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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years ago

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Heather Cox Richardson:

August 21, 2020 (Friday)

After the cascade of news in the past several days and the Democratic National Convention, today was a relatively calm day… at least in politics.

There are, though, some important stories.

The first is getting less play than it should: the nation has lately been hit by a series of environmental catastrophes. California is in the midst of a brutal heat wave, and has been hit by 560 fires, many of them sparked by lightning. Some of the fires have come together to create two dozen large and complex conflagrations. Land the size of Rhode Island has been burned over, six people have died in the fires, and one hundred thousand Californians have been evacuated from their homes. Air quality is dangerously bad.

California’s ability to fight the fires has been hampered by a lack of prison inmates, who have been used to fight fires since the 1940s. Usually the state can mobilize 192 inmate firefighting crews, but this year, the coronavirus has thinned their ranks both from disease and from release, as the state sent inmates home to relieve crowded facilities and slow the virus’s spread. Less than half the crews are available this year.

Inmate firefighters make up to $5.12 a day (that’s not a typo) and earn two days off their prison sentence for each day firefighting. Each year, they provide about 3 million hours of emergency response time to the state.

In an extremely rare weather event, two tropical depressions—Laura and Marco-- are currently developing in the Gulf of Mexico. If they become hurricanes, the event will be unique: never before in recorded history has the Gulf had two hurricanes at the same time. Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Diamond notes that the town of Chauvin, Louisiana, has the dubious honor of being located at the site where both forecast cones overlap.

Illinois and Iowa were hit with a “land hurricane” or “derecho” on August 10. The winds of up to 110 miles per hour damaged homes and businesses in Iowa and destroyed at least 10 million acres of crops. Many are still without power. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R) asked for $3.9 billion in federal aid on Sunday, and Trump tweeted that he had “Just approved (and fast) the FULL Emergency Declaration for the Great State of Iowa.”

But, in fact, he approved only about $45 million in aid to repair government buildings and utilities and remove debris from them. He did not fund assistance for homeowners or farmers. This appears to reflect the Republican conviction that the federal government has no role to play in providing a safety net for individuals.

There are a few political stories as well today.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the Senate. He acknowledged that the changes he has made at the United States Postal Service have slowed mail delivery—the LA Times had a ghastly story today about rotting parcels and shipments of dead chickens in mail facilities in California—but says he will not replace the sorting machines he has had removed because “they’re not needed.” He promises the USPS will be able to handle the expected volume of mail-in ballots this fall, and insisted he had made “no changes in any policies with regard to election mail for the 2020 election.” In fact, internal USPS documents show clearly that the USPS intended to treat ballots according to their marked postage, rather than all as first-class mail, as it has done in the past. Treating ballots as bulk mail would have slowed delivery.

The Senate hearing before the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was announced after the House Oversight Committee had arranged a hearing for Monday with DeJoy and USPS Board of Governors Chair Robert Duncan. While senators of both parties today expressed concerns over delays in the mail, the hearing was much friendlier than Monday’s, in front of a committee led by Democrats, is likely to be.

Trump’s apparent embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory has put Republicans in an uncomfortable spot. The victory of QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene in her conservative district in Georgia Tuesday means she will likely be going to Congress, along with her racism, anti-Semitism, and adherence to the belief that Trump is leading a secret crusade to purge the world of a gang of pedophiles and cannibals who have taken over governments and economies. When Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger tweeted that there is “no place in Congress” for QAnon, Greene retorted: “He’s a never Trumper who did nothing to stop the Russian collusion conspiracy/witch hunt…. America can’t afford any more RINOs!” (A “RINO” is a “Republican in Name Only," an epithet used since the 1990s to purge the party of moderates.)

“If she’s the future of the Republican party, we’re in trouble,” said freshman Representative Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who was replaced in his primary by a far-right candidate. And there’s the rub for Republican leaders: QAnon supporters like Trump, but their extremism threatens to turn off all but fellow extremists. So far, Republican leaders have been quiet about the QAnon believers in their midst, but there are rumblings of discontent from lower lawmakers at the inclusion of conspiracy theorists in their caucus.

There are signs that some Republican candidates are desperate. In Arizona, Martha McSally, who was appointed to her seat by Governor Doug Ducey in late 2018 after losing an election for Arizona’s other senate seat, is running significantly behind her Democratic challenger, former astronaut Mark Kelly. (Kelly is married to former Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords.) Tonight, news leaked that at a recent event McSally said: “We’re doing our part to catch up, you know, to get our message out. But it takes resources. So, anybody can give, I'm not ashamed to ask, to invest. If you can give a dollar, five dollars, if you can fast a meal and give what that would be.” After pushback on Twitter over the statement that people should go hungry to fund her campaign, a spokesperson said McSally had been joking.

The president’s tax returns were back in the news again today. Yesterday, Federal Judge Victor Marrero dismissed the president’s argument that the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena for eight years of his taxes was “wildly overbroad.” Marrero permitted the subpoena to stand. Trump’s lawyers then filed an emergency motion to block a grand jury from obtaining the records. The court today denied their request and scheduled a hearing about the matter on September 1. Trump’s lawyers have argued that the presidency makes Trump “constitutionally different” from other people, and thus should be treated differently than others. The court disagrees. Yesterday’s decision prompted Trump to complain, “This is just a continuation of the most hideous witch hunt in the history of our country.”

Finally, the White House has made no statement on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. European leaders as well as American politicians of both parties have condemned the attack.

