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We talked to "Matt" about all of it (he started as an unpaid protester, graduated to "Paid Protester" at the 2011 Take Back the Capitol event, and worked as an organizer for the Service Employees International Union) and he explained how a career in activism really works ...yes, there is absolutely some money floating around activism, that's inevitable in a capitalist society. But in the end, the whole "paid protester" thing is far more complicated than either side wants to admit ... kinda like every other political issue, now that we think about it.

The government of Turkey planned to use front groups and operatives “camouflaged” as journalists to gain access to Capitol Hill and the U.S. security apparatus, hacked emails released by WikiLeaks reveal. The documents, which are from the Gmail account of Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and the son-in-law of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, show the nascent plan for what has turned into a sprawling lobbying and PR campaign undertaken by the Turkish government. Turkey’s lobbying efforts catapulted into the news last week after Donald Trump’s short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn registered as a foreign lobbyist for Turkey.

One out of every 40 people in America lives in New York City. The area's population is 8.4 million, more than in 39 other states. For every vote cast for Donald Trump in the city last Tuesday, more than four were cast for Hillary Clinton; she earned 79 percent of the vote. In the wake of Trump's victory, thousands of protesters crowded the streets of Manhattan (where Trump got fewer votes than he did on Staten Island, where the population is a third smaller) outside Trump Tower. It's hard to know how many were there, but let's assume it was...

Here is the link,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OVHb-zc4Lw

Nearly one in 10 superdelegates who voted in the Democratic presidential primaries were registered lobbyists, according to a new report, adding some support to Bernie Sanders's claim that "the system is rigged." At least 63 of 712 superdelegates were registered at some point as lobbyists on the state or federal level, according to an analysis conducted this year by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Sunlight Foundation.

Tara had struck gold. After spending a lazy Saturday afternoon browsing through the dating app she was currently experimenting with, she hit it off with a nice-sounding guy, and the two exchanged real names and numbers. She found herself Googling Stuart*, a Brit living in Amsterdam. He worked at a startup; he was visiting New York on business. "I was like, oh, he’s kind of cute…" Neither had plans that night, so they started figuring out where they could meet up for a drink. When Tara suggested a restaurant in midtown Manhattan, Stuart was into it: "Okay cool, my hotel...

One of most dangerous areas in America has resorted to paying teenagers up to $1,300 a month as officials desperately try and stop gun crime. Gang members in Richmond, California, can also go on all expenses paid trips to New York and Washington if they are willing to travel with a rival. The programme, which is predominantly funded by taxpayers, was introduced in the city earlier this year.

Abortion groups have been attacking The New York Times on Twitter for publishing a front-page photo of pro-life protesters outside of the U.S. Supreme Court building on Wednesday. A huge crowd of pro-life and pro-abortion protesters gathered outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday as the justices heard oral arguments in a potential landmark abortion case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. The case involves a Texas law that protects women’s health and welfare by requiring abortion clinics to meet the kinds of medical and safety standards that legitimate medical centers meet. On Thursday, abortion groups including Planned Parenthood, NARAL...

Fox News used a pollster to host a pro-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)79% focus group after Thursday night’s Republican debate, despite the fact that the pollster actually had Rubio as a client. Pollster Frank Luntz got significant airtime to direct a post-debate focus group that unsurprisingly was very favorable to Rubio, the GOP establishment pick in the primary race.

Do people really like Donald Trump? Like, real people? The kind who would make their own signs and T-Shirts and show up at Trump's 2016 presidential campaign launch to watch him slowly descend an escalator to the sounds of "Rockin' in the Free World"? After a day of swirling rumors, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the consulting firm Gotham Government Relations & Communications sought to hire paid actors to attend Trump's much-talked-about campaign kickoff on Tuesday morning. Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, denied the allegation to the site, noting that he had never heard of Gotham GR nor the...

Remember the protests (and riots) in Ferguson last summer? It looks like at least some of the protestors were told they would be paid to show up and now they're upset the checks haven't arrived yet. Weaselzippers has the full story and the screen shots showing "protestors" using the Twitter hashtag #cutthecheck in response to non-payment. Based on tweets, Organize Missouri is responsible for issuing payments. On May 14, protesters, upset with not being paid their promised checks for protesting, protested outside MORE, Missourians Organizing For Reform and Empowerment, an ACORN organization which had received funding through George Soros to...

