#trump farm bureau speech 2020 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alexsmitposts · 5 years ago

Photo

Did the Fed Already Decide the 2020 US Election? As of beginning July 2019 prospects look positive for a re-election of Donald Trump as President in November 2020. Headline stock market and GDP figures all look positive…at the present. The huge unanswered question is whether that can be sustained until the fateful elections. We see signs already that spell potential trouble for the Republicans. A major problem for the Trump prospects to win a second term in November 2020 is the fact that since 1913 no American President, nor the Congress, control the decisions of the central bank, the legendary Federal Reserve or Fed. What few are aware of is the fact that the Fed is not a government agency. This is despite the fact the President nominates persons to serve as directors. The reality is that the Fed is privately owned largely by the international banks and financial groups that control global money flows. They determine in complex ways the control of US money creation, the heart of the economy. In December 1913 a cabal of Wall Street Republican international bankers led by J.P. Morgan, John D Rockefeller, Paul Warburg and cronies pulled off the fateful coup d’etat that saw “Democrat” Woodrow Wilson sign away the money power of the government to the bankers. Since then, the Fed has determined the course of the nation’s economy independent of the interests of the national economy or the citizens. The President of the New York Fed, Benjamin Strong, as head of the most powerful of the 12 reserve banks, literally determined the fate of the US and Europe until his death in 1928. His interest rate policies were directly responsible for creating the 1920s stock market bubble and the October 1929 Wall Street Great Crash. That in turn led to the 1931 global banking crisis and the Great Depression. It was the Fed under Allan Greenspan that was responsible for the creation of the securitization USA housing bubble and also for its deliberate destruction into the “Great Recession” of 2007-2008, a key factor in the 2008 Obama win. This Fed is the real power over economic good times or bad. It can be demonstrated that every recession or boom, every so-called business cycle since 1914 has been determined by the Fed. When Donald Trump became President he selected several directors of the Fed Board of Governors, including Chairman Jerome Powell beginning February 2018, apparently believing Powell would continue an easy money regimen. When Powell and the Fed continued the Janet Yellen interest rate increases and withdrawal from Quantitative Easing by selling off the assets it bought after the 2008 financial crisis, the effects were initially overshadowed by the Trump tax law and other factors that spurred both the stock market, the dollar and the economy. By late 2018, however, it began to become clear that the Fed was on course to create a collapse of the post-2008 asset bubble in stocks and real estate, prompting unprecedented criticism from Donald Trump of Jerome Powell, his choice for Fed chairman. By December 2018, almost a year into Powell’s term, financial markets appeared in freefall, the stock markets down by 30% in six weeks, junk bond markets freezing and oil prices down by 40%. At that point on the urging of a group of influential business people, Trump began to attack Powell for trying to create a new recession. By March 2019 Powell announced the Fed would likely not raise Fed Funds rates as had been planned further in 2019, holding it at 2.375%, suspending plans to do three or four added rate hikes in 2019. Markets were euphoric. But by then Fed prior actions had set into motion deep shifts in the economy which are now becoming undeniable. Monetary actions tend to have a lag effect of six to nine months in the real economy. The aggressive Fed tightening through the end of 2018 is just beginning to show damage in the real economy. This is beginning to concern the White House. Here are some preliminary indicators that all is not peachy. Trucking and Agriculture According to the Bank of America’s Trucking Diffusion Index for the week of June 21, the national truck freight outlook hit the lowest level since October, 2016, just before the US elections. More alarming, the indicator is down 29% year-on-year, the largest decline since the index started. The current US outlook for freight demand is at a five-year low. Reports are that the construction sector is struggling due to weather issues in key markets. What this suggests is that the volume of goods being shipped by truck through the US economy is showing a not healthy trend. How long this goes on is at this point not clear. It is an indicator of real problems. If we add to this the developing crisis in US agriculture, the picture becomes darker not only for trucking but for the overall economy. Record rainfall across the Midwest farmbelt has so far had a devastating impact on crop prospects well into the key summer growing season. The US Department of Agriculture cut its estimate of the corn harvest, a rare event, in June. Farmers say the government is downplaying the crisis. In addition lack of Congressional action on the Mexico and Canada trade agreements and the Chinese restrictions on US soybean exports are combining to create one of the worst US farm crises in recent years. The US Farm Bureau Federation, a major lobby, has stated that a third emergency farmer bailout would be necessary if export markets for US farm products are not soon reopened. The Farm Bureau states that the combination of disruption of key export markets together with low spot prices, high inventory levels, a slowing economic outlook, and damaging weather across the Midwest, “could culminate into a full-blown farm crisis on par to the 1980s.” These are not the only signs of storm clouds in the US economy. Sales of existing homes have declined on a Year-on-Year basis for 15 straight months. Rising interest rates are a major deterrent for home buying. Further, the monthly Philadelphia fed survey of Business Outlook expectations, which monitors expected company new orders, sales, employment and other indicators of business activity, registered a sharp drop from 16.6 in May to only 0.3 in June. This all does not yet indicate a full recession in the overall economy. However it shows how vulnerable the fragile recovery from the 2008 debacle still is. In this situation the Powell Fed is not at all playing a constructive role. Powell proclaims Fed Independence On June 25, Fed Chairman Powell gave a speech to the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the original think-tank of the Wall Street bankers created in the wake of World War I parallel to the British Chatham House. In his remarks Powell stressed the Fed’s independence from political pressures: “The Fed is insulated from short-term political pressures — what is often referred to as our ‘independence,” Powell said. “Congress chose to insulate the Fed this way because it had seen the damage that often arises when policy bends to short-term political interests. Central banks in major democracies around the world have similar independence.” It was a declaration of independence from Trump. The reality, as Donald Trump noted repeatedly in public speeches in March and April, despite the Fed statement about interest rate pause in March, the Fed has not stopped tightening. It is via the little-noticed policy called Quantitative Tightening, the moves by the Fed to tighten money liquidity in the banking system and economy by forcing major banks to buy back some of the almost $4 trillion in corporate bonds and other assets the Fed bought to bail out the major banks and financial giants after the September 2008 Lehman Bros. crisis. In early 2018 as it was simultaneously raising Fed Funds interest rates, the Fed delivered a double-whammy effect on market interest rates by “selling” some $50 billion a month of its assets from the unprecedented Quantitative Easing (QE) experiment of 2008. QE was a de facto policy of Fed money printing by buying select bonds and other securities, including mortgages, from primary security dealer banks, giving them huge liquidity in return. QT is the attempt to put the QE liquidity Genie back in the bottle by reversing the process, a highly dangerous experiment, one by no means urgent. As the impact of Fed QT actions began to cause alarm, in February 2019 the Fed agreed to reduce the tightening, but only from $50 to $40 billion a month until now. That comes to almost half-a-trillion dollars less liquidity in the economy annually, not small. If a recession now unfolds over the next 6 months until the November, 2020 elections, it will once again by the “gods of money” at the Fed and their banker backers who caused it. If Trump then loses the 2020 re-election it will owe more to the Fed than to his bizarre Democrat opponents.

1 note · View note

your-dietician · 3 years ago

Text

Ammon Bundy seizes on housing shortage in new bid to take public lands in Idaho

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/latest/ammon-bundy-seizes-on-housing-shortage-in-new-bid-to-take-public-lands-in-idaho/

Ammon Bundy seizes on housing shortage in new bid to take public lands in Idaho

Ammon Bundy, left, laughs with a supporter while grilling burgers at a campaign event on June 19 in Boise, Idaho. Known for his 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, Bundy announced his candidacy for Idaho governor in June. (Nathan Howard / Getty Images)

When Ammon Bundy announced his run for governor of Idaho during a recent barbecue, he cooked up quarter-pound “Bundy burgers” made from a cow that his father unlawfully grazed on federal lands, part of a rebellion that triggered an armed standoff with authorities in 2014.

The sizzling patties conveyed that Bundy, despite pursuing something so mainstream as running for office, remains the defiant anti-government militant who has earned folk-hero status with the far right. He’s still focused on radically reducing federal land ownership in the West, property that belongs to the U.S. public but is coveted by ranchers, farmers, developers and others.

“When you lose control of the land, you lose control of everything,” Bundy said standing on an outdoor stage between cardboard cutouts of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, both of whom favored opening federal lands to development. “History and human nature demonstrate that if we build up and create dense and congested cities with large populations, traffic and pollution, we will lose our conservative, traditional values.”

Bundy is reframing the decades-long but narrow fight of his father, Cliven Bundy, against the Bureau of Land Management — the other BLM, as it’s known here — into a platform with broader appeal. He wants to use the governorship to wrest ownership of federal land for state control. It’s a campaign aimed at voters dreaming of wide open spaces and homes they can afford, wrapped in an idealized view of western life where land and resources are limited only by an unwillingness to use them.

Neither America nor the Gem State, he told the crowd, can survive the liberal creep of growing cities or the economic toll of too few houses for too many people. To “keep Idaho Idaho,” as his slogan promises, growth needs to happen out instead of up, as he puts it.

The federal government is “forcing everybody down into big cities and where they’re just surviving,” Bundy said in a recent interview with The Times. He spoke from his home outside Boise on five acres of apple orchards in an agricultural area known as Treasure Valley, surrounded by public lands.

Story continues

His is a message laced with undertones of violence, conspiracy theories and a concept of God (Bundy is a devout Mormon) that includes a belief in Manifest Destiny. In Bundy’s worldview, preservationists and regulators are enemies, and sneaky ones at that. “They infiltrate government … in order to force their ideological religious beliefs,” he said.

Environmentalists “don’t believe that God created the earth for man,” he said.

“They don’t believe, therefore, that man is anything more than another species that has evolved intellectually. And so they believe that it is their duty to create a disadvantage to humans, to balance the species,” he said.

Five years ago, Bundy led an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to protest the prosecution of two ranchers accused of setting fires on federal lands.

Two years before that, he helped lead hundreds of supporters in an armed confrontation in Nevada to stop a roundup of his father’s cattle, which ended with the government backing down (Bundy did not carry a weapon himself). Yet while Bundy faced federal prosecutions for both of these standoffs — and spent years in jail awaiting trials — he wasn’t convicted in either case.

“He fought the law and won,” said Devin Burghart, who tracks Bundy as executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.

Last week, that winning streak ended. Bundy was convicted by an Idaho jury on minor misdemeanor charges for trespassing and obstructing or resisting an officer, stemming from an August protest at the Idaho Capitol(which he is now banned from entering for a year).