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orbemnews · 3 years ago

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Wall Street Rebels Against Exxon The little Engine … Exxon Mobil suffered a stunning loss at its annual shareholder meeting yesterday, as a small new activist investor focused on climate change, Engine No. 1, won at least two seats on its 12-member board. To corporate America, the upset was a clear sign that company boards and leaders need to pay attention to environmental, social and governance issues (known as E.S.G.) — or suffer rebukes. A big splash for a tiny fund. Exxon was the first activist campaign for Engine No. 1, which was founded last year by the energy and tech investor Chris James. Its head of active engagement is Charlie Penner, a veteran hedge fund executive who helped lead campaigns against companies like Apple while at Jana Partners. It was a victory long in the making. Engine No. 1 began agitating against the oil giant in December, calling on the company to diversify away from fossil fuels and reduce its carbon emissions. But it began work on the campaign last March, courting large investors like public pension funds that held far larger stakes in Exxon, and thus had more sway. That’s how it parlayed a stake of just 0.02 percent into seats on the oil giant’s board — a truly remarkable feat. Exxon’s shares rose 1.2 percent yesterday. Sources with knowledge of the matter told DealBook that the fund was betting on a confluence of events, including longstanding investor dissatisfaction with Exxon’s corporate governance and a growing appreciation on Wall Street for E.S.G. In a note explaining why it backed three of Engine No. 1’s board candidates, BlackRock — which owns nearly 7 percent of Exxon — said the company’s directors “need to further assess the company’s strategy and board expertise against the possibility that demand for fossil fuels may decline rapidly in the coming decades.” Exxon largely played down Engine No. 1’s concerns, and pressured the firm to drop its challenge after a much bigger hedge fund, D.E. Shaw, called off a campaign. But Engine No. 1 persisted, and also benefited from timing: It began its campaign while oil prices were still depressed by the pandemic. Had oil not rebounded in recent months, Engine No. 1 executives believe, all four of its directors might have been elected. Big Oil is facing a reckoning. A Dutch court ruled yesterday that Royal Dutch Shell must speed up its efforts to cut its carbon emissions. And Chevron shareholders backed a proposal to compel the company to help customers reduce their own emissions. One question we have: Is Darren Woods, Exxon’s C.E.O., who pushed back forcefully against Engine No. 1, now at risk of losing his job? HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The Justice Department opens an inquiry into Archegos. Prosecutors have asked some of the fund’s lenders for information about its meltdown, Bloomberg reports. The rare blood clots associated with Covid-19 vaccines may have a fixable explanation. German scientists theorize that a feature of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson shots, one they say could be modified, may be responsible. Russia puts pressure on U.S. tech giants. Moscow’s internet regulator now regularly demands that Facebook, Google and Twitter comply with its content restrictions and data storage requirements, or risk losing access to Russian users. It’s the latest instance of governments squeezing Silicon Valley companies. Ford pours billions more into electric vehicles. The company will increase spending on the technology by a third, to $30 billion. It now expects 40 percent of the vehicles it produces worldwide to be electric by 2030. Purdue Pharma’s restructuring plan is set for a vote. The judge overseeing the OxyContin maker’s bankruptcy case said he would let the company’s proposal — in which it would become a nonprofit, and both it and its founding Sackler family would be shielded from future legal liability — be voted on by 614,000 claimants. A culture of fear at the Gateses’ investment firm Bill Gates’s longtime money manager, Michael Larson, bullied co-workers, made sexually inappropriate comments and engaged in a broad pattern of inappropriate workplace behavior, an investigation by The Times found. For the past 27 years, Larson has run Cascade Investment, also sometimes known as Bill and Melinda Gates Investments (B.M.G.I.), which manages the Gateses’ enormous fortune. Among The Times’s findings: Larson made inappropriate comments about female employees. At a work party in the mid-2000s, he asked male employees which of three female colleagues they would want to have sex with. In another case, he asked an employee who was on a Weight Watchers program, “Are you losing weight for me?” Larson denied making any of the comments. A racist comment from Larson led to an internal investigation. When a Black employee mentioned on Election Day that she had not had to wait in line to vote, Larson replied, “But you live in the ghetto, and everybody knows that Black people don’t vote.” A spokesman for Larson, Chris Giglio, denied that he made the remark. At least one employee reported it to human resources, resulting in an internal investigation. Larson was known for “Larson bombs.” In emails, he sometimes called colleagues “stupid” or their work “garbage.” Some employees were moved to different floors in order to put distance between them and him. “Years ago, earlier in my career, I used harsh language that I would not use today,” Larson said. “I regret this greatly but have done a lot of work to change.” “Any issue raised over the company’s history has been taken seriously and resolved appropriately,” said Bridgitt Arnold, a spokeswoman for Bill Gates. Courtney Wade, a spokeswoman for Melinda French Gates, said, “Melinda unequivocally condemns disrespectful and inappropriate conduct in the workplace. She was unaware of most of these allegations given her lack of ownership of and control over B.M.G.I.” Today in Business Updated May 26, 2021, 4:06 p.m. ET “During his tenure, Mr. Larson has managed over 380 people, and there have been fewer than five complaints related to him in total,” said Giglio, Larson’s spokesman. “Any complaint was investigated and treated seriously and fully examined, and none merited Mr. Larson’s dismissal.” Overdraft math lessons Yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee held a three-hour hearing with C.E.O.s from the country’s six biggest banks. It lacked much of the heat of sessions in the aftermath of the financial crisis, when Congress routinely castigated Wall Street chiefs. (The C.E.O.s gather again today for a hearing in the House.) The most contentious moment came when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase felt the wrath of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. Warren was a teacher before entering politics; she revealed her roots when she took Dimon and others to task for charging overdraft fees during the pandemic. The four biggest banks took $4 billion in overdraft fees from customers last year, Warren said. She singled out Dimon, asking him how much his bank, the nation’s largest, collected in 2020. “I think your numbers are totally inaccurate,” he countered. Dimon noted that JPMorgan waived fees upon request, didn’t go into overdraft at the Fed (which had waived its fees for banks), and provided $120 million in Covid relief. The senator kept pressing and finally provided the figure herself: “It’s $1.463 billion dollars.” “I did the math for you,” Warren said, calling their claims about stepping up during the pandemic “about $4 billion dollars’ worth of baloney.” When challenged to return the fees, none agreed. She asked Dimon directly twice, and he said “no” twice. Amazon, MGM and the streaming wars Amazon said yesterday that it would acquire the 97-year-old film and television studio MGM for $8.45 billion — about 40 percent more than what other potential buyers, including Apple and Comcast, were willing to pay. The deal reportedly made MGM’s owner, the hedge fund Anchorage Capital, a $2 billion profit. DealBook talked with Brooks Barnes, a reporter at The Times who covers Hollywood, about why Amazon was willing to pay so much and what this means for the streaming wars. Are Amazon’s motives different from other streaming platforms’? Amazon is mostly in the Prime membership business, whereas Netflix wants to sell subscriptions purely to its TV and movies. If you’re Amazon, you want to bolster Prime Video to make people even happier to pay for a Prime membership. Is there a risk that regulators won’t allow the deal? The regulatory scrutiny will be considerable. Representative Ken Buck and Senator Amy Klobuchar, both of whom have important antitrust roles, immediately voiced concern because Amazon is Amazon. But the deal is unlikely to be scuttled because MGM is relatively small and so is Amazon Studios. What does the acquisition mean for the streaming wars? If you’re Apple, you’re probably looking around and thinking, well, we don’t have a library, we don’t have a big franchise of our own. Do we need to go out and buy? People think that it will increase the pressure on other streaming services to bulk up. And that’s becoming harder, right? It’s becoming harder, which is partly, I’m sure, how Amazon justified some of the price. Disney isn’t for sale. Sony has repeatedly said its TV and movie operation is not for sale. It’s also becoming harder in part because the corporate sibling studios are not licensing out as much — they’re supplying their own streaming services. More takes on the deal: Jason Hirschhorn, a former MGM board member, has been thinking out loud on Twitter about the deal, including the intriguing possibility that Amazon could buy out the family that controls MGM’s James Bond franchise, gaining more freedom to expand the Bond “universe.” Brad Stone, the author of the new book “Amazon Unbound,” shared Jeff Bezos’s 12 ingredients for hit shows. MGM owns the rights to “The Apprentice,” including unaired material that some claim contains unflattering footage of the reality show’s former host, Donald Trump. The tapes’ contractual status is unclear, but the notion that they might belong to Bezos, a frequent target of Trump’s ire when he was president, has set tongues wagging. THE SPEED READ Deals HSBC plans to sell or close most of its U.S. retail branches, as it focuses on Asia. (WSJ) Investors in Bill Ackman’s $5 billion SPAC are increasingly worried that it won’t strike a deal. (Institutional Investor) Politics and policy How Covax, the multibillion-dollar global vaccination program backed by governments and drug makers, ran aground. (WSJ) Tech Best of the rest A record number of American workers tested positive for marijuana last year. (Insider) The white woman who called police on a Black bird-watcher in Central Park last year sued her former employer, Franklin Templeton, for firing her over the incident. (NYT) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Orbem News #Exxon #rebels #Street #Wall

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baoanhwin · 4 years ago

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It’s time to take a Biden landslide seriously

Trump may recover but he could be overwhelmed

Donald Trump has always treated his presidency as a game show; one where success is measured in ratings and dollars. Controversy is to be welcomed: it keeps attention on him and his fans love it. As politics, it’s been relatively successful – enough so to win him the presidency, even if his approval figures have never been much to write home about and the mid-terms were a serious set-back.

Events, however, have a habit of sorting the serious politicians from those in it for the applause. The presidency is a wonderful stage but it’s also an exposed summit – and when a crisis hits, there are few places to hide. Which may be why Trump has found these last few months so difficult: his pantomime CEO Apprentice schtick is of neither practical nor political use against a pandemic. The public expects, and needs a leader to govern. In Trump, the US does not have one.

All of which may go to explain why the incumbent is trailing badly in the polls. The RCP average puts Joe Biden 9.5% ahead, close to double the lead a month ago. Trump’s job approval rating is down at -13.5, the lowest all year. Polls released this week have him trailing in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, N Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia – and Texas. Trump won all nine of those state in 2016, which between them account for a mighty 171 Electoral College Votes: well over half his entire total.