Last week local black activists held a sit-in protest at the office of MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) in St. Louis to press their claim that groups led by whites have collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations off of the Black Lives Matter movement without paying the Black participants their fair share.During the sit-in, one of the Black activists threatened the white representative for MORE, saying, “We gon’, we gonna just **** you up.” (Expletive deleted.) Apparently much of the money raised by MORE didn’t reach the local protesters.In response to this protest MORE released a...

**SNIP** Disclosure documents filed by Hillary Clinton last week revealed that the couple have earned about $25 million for delivering 104 paid speeches since January 2014. While Bill Clinton’s lucrative speaking career since leaving the White House in 2001 has been well documented, the new disclosures offer the first public accounting of Hillary Clinton’s paid addresses since she stepped down as secretary of state. And they illustrate how the Clintons have personally profited by drawing on the same network of supporters who have backed their political campaigns and philanthropic efforts — while those supporters have gained entree to a potential...

<p>ST. PAUL, Minn. - After a successful push to raise the minimum wage, some Minnesota Democrats want to establish a statewide paid family leave program.</p> <p>Workers would be able to take up to six weeks off from work for a birth, adoption or to take care of a sick relative under the proposal. They'd make at least two-thirds of their pay during that time.</p>

The Obama administration on Monday announced an ambitious goal to overhaul the way doctors are paid, tying their fees more closely to the quality of care rather than the quantity. Rather than pay more money to Medicare doctors simply for every procedure they perform, the government will also evaluate whether patients are healthier, among other measures. The goal is for half of all Medicare payments to be handled this way by 2018. Monday’s announcement marks the administration’s biggest effort yet to shape how doctors are compensated across the health-care system. As the country's largest payer of health-care services, Medicare influences...

Democrats are seizing on the fight for mandatory paid leave in the United States as their next big pocketbook issue. The Obama administration has for months called upon Congress to require employers to offer paid leave, with Labor Secretary Tom Perez relentlessly pressing the case to anyone who will listen. And while potential Democratic presidential candidates, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), have voiced support for the proposal, the party has yet to elevate paid leave to the top tier of its policy agenda. That will soon change, according to Democratic operatives, administration officials...

The conservative blogger from California who paid a Baptist minister from Meridian to tell his story about vote buying in the Republican Senate runoff between incumbent Senator Thad Cochran and state Senator Chris McDaniel is in the state on a speaking tour. Reports also indicate that the blogger, Chuck Johnson, has been subpoenaed by a grand jury in Lauderdale County in conjunction with an investigation of a felony. The Baptist minister from Meridian stands by his claims of vote buying in the senate race. For nearly six weeks, Reverend Stevie Fielder of First Union Missionary Baptist Church in Meridian has...

A $4 million ransom was reportedly paid to the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front for the release of 13 Greek Orthodox nuns that were held by the rebel group for four months, Lebanese media reported on Monday In addition to that, some 150 imprisoned Syrian women were to be released in exchange for the nuns from Syrian government jails, along with three other women were taken from their convent in the Christian-dominated town of Maaloula during clashes in December.

Reuters reports that the NSA paid massive computer security firm RSA $10 million to promote a flawed encryption system so that the surveillance organization could wiggle its way around security. In other words, the NSA bribed the firm to leave the back door to computers all over the world open. Thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we already knew the NSA played a central role in promoting a flawed formula for generating random numbers, which if used in encryption, essentially gives the spies easy access to computing systems. A piece of RSA software, bSafe, became the most significant vector...

No fewer than 572 San Francisco city workers and executives made more than Gov. Jerry Brown last year. More than 1,500 city workers made more than state Attorney General Kamala Harris. And that's without overtime. "That's pretty staggering," said Tom Dalzell, head of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay for state lawmakers. --SNIP-- The days when the headline-grabbing "$100,000 club" was made up of a handful of top managers and overtime earners are long gone. Last year, city controller's records show, roughly a quarter of the city's 36,000 full- and part-time workers made more than $100,000 - without...