Ammon Bundy, center, stands on the Idaho Capitol steps in Boise on Aug. 24, 2020, as part of a protest against COVID-19 health measures. (Keith Ridler / Associated Press)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bundy capitalized on his government overreach argument and grew his base by leading multiple anti-lockdown and anti-mask protests, resulting in police arresting him five times, including the trespass incident related to his conviction.

His first court loss — for which he must pay a $750 fine and perform community service — is unlikely to hurt his run for governor, and may help it, said Boise State political science professor Ross Burkhart.

Some voters may be attracted to Bundy’s claims that “he is a victim of the state suppressing his right to free speech,” Burkhart said.

Rachel Goldwasser, a research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Bundy’s sense of righteousness scares her.

“He’s not interested in what the masses want; he’s interested in what he believes is right,” Goldwasser said. “If he believes the thing he is opposing is unconstitutional, then lawlessness is acceptable. If it’s patriotic, lawlessness is acceptable.”

Across much of the rural West, tensions are escalating — and anger at government ratcheting to extremes — as the climate warms, fires rage, droughts worsen and population grows.

Bundy says that insurgency can be justified in places where federal rules hamper the use of natural resources, and preaches that the Constitution forbids the federal government to own many lands it claims. It’s a message that appeals beyond Idaho, especially for those in agriculture who fear their livelihoods are being regulated to death.

The election of President Biden means that opponents of federal environmental laws no longer have a friend in the White House and agencies such as the Department of the Interior. Biden has pledged to triple the amount of protected land in the U.S. by 2030 and enforce laws such as the Endangered Species Act.

In the western United States, ownership of land means access to water rights, and in no other part of the country is the federal government such a large landlord — or steward, depending on your point of view. In Nevada, 80% of the land is in federal control, as is 62% in Idaho, 52% in Oregon, 45% in California, and 29% in Washington.

Federal land practices also fueled the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s that sought state control of public forests and range land. Reagan’s election gave the rebels some hope, but he and Interior Secretary James G. Watt were unable to significantly shift federal land ownership.

“You have always had anti-government extremists who have a fundamental belief that land should belong to them individually,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a Denver-based conservation organization. Weiss said that water rights have always been central to that brawl.

“You go all the way back to the first time you had white settlers invading the West, displacing Indigenous people, you will find fights over water,” Weiss said. “Because, at the end of the day, the West is dry.”

At the Oregon and California border, Bundy is in the thick of a dire struggle over water.

There, a group of activists aligned with him have threatened to forcibly take control of irrigation gates in Klamath Falls, Ore., where federal regulators have cut off annual water flows to family farms amid a drought that threatens endangered fish sacred to Native American tribes. The activists in Klamath Falls have erected a red and white circus tent, dubbed the Water Crisis Info Center, on private property just feet from the irrigation gates.

A display of the Klamath Bucket Brigade sits between a circus tent and a canal gate last month in Klamath Falls, Ore. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Bundy has pledged his support to the activists, one of whom, Dan Nielsen, stormed the Idaho Capitol with him last year. Bundy and Nielsen both confirmed they are in regular communication.

Recently, Nielsen said he is waiting to see if the water issue can be returned to state courts before taking action, but Bundy said withholding the water is “pure theft” and that if courts fail to back Nielsen, “I’ll go stand with him, and I know that there are thousands of people that will as well.”

The protesters are part of the People’s Rights Network, an organization that Bundy launched last year at the height of coronavirus restrictions. Using a proprietary internet platform, tens of thousands of members can communicate with one another, potentially summoning gun-toting supporters to scenes of protests.

Standing in his kitchen, Bundy recently used his smartphone to pull up the latest stats for People’s Rights — nearly 60,000 members organized in 29 states and Canada, all promising to protect their fellow members if called, he claimed. Bundy is quick to describe it as a linked network of “neighbors” who make independent choices and are not under his direction.

But Bundy does make calls to action, though often veiled. He recently posted a video on his YouTube channel, explaining how he sees America at this moment, using a mildew infecting his orchard as a metaphor. The fungus, he said, can’t be easily beat; the blighted branches have to be cut off and burned.

Without such drastic measures, Bundy warned, a nearby stand of saplings, with roots too young to fight the “invasive species” on their own, could die. The saplings, he said, were like “our children.”

Asked during an earlier phone interview who were the invasive species threatening future generations, Bundy said, “That’s a really good question. Maybe I don’t want to answer it.”

Then he continued, “Right now, I can say the agents in the Bureau of Reclamation in Klamath Falls, they’re certainly invasive species. They’re literally coming in, and they become parasites upon the people’s rights in that area.”

That kind of rhetoric has permeated the water crisis in Klamath Falls, and to some extremist trackers reveal a more disturbing picture of Bundy’s supporters.

In June, People’s Rights welcomed a guest speaker to the Klamath County Fairgrounds: a far-right activist who has claimed the proposed removal of four dams along the Klamath River is part of an “Agenda 21 method on how to control all people.”

Agenda 21 — a nonbinding 1992 United Nations resolution that encourages global sustainable development — has become fodder for conspiracy theorists who claim it is part of a plot to create one global government and trample freedoms in the name of environmentalism.

On a right-wing Telegram channel called Patriot Party California, an antisemitic message claimed the Klamath water shut-off was the work of so-called globalists who are “creating an artificial drought and an intentional food shortage.”

“Jews have made a move to starve Americans by cutting off the water supply to 1000’s of farms from Oregon to California,” the message read.

Goldwasser, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the Klamath Falls fight is playing out in an area that is “somewhat of a hotbed for white nationalism.” She said it has drawn the attention of militias and secessionists who support the creation of the State of Jefferson out of rural counties in Northern California and southern Oregon.

“Any time you have gun owners — open carriers whenever possible — that also have an anti-government mind-set to the point of anger and grievance, there’s always the possibility of violence,” she said.

Boise State political science assistant professor Charlie Hunt says Bundy’s shot at occupying the Idaho governor’s mansion is unlikely but not out of the question. Though the Idaho Republican Party has disavowed Bundy, ultra-conservative politics are the norm here, he said.

The lieutenant governor, considered Bundy’s main primary competition, is an ardent Trump supporter whom Hunt compares to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who supports conspiracy theories.

“It’s Idaho and there are plenty of voters who share those [far-right] views,” Hunt said. “The loudest voices in Idaho tend to be voices like Bundy.”

Burkhart, the political expert, points out that Bundy has name recognition and a fervent base. The tension in Idaho is less than in the Klamath basin, he said, but “if the exceptional drought spreads, then the political climate for Bundy becomes more favorable.”

Bundy, who supports himself and his six children largely from income from commercial investment properties, is taking the next year to run a grass-roots campaign, in which he’s promising to accept any invitation to speak that comes with a crowd of 50 people or more — including gatherings of urban liberals, whom he says he can convert to his way of thinking. His platform also includes an end to state income and property taxes.

Even detractors acknowledge he has a potent combination of everyman charm and cowboy swagger that still holds sway here, along with a clear framework of religious principles (including a promise to ban abortion) that win votes in this largely Christian state. Bundy said he believes his message will resonate even in the cities he scorns because the affordable housing crisis crosses party lines.

One of his daughters is 18 and thinking of marrying her sweetheart. She plans to train to be a masseuse and her boyfriend has college plans. Bundy wonders how they will ever afford a housing payment. His property, for which he paid nearly $600,000 six years ago, is now worth double that — a mortgage the young couple couldn’t manage, he said.

The average home price in Idaho is about $390,000, according to real estate tracker Zillow, an increase of nearly 28% from a year ago. Flooding the market is how he sees homes becoming attainable for future generations.

“It is important to know that the historical American dream was rooted in property ownership. In order for people to feel prosperous, secure and happy, they have to have their own home,” Bundy, wearing a trademark Stetson, told the cheering crowd at his kickoff event, which drew about 400 people, though organizers claimed 700.

“To create affordable housing for the young and the old alike, we simply need more supply. And to have more supply, we need to take our lands back.”

Chabria reported from Meridian and Klamath Falls and Branson-Potts from Los Angeles.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Source link

0 notes

newstechreviews · 4 years ago

Link

(TOPEKA, Kan.) — Kansas Republicans on Tuesday nominated Rep. Roger Marshall for the Senate over polarizing conservative Kris Kobach, heeding the party establishment’s advice as it tries to keep a normally safe seat out of play in what could be a difficult year for the GOP.

Marshall prevailed comfortably in a crowded primary field with the backing of major farm, business and anti-abortion groups but without a pre-election endorsement from President Donald Trump sought by Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and others for the two-term congressman for western and central Kansas. Marshall overcame Kobach’s reputation as a conservative firebrand and informal adviser to Trump.

Marshall will face Democratic state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a former lifelong moderate Republican who received national attention at the end of 2018 by switching parties. GOP leaders have worried for months about Bollier’s ability so far to raise more in contributions than the top GOP candidates combined.

Travis Heying–The Wichita Eagle/APRoger Marshall pumps his fist after speaking to supporters near Pawnee Rock, Kan., Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020, after defeating Kris Kobach in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, is nationally known for advocating restrictive immigration policies and alienated independent and moderate GOP voters in losing the Kansas governor’s race in 2018. Marshall and his allies made that loss a key issue as he and Kobach battled atop the GOP field.

Bob and Debbie Rosenberger said Kobach’s loss in 2018 was on their minds as they cast their Republican primary ballots for Marshall at a southwest Topeka church. The retired 62-year-old postal worker and his wife, a retired, 63-year-old nursing home supervisor, said they are Trump supporters and believe Marshall will help him in the Senate.

As for Kobach, Bob Rosenberger said, “Bottom line, I just don’t trust him as much as Roger Marshall.”

The race for retiring four-term Republican Sen. Pat Roberts’ seat had national implications even though the GOP hasn’t lost a Senate contest in Kansas since 1932. Republicans are trying to keep their 53-47 Senate majority with competitive races in other states, including Arizona, Colorado and Maine.

Marshall immediately called for party unity at a watch party at a winery southwest of his central Kansas hometown of Great Bend. He told his supporters that the GOP’s Senate majority is at stake in his race and said he was strengthened by the contentious primary.

“I’ve always believed in this iron sharpening iron,” Marshall said in his livestreamed remarks. “After this primary, our swords are sharp and our shields are thick.”

Kobach said in his concession speech that he had faced a “very steep, uphill struggle” after telling reporters earlier in the day that the GOP establishment had a recent history of crushing conservatives like him. But he urged Republicans to get behind Marshall.