True, the numbers in Texas and Georgia were tight (1 and 2 per cent respectively), and Trump led in one of the four polls from N Carolina this week (by 3%, he trailed by 2, 9 and 2 in the others), but however you cut it, if the election was tomorrow, Biden would win by a landslide.

Which begs the question, is there value to be had betting on that – to which the answer is: quite possibly. Both Betfair (fixed odds) and Paddy Power are offering 6/1 that Trump will win between 101-150 Electoral College votes, which is exactly where he’d end up if he lost the above nine states.

Polls, of course, are snapshots, not predictions. Is it realistic to think that there won’t be a Trump revival between now and the beginning of November? Or more accurately: how likely is it that there’ll be a Trump revival? After all, while it’d be nice for the bet to come in, 6/1 bets don’t have to land every time to make a profit.

Until recently, I’ve always rated Trump as a highly effective negative campaigner, and Biden as a candidate with enough weaknesses to exploit that the race ought again to be close and given a fair wind (and procedural chicanery in legal but discreditable voter suppression methods), Trump might win a second term.

However, while that might still come about, I’m beginning to doubt it. For one thing, the negative campaign against Biden is all over the place. While it is a legitimate tactic to throw a lot of mud and see what sticks, that conclusion should have been drawn by now. Trump and the Republicans keep returning half-heartedly to Biden’s age (4 years more than Trump’s) and his mental lapses. But unless Biden provides the evidence to make that attack stick, it’s not likely to be very effective.

Questioning Biden’s mental ability also sets public expectations of the Democrat low for the debates. In truth, Biden handled himself more than adequately through the latter part of the primaries, when there were only a few candidates remaining. We shouldn’t take too much store from a couple of bad early debates when the front-runner inevitably gets a lot of incoming and because of time constraints, has disproportionately little time to respond. Trump, by contrast, has not engaged in a debate on equal terms for almost four years.

It’s a decent rule-of-thumb that in most elections, a candidate or party with a substantial lead will see it decline by election day. Those with a lead rarely extend them further to peak on polling day. But we don’t know that Biden has peaked yet. While political gravity may pull Biden down, the point and time from which he falls is yet far from clear.

And then there are events. One of the striking current figures is that Trump’s rating on the economy (again using the RCP average) is +4.4 – well above his general rating and even more above his rating on handling the coronavirus pandemic. It was the economy that Trump, probably rightly, saw at the start of the year as his ticket to re-election but that prospect has taken a massive hit with the Covid-19 crisis.

We might well ask why Trump is polling so well (relatively) on the economy. One part of it might well be that the extremely generous (or costly, if you prefer) support package has no doubt significantly cushioned the blow to many Americans, those who’ve not lost their jobs. As in other countries, despite the intensity of the recession, it doesn’t yet feel like one. Yet.

Except that whereas other countries are re-opening having significantly reduced their number of Covid-19 cases, numbers in the US barely declined at all: the focus just shifted from one part of the country to another – and in those places, the epidemic is now rapidly intensifying.

Yesterday saw the highest daily number of new cases in the US yet: more than 47,000 – an increase of more than 7,000 on the day before (which was itself a new record). Some thirteen states have set records this week for their 7-day average of new cases, including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas. That’s four of the key swing states we mentioned earlier, plus the largest in the country. Florida alone recorded more cases yesterday than the UK has recorded on any single day of the outbreak – and Florida’s population is less than a third that of the UK. Note that Jacksonville, Florida is due to host most of the Republican convention in two months’ time.

It’s hard to see any outcome here other than more prolonged shut-downs, leading to a great deal more economic damage, particularly given that many of the states suffering most have large tourist sectors and we’re just entering the peak summer season; or such a surge in Covid-19 cases that local healthcare systems are overwhelmed (already an acknowledged risk in places like Austin, Texas). Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions.

There’s also the serious risk of a lot more violence over the summer, as multiple issues converge, which could play to Trump’s advantage if he can show himself to be getting on top of the situation rather than inflaming it and grandstanding.

Given all that, plus what we already know about the nature of Trump’s administration and character, it seems much better than a 1-in-7 chance that the polls get worse for him over the next four months, although not yet an evens one. The 6/1 on the 101-150 range looks good value in an extremely unpredictable year, though more cautious punters might prefer to invest on the broader ‘under 200’ band (9/4, SkyBet).

Trump has defied both expectations and the normal rules of politics for five years now but he’s now in a situation he can’t control; can’t insult, brag or spectacle his way out of; and which is making a massive impact on average Americans. Against a less polarising opponent than Hillary Clinton, there is a real risk that a Blue Tide could sweep away all those big states he won narrowly last time.

David Herdson

from politicalbetting.com https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/06/27/its-time-to-take-a-biden-landslide-seriously/ https://dangky.ric.win/

#nhacai #one88 #danhbaidoithuong #ricwin #choibaidoithuong #gamedanhbaidoithuong #choigamedoit

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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years ago

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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/7/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 8/7/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Trade

“U.S. agricultural exports to China plummeted more than 50% last year to $9.1 billion as tariffs raised the cost of American soybeans, pork and other farm products. The exports dropped another 20% in the first six months of this year. The pain is rippling through agricultural supply chains. One forecast says tariffs could cost the sector as many as 71,000 jobs over the next two years” [Wall Street Journal]. (Apparently, China’s swine fever epidemic has not cut demand for soy.)

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of August 5: Biden fluctuates to 32.3% (32.2), Sanders continues climb to 16.7% (16.5%), Warren flat at 14.0% (14.0%), Buttigieg flat at 5.5% (5.5%), Harris down at 10.2% (10.3%), Beto separating himself from the bottom feeders, interestingly. Others Brownian motion. So, I think we can conclude that Sanders won both debates.

* * *

2020

Sanders (D)(1): Sanders calls his shot not only the effect of trade deals on workers, but on the two-party system. In 2000. The whole video is worth a listen, since the Tweet doesn’t quote all of it.

In the year 2000, Congress voted to grant China upgraded trade status, helping it become world's most powerful dictatorship.

Bernie Sanders voted against. He stood next to Pelosi at Dem presser and blasted Bill Clinton. "Let me tell you where he got his money," Sanders intoned. pic.twitter.com/JzBZ3UiXka

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 7, 2019

No wonder they hate him….

* * *

“Few candidates have loyal small-dollar donor bases” [WaPo]. • Few, but not none:

Turns out small donor money isn’t all that fungible.

“Shadow of Dark Money Grows as 2020 Groups Shun Donor Disclosure” [Bloomberg]. “Democratic and Republican groups raising tens of millions of dollars for the 2020 elections increasingly are keeping their funding sources secret, a trend that watchdog groups warn allows high-dollar donors to gain influence with candidates without risking exposure. Priorities USA, which collected almost $200 million to help Hillary Clinton in 2016, says it wants to spend that much or more to help the next Democratic nominee defeat President Donald Trump. This time, however, Priorities is being funded mostly by undisclosed donations.” • What could go wrong?

“Are the Democrats divided? No — they’re poised to win big if they don’t screw it up” [Bill Curry, Salon]. “Everyone wants to see Warren and Sanders face off against Biden because the real dividing line is between the middle class and the donor class. Warren and Sanders never attack Obama, Biden or each other and they won’t do it in September. What they will do is compare their ideas and campaigns to his. The facts will be fierce, but the delivery will be civil. It’ll be Biden’s toughest test. Progressives want to take a new path, but I’ve yet to meet a “Never Bidener.” The stakes are too high. To defeat Trump, Democrats need to answer his racism with a message of both racial justice and social conciliation, and answer his corruption with a message of economic justice and political reform. So long as their candidates don’t make a fetish of their small differences, they’ll get there.” • White House counsellor to Clinton. Not seeing a whole lot about “economic justice and political reform” from establishment Democrats. Of course, if they hadn’t spent three years yammering about Russia, they might have had time to come up with something.

