi- tional 22,000 had to be reinstated by the secretary of state’s office after they had been removed even though those registered voters had contacted election officials before the cut-off date.
On a positive note, there was a change in state law this year that lengthens the pe- riod before voters become “inactive” from three years to five years. But Fair Fight Ac- tion argued that the change in House Bill 316, should apply to voters who were pre- viously declared inactive to no avail.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Posts Bail For Cook County Jail Inmates On Christmas
records cleared. Officials es- timate that 34,000 records are eligible for being cleared within that process.
REV. JESSE JACKSON WITH INMATES
Christmas message.
Hatch likened the in-
mates to baby Jesus, saying they were like the baby “wrapped in swaddling clothes, meaning literally the babe is wrapped in rags, which means it does not mat- ter what you have on. The only thing that matters is what’s on the inside,” he
preached.
This isn’t the first time
Jackson has posted bonds for folks sitting in Cook County Jail. Earlier this month, he did the same for Bernard Kersh, the 29- year-old black man who was slammed to the ground by Chicago police officers on Thanksgiving.
PAGE 6-A FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 2020