“We will hold this seat, and I will do everything I can to make sure that happens for the Republican Party,” Kobach said, speaking from Leavenworth, where he kicked off his campaign more than a year ago.

Even with Marshall as the nominee, the GOP faces a potentially competitive Senate race. Bollier had raised more than $8 million through July — and her campaign said Tuesday night that the total is now $9 million — a big sum in a low-cost media state like Kansas, with donations flooding in from outside the state.

Bollier said in an online primary victory speech each of the Republican candidates demonstrated that he would be a “yes man” for the party, calling it “the last thing we need right now.” Bollier has positioned herself as a “commonsense” political moderate, but the GOP is likely to try to paint her as too liberal for the state.

Bollier is a retired Kansas City-area anesthesiologist, while Marshall is an obstetrician.

Marshall raised about $2.9 million and Kobach, a little more than $1 million. Bob Hamilton, the founder of a Kansas City-area plumbing company, largely self-funded a campaign heavy on television ads with $3.5 million in personal loans. Those figures were all dwarfed by PAC spending in the primary, which totaled about $11 million.

Hamilton had a strong showing in running behind Kobach and Marshall in early returns.

Marshall, Kobach and Hamilton and eight other candidates made the field the largest for the GOP since the state began holding Senate primaries more than 100 years ago. Kansas has no runoff elections, so Marshall could win the nomination with 40% or less of the vote.

Dean Crenshaw, a 53-year-old welder from Belle Plaine in south-central Kansas, voted for Kobach for his conservative views despite believing that Democrats preferred to have Bollier face Kobach.

He said he was torn between voting for Kobach and Marshall but didn’t know much about Marshall and he “just voted for the guy I knew the most about.”

McConnell’s first choice in the race was U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former Wichita-area congressman, but while Pompeo made multiple visits to Kansas suggesting interest, he definitely declared himself out in January.

Kobach argued that the issues he’s often emphasized — particularly immigration — would play better in a fall Senate campaign and said he’d benefit from a flood of pro-Trump voters going to the polls in November after skipping voting in the 2018 mid-terms.

But many Republicans didn’t buy those arguments.

Roberts declared his support for Marshall after the congressman had picked up endorsements from the U.S Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas Farm Bureau, the National Right to Life Committee and Kansans for Life, the state’s most influential anti-abortion group. Marshall also had the backing of 97-year-old political icon Bob Dole, the former U.S. Senate majority leader and 1996 GOP presidential nominee.

#Blogger

0 notes

kansascityhappenings · 5 years ago

Text

USDA job openings in Kansas City ahead of big relocation

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dozens of USDA job openings are listed online for the Kansas City market. This comes as the United States Department of Agriculture prepares to relocate its headquarters to Kansas City.

The jobs pay well. Some come with a six-figure salary. These jobs include anything from writing grants, biology research, social science research, rural community development, statistics, auditing, accounting, and office administration. The USDA job openings, in part, are a result of a large exodus of workers who have decided to quit instead of relocate out of Washington D.C.

Many of the posted jobs require a college education or higher and include benefit packages. Scroll to the bottom of this page for links to those jobs.

USDA Hiring Opportunities

According to the Kansas City Area Development Council, the USDA will hire at least 50 people, and up to 90 employees during the first round of hires. This includes 40 to 80 positions for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and 10 or more positions for the Economic Research Service.

In total, the USDA plans to move about 570 jobs to Kansas City. Despite the positives of strong jobs coming to our area, there is notable contention over the relocation deal. The union representing USDA workers, some Democrat leaders, and critics claim the relocation was a political move by the Trump Administration to diminish the power of the department, which does research on climate change and the environment. Critics have argued that President Donald Trump’s goals, policies, or priorities don’t always align with the USDA’s work and research. The USDA claims the move will improve operations over the next decade and save taxpayers money.

As for the move, it is unclear when the USDA will announce what building it has selected for its operations. It is also unclear whether the headquarters will be in Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas City, Kansas. Employees relocating from the Washington D.C. area are expected to move to the metro by the end of September; this year’s federal budget ends on September 30th.

Contention over Relocation

Some of the employees who decided to quit rather than relocate will receive buyouts. However, the USDA reduced those buyouts from $25,000 per employee to $10,000. The USDA claims the reduction in buyout payments has to do with the higher than expected number of employees refusing to transfer. Eligible workers will receive a lump-sum payment for resigning or retiring. 91 employees were eligible for the Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment plan. Around 250 employees plan to quit.

During the relocation announcement on June 13, employees turned their backs in a silent protest to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

Near the end of his nine-minute speech, Perdue said, “Moving you out of the capital area in no way lessens your importance.”

The secretary took no questions from employees after making the announcement.

Union officials described the relocation process as an unprecedented mess.

“It’s hard to imagine USDA management finding more ways to demoralize the workers at these two agencies, yet they continue to top themselves at every turn,” AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said in a release. “It’s no secret that employees are extremely upset by USDA’s decision to relocate these two agencies half-way across the country… USDA should have planned better for that reality and budgeted accordingly.”

Employees Coming out of Retirement to Help the USDA

Most of the employees at the Economic Service and National Institute for Food and Agriculture intend to quit rather than relocate. In order to keep operations running as normal during the transition process, the department is offering jobs to retired employees. Current workers have until September 26 to make a final decision on whether they will accept the relocation offer or leave the department. If retired workers return to the USDA, they will still receive their defined benefit annuities. One former ERS employee says the department offered him half of his previous salary to work 20 hours a week at an office in Washington D.C. and then offered him the chance to work from home in 2020.

The department hasn’t announced how many retirees it hopes to rehire or whether any grant editors have agreed to move to Kansas City. The high turnover rate could stall or even jeopardize operations at the USDA; this has the potential to disrupt critical research or lead to food insecurity.

Other Operations Moving out of Washington D.C.

On a similar note, the U.S. Department of Interior is relocating the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado.

Officials at USDA and DOI have both said moving its headquarters will place its departments closer to the majority of people and lands it serves. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the move will save the department nearly $300 million over 15 years. The USDA also claims the move will enhance long-term sustainability, save taxpayers money, bring resources closer to stakeholders, attract talented workers, and help it retain employees over the long run.

DOI is relocating positions to offices in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

Senators Concerned about the Move and Buyouts

Several Democratic U.S. Senators have concerns about the reduced buyouts for USDA employees who plan to quit.

Senators Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Ben Cardin, and Chris Van Hollen are putting pressure on the USDA to explain its reasoning behind the smaller buyouts.

“We are troubled by the United States Department of Agriculture’s decision to lower [Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments] by such a large amount, and we have serious concerns about the timing of this announcement, and the burden it places on federal workers who have already endured significant hardship throughout this rushed relocation process,” wrote the senators in a letter to Secretary Perdue.

The USDA has pushed back on lawmakers who have tried to prevent the move. The department claims U.S. Supreme Court rulings, laws, and determinations by the Government Accountability Office prevent Congress from limiting executive agencies’ ability to relocate to improve its operations. Siding with USDA and DOI, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa reintroduced the Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement Act. The SWAMP Act would repeal a Truman-era statute specifying “all offices attached to the seat of government be exercised in the District of Columbia, and not elsewhere.”

The SWAMP Act would allow states, cities, and other communities the chance to compete for department headquarters. It also gives power to departments to move to areas considered advantageous for its work.

The Work and Role of the USDA

The USDA serves dozens of industries critical to the United States’ stability. One of its largest focuses is to develop and execute federal laws related to farming, forestry, and food.

The executive department works to assure food safety, protects natural resources through conservation, helps stabilize rural communities, promotes agricultural trade and production, and has the goal of ending hunger in the United States and around the world.

Roughly 80% of the USDA’s $141 billion budget goes toward the Food and Nutrition Service program. This includes the Food Stamp program, which a large portion of Americans depend upon.

The USDA also works to educate the public on nutrition. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides healthy food to over 40 million low-income and homeless people monthly.

The department also provides surplus foods to developing countries. The USDA helps farmers and food producers with crop sales both nationally and internationally.

The USDA includes 29 agencies and offices with nearly 100,000 employees who serve the American people. It has more than 4,500 locations across the country and overseas.

President Abraham Lincoln established the Independent Department of Agriculture on May 15, 1862. Lincoln called it the “people’s department.”

USDA Job Listings in Kansas City

Supervisory Grants Management Specialist

Administrative Officer

Biological Science Specialist (National Program Leader)

Research Social Scientist

Auditor

Supervisory Risk Management Specialist

Supervisory Statistician (Data Scientist)

Accountant

Agricultural Economist

Information Technology Specialist

IT Specialist (Operating Systems / Systems Administration )

Human Resources Specialist

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/09/02/usda-job-openings-in-kansas-city-ahead-of-big-relocation/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/09/02/usda-job-openings-in-kansas-city-ahead-of-big-relocation/

0 notes

itsfinancethings · 4 years ago

Link

As for Kobach, Bob Rosenberger said, “Bottom line, I just don’t trust him as much as Roger Marshall.”

“I’ve always believed in this iron sharpening iron,” Marshall said in his livestreamed remarks. “After this primary, our swords are sharp and our shields are thick.”

Bollier is a retired Kansas City-area anesthesiologist, while Marshall is an obstetrician.

Hamilton had a strong showing in running behind Kobach and Marshall in early returns.

Dean Crenshaw, a 53-year-old welder from Belle Plaine in south-central Kansas, voted for Kobach for his conservative views despite believing that Democrats preferred to have Bollier face Kobach.

He said he was torn between voting for Kobach and Marshall but didn’t know much about Marshall and he “just voted for the guy I knew the most about.”

But many Republicans didn’t buy those arguments.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

jobsearchtips02 · 4 years ago

Text

Secretary of State Pompeo to Advise Chinese People to Modification Communist Party

WASHINGTON– Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on the Chinese individuals to modify the judgment Communist Celebration’s instructions in a speech explaining the Trump administration’s full-throttle response to an assertive China.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is a “true believer in an insolvent, totalitarian ideology,” Mr. Pompeo stated. He stopped shy of explicitly requiring routine modification, urging allied countries and individuals of China to work with the U.S. to change the Communist Celebration’s habits.

The Communist Celebration “fears the Chinese individuals’s truthful opinions more than any foe,” Mr. Pompeo said in a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif. The U.S.” should likewise engage and empower the Chinese individuals,” he stated.

The speech, called “Communist China and the Free World’s Future,” caps a series of addresses by senior officials in current weeks focusing on what the Trump administration views as the challenge positioned by China and its broadening global reach. The uncompromising rhetoric has actually been accompanied by an uptick in administration pressure on Beijing– from sanctions to military workouts and indictments– as relations between the nations spiral downward to the most affordable point in years.