El Paso and Dayton Shootings

“Dayton shooter may be antifa’s first mass killer” [NY Post]. • I dunno. It’s the shooters pr0n rock band that gets me. I see the El Paso shooter, who — assuming the provenance proves out — wrote a manifesto as being ideologically serious in a way that the Dayton shooter, who was just a mess by all accounts, was not. (We should also think back to the Orlando shootings, where literally everything about the initial stories was wrong). And speaking of pr0n–

“Photos from Dayton and El Paso illustrate the grim routine of mass shootings” [WaPo]. • If I see one more photo of beautiful young people holding candles… Honestly, it’s like some weird kind of pr0n. I don’t equate viewing digital images of people mourning as actually mourning.

Where “we” are:

Panic in Times Square After Motorcycle Is Mistaken for Gunshots https://t.co/F5qsndMPfD

— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) August 7, 2019

Somehow, I can’t help thinking that a panicked populace is not conducive to sound democratic decision-making…

“What Experts Know About People Who Commit Mass Shootings” [New York Times]. “Can one mass shooting inspire another? Yes… Are video games to blame for mass shootings? The results of studies attempting to clarify the relationship between violent video games and aggression have been mixed, with experts deeply divided on the findings. How strong is the link between mental illness and mass shootings? Tenuous, at best. Would drugging or confining people showing “red flags” prevent massacres? No one knows for certain.” • This is pretty thin stuff.

2018 Post Mortem

No:

.@ChelseaClinton and I are thrilled to announce "The Book of Gutsy Women," out October 1st. It's a conversation about over 100 women who have inspired us—and narrowing it down was a process! https://t.co/DOhSrVq9SC pic.twitter.com/bOVES73FAQ

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 6, 2019

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Is ‘Bernie or Bust’ the Future of the Left?” [New York Times]. • Report on the DSA convention. I dunno, it seems to me that an organization dedicated to seizing the means of production shouldn’t be getting press this good. Perhaps it’s their stand on open borders.

“Twitter says it won’t verify new candidates until they win their primaries” [The Hill]. • Swell. More incumbent protection. That should certainly help Twitter with regulatory issues!

“Inslee Is Doing Very Well in the Power Primary” [Mike the Mad Biologist]. The conclusion: “Democrats in 2021 will need to make people’s lives better in meaningful ways. If not, we will have a repeat of 2010 in 2022, since next time we won’t get Trump, we’ll get someone smarter and more disciplined. As bad as Trump is, President Tom Cotton would be far worse.” • Yep. 2020 is their last shot. Biden/Harris all the way!

They call it historical materialism:

The political continuum hypothesis states that there exist historical precedents besides Nixon and Hitler. It is widely believed outside the United States, in countries Americans have never heard of

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) August 7, 2019

Stats Watch

JOLTS, June 2019 (yesterday): “Moderation in labor demand is this year’s theme of the JOLTS report” [Econoday]. “Quits, which are tracked by Federal Reserve officials for indications of worker mobility and related wage pressure, remain flat… This report hints at easing capacity pressure in the labor market and will likely be welcome by Fed officials who, with last month’s rate cut, are adding new stimulus to the economy.”

MBA Mortgage Applications, week of August 2, 2019: “A big drop in mortgage rates — the result of last week’s rate cut by the Federal Reserve — triggered a surge of refinancing applications” [Econoday].

Shipping: “Slots in heavy-duty truck production lines are opening up but few fleet operators are getting in line. Orders for Class 8 trucks fell last month to their lowest level since 2010” [Wall Street Journal]. “A factory backlog for Class 8 trucks that exceeded 300,000 orders late last year is down by more than a third, and research group FTR expects production to decline 22% next year. The good news for manufacturers is that cancellations have remained relatively light. That could change if weakness in the broader industrial sector gets worse and trucking companies decide to park their current fleet plans.”

The Bezzle: “A pioneer in the meal-kit market is losing its sizzle. Blue Apron Holdings Inc. narrowed its quarterly loss but is still losing customers… and a turnaround could involve a lot more logistics for a business already laden with complicated fulfillment” [Wall Street Journal]. “New Chief Executive Linda Kozlowski says Blue Apron’s plan to boost revenue and customer growth this year will include serving more households and offering greater menu choices, including flexibility to tailor the options…. Perhaps more challenging, analysts say the overall market is already saturated and likely smaller than companies had hoped.”

Tech: “Trump Wants to Make It Basically Impossible to Sue for Algorithmic Discrimination” [Vice]. “The new rule takes aim at a 2015 Supreme Court ruling, which decided that consumers could combat housing discriminatory business practices by making “disparate-impact claims” under the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In a disparate-impact claim, if you find out that a business practice had a disproportionate effect on certain groups of people, then you can hold that business liable—even if it was an unintended consequence….. HUD’s new rule would throw all that out the window by introducing huge loopholes to shield businesses from liability when their algorithms are accused of bias. As Reveal News reported, ‘A hypothetical bank that rejected every loan application filed by African Americans and approved every one filed by white people, for example, would need to prove only that race or a proxy for it was not used directly in constructing its computer model.’ But there is substantial evidence to show that racial bias is fundamentally baked into the way that these algorithms and their data sets are constructed, even if they don’t specifically take race into account.” • Code is law…

Tech: “Amazon Is Coaching Cops on How to Obtain Surveillance Footage Without a Warrant” [Vice]. “When police partner with Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance camera company, they get access to the ‘Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal,’ an interactive map that allows officers to request footage directly from camera owners. Police don’t need a warrant to request this footage, but they do need permission from camera owners. Emails and documents obtained by Motherboard reveal that people aren’t always willing to provide police with their Ring camera footage. However, Ring works with law enforcement and gives them advice on how to persuade people to give them footage. Emails obtained from police department in Maywood, NJ—and emails from the police department of Bloomfield, NJ, which were also posted by Wired—show that Ring coaches police on how to obtain footage. The company provides cops with templates for requesting footage… Ring suggests cops post often on Neighbors, Ring’s free ‘neighborhood watch’ app, where Ring camera owners have the option of sharing their camera footage.” • It’s a little tough to rank Big. Tech companies for evil right now, but surely Amazon gets a boost for this.

Tech: “Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One’s AWS S3 buckets got hacked?” [The Register]. “After last week’s revelations that a hacker stole the personal details of 106 million Capital One credit card applicants from its Amazon-hosted cloud storage, a US Senator has demanded Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explain what exactly what went wrong. The sensitive information was siphoned from Capital One’s Amazon Web Services S3 buckets by a former AWS engineer, who was arrested and charged at the end of July…. Wyden is particularly concerned that other companies that store their data in the AWS cloud may have been hit in the same way by the suspected Capital One thief, Seattle-based software engineer Paige Thompson. He cited reports that Ford, the University of Michigan, the Ohio Department of Transportation, and others may have suffered similar losses of information at the hands of Thompson, and that this may point to a systemic weakness in Amazon’s security.” • Uh oh. Keeping my data on my hard disk, thank you very much.

Tech: “FCC Plans to Redo Flawed Broadband Maps” [Inside Sources]. “Accurate broadband maps would help under [-served] areas get internet access, and they could also be used to hold telecom companies T-Mobile and Sprint accountable for their pledge to build out 5G to cover 85 percent of rural Americans in three years and 99 percent of all Americans in six years once they complete their merger. (The combined company will face financial penalties if they don’t meet these conditions.) According to the FCC’s Report and Order for the Digital Opportunity Data Collection, the FCC will require all internet service providers (ISPs) ‘to submit granular data maps of the areas where they have broadband-capable networks and make service available.’ Previously, ISPs submitted census block data, which means even if they only served one person within a census tract or county, they counted that entire tract or county has having internet access.” • Wow.

