Keith was an avid horse racing fan who raised thoroughbreds himself. Continue reading…

If you are “of a certain age,” you might remember the plastic couch and chair covers that were everywhere. One lady in our neighborhood had all of her furniture covered and plastic runners throughout the house. If you visited, you better not step off that runner and touch the carpet! TikTok user Queen TrayBay is celebrating the removal of her grandmother’s plastic couch covers. @queen_traybay I’ve always wondered when she would finally enjoy her couch. I think at 100 years old its time! #plasticoncouch #oldschool #retro #plasticonfurniture #blackfamilies #oldpeopleontiktok #centenarian #centenarian #bootsontheground ♬ Hell To Da Naw Naw Naw – Bishop Bullwinkle TrayBay’s grandma is 100 years old and has never sat on her sofa without the plastic couch covers. We don’t know the age of the sofa. Gold velour furniture was popular in the 1970s, and we can make an educated guess. Grandma’s reaction was less than impressed, but she did manage a slight smile. She seemed to feel uneasy without the plastic couch cover. There are times when plastic couch covers can be a convenient option. The owners of this muddy golden retriever would have appreciated them. There are other times when they were not fun to deal with. Wearing shorts in the summer meant leaving skin behind because very few people had air conditioning back then. Image from TikTok. Surprisingly, you can still purchase fitted plastic couch covers. It is hard to say whether they sell well. The telltale squeak and pfffffttttt of air pressing through the zipper is something that most of us did not cherish and don’t miss. Queen TrayBay runs TrayBay Productions in the San Francisco Bay area. She posts travelogs and short productions celebrating the arts and entertainment industry. Every year, she makes sure her grandma’s Christmas card photo with her dog, Sophie, is perfect. She may have been removed from the will after removing the plastic couch covers, but we hope not. Please share if you remember these. You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post 100-Year-Old Grandmother Sits On Her Couch For The “First” Time After Finally Removing The Plastic! appeared first on InspireMore.

Two bills that would cut red tape and make it easier for employers to provide child care and elder care benefits and educational opportunities for their employees have advanced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The House Committee on Education and Workforce moved the two bills forward on April 9—the Empowering Employer Child and Elder Care Solutions Act and the Flexibility for Workers Education Act. While the actual dollars that employers must pay to provide their workers with benefits like education or child care subsidies are usually employers’ first consideration, it’s sometimes the labor laws and regulations—not the costs—surrounding these benefits that prevent employers from offering them. Take employer-provided child care, for example. Suppose that an employer wants to support an on-site child care facility and provide workers with a child care subsidy of $5,000 per year. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers who provide any kind of on-site child care or child care subsidies must include the value of those benefits in employees’ pay calculations when paying overtime. That results in the employer actually paying someone more for overtime than she is due. Forcing employers to undergo burdensome and confusing calculations and to pay employees more than what is actually owed is a recipe for employers scrapping the idea of a subsidy altogether. To illustrate, this is how the government’s treatment of a subsidy currently works: If Sue makes $20 per hour, her employer must include the value of her child care subsidy in her hourly rate of pay when calculating overtime. So, if Sue averages 40 hours a week with two weeks off per year, then the hourly equivalent of her $5,000 child care subsidy equals $2.50 per hour. Although Sue’s actual wage is still $20 per hour, her rate of pay for overtime calculations is now calculated at $22.50. Therefore, if Sue works five hours of overtime this week, her employer will have to pay her $168.75 in cash wages ($22.50 “regular rate” x 5 hours x 1.5 overtime rate), instead of the $150 ($20 hourly pay x 5 x 1.5) he actually should be paying her. But that assumes Sue works 2,000 hours per year. If she ends up working more or less—say 2,100 or 1,900 hours—her regular rate of pay would be somewhere between $22.63 and $22.38, which means $22.50 was the wrong regular rate of pay for her employer to use to begin with. Perhaps more so than the extra dollars that Sue’s employer must pay her and other employees who receive child care benefits, there’s the added concern of being held liable for wage theft if he applies the wrong regular rate of pay. By amending the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to treat child care and elder care subsidies the same as other fixed-cost workplace benefits such as health and life insurance, the Empowering Employer Child and Elder Care Solutions Act (H.R. 2270) would make it easier for employers to provide these benefits without having to include them in workers’ “regular rate” of pay calculations for overtime. This bill was introduced on March 21 by Rep. Mark Messmer, R-Ind., and was reported favorably out of committee on April 9.   Another workplace benefit that employers often want to offer employees but which can come with added costs and complications due to overtime laws is voluntary employer-provided education. Many workers pursue personal growth and development opportunities at their own expense outside of their working hours. But if an employer wants to offer to pay for his employees to attend such opportunities, under current law, the time spent completing that education counts toward their weekly work hours and can trigger added overtime costs and complications.The Flexibility for Workers’ Education Act (H.R. 2262), introduced by Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, would exclude voluntary, employer-provided “upskilling” opportunities from the “hours worked” calculation used to determine overtime pay, so long as employees do not perform work for their employer during that time and the education occurs outside of working hours. This bill was also reported favorably out of committee on April 9. As lawmakers seek to expand employer-provided benefits and improve workplace flexibility, these two bills demonstrate that less is more when it comes to government intervention in workers’ and families’ lives and in employers’ operations. The post 2 Bills Cutting Red Tape for Employee Benefits Advance in House appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Illegal Aid Society Is Making New York Unsafe