Footage appears to show small fires burning at the Chinese consulate in Houston, which. was bought to close by the Trump administration. Here’s what we understand about the latest. escalation in tensions between the U.S. and China. Image: David J. Phillip/Associated. Press.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to ask for comment. The Chinese foreign ministry has formerly challenged what it said were Trump administration attempts to drive a wedge in between the Chinese individuals and the party.

Today, the administration took the unmatched move of buying China to close its consulate in Houston by Friday afternoon, implicating it and other Chinese diplomatic missions of financial espionage and visa scams.

Beijing retaliated early Friday by purchasing the closing of the U.S. consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. The foreign ministry called it a “legitimate and needed response to the unreasonable habits of the U.S.”

American diplomats had been expecting the closure of among the 7 U.S. diplomatic objectives in the country, and are making preparations in case that happens, according to people knowledgeable about the matter.

The consulate closings have added a brand-new front to a growing list of U.S.-China conflicts over trade, technology and international impact.

Mr. Pompeo, in an interview ahead of the speech, declined to go over possible retaliation for the Houston consulate closure, stating any such step would depend on Beijing. He depicted the U.S. move as required for nationwide security and the avoidance of intellectual property theft from delicate energy and health-care businesses in the Houston area.

” We are now decades into America not reacting to Chinese hostility,” he stated, explaining U.S. policy as an effort to bring back balance to a relationship the administration sees as unfairly tilted toward Beijing.

Mr. Pompeo criticized Beijing for restricting U.S. diplomats in China and preventing them from meeting with members of the legislature and others. “This is the sort of lack of reciprocity that President Trump merely has actually stated is inappropriate,” he stated.

The administration’s increased concentrate on Beijing dovetails with a tough-on-China message in Mr. Trump’s re-election project, similar to the one in his 2016 quote.

As president, while his administration has actually transferred to challenge Beijing, Mr. Trump has actually often prevented confronting Mr. Xi, playing down differences or human-rights concerns. That was particularly so during trade settlements that ended in a limited deal that needs China to increase purchases of U.S. farm products and energy.

Mr. Pompeo, in the interview, said challenging China was a long-lasting policy for the president along with a bipartisan priority for Congress, which has extremely passed legislation allowing for Chinese sanctions. “Look, the American people are not going to enable our economic work, our skill to be taken by the Chinese Communist Party,” he stated.

Mr. Pompeo has previously made direct interest foreign residents while assaulting their federal governments, in speeches on Iran in 2018 and Venezuela in March.

Lots of world leaders have criticized the Trump administration’s diplomacy as unilateralist. But in recent weeks, Washington has actually seen crucial allies embrace its harder-edged method to China.

That effort has actually been enhanced by Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, its crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong, the mass detention of Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang, and its recent fight with neighboring India on their Himalayan border.

This month, the U.K. revealed it will bar equipment made by Chinese business Huawei Technologies Co. from the country’s 5G telecoms networks following intense lobbying by the U.S., which states the company presents security dangers. Huawei denies it does so.

India pointed out similar cybersecurity concerns last month in banning lots of Chinese mobile apps, including social media platforms TikTok and.

WeChat,

after the border clash with Chinese troops left 20 Indian soldiers dead.

In the speech, Mr. Pompeo urged similar countries to apply collaborated pressure on the Chinese Communist Celebration. “We must induce China to alter in more innovative and assertive methods, due to the fact that Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our success,” he said.

The shifting worldwide consensus on China is giving new prominence to Mr. Pompeo, who has emerged in current months as the administration’s top critic of Beijing and a force in policy making.

Mr. Pompeo, a former congressman from Kansas and Central Intelligence Firm director, took over at the State Department in 2018 as the administration was moving its method to China– away from working with Beijing on North Korea and towards facing it on trade and its aspirations for worldwide power.

Andrew Kim, a previous senior CIA officer who worked with Mr. Pompeo at the agency, recalls that Mr. Pompeo held a pragmatic view of China’s management, believing, for instance, that Beijing would undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy if it suited its interest.

” He never served in Beijing, he never served in Hong Kong, however he called it properly,” said Mr. Kim, a current fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Thursday’s speech consisted of an important summary of Mr. Pompeo’s meeting in June in Hawaii with China’s top foreign-policy authorities, Yang Jiechi, at a time of strained relations. “It was the very same old story– words, but actually no offer to alter any of the habits,” he said.

” The only method to genuinely change Communist China is to act not on the basis of what Chinese leaders say but how they behave,” Mr. Pompeo stated. “Suspicion and confirm.”

In working out a new China policy, Mr. Pompeo has actually been joined by Attorney general of the United States William Barr, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and his deputy, Matthew Pottinger. Mr. Pompeo decided a public case required to be made for a harder China policy, and arranged for Messrs. O’Brien, Barr and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray to offer speeches dealing with Beijing’s problematic behavior, according to a senior administration official.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls Chinese leader Xi Jinping a ‘real believer. in an insolvent totalitarian ideology,’ according to a draft of his speech.

Picture:. mads claus rasmussen/EPA/Shutterstock.

Though drafted individually by the senior officials and their staffs, the speeches were designed to take on various problems and construct on each other, this authorities stated. Mr. Barr looked at the role of the business neighborhood and Beijing’s efforts to co-opt it. Mr. O’Brien resolved ideology while Mr. Wray took on espionage and intellectual-property theft.

Mr. Pompeo held out the possibility of working cooperatively with Beijing. But much of the speech argues for a tough-minded technique, calling attention to unmet promises by China’s federal government and the way it treats its people.

” Communists always lie, but the biggest lie is that the Chinese Communist Celebration speaks for 1.4 billion individuals who are surveilled, oppressed and scared to speak up,” Mr. Pompeo prepares to state.

The location, the Nixon library in Yorba Linda, Calif., brings intentional significance since Mr. Nixon charted a new course of engagement with the leadership of China, according to a senior State Department authorities. The Trump administration sees that prior engagement with China’s management, aimed in part at putting pressure on the Soviet Union, as having run its course.

The audience is expected to include Wang Dan, a leader from the Tiananmen Square protests, and Wei Jingsheng, a democracy activist given that the 1970 s. Mr. Pompeo is anticipated to acknowledge them and to remember meetings with ethnic Uighurs and Kazakhs who got away detention in Xinjiang, as well as his conversations with Hong Kong’s democracy leaders such as Nathan Law.

Write to Kate O’Keeffe at [email protected] and William Mauldin at [email protected]

%%.

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/secretary-of-state-pompeo-to-advise-chinese-people-to-modification-communist-party/

0 notes

seriousbusinessforhumans · 5 years ago

Link

by Chris Lu and Harin Contractor - February 5, 2020

Donald Trump has been on a mission this week to distract from his impeachment by touting his administration’s economic record. First, he launched a 30-second ad after the Super Bowl promising that “the best is yet to come.” Then, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Trump highlighted the “American Comeback.” The speech was full of audacious—and characteristically inaccurate—claims: “our economy is the best it has ever been”; the “average unemployment rate … is lower than any administration in the history of our country”; and “wages are rising fast.”

In 2019, for instance, the gap between the richest and poorest households in the United States reached its highest point in more than 50 years. The number of Americans without health insurance continues to climb following years of declines since the passage and implementation of Obamacare. And household debt is now in excess of $14 trillion, exceeding the pre-recession high.

Even with low unemployment, wage growth is lagging. The most recent employment report reported wages increasing by just 2.9 percent over the last year. With inflation at 2.1 percent, that’s not much of a pay raise. To the extent that wage growth has picked up in recent months, a major contributor has been increases in state and local minimum wages that Republicans and the president opposed.

Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment, the 2017 tax cut, has produced none of its promised benefits, including the $4,000 pay raise that he and his allies promised to American workers. In fact, as a result of the tax cut, 91 companies in the Fortune 500 paid no federal taxes last year. The country’s six biggest banks saved $32 billion at the same time that they laid off more than 1,000 employees.

Ironically, despite the President’s pledge to help the “forgotten men and women,” blue-collar job growth—which includes construction, manufacturing, and mining—remains anemic, only growing at 0.8 percent in 2019 compared to 2 percent in Obama’s final term.

What’s more, the ongoing trade war plunged the manufacturing sector into recession last year, which has stunted economic growth in states like Wisconsin and Michigan. Tensions with China produced a 24 percent increase in farm bankruptcies last year, with the most coming from Wisconsin. The Congressional Budget Office estimated recently that Trump’s trade policies will cost American households an average of $1,277 this year.

Worse yet, employers reported the highest number of layoffs in four years. For workers who are able to find new jobs, data shows they earn about 10 percent less than before.

But while the economic reality under Trump is troubling for most Americans overall, it’s even more daunting for African-American workers, who have an unemployment rate almost twice as high as white workers. Displaced African Americans earn 13 percent less in their new jobs.

(selected segments of the article)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/upshot/minimum-wage-boost-bottom-earners.html

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-consumer-debt-is-now-breaching-levels-last-reached-during-the-2008-financial-crisis-2019-06-19

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/789540931/2-years-later-trump-tax-cuts-have-failed-to-deliver-on-gops-promises

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/these-91-fortune-500-companies-didnt-pay-federal-taxes-in-2018.html

https://www.newsweek.com/two-years-after-trump-said-economy-can-hit-6-percent-gdp-growth-slowed-21-percent-1484901

US Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag06.htm

https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/news/farm-bankruptcies-jump-24-as-trump-trade-war-tariffs-bite-2019-10-1028649836

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tariffs-cost-average-us-household-year-cbo-lower-income-2020-1-1028857027

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/2019-was-one-of-decades-worst-years-layoffs-job-cuts-2020-1-1028791832

#Donald Trump #Trump's America #State of the union #american economy #trump's lies #wages #wall street #tax cut #federal taxes #corporate taxes #farm bankruptcies #trade issues #trade war #2010s #2020 #household debt #economic growth #banks

0 notes

centinel2001 · 5 years ago

Text

President Trump Convention Speech to American Farm Bureau – Video and Transcript…

Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on January 20, 2020 by sundance

Sunday evening President Donald Trump delivered a key-note speech during the American Farm Bureau National Convention. [Video and Transcript Below]

[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: Well, I want to thank you very much. And thank you to our great Secretary of…