Tech: “More on Backdooring (or Not) WhatsApp” [Schneier on Security]. “Yesterday, I blogged about a Facebook plan to backdoor WhatsApp by adding client-side scanning and filtering. It seems that I was wrong, and there are no such plans.” • A retraction, which speaks well of Schneier.

Tech: “Hacked Equifax Customer Receives 10,000 Stolen Social Security Numbers As Share Of Class Action Settlement” [The Onion]. • News In Photos, so the headline is the joke.

Manufacturing: “Boeing Holds Workshops With China Carriers to Bring 737 Max Back” [Industry Week]. “Boeing invited pilots and engineers from China Southern Airlines Co. to a gathering in Guangzhou on Monday, according to an emailed statement from Boeing. More such workshops will be held with Air China Ltd., China Eastern Airlines Corp., Xiamen Airlines Co. and Hainan Airlines Holding Co. in their respective hubs this week. The gatherings are among the latest steps Boeing is taking to bring the plane back, though the exact timing remains unclear. Boeing is redesigning the plane’s flight-control system and is still aiming to present a final software package to regulators by September, though the timeline could slip, a person familiar with the plans has said. China Southern and Air China are among Chinese carriers seeking compensation from the U.S. manufacturer for order delays and losses caused by the grounding of the 737 Max in the wake of two deadly crashes.”

Transportation: “Self-Driving Trucks Are Ready to Do Business in Texas” [WIRED]. “The truck developers come for the weather: It can get chilly in Texas, but the state doesn’t get the months of snow, which can bedevil automated vehicle sensor technology.” • So, when the headline says “in Texas,” it really does mean “in Texas.”

Transportation: “How Much Traffic Do Uber and Lyft Cause?” [CityLab]. “Today the ride-hailing giants released a joint analysis showing that their vehicles are responsible for significant portions of [vehicle-miles traveled (VMT)] in six major urban centers… Now, the Fehr and Peers memo indicates that [transportation network companies (TNCs)] accounted for nearly twice the VMT in San Francisco than the SFCTA had estimated, said Gregory Erhardt, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Kentucky who has researched Uber and Lyft’s effects on public transit ridership. That means the services are likely delaying commuters more, too… On average, between the six cities, just 54 to 62 percent of the vehicle miles traveled by Lyfts and Ubers were with a rider in tow. A third of these miles involve drivers slogging around in between passengers (“deadheading,” in taxi-driver argot); 9 to 10 percent are drivers on their way to a pickup.”

Transportation: “Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second Crash” [IEEE Spectrum]. “For about a year, Swiss Post and Matternet have been collaborating on a drone delivery service in three different cities in Switzerland, with drones ferrying lab samples between hospitals far faster and more efficiently than is possible with conventional ground transportation. The service had made about 3,000 successful flights as of last January, but a January 25th crash into Lake Zurich put things on hold until April. A second crash in May caused Swiss Post to suspend the service indefinitely, and a recently released interim report published by the Swiss Safety Investigation Board provides some detail on what happened—and a reminder that for all the delivery drone hype, there are some basic problems that are still not totally solved.” • In this case, parachutes that deploy “if something goes wrong.” More: “We have no idea exactly how safe Amazon’s drones are, or Google’s drones are. Even Zipline, which has been flying drones dozens of times per day for years, is still working to make their drones safer. What we do know is that crashes can (and do) happen, and the Swiss Post incidents are further evidence that we’ll need a much better understanding of where all of the risk is if we want drones flying regularly over populated areas.”

Concentration: “Australia Strips Google/Facebook to Their Underwear” [Matt Stoller, Big]. “The [Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC)]’s most important contribution to the debate is to say, unvarnished, that Google and Facebook have exceptional amounts of market power and the incentive to use it to manipulate and exploit publishers, businesses, and users. Over the past fifteen years, Google and Facebook have become, as Sims put it in his press conference, “essential gateways for consumers and businesses.” The consequences of this shift are the killing of the free press and the mass manipulation of users….” • Most NC readers already know that, but Stoller’s post is well worth a read for the wealth of detail and clarity of exposition.

Mr. Market: “Carry On Like Nothing Really Matters. Until It Does” [John Authers, Bloomberg]. “It’s no secret that yields on sovereign bonds around the world remain stunningly and historically low. And that, in turn, means a revival in the ‘carry trade.’… Carry trading is best known from its incarnation in the foreign-exchange market. It involves borrowing in a currency where interest rates are low and parking that money in a currency with higher rates, pocketing the difference, or ‘carry.’ Ideally, you get paid for doing nothing… In practice, any increase in volatility or perceived risk — which can be nicely proxied by the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX — spells doom for the carry trade.” • Uh oh.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 20 Extreme Fear (previous close: 27, Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 48 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 7 at 12:19pm. • Restored at reader request. Note that the index is not always updated daily, sadly.

The Biosphere

“Who Will Save the Amazon (and How)?” [Foreign Policy]. “Aug. 5, 2025: In a televised address to the nation, U.S. President Gavin Newsom announced that he had given Brazil a one-week ultimatum to cease destructive deforestation activities in the Amazon rainforest. If Brazil did not comply, the president warned, he would order a naval blockade of Brazilian ports and airstrikes against critical Brazilian infrastructure. The president’s decision came in the aftermath of a new United Nations report cataloging the catastrophic global effects of continued rainforest destruction, which warned of a critical “tipping point” that, if reached, would trigger a rapid acceleration of global warming. Although China has stated that it would veto any U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Brazil, the president said that a large “coalition of concerned states” was prepared to support U.S. action. At the same time, Newsom said the United States and other countries were willing to negotiate a compensation package to mitigate the costs to Brazil for protecting the rainforest, but only if it first ceased its current efforts to accelerate development.” • Ulp.

“Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene” [Nature]. “Crawford Lake is one of ten sites around the globe that researchers are studying as potential markers for the start of the Anthropocene, an as-yet-unofficial designation that is being considered for inclusion in the geological time scale. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a committee of 34 researchers formed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) in 2009, is leading the work, with the aim of crafting a proposal to formally recognize the Anthropocene. This new epoch would mark a clear departure from the Holocene, which started with the close of the last ice age. To define a new epoch, the researchers need to find a representative marker in the rock record that identifies the point at which human activity exploded to such a massive scale that it left an indelible signature on the globe. Given how much people have done to the planet, there are many potential markers. “Scientifically, in terms of evidence, we’re spoiled for choice, but we have to pin it down,” says Jan Zalasiewicz, a palaeobiologist at the University of Leicester, UK, and chair of the AWG…. In the end, it will be the rocks that have the final say.” • In more ways than one.

“A mission to Mars could cause learning impairment and anxiety, study says” [CNN]. “On a long-term spaceflight mission to Mars, astronauts will be continuously exposed to low-dose radiation in deep space. A new study found that this exposure can cause impairments in the brains of mice, resulting in learning and memory issues as well as anxiety… Based on their findings, the researchers believe that one out of five astronauts on a deep space mission would likely experienced anxiety. One in three would be more likely to deal with memory issues. And all of them may struggle when it comes to making decisions, which would be crucial on a mission to Mars where communications with the Earth are delayed by up to 20 minutes.” • Surely there is a science fiction story with this premise, though I can’t remember one. Certainly lots of potential for dark comedy…

“This tiny insect could be delivering toxic pesticides to honey bees and other beneficial bugs” [Science]. “According to a new study, neonicotinoids can kill beneficial insects such as honey bees, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps by contaminating honeydew, a sugar-rich liquid excreted by certain insects…. The study suggests honeydew could be another way beneficial insects are exposed to deadly insecticides. This can devastate more insects across the food web than nectar contaminated with insecticides could, the team says, because honeydew is more abundant, especially in agricultural fields… neonicotinoids still account for more than 20% of the world’s insecticide market.”

Our Famously Free Press

“The GateHouse takeover of Gannett has been finalized” [Poynter]. • Ugh. I expect the imminent gutting of USA Today, which has been a surprisingly good paper.

