Bringing Women to the Business Table
On Wednesday, I was thrilled to take a behind-the-scenes look at Square, a remarkable San Francisco-based company that helps Americans hoping to start and run a small business by allowing them to accept credit cards with just one easy application on their smart device.

After the tour, I joined with Square employees and merchants for a women’s economic roundtable to learn about the company’s efforts to support women entrepreneurs, students, and employees, and discuss how the private and public sectors can work together on these issues.

Square has a unique understanding of the strength, creativity, and savvy women bring to the business table—and insists on workplace policies that support women and families.

And Square’s “Code Camp” initiative will help create a 21st-century workforce by teaching, mentoring, and molding the next generation of coding engineers that will ensure America remains a global leader in technology and innovation.

Unleashing the power of our country’s women is at the core of House Democrats’ economic agenda for women and families: When Women Succeed, America Succeeds.

This agenda stands on three pillars:
Fair pay—raising the minimum wage and ensuring paycheck fairness

Work and family balance—guaranteeing paid sick leave

Affordable, quality child care—the lynchpin for a working mother’s success in the workplace.

When women earn equal pay, we know America’s economy will prosper. When women ensure fairness and balance between work and family, we know American society will thrive. And when all women succeed, we know America succeeds.

Congresswoman Pelosi participates in a women’s economic roundtable with Square employees and merchants to discuss efforts to support and provide affordable tools to women entrepreneurs at Square’s headquarters in SoMA.

A Foundation for the Future
For generations, San Francisco has stood on the cutting edge of progress: in economic development, in new technology, in transportation and sustainability.

That tradition of leadership continued this week as we poured concrete into the first permanent part of the new Transbay Transit Center, which is scheduled to open in late 2017.

With this Transbay Transit Center, we are setting the cornerstone of a new “Grand Central Station of the West”. We are staying on-track to connect cities and communities throughout the region and across the state. We are opening new doors to public transit options, reducing congestion on our roads, cutting carbon emissions and creating jobs.

This center will be the place where riders can board high-speed trains as part of the development of California’s high-speed rail system. It will bring capital, commuters, and consumers to our city through a system that is that is better, faster, cheaper.

Once the Transbay Transit Center is complete, it will bring 11 transit systems together under one roof – meaning more convenience for commuters, more efficiency for workers, and more growth for our city.

Our actions serve as a marker that this entire city – leaders in public service, in labor, and in business – is united behind the success of the Transbay Transit Center.

Standing together, these leaders are keeping San Francisco at the forefront of good jobs, a growing economy, and a thriving middle class. Working together, we will keep this city on the cutting edge of progress.

Shana Tova!
For Jewish families around the world, Rosh Hashanah is a moment of reflection and renewal, joy and prayer, repentance and introspection. With hope for a future of health and happiness, the new year is an opportunity to reiterate the core commitments and values of the Jewish people: to repair the world, and perfect it; to cherish justice, and pursue it; to seek peace, and secure it.

As Jewish households gather to hear the sound of the shofar, to celebrate with loved ones, to dip apples in honey, to rejoice and to pray, let us hope that this Rosh Hashanah will bring a year of peace and security to Israel and her neighbors across the Middle East.

Let us hope that this new year ushers in a time of joy, good fortune, and progress for the Jewish community in the United States and around the world. Shana tovah u’metukah – may you have a happy, healthy, sweet new year.

Please feel free to forward this information to your family and friends. To learn more about these efforts, to express your views, or to sign up for email updates, please visit my website. I am also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NancyPelosi.

best regards,

Last week, CMD reported that a small GOP lobby shop tied to the Tea Party and David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity group was awarded a $500,000 grant in a backdoor, sweetheart deal cooked up by ALEC leadership in the State Legislature and sanctioned by the Walker administration.

The United Sportsmen of Wisconsin Foundation was the only applicant for a newly-created grant to promote hunting, fishing, and trapping in the state, despite the organization having no record in outdoors training.

The organization does have a record of lobbying on extreme gun measures, controversial mines, and other GOP priorities. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the grant was slipped into the budget bill by outgoing Majority Leader Scott Suder with terms that excluded most sporting groups in the state. The grant was not properly advertised, conveniently leaving United Sportsmen as the sole applicant.

CMD documented Suder’s ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council and the extensive ties United Sportsmen staff had to the Kochs and the Tea Party, plus their history of partisan electoral politics in the state. Listed as “educators” on the grant were Americans for Prosperity’s Luke Hilgemann, Sauk County Tea Party leader John Keegan, and Annette Olson, Americans for Prosperity “Activist of the Year” for 2012. CMD uncovered that the web domain for the group was registered by an Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin staffer named John Connors.

We sent out an alert prompting almost 1,000 Wisconsinites to contact the committee overnight. The United Sportsmen representative couldn’t be bothered to show up at last week’s committee hearing (joining by phone) and couldn’t answer basic questions, prompting one committee member to say that the “whole deal just doesn’t smell right.” One Wisconsin Now uncovered a loophole in the bill regarding the group’s tax status and later United Sportsmen apologized for misleading legislators into thinking it was a tax-exempt charity.

Thanks to these efforts and yours, Scott Walker is backing down and rescinding the grant, showing that even in the land of the shameless, the people can sometimes win.

I like the way you reported that story about my friend. There is always more to the story than what is released in press releases. That’s why there are trials with both prosecutors and defenders presenting the story.