View On WordPress

0 notes

courtneytincher · 5 years ago

Text

Trump Aims for Joe Biden, Ensnares Ukraine's Leader

(Bloomberg) -- Want to receive this post in your inbox every day? Sign up for the Balance of Power newsletter, and follow Bloomberg Politics on Twitter and Facebook for more.Beset once again by questions of whether he inappropriately sought electoral help from a foreign government, Donald Trump is reviving his 2016 playbook: try to turn the tables on his Democratic opponent.But the tactic is making life harder for Ukraine’s novice president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.At issue is Trump’s July 25 telephone call to Zelenskiy, the content of which has emerged as a potentially defining storyline of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In the call, Trump is alleged to have asked Zelenskiy to investigate a largely discredited accusation that Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden tried to interfere in a Ukrainian corruption investigating involving a company connected to his son, Hunter.As Aliaksandr Kudrytski and Andrew Langley write, Zelenskiy must tread carefully.At home, Zelenskiy had been off to a flying start since his shock election victory in April. His market-friendly policies helped turn the hryvnia into this year’s best-performing currency, he’s riding high in polls and a prisoner swap with Moscow has top diplomats predicting improved chances for peace between the longtime foes.But his job just got trickier. Congress is already probing the matter after a complaint from a federal whistleblower. Trump yesterday suggested he discussed Biden during the call and said he’d consider releasing a partial transcript.For Zelenskiy, who’s set to meet Trump this week in New York, the question is whether his own agenda will be torpedoed by the latest storm surrounding the U.S. president.Global HeadlinesDiplomatic whirlwind | The U.S.-Iran showdown and the U.K.’s search for a deal to leave the European Union move to Manhattan this week as about 200 world leaders and thousands of diplomats converge on New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly. While talk of a historic meeting between Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has faded, France still thinks it can convince the U.S. and Iran to dial back their mutual hostility.Home raid | South Korean prosecutors reportedly raided the residence of Justice Minister Cho Kuk as part of a growing corruption investigation that could further sap public support for President Moon Jae-in. Cho, a close confidant of Moon’s, is being scrutinized over issues including his children’s college applications and an investment in a private equity fund. He’s denied wrongdoing.Signaling support | In a speech that risks being viewed as siding with India in its dispute with Pakistan, Trump yesterday pledged expanded military cooperation with New Delhi and called for more border security. Drawing huge cheers from a raucous crowd at a rock concert-like event in Houston, the president appeared on stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who’s seeking to expand control of the disputed territory of Kashmir. In the audience: more than 50,000 Indian Americans — an influential voter base.Israeli Arab Spring | The political bloc representing Israel’s large Arab minority took the rare step of recommending a candidate for prime minister in a bid to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu, who was badly weakened in last week’s inconclusive revote. In supporting former military chief Benny Gantz to form the next government, the Joint List of Arab parties said it wanted to show it would no longer be taken for granted and rejected Netanyahu’s “policies of fear and hate.”No green light | Only two of the world’s 10 biggest banks joined the coalition of 130 global financial firms in agreeing to align their business with international efforts to address climate change and other environmental issues. Citigroup and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China joined the pledge, which asks firms to self-assess their sustainability practices and to develop plans to increase those efforts by 2023.What to WatchChina’s cancellation of a planned visit to farms in the American heartland was done at the request of the U.S., Bloomberg’s Washington bureau reports, an indication the change wasn’t caused by a negative turn in the lower-level discussions held in Washington last week. Trump is set to meet Wednesday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as the countries seek to sign a trade deal. Bernie Sanders kicks off an Iowa tour today aimed at showing he’s the Democratic candidate best able to woo back working-class voters. Thomas Cook, the household name for package holidays, has collapsed and the U.K. government will have to spend millions to fly stranded tourists back. Saving the company was out of the question with its outdated travel model. Hong Kong protesters gathered at shopping malls, set blazes and clashed with police in the 16th weekend of protests, as the city braces for large-scale demonstrations planned for Oct. 1’s 70th anniversary of Communist rule in China.And finally ... Small demonstrations erupted this weekend in Egypt after a series of online videos made by a fledgling actor and ex-government contractor alleged corruption all the way at the top. The concern now is that an escalation of protests against President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and the military at a time of worsening living standards could upend a revival that has made Egypt an emerging markets darling and send investors fleeing. \--With assistance from Michael Gunn, Amy Teibel, Karen Leigh, Ruth Pollard and Flavia Krause-Jackson.To contact the author of this story: Kathleen Hunter in London at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Karl Maier at [email protected] more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

September 23, 2019 at 11:02AM via IFTTT

#Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

0 notes

chestnutpost · 6 years ago

Text

Powerful Firefighters Union Has A Message For Joe Biden: ‘Run, Joe, Run’

This post was originally published on this site

WASHINGTON ― If Joe Biden decides to make a run for president in the 2020 election, he can expect to have a lot of firefighters in his corner.

The politically powerful International Association of Fire Fighters has a long and warm relationship with the former vice president, stretching back to his early days in the Senate in the 1970s. Even though the 2020 Democratic field is only just taking shape, the head of the firefighters union is making his personal allegiances clear.

“Oh, I’m more than hoping ― I’m doing everything I can to ‘Run, Joe, Run,’” said Harold Schaitberger, the union’s general president since 2000.

Unions are a pillar of the Democratic base and can be a strong influence in primary elections, if they choose to weigh in. During the 2016 election cycle, the IAFF decided to hold off on an endorsement during the primary after Biden announced he wouldn’t run. In the end, the union declined to publicly back the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, during the general election, saying her support wasn’t broad enough within the union.

But it’s likely that the IAFF, which represents 316,000 workers, will be all-in this year if Biden files papers to seek the nomination to run against President Donald Trump.

Biden is slated to deliver the keynote address at the union’s conference in Washington next week. Schaitberger met personally with Biden in January. While the union head said he didn’t want to get into the details of their discussion, Schaitberger said he told the former vice president the same thing he’s been telling him since 2015: The guy needs to throw his hat in the ring.

“We really think that we need someone like Joe Biden who will take that center-progressive ― but center ― lane, and who will be the candidate who can speak to workers [in] states like Wisconsin and Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania, who can speak to the real working class,” Schaitberger said.

“That working class used to be dependable Democratic supporters who to some degree, over time, have not been as committed,” he added.

The union’s affinity for Biden says a lot about the maybe-candidate’s appeal to centrists in a growing field, and the broader debate on the left about who’s best equipped to take on Trump: a deep progressive who excites the base, or a moderate who can appeal to conservative and middle-of-the-road voters turned off by the Trump presidency.

Even though he hasn’t declared a run, Biden already enjoys a comfy head start for the Democratic nomination in most polls, handily leading nearly a dozen declared or potential candidates.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters Harold Schaitberger, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, has a relationship with former Vice President Joe Biden that goes back to the late 1970s.

The IAFF’s membership probably skews more to the middle than a lot of other big public-sector unions known for their progressive politics. The union’s 2017 conference in Washington included speeches not only from Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), but Fox News host Tucker Carlson and then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. Like the building trades unions, the IAFF has relationships that cross the political aisle.

Although the union hasn’t done any internal polling this cycle, Schaitberger said his membership is “broad and wide,” and has always embraced Amtrak Joe’s “pragmatic approach.”

Most IAFF members also would share Biden’s demographic profile. Firefighters in the U.S. tend to be white men. Around 5 percent are women, and roughly 17 percent are either African-American, Latino or Asian, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The political ground on the left has shifted significantly since Biden and President Barack Obama left office in early 2017. As HuffPost’s Zach Carter put it this week, “Joe Biden’s biggest 2020 problem is Joe Biden.” With talk of Medicare for All and a wave of young women of color claiming Democratic seats in Congress, Biden can come off like a political relic from a different party.

Schaitberger argued that’s all the more reason to get behind a Biden candidacy.

“The party has shifted in several ways too far to the left,” he said. “My membership, I believe, represents a pretty clear political landscape of the nation. I’ve got Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, and lots down the middle. … This kind of a membership … does respond to Joe’s voice.”

I’m more than hoping ― I’m doing everything I can to ‘Run, Joe, Run.’ IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger

Union endorsements typically aren’t done by a membership vote, and of course not all members end up thrilled with them. The IAFF, like a lot of unions, determines which candidates to support through its executive board, of which Schaitberger is a member. If Biden declares his candidacy and the union quickly gets behind him, Schaitberger will be reminding members of Biden’s support for their priorities over the years.

The union leader first got to know Biden when he was working in the union’s legislative shop in Washington in 1977, and Biden was serving his first term as a senator from Delaware. Over the years, Biden backed up the union when it came to public-safety officer death benefits, funding for emergency medical services and collective bargaining rights for firefighters, Schaitberger said.

Of course, there are plenty of other potential Democratic candidates who’ve been loyal supporters of unions and workers over the years.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has walked picket lines for decades. Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) browbeats companies just about every week for busting unions or offshoring work. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) keeps worker bargaining power near the center of her vision of a fair economy. And just last month, Harris re-introduced her bill to extend overtime protections to farm workers.

But according to Schaitberger, there’s no substitute for a 40-plus-year friendship.

“We’re really big on loyalty,” he said. “If you know anything about us, that’s our fundamental principle: If you’ve been with us, we’re going to be with you.”

The post Powerful Firefighters Union Has A Message For Joe Biden: ‘Run, Joe, Run’ appeared first on The Chestnut Post.

from The Chestnut Post https://thechestnutpost.com/news/powerful-firefighters-union-has-a-message-for-joe-biden-run-joe-run/

0 notes

librasunpixels-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Quotes

Warm at the left:

“invoice de blasio to iowa democrats: circulate left and win,” from david weigel: “‘no,’ stated invoice de blasio. ‘i’m now not going for walks for president.’ the mayor of new york town, clean off a 39-factor reelection victory, might solution variations of the 2020 question all day. Media back home, media that had followed him to the usa’s 102nd largest metropolis, were asking the query given that de blasio’s first trip to iowa in 2015. He became requested once more at a press gaggle before his speech to development iowa, giving a definitive answer to a question that is requested each time a politician travels to des moines. … once he faced the clicking, de blasio counseled a democratic destiny based totally on his own paintings in new york — pure economic populism, with taxes on the very rich procuring fitness care, pre-okay education, and less expensive housing. De blasio, who encouraged hillary clinton for president in 2016, changed into excited that his celebration seemed to be leaving neoliberalism behind.”