“How to do something about local news” [Substack]. • Basically a hymn of praise to substack by a founder, but it still sounds like an interesting, er, platform (akin to WordPress, not Facebook).

Games

“Investigative journalism startup uses mobile gaming to finance its future” [Journalism]. “In the game, the player uses tools and skills that McGregor and his editorial team need in their day-to-day investigations and reports. With image verification being an example of one of the most difficult challenges, the game will ask players to assess whether a viral image is accurate or not by using software to spot areas of the image that have been edited. ‘It’s the basics and 101 of journalism – teaching people to be sceptical and what tools to use to crack the conspiracy, like searching court records or sting operations on a more extreme level,’ he explained.” • It sounds like the stories and games are fictional. I don’t see why they couldn’t be real.

The Last of the Feral Hogs, I Swear

For our readers in the United Kingdom:

“30-50 of them, you say?” pic.twitter.com/M07mLraoSE

— Josephine Long come to my show please it’s urgent (@JosieLong) August 5, 2019

A kind soul summarizes:

in the final analysis, the great moral victory of feral hog twitter was that it was much more of a carnival atmosphere with people aiming to make each other laugh than a dunkfest on the feral hog guy

— elizabeth bruenig (@ebruenig) August 6, 2019

News of the Wired

Bake like an Egyptian. Wonderful thread:

Two weeks ago, with the help of Egyptologist @drserenalove and Microbiologist @rbowman1234, I went to Boston’s MFA and @Harvard‘s @peabodymuseum to attempt collecting 4,500 year old yeast from Ancient Egyptian pottery. Today, I baked with some of it… pic.twitter.com/143aKe6M3b

— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) August 5, 2019

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (EM):

EM writes: “You have been saying you need plant photos. I was just in the garden weeding when I remembered to capture this and send it to you. The pink hydrangea on the left is my favorite this year but I am also partial to the coreopsis beneath it.” I like the path, which looks like it would be nice to walk on in bare feet.

Bonus (PS):

PS writes: “Does this fill the bill?” Re Silc sent in his mobile, and Mark52 sent in his steel silhouette, and now PS. I didn’t expect a response like this. Reader, how about you?

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser.Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

2:00PM Water Cooler 8/7/2019

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straincounsel · 5 years ago

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COVID19Alberta

https://youtu.be/kys98Vx562g Dr. Deena Hinshaw; Minister of Environment parks and government house leader Jason Nixon "Alberta the case count rose by 56 since yesterday to a total of 542 while the number of deaths remains at two" 1. the maximum size of group gatherings is immediately reduced from 50 to no more than 15 ...this includes family gatherings such as weddings funerals as well as religious celebrations "While getting outdoors for fresh air and exercise is important to both our physical and mental health this must not occur in groups of more than 15 people also at all such gatherings indoors and out the two meters social distancing guideline must be observed". "to further prevent large group gatherings we are closing vehicle access to provincial parks and public lands" "Immediate closure of non-essential businesses including close-contact businesses like hair salons and barbershops tattoo and piercing studios and aesthetic services as well as wellness studios and clinics and non-emergency and non-critical health services provided by regulated health professionals or registered professionals including dentistry physiotherapy massage podiatry chiropractic and optometry services furthermore all dine in restaurants must close now for dine in service but they can continue to offer a takeout and delivery services and non-essential retail stores like clothing stores computer and gaming stores and services and shopping malls such as hobby and toys stores gift and speciality items stores and furniture stores must also close at this time...". "all of these closures will be subject to the enhanced to penalties and enforcement provisions that were introduced by the government earlier this week" "Alberta self-isolation emergency payment to bridge people until they can qualify for the widely enhanced federal employment insurance benefits with a one-time payment for two weeks of over $1,100 already over 16,000 applications have been processed by a service Alberta" "utility companies to defer payments for 90 days without fear of being cut off" "Six-month interest-free moratorium on student loan payments and we've frozen the education portion of property taxes at last year's level ...a move that will save Albertans forty five million dollars" "Alberta Treasury Board branches...financial credit unions and the major chart chartered banks encouraged to give deferrals on mortgage payments and on terms for loans and credit today we are announcing that we are allowing businesses to defer the tourism industry levy until August 31st ...this will free up five million dollars in cash" "no one will be evicted of April 1 for non-payment of rent I repeat no one will be evicted at the beginning of the next month for non-payment of rent civil enforcement of evictions currently underway for tenants for non-payment of rent will be suspended until April 30... includes folks who were had not been able to pay their rent for the last few months. "a freeze on the rent levels as they are effective today there will be no rent increases including rent increases for which notice was given months ago" "no late fees for missing their rent payments over the next three months" "landlords will be obliged to negotiate payment plans that accommodate their renters financial circumstances" "renters will be obliged to pay their rent as fully and consistently as possible and both the renters and the landlords will be obliged to take into account thus in financial supports they are getting from the provincial and federal governments" "any renter who willfully damages or commits criminal acts within their landlords property we want landlords to understand that they can still protect the value of their property from renters who may be breaking the law or damaging their property" "the price of Western Canadians select oil has been trading as low as $5 there is a flood of OPEC oil coming on to the North American energy markets this in my view constitutes predatory dumping by unfriendly dictatorships that are seeking to drive the North American energy producers out of business " "late fees may not be charged from April 1st to June 30th" "vehicle access for recreational activities is temporarily suspended into access points in our provincial parks this includes parking lots and staging areas I want to be clear that this is only for recreational purposes "First Nations and maytee traditional uses are still permitted as is access for forestry and oil gas oil and gas operations businesses and residents of course who operate or live inside Park lands will not be affected" "Now is not the time to drive to visit our provincial parks or public land for recreational purposes to be clear if a car is required to access the park do not go if you have plans to drive and visit one of these areas in the coming days please cancel your plans" "people who do choose to access parks should only do so by non-motorised means or by being dropped off and picked up... our provincial park facilities are closed and have been closed for over a week referring to washroom structures education centres ski hills and everything in between including winter camping warm-up huts cook shacks etc the safety of our park visitors staff and volunteers and minimising the spread of COVID19 is our top priority" "enforcement officers will be doing routine checks in provincial parks and public areas starting this weekend " "officers can issue fines for non-compliance if required officers can also issue fines for littering ...last weekend revealed a disturbing trend of people not exercising physical distancing leaving behind large amounts of garbage and human waste in some of our provincial parks "horseback riding and off highway vehicle use are still permitted where it is already legal to do so but I want to remind everyone to continue to practice appropriate social distancing" "improper disposing of garbage and waste and our struggle to get it out of parks at the moment has a potential to draw in wild life to the area like bears that are coming out of hibernation at this moment this creates a public safety issue" "Alberta Health Services will be postponing any diagnostic imaging procedures that are considered non urgent by the ordering physician to be clear anyone needing outpatient or emergent outpatient CTS and MRI stands will still receive one "stop all non-essential and routine laboratory testing any bloodwork that is critical to a patient's immediate care will continue to be tested "businesses like retails retail outlets these measures restrict Albertans from attending these locations to purchase goods however the owners of these businesses may continue to sell through online measures or curbside pickup "I urge you to reach out to those you know who are feeling unwell and try to support them perhaps by texting calling or dropping off food" "those who are experiencing any symptoms no matter how mild they seem should share that information with their employer if anyone is in need of emergency medical services we have heard some people not disclosing symptoms" "I want to assure people that they will receive treatment and it is important to tell the dispatcher if you were calling for emergency medical services if you were experiencing symptoms such as fever runny nose cough or difficulty breathing" "it seems small but wash your hands regularly stay home if you're feeling sick and stay away from others even in your own household if you are not feeling well . "we all have a role to play "an online campaign of defamation and harassment of minister Chandra's wife based on completely spurious false disproven allegations which had been dismissed by the ethics commissioner including death threats that were issued against his wife I think any Alberton would understand that a husband or wife will get passionate when their spouse is being attacked and even threatened and certainly defamed" "Minister Chandra saw that his wife was being defamed by a neighbor who he had who had been an acquaintance of his for many years he went down to chat with the neighbor and asked that the post be deleted "I told Tyler he should probably just stay away from social media don't be distracted by the trolls just stay focused on his job." "we've really only had cases for about three weeks and communities spread in terms of those cases that were not known to be travel related or even more recent than that so for us it's going to take a little bit longer to be able to look at how our own data can inform our modeling "the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has shut down a production plant harmony beef that's just outside of Calgary due to concerns over Covid19 how concerned should employees who work there be and should consumers who consume beef be concerned" "as well so I am aware that there was one case in a worker at that plant and the information I received from local Public Health is that a small number of close contacts had been identified and those close contacts were being contacted today" "to inform them of the need to stay home the information I had as of this morning was that the total number of people who were impacted was not significant enough to impact the operations of the plant so "I can't comment on the decision to shut that down but this is not a foodborne illness so this would not be considered to be a concern with respect to the the food that comes out of that plant" "so again I would not be able to comment on the reasons for that whether they wanted to perform some environmental cleaning again that I wasn't aware of that decision but I do know from the information I have again that this wouldn't be considered to be a significant risk to the public and that small number of close contacts we're going to be followed up with today" "The Canadian Food Inspection Agency believes that the plant has been cleaned all the protocols have been followed and that the plant is safe to reopen for production but that some individuals see I see FIA inspectors have refused to go back to the job and so our Minister of Agriculture for Alberta Minister tree Chien is working with his officials to see if we can instead substitute Alberta inspectors into that facility or any other facilities because we also have concerns about a shortage of CFIA inspectors at some of the other meatpacking plants in Alberta" "we are seeing a huge increase in demand for those products and we cannot have the CFIA effectively impairing our entire lost livestock industry by having people refusing to go on the job" "Service Canada employees must and should take all appropriate health precautions follow all of the protocols in the case of CIF see FIA inspectors they we're basically full virtually full hazmat suits in those plants and and and masks and gloves and I mean there are there are very strict protocols about hygiene" "other provinces such as Quebec really ban all gatherings so not just limiting a number but essentially saying no one can gather together outside the home and there would be potentially some of those considerations again depending on how the situation unfolds but the important thing is again as we have always done is watching our own local situation" Read the full article