President Donald Trump is taking more action on behalf of Christians, making good on his promise to defend the faith. On Tuesday, prominent Christians and members of the Trump administration convened for the first meeting of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. Trump established the task force to correct the "egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses" that he said occurred in the Biden administration. The Trump administration is exposing the rotten fruit of the negative world. Shocking evidence to prove those allegations was presented at this week's meeting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, presented evidence of bias against Christian foreign service officers who homeschool their children. Rubio said the Biden administration threatened the officers with allegations of child abuse or IRS investigations if they insisted on homeschooling. He also said Christians in the Biden administration were discriminated against for opposing DEI and LGBTQ ideology, stigmatized for opposing the COVID-19 shot, and had their religious holidays downplayed while non-Christian holidays were openly celebrated. This is what other officials testified to: FBI Director Kash Patel spoke about the anti-Catholic memo the FBI, under then-President Joe Biden, issued. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about how the Biden administration targeted a Catholic hospital and exposed "progressive rules" the administration enacted against Christians hoping to become foster parents. Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke about discrimination against Christians who oppose the LGBTQ agenda in education policy. Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender discussed "financial surveillance" of Christian organizations under the Biden administration, which allegedly included weaponization of tax classification statuses, de-banking, and labeling certain organizations as "hate groups." Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins revealed how the Biden administration allegedly punished a chaplain for preaching from the Bible.Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley spoke about the Biden administration's campaign to advance anti-Christian gender ideology on children.But that's not all.The task force also heard allegations that the IRS under Biden targeted churches under the guise of the Johnson Amendment and claims that Liberty University and Grand Canyon University were targeted for fines over their Christian worldview."As shown by our victims' stories today, Biden's Department of Justice abused and targeted peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses," Attorney General Pam Bondi said.Michael Farris, a celebrated attorney, said he thought the meeting would be "small" and "informal." But he was surprised when he learned just how serious the Trump administration is about defending Christians."I have been in a lot of high ranking meetings in my 40+ years in DC but this was over the top," Farris said. "I was absolutely blown away. We heard frank stories of terrible treatment of Christians by the prior administration. In the military, by the FBI, by the State Department, by the Justice Department, the Education Department and more. And the solutions were swift, real, and incredibly inspiring," he continued."I have chaired meetings in the past where the top Christian litigators shared our most outrageous cases and where we were making plans to fight back," Farris explained. "Today’s meeting had that same spirit but with one major difference. These people actually run our government and were swiftly taken the kind of action that for a long time Christians have believed were demanded by justice. I was amazed and encouraged deeply in my soul."The task force, Farris added, is proof that the Trump administration is following through on campaign promises "quickly" and "vigorously.""If every believer could have seen this in person their hearts would be overflowing tonight," Farris said.Not only is the Trump administration exposing instances of anti-Christian bias that happened in the Biden administration, but it is taking proactive measures to prevent such discrimination from continuing.Earlier this month, the State Department and VA deployed memos to employees asking them to report incidents of anti-Christian bias. The goal is to completely eliminate all forms of anti-Christian discrimination from the federal government.For a generation, American Christians have existed in a "negative world." Aaron Renn, who coined the phrase, explains:Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.Our faith has been mocked. Our values have been eroded and stigmatized. In a progressive world, faithful Christians have increasingly become an "other," the target of scorn and public ridicule.But now, the Trump administration is exposing the rotten fruit of the negative world.Clearly, Trump means business. The task force is more than a nod or gesture; it's a signal that anti-Christian bias will no longer be tolerated in the federal government. More importantly, Trump is sending a message to Christians everywhere: I see you. I hear you. I am willing to fight and to defend you.Christians should celebrate this moment. Not because our hope is found in Washington, but because faithful Christians and biblical values have increasingly become stigmatized in the halls of powerful institutions. And now, that is changing.Perhaps we are finally witnessing a reversal of the negative world.

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