Ask Questions To Girls

Hot on the proper:

“[Fed] organisation devoted ‘militaristic’ operation against nevada rancher,” from the every day caller: “an research into the bureau of land control’s (blm) managing of the 2014 nevada standoff with rancher cliven bundy revealed ‘extraordinary bias,’ good sized misconduct and likely unlawful actions via the blm. Prosecutors shared the document with the bundys’ defense lawyers, prompting a petition to decide gloria navarro for a mistrial, or for the case to be brushed off altogether … nformer special agent dan love, who was in charge of impounding cliven bundy’s livestock in 2014, performed ‘the most intrusive, oppressive, large scale and militaristic trespass farm animals impound possible’ towards bundy’s ranch towards the direction of the u.S. Legal professional’s office, according to wooten. The bundys’ protection approach accuses the blm of the usage of overly-competitive and perilous techniques. Navarro has dominated that myhre’s prosecution team has devoted numerous brady act violations failing to show over exculpatory evidence, evidence that can exonerate the bundys.”

Daybook:

Trump has a cabinet assembly these days. The president’s specific plans for the holidays are still unconfirmed, however the palm seashore publish reviews melania and barron trump are already at mar-a-lago.

Quote of the day:

Sen. Mike rounds (r-s.D.) defined his vote blocking off trump’s nominee to guide the export-import financial institution: “my message to the white house has been once in a while it’s the duty of the senate to recommend, however not to consent. And that’s what we tried to do in this situation.” (nbc information)

Information you could use if you stay in d.C.:

-- d.C. Will see a few clouds and slightly cooler temperatures nowadays. The capital climate gang forecasts: “high stress constructing into our place from the awesome lakes have to assist preserve a storm system monitoring east across southern virginia and the carolinas from making it into our region, even though regions some distance south of d.C closer to fredericksburg should get clipped with a light shower or . In any other case we’re partially cloudy and cooler than the day prior to this, but now not too cold, with highs close to 50 to the low 50s[.]”

-- the wizards gained towards the pelicans 116-106. (candace buckner)

-- the capitals beat the stars 4-three. (isabelle khurshudyan)

-- laura vozzella profiles dorothy mcauliffe, who will relinquish her publish as virginia’s first woman next month: “[O]utside of the [governor’s] mansion, she’s been a trailblazer. Mcauliffe, fifty four, was the primary virginia first lady to set up her office inside the patrick henry constructing, in which cupboard secretaries and company heads work. She changed into the first to heavily push for regulation, buttonholing senators and delegates with all of the staying power — and none of the pay — of the professional lobbyists swarming capitol square.”

-- d.C. Del. Eleanor holmes norton (d) desires to make rock creek park a countrywide park. That would help free up a few federal money — the park presently has a $fifty three million maintenance backlog. (rachel chason)

-- maryland gov. Larry hogan (r) seemed hesitantly optimistic about a plan from democratic nation legislators to increase dedicated funding for metro with out elevating taxes. Robert mccartney reviews: “the initiative manner that each the maryland and virginia widespread assemblies will keep in mind important regulation early subsequent 12 months to help the transit machine[.] … the maryland bill … would dedicate maryland to elevate its annual contribution to metro permanently via $one hundred twenty five million a yr if positive conditions are met.”

0 notes

everettwilkinson · 7 years ago

Text

22 DEAD in Manchester horror — TRUMP: terrorists are ‘evil losers in life’ — Eliana and Dawsey SCOOP: LEWANDOWSKI, BOSSIE back in the mix — GARCETTI talks 2020

Listen to the Playbook Audio Briefing http://bit.ly/2rwaAo7 … Subscribe on iTunes http://apple.co/2eX6Eay … Visit the online home of Playbook http://politi.co/2f51Jnf

Good Tuesday morning. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP in BETHLEHEM offered his “deepest condolences to those so terribly injured in this terrorist attack” in Manchester, United Kingdom.

Story Continued Below

NEW LINE ALERT — “LOSERS” — TRUMP in the West Bank: Terrorists are “EVIL LOSERS IN LIFE.” TRUMP’S EXPLANATION, via pooler Mike Memoli: “So many young, beautiful innocent people living and enjoying their lives murdered by evil losers in life. I won’t call them monsters because they would like that term. They would think that’s a great name. I will call them from now on losers, because that’s what they are. They’re losers. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers. Just remember that.”

MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS FRONT PAGE — “MASSACRE: 22 CHILDREN AND ADULTS ARE MURDERED BY SUICIDE BOMBER AT ARENA POP CONCERT” http://bit.ly/2q6NAwi

AP at 6:05 a.m.: “LONDON (AP) – British prime minister says terrorist attack among the worst Britain has experienced.”

— THE LATEST: AP at 5:17 a.m., by Jill Lawless in Manchester and Gregory Katz in London, with Leanne Italie in New York, Mesfin Fekadu in Jersey City and Lori Hinnant and John Leicester in Paris: “An apparent suicide bomber attacked an Ariana Grande concert as it ended Monday night, killing 22 people among a panicked crowd of young concertgoers, some still wearing the star’s trademark kitten ears and holding pink balloons as they fled.

“Teenage screams filled the arena just after the explosion, which also killed the attacker and injured dozens. The attack sparked a nightlong search for loved ones — parents for the children they had accompanied or agreed to pick up, and friends for each other after groups were scattered by the blast. Twitter and Facebook were filled with appeals for the missing. … There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said police are treating the blast as an act of terrorism ‘until we know otherwise.’ …

“Forensic investigations are trying to determine if the attacker had accomplices, Hopkins said. He provided no information about the person who set off the bomb….There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Supporters of the extremist Islamic State group, which holds territory in Iraq’s Mosul and around its de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, celebrated the blast online. … If the explosion is confirmed as a terrorist attack it would be the deadliest in Britain since four suicide bombers killed 52 London commuters on three subway trains and a bus in July 2005.” http://apne.ws/2rOiVA5

**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/2lQswbh

AP BULLETIN at 4:42 a.m. — “SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korean military says it fired warning shot after unidentified object flew south from North Korea.”

ON THE WORLD STAGE — “Turkey tests Trump’s patience after protesters roughed up,” by Nahal Toosi: “Turkish officials, under pressure to prove loyalty to their autocratic president, are casting fresh blame on the United States following a violent clash last week between Turkish security guards and protesters in Washington. And there’s not a whole lot the Trump administration can do about it.

“Turkey’s Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned the U.S. ambassador in Ankara to lodge a formal protest days after Washington police intervened to stop Turkish security officials from beating up protesters. The violence near the Turkish embassy came soon after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with President Donald Trump at the White House, and video caught Erdogan watching some of the skirmish.

“The May 16 melee and subsequent diplomatic kerfuffle have offered an astonishing glimpse into the growing hostility between America and Turkey, two NATO allies at odds over how best to fight Islamic State terrorists, among other disputes.” http://politi.co/2rvlcnu

TOP MIDDLE-EAST TWEETS — Bill Booth (@BoothWilliam), Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post: “Between the lines: Trump tells Abbas to curb incitement, condemn attacks against Israeli civilians & stop payments to prisoners and martyrs” … @Yair_Rosenberg: “Oh man, watch Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (on right couch) react when Trump says—in Israel—‘We just got back from the Middle East.’” http://bit.ly/2rNfw4w …

… @aarondmiller2: “In knowing [and] working with Netanyahu for decades, never — and I mean never — have I seen him so relaxed in presence of a US president.” … @robertdanin: “Commentators on @Channel2News repeatedly referring to Ivanka Trump by her Hebrew name ‘Yael’. Israelis seem to see her as family.”

— After departing Bethlehem, DONALD TRUMP went back to the hotel, and then to Yad V’Shem, Israel’s Holocaust museum. He is going to give a speech at the Israel Museum in the 7 a.m. hour on the East coast. He is then scheduled to depart for Rome.

THE PRIZE FIGHT CONTINUES: NYT and WAPO’s LATEST SCOOPS …

— “Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence,” by WaPo’s Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima: “President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials. Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the [NSA], urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election. Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate …

“‘The White House does not confirm or deny unsubstantiated claims based on illegal leaks from anonymous individuals,’ [an unnamed] White House spokesman said. ‘The president will continue to focus on his agenda that he was elected to pursue by the American people.’ In addition to the requests to Coats and Rogers, senior White House officials sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn, … The officials said the White House appeared uncertain about its power to influence the FBI. ‘Can we ask him to shut down the investigation? Are you able to assist in this matter?’ one official said of the line of questioning from the White House.” http://wapo.st/2qe2nR2

— NYT A1, “Michael Flynn Misled Pentagon About His Russia Ties, Letter Says,” by Mark Mazzetti and Matt Rosenberg: “Mr. Flynn … told investigators in February 2016 that he had received no income from foreign companies and had only ‘insubstantial contact’ with foreign nationals … In fact, Mr. Flynn had sat two months earlier beside President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a Moscow gala for RT, the Kremlin-financed television network, which paid Mr. Flynn more than $45,000 to attend the event and give a separate speech. His failure to make those disclosures and his apparent attempt to mislead the Pentagon could put Mr. Flynn in further legal jeopardy. Intentionally lying to federal investigators is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.” http://nyti.ms/2qQybx3 … The letter http://bit.ly/2q6oVrq

****** A message from the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs (CAPD): One in two Americans rely on their employers for health care benefits including affordable access to prescription drugs. That’s why employers are partnering with PBMs to provide access to effective medications at the most affordable price and improve health outcomes. Learn more at www.affordableprescriptiondrugs.org. ******

TRUMP’S BUDGET OUT TODAY — “Trump’s budget hits his own voters hardest: The president’s proposal for next year’s federal spending calls for more than $1 trillion in cuts to social programs, including farm aid,” by Andrew Restuccia, Matt Nussbaum and Sarah Ferris: “Rather than breaking with Washington precedent, Trump’s spending blueprint follows established conservative orthodoxy, cutting taxes on the wealthy, boosting defense spending and taking a hatchet to programs for the poor and disabled — potentially hurting many of the rural and low-income Americans that voted him into office. …

“The president’s budget plan calls for more than $1 trillion in cuts to a wide range of social programs with millions of beneficiaries, from farm subsidies to federal student aid. That includes a $600 billion cut to Medicaid over 10 years, despite Trump’s repeated promises on the campaign trail not to cut the program. The budget also takes an ax to the federal food stamp program and Social Security Disability Insurance.