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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The Ukraine Call: 6 Takeaways https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/politics/ukraine-phone-call-transcript.html

The Trump-Zelensky Phone Call: Key Takeaways From Two New Documents

A reconstructed transcript showed President Trump pressing Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and a Justice Department memo added new details about a whistle-blower’s concerns.

By Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman |

Published Sept. 25, 2019, Updated 7:39 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 25, 2019 8:15 PM ET |

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday released a reconstructed transcript of President Trump’s 30-minute conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on July 25 that was at least in part the focus of a disputed whistle-blower complaint.

Separately, the Justice Department released a revised version of a memo by its Office of Legal Counsel that declared that it was lawful to withhold that complaint from Congress, notwithstanding an inspector general’s determination that the complaint was credible and raised an “urgent concern” of the sort that a statute says must be shown to lawmakers.

Both documents should be treated with caution. A footnote in the five-page reconstructed transcript says it is not verbatim, and its text contains ellipses.

Similarly, a footnote in the Office of Legal Counsel memo says it is a rewritten version and that “we have changed the prior version to avoid references to certain details that remain classified.” Notably, the revised memo talks only about a single phone call, but the inspector general told Congress the whistle-blower’s complaint concerned more than one action.

1. Trump asked for an investigation into the Bidens.

The President: “The other thing. There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

In this passage of the reconstructed call transcript, Mr. Trump pushed the new Ukrainian president to get his country’s prosecutor to open an investigation into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his younger son, Hunter Biden. In May, Ukraine’s top prosecutor had said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens to investigate.

When he was vice president, Mr. Biden had pushed the Ukrainian government in 2015 to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was widely seen as an obstacle to reform because he failed to bring corruption cases. At the time, Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, that was the subject of an investigation that Mr. Shokin’s office had long left dormant.

In 2018, the former vice president talked about his effort to get Mr. Shokin removed — carrying out the Obama administration’s policy — at a Council on Foreign Relations event, and Mr. Trump’s supporters have used a brief video clip from those remarks as part of their insinuations that Mr. Biden was trying to protect Burisma Holdings from prosecution. Mr. Biden did not portray his effort to get Mr. Shokin out as stopping any prosecution of Burisma Holdings.

2. Trump alluded to American aid, while not explicitly linking his request to unfreezing it, the document shows.

The President: “I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.”

At the time of this call, Mr. Trump was holding back hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine that Congress had appropriated to help that country fend off Russian aggression. The reconstructed transcript does not directly refer to Mr. Trump’s freezing of the aid or whether he would unfreeze it. However, it says Mr. Trump referred to large-scale American assistance to Ukraine in the above passage, and several sentences later, Mr. Trump added:

The President: … “but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal, necessarily, because things are happening that are not good. But the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.”

The next thing Mr. Trump did — after Mr. Zelensky responded to this statement by thanking Mr. Trump for his support “in the area of defense” and saying Ukraine was “ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps,” such as by buying American missiles — was to ask for investigations as a “favor.”

3. Zelensky agreed to pursue an inquiry into the Bidens.

President Zelensky: “Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country.”

In May, Ukraine’s top prosecutor at the time had said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens for him to investigate. In this passage, Mr. Zelensky promises to do what Mr. Trump is asking — launch an investigation into the Bidens — but also asks Mr. Trump if he can provide any information for Ukrainian investigators to look at.

4. White House officials, the whistle-blower, and the intelligence community inspector general were concerned that Trump may have broken the law.

The complainant alleged that unnamed “White House officials” had expressed concern about the content of a telephone call between the President and a foreign leader. According to the ICIG, statements made by the President during the call could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of the campaign-finance laws.

This quote comes from the Office of Legal Counsel memo, written by the office’s head, Steven A. Engel, about the still-secret whistle-blower complaint. It shows that one aspect of the complaint is the allegation that Mr. Trump may have violated a law that prohibits the solicitation of an illegal foreign campaign contribution, which can be a “thing of value” as well as funds.

The Justice Department memo also said:

The ICIG further noted that alleged misconduct by a senior U.S. official to seek foreign assistance to interfere in or influence a federal election could potentially expose the official to serious national security and counterintelligence risks.

While the memo does not specify the details of the counterintelligence concern, the suggestion is that if a foreign leader knew that Mr. Trump had broken a law, he would have leverage over the American president because he could threaten to expose the misconduct.

5. The whistle-blower did not have direct knowledge of the call and may not like Trump, but the Trump-appointed inspector general still found the information credible.

Although the ICIG’s preliminary review found “some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate,” the ICIG concluded that the complaint’s allegations nonetheless appeared credible.

Steven Engel’s memo stresses that the whistle-blower “received secondhand” the information about Mr. Trump’s “confidential diplomatic communication.” (As noted, the complaint apparently refers to more events than just this phone call.) It also notes that the inspector general — Michael Atkinson, an appointee of Mr. Trump’s — noted something that suggested that the whistle-blower did not support the re-election of Mr. Trump. Nevertheless, Mr. Atkinson found the allegations credible.

6. Trump said Barr would call the Ukrainian president about another investigation.

The President: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation in Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

In this portion of the reconstructed transcript, Mr. Trump appears to be referring to an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory pushed by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, that Ukraine had some involvement in the emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Giuliani said in a previously unpublished portion of an interview with The New York Times in April that he was in touch with people “who said that the Ukrainians were the ones who did the hacking,” then participated in an effort to blame the Russian government and link it to the Trump campaign.