“Trump also proposes some of the deepest cuts to agriculture subsidies since Ronald Reagan, squeezing out nearly $50 billion over 10 years. Trump’s budget would drastically cut domestic programs controlled by Congress, slashing $1.7 trillion over 10 years. At the end of the decade, the U.S. would spend nearly twice as much on defense as on other domestic programs. Domestic discretionary spending would be capped at $429 billion per year, below 2004 levels, while military spending soars to $722 billion.” http://politi.co/2qRmxlF

— THE REALITY ABOUT BUDGETS… — This budget — like President Barack Obama’s budget before it — is dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. But it does represent a negotiating point for the administration as they pursue other budgeting priorities. That being said, we believe it’s going to be difficult for the House and Senate to pass a budget this year, which could stall — or stop — tax reform.

FLYNN WATCH — “Burr: Flynn could be held in contempt,” by Austin Wright and Burgess Everett: “Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr is not ruling out holding Michael Flynn in contempt of Congress as President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser continues to stonewall Congress. Flynn’s lawyer informed the Intelligence panel Monday that Flynn would not honor a subpoena for a list of his interactions with Russian officials in the run-up to last year’s presidential election.

“And the North Carolina Republican said his committee has ‘plenty’ of options to respond. ‘You’ll just have to wait and watch. [Contempt is] certainly one of the avenues that we could pursue,’ Burr told three reporters on Monday evening. ‘It does us no good to have people insist on pleading the Fifth if you’re out trying to get information. The only thing I can tell you is immunity is off the table.’” http://politi.co/2rOcxZz

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE — “Trump close to choosing outside counsel for Russia investigation,” by WaPo’s Bob Costa and Ashley Parker: “The attorneys who have spoken to the White House and who are seen as the finalists are Marc E. Kasowitz; Robert J. Giuffra Jr.; Reid H. Weingarten; and Theodore B. Olson … Two other attorneys who were originally viewed as contenders but have since drifted away from the mix, at least momentarily, because of legal or professional obstacles are Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. of Williams & Connolly and A.B. Culvahouse Jr. … Kasowitz, who has known Trump for decades, is expected to take a leading role. A partner at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman in New York, Kasowitz has represented Trump in numerous cases, including on his divorce records, real estate transactions and allegations of fraud at Trump University.” http://wapo.st/2rJFIxW

THE INVESTIGATION — “Mueller briefed on secret Comey memos, source says,” by CNN’s Pamela Brown and Shimon Prokupecz: “Additionally, he has already visited FBI headquarters, where he met with the counterintelligence agents who have been working on the case since last July, according to two people familiar with the matter.” http://cnn.it/2qb2BJj

— @NBCNews: “JUST IN: Former Trump associates Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have turned over documents to Senate Intel Committee, source tells NBC News”

NEW SHERIFFS AT 1600? “Trump eyeing Lewandowski, Bossie as crisis managers,” by Eliana Johnson and Josh Dawsey: “The White House is looking to wall off the scandals threatening to overtake the president’s agenda by building a separate crisis management operation. President Donald Trump personally reached out to two of his former campaign aides — his first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and his deputy campaign manager, David Bossie — to sound them out about working with the administration as crisis managers, according to two people familiar with the situation. … The scope and complexity of independent investigations has typically proved a challenge for regular White House staffers, who have struggled to juggle them with their day-to-day duties, and veterans of previous administrations say creating an independent operation can relieve some of the pressure on the press office.” http://politi.co/2q4DT1v

COMING ATTRACTIONS — “Ryan bucks White House, setting up clash on taxes,” by Rachael Bade: “Paul Ryan and the White House are barreling toward a tax reform show-down — a faceoff that’s becoming all but inevitable as the speaker continues selling a tax plan rejected by Trump officials. At issue is a controversial pillar of the House GOP tax plan that effectively hikes taxes on imports.

“Top administration officials from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to chief economic adviser Gary Cohn have warned the speaker that they’re not exactly fans of the so-called border adjustment tax — hoping Ryan would take a hint and change direction. But the Wisconsin Republican is refusing to back off, arguing in recent days that it’s ‘the smart way to go.’ And over the weekend, his key ally on the matter, Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), began circulating talking points encouraging panel members to sell the scheme.” http://politi.co/2rcprEx … The talking points http://politi.co/2qQhvaZ

— THIS IS EXACTLY THE TYPE OF INTERNAL DIVISION Mnuchin and other top White House officials have been trying to avoid. Mnuchin has spent weeks meeting with Republicans and even some Democrats on Capitol Hill and on K Street as he’s tried to build consensus and good will for a major tax reform bill. With the border adjustment tax all but dead in the Senate, it’s unclear what Ryan’s endgame strategy is as he continues to push the measure that is also fairly unpopular within his own ranks.

SNEAK PEEK — PROPUBLICA’S ALEC MACGILLIS in NYT MAGAZINE: “Jared Kushner’s Other Real Estate Empire: Baltimore-area renters complain about a property owner who they say neglects their homes and often sues when they leave. Few of them know the landlord is the president’s son-in-law”: “[A]mid the high-profile Manhattan and Brooklyn purchases, in 2011, Kushner Companies, with Jared now more firmly in command, pulled together a deal that looked much more like something from the firm’s humble past than from its high-rolling present. That June, the company and its equity partners bought 4,681 units of what are known in real estate jargon as ‘distress-ridden, Class B’ apartment complexes: units whose prices fell somewhere in the middle of the market, typically of a certain age and wear, whose owners were in financial difficulty. The properties were spread across 12 sites in Toledo, Ohio; Pittsburgh; and other Rust Belt cities still reeling from the Great Recession.” http://nyti.ms/2rvUVVO

THE JUICE …

— BRODERICK JOHNSON and ROBERT DOAR are joining the Path Forward Coalition, a joint project focused on the positive aspects of service industry jobs of the National Restaurant Association and the National Retail Federation, as senior advisers. Potomac West Group runs the coalition’s day-to-day operations. Look for Capitol Hill events in mid-June and mid-July.

— JESSICA SMITH started on Monday as chief operating officer at J Street. She previously was managing director within the public affairs and crisis practice at Burson-Marsteller.

LATE-NIGHT BEST — RACHEL MADDOW on STEPHEN COLBERT http://bit.ly/2qQ6x5t … http://bit.ly/2qKbaO6 … BEN PLATT! on Colbert. http://bit.ly/2qQiQyw … http://bit.ly/2qQbE5H

PHOTO DU JOUR: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas shakes hands with President Donald Trump after delivering a statement following their meeting in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on May 23. | Nasser Nasser/AP Photo

OFF MESSAGE PODCAST: Will Eric Garcetti throw his hat into the ring for 2020? In the latest episode of Off Message, Isaac Dovere sits down with the mayor of Los Angeles, a city, as Garcetti points out, with four million residents. California is the sixth-largest economy in the world and L.A. has the seventeenth-largest population globally, if it was an independent country. With Garcetti’s keynote at the California state Democratic convention next month, many party leaders across the country believe he could be a real contender. Listen and subscribe http://apple.co/2nEa7y0

— “Eric Garcetti isn’t running for president (wink, wink),” by Isaac Dovere: http://politi.co/2qK3NWK

DRAIN THE SWAMP! – NYT A1, “White House Moves to Block Ethics Inquiry Into Ex-Lobbyists on Payroll,” by Eric Lipton: “The Trump administration, in a significant escalation of its clash with the government’s top ethics watchdog, has moved to block an effort to disclose the names of former lobbyists who have been granted waivers to work in the White House or federal agencies. … Mr. Shaub returned a scalding, 10-page response to the White House late Monday, unlike just about any correspondence in the history of the office, created after the Nixon Watergate scandal. … Dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration. Keeping the waivers confidential would make it impossible to know whether any such officials are violating federal ethics rules or have been given a pass to ignore them.” http://nyti.ms/2q56eEU … Shaub’s letter http://bit.ly/2rLHfnc

–“Amid complicated relations with U.S., Turkey hires longtime Trump lobbyist Brian Ballard,” by Florida Playbooker Marc Caputo: “President Donald Trump’s longtime Florida lobbyist, Brian Ballard, has expanded his practice globally and just signed a $1.5 million contract with the government of Turkey, which will be represented by the firm’s new big hire, former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler. … Wexler is new to lobbying and joined Ballard Partners in March. He’s still serving as president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, a Washington-based think tank devoted to Israeli-Palestinian relations.” http://politi.co/2qJpJS9 … Subscribe to Florida Playbook http://politi.co/1OypFe9

TOP-ED – MONICA LEWINSKY in the NYT, “Roger Ailes’s Dream Was My Nightmare”: “Mr. Ailes, a former Republican political operative, took the story of the affair and the trial that followed and made certain his anchors hammered it ceaselessly, 24 hours a day. … John Moody, a Fox executive editor, reflected on that period[:] … ‘Monica was a news channel’s dream come true.’ Their dream was my nightmare. My character, my looks and my life were picked apart mercilessly. … My family and I huddled at home, worried about my going to jail — I was the original target of Kenneth Starr’s investigation, threatened with 27 years for having been accused of signing a false affidavit and other alleged crimes — or worse, me taking my own life.” http://nyti.ms/2rNf5am

MICHAEL WOLFF in The Hollywood Reporter, “at Roger Ailes’ Funeral: Loyalists Celebrate in an ‘Act of Defiance’”: “If the liberal media saw Ailes as a disgraced and broken man … his funeral was meant to be an act of defiance. Without apology, it was a celebration of husband, father, friend, employer, political figure, media titan, TV impresario and, hardly least of all, man of many provocations. … Most of all the villains were the Murdochs: Rupert Murdoch, who had hired Ailes in 1996, and his sons, James and Lachlan, who had assumed executive authority two years ago. Ailes had given the Murdoch family 20 years and built them a $30 billion company, and, in the opinion of family, friends and his confidants at Fox, had been sacrificed by them when it suited their purposes. On the day Ailes died, Rupert Murdoch had been advised that a condolence call to Ailes’ wife would not be well received. …

“The funeral two days later was held at Saint Edwards Roman Catholic Church in Palm Beach — the church where Rose Kennedy attended mass every morning when she was at her winter home. Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Robert F. Kennedy, attended the Ailes’ service with her son Douglas Kennedy, a long-time Fox News reporter. Along with Limbaugh and Kennedy were Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Bill Hemmer, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Liz Trotta. There was, too, Dennis Kucinich, the wild card Democratic presidential candidate whom Ailes had befriended, and Pat Caddell, the rogue Democratic political operative who had long bonded with Ailes as rogue Republican operative.” http://bit.ly/2qP1kuE

****** A message from the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs (CAPD): As list prices for brand drugs continue to rise, employers are partnering with PBMs to keep drug costs under control. In fact, every dollar an employer invests in a PBM service returns six dollars in savings. Learn more at www.affordableprescriptiondrugs.org. ******

DEMOCRATIC UNITY? — “Bernie backers rage over Calif. Democratic Party chair race,” by California Playbooker Carla Marinucci in San Francisco: “Supporters of the losing candidate in a bitterly disputed election to serve as chair of the California Democratic Party say they’ll begin a detailed audit of the votes on Monday. The move comes after protests, allegations of ballot stuffing and bitter disputes after votes at a weekend party convention. Longtime party operative Eric Bauman won the chairmanship of the California Democratic Party over the weekend — but his victory was marred by complaints of ballot-stuffing and floor protests. Backers of the Kimberly Ellis, a favorite of the ‘Berniecrat,’ activist wing of the party — say efforts to scrutinize the votes will begin immediately.” http://politi.co/2qRdotk … Subscribe to California Playbook http://politi.co/2bLvcPl

AT THE DEPT. OF EDUCATION — “DeVos says Washington will not mandate ‘school choice’,” by Caitlin Emma: “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos promised Monday night that the Trump administration would propose ‘the most ambitious expansion of education choice in our nation’s history,’ but said that states, rather than Washington, D.C., would make the decisions. ‘When it comes to education, no solution, not even ones we like, should be dictated or run from Washington, D.C.,’ she said. DeVos, though, offered scant details about the Trump administration’s vision for school choice.” http://politi.co/2rNTuP2

DATA DU JOUR — “The Harvard Graduating Class of 2017 by the numbers,” by Harvard Crimson’s Mariel A. Klein: “A fifth of surveyed seniors reported that the 2016 election results changed their postgraduate career plans in some way. Of those who said the election results changed their plans, 12 percent said they took a job in the public sector instead of the private sector. Another 10 percent reported that they now hope to run for public office. … Among those who said the election changed their plans, 37 percent said they had been considering jobs in the federal government but decided against pursuing one.” http://bit.ly/2q5a4xD

HISTORY LESSON — “That Time the Soviets Bugged Congress, and Other Spy Tales: Allowing a photographer from the Russian state media into the Oval Office was an act of breathtaking recklessness,” by Calder Walton in POLITICO Magazine: “During a private meeting [with the Russians] in the Oval Office earlier this month, President Donald Trump … [barred] U.S. reporters and photographers … but bizarrely, a photographer from the Russian state-run media agency, TASS, was admitted. … [T]hough it may seem like a storyline from The Americans, fears that the TASS photographer may have planted an electronic monitoring device in the Oval Office are not as far-fetched as they first seem. In fact, the Kremlin is a past master of planting hidden listening devices in America’s most sensitive government buildings. During the Cold War, Soviet intelligence used TASS as cover for espionage, and in one operation, used it to plant a bug at the center of Capitol Hill.” http://politi.co/2qOURQn

MEDIWATCH — “Judge won’t move libel suit against BuzzFeed over Trump dossier,” by Josh Gerstein: “A federal judge has turned down BuzzFeed’s request to move a libel suit over its publication of a dossier contained unverified allegations against President Donald Trump. BuzzFeed and its editor-in-chief Ben Smith asked that the case be relocated to New York City, but Miami-based U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro issued a ruling Monday refusing to give up the case filed by Russian tech executive and entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev.” http://politi.co/2qbYY5V

— After JAMES SUROWIECKI left The New Yorker in March, ADAM DAVIDSON and SHEELAH KOLHATKAR are now writing The Financial Page column in his place, on a rotating basis. Davidson is a staff writer for the magazine and previously was the “On Money” columnist and a contributing writer for the N.Y. Times Magazine and co-founded and co-hosted NPR’s “Planet Money.” Kolhatkar, author of “Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street,” is also a staff writer at the magazine and previously was features editor and national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek.

— Washington Examiner is launching “Trump’s America,” a four-year long reporting project that will cover the Trump presidency with long-form reporting in nine counties that helped deliver the election to Trump. Daniel Allott, deputy commentary editor for the Examiner, and his twin brother, documentary filmmaker Jordan Allott, will report from these counties regularly during the Trump presidency. http://bit.ly/2qbkszK

SPOTTED: John Kerry shopping yesterday at Hartford’s Bradley Airport gift shop looking at a Hartford Whalers cap after receiving his honorary degree at Yale earlier in the day … Tamron Hall, April Ryan and Suzanne Malveaux last night leaving a private dining room at Centrolina.

OUT AND ABOUT — KALORAMA CONVERSATION — POOL REPORT from a dinner party last night: “[T]he rise of populism in the US and Europe was the convening hook for a diverse group of D.C. glitterati at the home of French Ambassador to the U.S. Gerard Araud and organized by The Atlantic. President George W. Bush once said that his second choice home in D.C. behind the White House was the French Ambassador’s residence. The opening provocateur was ‘Axis of Evil’ wordsmith and Atlantic Senior Editor David Frum on his views on the rise of autocracy and populism in America and abroad.”

SPOTTED: Paul Wolfowitz, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Steve Clemons, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) Susan Glasser, Margaret Carlson, Jeff Carneal, Steve Wozencraft, Alex Wagner (formerly of the Pentagon), Trevor Thrall, Vann Newkirk, Martin Indyk and Gahl Burt, Jennifer Rubin, Carroll Doherty, Bruce Stokes, Michael Abramowitz, Julianne Smith, John Bellinger, Michael Kofman, Jonathan Capehart, Patrick and Emmanuelle Lachaussee, Ruth Marcus, Maureen White, A.B. Stoddard, Ron Christie, Leo Casey, Maya Rockeymoore, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Yael Luttwak, Susannah Wellford, Eleanor Clift, Uri Friedman and McKay Coppins.

ENGAGED — Sari Bourne, a pharmaceutical and biotechnology senior associate at Hogan Lovells, got engaged to Matt Kaplan, an Obama and Clinton campaign alum and veteran of the Senate and House. Kaplan, a California native and Oberlin alum, proposed during a weekend stay at the Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Virginia. Bourne, a San Francisco native and Stanford/Emory Law graduate, said yes. Their first date took place at Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar on Capitol Hill in 2015 and the wedding will be in the Bay Area in 2018. Pic http://bit.ly/2qQq03N

— James Hewitt, senior director at strategic comms firm Dezenhall Resources and an RNC alum, got engaged to Cara Read of Bloomberg Government. He popped the question over champagne and Cabernet Sauvignon in Prague. Pic http://politi.co/2qPcWOu

WELCOME TO THE WORLD – AARON BLAKE, senior political reporter for The Fix at WaPo and DANIELLE BLAKE, associate VP for public affairs at AdvaMed, email friends and family: “Wanted to let you know that Aria Marie Blake arrived [Monday] morning at 4:41 a.m., 7 hours before her scheduled c-section (apparently already making her own decisions). She weighed in at 7 lbs and 2 oz, 20.5 inches long. We are totally smitten, as is big brother Grayson.” Pics http://politi.co/2q59IqN … http://politi.co/2qbtVqI

BIRTHWEEK (was yesterday): Kerry Rom, director of media affairs at the NRCC and a Jeb and Chamber of Commerce alum (hat tip: Emily Benavides)

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: WaPo’s Dana Priest, Pulitzer Prize winner and the pride of Canoga Park, Calif. How she’s celebrating: “In the morning, I’ll celebrate my birthday by trying to convince a group of students to get involved in helping journalists imprisoned overseas, my newish passion. Then I’ll take a horseback riding lesson as a gift to myself. I’ll have dinner in our backyard garden with friends and family.” Read her Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2qfl1HX

BIRTHDAYS: Melanie Fonder Kaye (hat tip: Kelley McCormick) … William Minor, partner at DLA Piper, is 5-0 (h/t wife Christine Enemark) … Ilyas Kirmani, senior producer at NBC Nightly News … ABC News’ Mary Bruce (h/t Rachel Adler) … NBC’s Danielle Dellorto, a CNN alum … Politico’s Matt Nussbaum … Tom Heinemann, VP of federal gov’t affairs at the Manufactured Housing Institute, and bro-in-law of Carrie Budoff Brown … Redeemer Arlington … Blake Rollins … Shekar Narasimhan … CNN’s Nate McDermott (h/t K File crew) … Adam Levy, senior producer at CNN … Poynter alum Mallary Tenore Tarpley … devoted Playbooker Megan McKinley, of Sen. Rubio’s office, is 23 (h/t Libby Callaway) … Jacob Gladysz, a CSIS alum and recent graduate of Georgetown University, is 22 (h/t Bill Schuette) …

… Anna Gohmann of Comcast/NBC Universal … Jerry H. Goldfeder of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP … Helen Smith (h/t Megan Apper) … Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) is 67 … Adrienne Cisneros-Selekman … Rachel MacKnight … Jorge Martinez … Casey Greenfield … Entergy’s Nick Culp … Adrienne Cisneros-Selekman … Rob Keast … USA Today’s Cameron Smith … Brian Bakst of Minnesota Public Radio News and an AP alum … Alan Auglis … John Gonzalez … Lucy Cook … Mark Sullivan … Vivian Graubard … Georgiana Bloom … Reuters’ Katherina Lemus … Connie Sammarco … chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov is 66 … Drew Carey is 59 … “Jeopardy!” champ Ken Jennings is 43 (h/ts AP)

****** A message from the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs (CAPD): One in two Americans rely on their employers to provide health care benefits. So, employers partner with PBMs to provide access to effective medications at the most affordable price. PBMs drive savings in part by using clinical expertise to identify generic alternatives that achieve the same health outcomes for a lower price. With generics accounting for 89 percent of prescriptions filled in 2015, but only 27 percent of drug costs, that represents a savings of $227 billion across the U.S. health care system in just one year. Learn more at www.affordableprescriptiondrugs.org. ******

SUBSCRIBE to the Playbook family: POLITICO Playbook http://politi.co/1M75UbX … New York Playbook http://politi.co/1ON8bqW … Florida Playbook http://politi.co/1OypFe9 … New Jersey Playbook http://politi.co/1HLKltF … Massachusetts Playbook http://politi.co/1Nhtq5v … Illinois Playbook http://politi.co/1N7u5sb … California Playbook http://politi.co/2bLvcPl … Brussels Playbook http://politi.co/1FZeLcw … All our political and policy tipsheets http://politi.co/1M75UbX

Source link

from CapitalistHQ.com http://capitalisthq.com/22-dead-in-manchester-horror-trump-terrorists-are-evil-losers-in-life-eliana-and-dawsey-scoop-lewandowski-bossie-back-in-the-mix-garcetti-talks-2020/

#TrumpNews #CapitalistHQ.com

0 notes