The special counsel’s report, which Mr. Trump disparages here, made clear that Russian military officers hacked the committee’s mail server. There is no evidence that the Ukrainians were involved. But in May, Attorney General William P. Barr began his own investigation into the Russia investigation and its origins.

Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.

Trump Officials Turn Over Whistle-Blower Complaint as Impeachment Inquiry Begins

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House should work “expeditiously” to build its case. It is not yet clear what that means.

By Nicholas Fandos | Published Sept. 25, 2019 Updated 7:45 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 25, 2019 8:15 PM ET |

WASHINGTON — House Democrats rushed on Wednesday to plot the course of their formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, getting their first glimpses of the secret intelligence whistle-blower complaint that touched off the investigation that could lead to his removal.

But even as they obtained crucial details about allegations that Mr. Trump pressured a foreign leader to help him tarnish a political rival, Democrats did not plan any immediate action to formalize their impeachment inquiry. They do not intend to hold a vote on the House floor to authorize the proceedings, as has been done in the past, lawmakers and senior party officials said, because they do not believe it is necessary.

Instead, they were planning to use the coming weeks to build as strong a case as they could against Mr. Trump, with an eye toward drafting articles of impeachment against him. That would mean the House would not vote on the matter unless the articles of impeachment were brought to the floor.

The disclosure to Congress of the whistle-blower’s complaint, coming less than 24 hours after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would pursue an official impeachment inquiry, underscored how rapidly things were changing now that lawmakers had pivoted to using their powers under the Constitution to weigh charges against the president.

Ms. Pelosi spent Wednesday largely sequestered behind closed doors, strategizing with her leadership team, top aides and a group of six committee leaders investigating Mr. Trump. She repeatedly stressed that she wanted the House to move “expeditiously” to uncover new facts about Mr. Trump’s attempts to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of his leading political rivals, for corruption.

As they debated how best to structure the inquiry, lawmakers made headway in obtaining documentary evidence that could constitute a crucial piece of their case. Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine are at least part of the whistle-blower complaint, which the Trump administration had withheld from Congress until Wednesday afternoon and which is said to contain a detailed account of the president’s attempts to pressure a foreign power for personal political gain.

Democrats plan to make those interactions the top priority of their impeachment case, senior lawmakers and aides familiar with the speaker’s thinking said. They emphasized again and again what Ms. Pelosi has called the president’s “betrayal” of his oath, of national security and of the American electoral process.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee who is leading the House’s Ukraine investigation, said early Wednesday afternoon that a newly released summary of a July conversation between Mr. Trump and the Ukrainian leader, in which Mr. Trump offered the assistance of his personal lawyer and the attorney general, only added urgency to that point.

“The notes of the call reflect a conversation far more damning than I or many others had imagined,” Mr. Schiff told reporters, calling the conversation a “classic, mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader” that constituted “very powerful evidence of that kind of potential impeachable offense.” On Wednesday afternoon, his committee also finally got its hands on the complaint itself.

As the facts around Mr. Trump’s alleged pressure campaign came into clearer focus, though, significant questions went unanswered about the scope and speed of Democrats’ inquiry, with lawmakers from the party’s progressive and moderate wings at odds over how to handle accusations of presidential wrongdoing.

For now at least, Democrats do not intend to limit their inquiry to the Ukraine episode. They are planning to consider other matters they have been investigating as possible impeachable offenses, including the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections and Mr. Trump’s attempts to derail that inquiry. Each could still form the substance of separate articles of impeachment for consideration by the House.

But during a meeting with members of her leadership team, the speaker initiated a discussion about whether Democrats should limit their case strictly to the Ukraine matter and attempts by Mr. Trump and his administration to keep it from Congress, people familiar with the conversation said. An aide to Ms. Pelosi cautioned that no final decisions had been made.

Proponents of limiting the impeachment inquiry argue that the Ukraine case makes for a fresher, simpler case to make to voters, but also that it could create space for national security-minded Republicans to cross party lines.

Representative Mikie Sherrill, a freshman Democrat who represents a swing district in New Jersey, said her party had not made its case to voters that Mr. Trump obstructed justice in the Russia investigation, and would be better served to confine the impeachment inquiry to the president’s dealings with Ukraine.

“I am worried about it getting too broad,” Ms. Sherrill said.

Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, another first-term Democrat who holds a seat Mr. Trump won in 2016, said she spoke privately with Ms. Pelosi on Tuesday night to warn that the newly announced inquiry must be more focused than the six-committee investigation long underway.

“Whatever process moving forward we have, it should be different, it should be strategic, clear and efficient,” Ms. Slotkin said in an interview.

Democrats were closely watching their Republican counterparts for any signs of potential cracks in support for Mr. Trump. There was no expectation that party leaders — many of whom began the day at the White House, reviewing the transcript before it was public and hearing via phone from the president — would level a word of criticism.

“It’s now clear that Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry on the basis of rumors, rumors that turned out to be false,” said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican.

But there were faint signs of growing discomfort among a handful of Republicans, both about what has been revealed about Mr. Trump’s actions and his administration’s handling of the whistle-blower complaint.

Most notably, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, told reporters that the summary of the call was “deeply troubling.” And when asked at the Atlantic Festival in Washington later in the day why he was one of the few Republicans criticizing the president, Mr. Romney took a swipe at his party.

“I think it’s very natural for people to look at circumstances and see them in the light that’s most amenable to their maintaining power, and doing things to preserve that power,” he said.

Mr. Romney was not entirely alone. Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, emerged from reading the whistle-blower complaint and urged both parties not to rush to “partisan tribalism.” His own party, he said, “ought not be rushing to circle the wagons and say there’s no there there, when there’s obviously a lot that is troubling there,” while Democrats should not jump to conclusions on impeachment.

And even as the vast majority of Republicans said they believed Mr. Trump had done nothing wrong, all but two of them joined House Democrats in voting Wednesday in favor of a nonbinding resolution to condemn the Trump administration’s handling of the whistle-blower complaint. The measure demanded that the complaint be given to Congress, that the whistle-blower be instructed on how to contact the congressional intelligence committees and that Mr. Trump and his team “cease their public efforts to discredit the whistle-blower.”

Two Republicans, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted “present.”

The situation in the House reflected just how quickly Democrats’ views of impeachment had evolved in the past week. Although the House Judiciary Committee has been conducting an investigation for months into possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power, House Democrats remained divided over an official move toward impeachment until the emergence of the secret whistle-blower complaint about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, and his administration’s attempts to block Congress from learning more about it.

Now, Democrats are wary of repeating some of the mistakes they believe they made around the rollout of Mr. Mueller’s report, when many of them now think they moved too slowly and allowed Mr. Trump and his allies to define what wrongdoing looked like.

“There is an understanding that all justice should be swift and sure and that this has to happen deliberately, but relatively quickly,” said Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Intelligence Committee.

That will be made more difficult by the fact that the House is scheduled to depart for a two-week recess on Friday. Some Democrats and progressive activists called for it to be canceled.

“For us to not tend to this matter first and foremost, when we are calling it a matter of national security, a matter that’s so incredibly significant, I think leaving for two weeks would be irresponsible,” said Representative Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania.

But Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat, said on Wednesday that it was important to preserve the recess so lawmakers could go home and explain the building case against the president to their constituents. And committees involved in the investigations planned to remain active over the break, potentially holding hearings.

Trump Meets With Ukraine’s President and Denies Pressuring Him to Investigate Biden

By Peter Baker | Published Sept. 25, 2019 Updated 4:34 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 25, 2019 |

President Trump on Wednesday adamantly denied that he pressured Ukraine to investigate one of his leading Democratic rivals despite the newly released record of a call in which he asked the country’s president to look into Democrats as “a favor” to him.

Mr. Trump received some backing from the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who by chance met with Mr. Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly at the same time the House was gearing up for impeachment proceedings stemming from the interaction between the two leaders.

Sitting side by side with Mr. Trump in their first face-to-face meeting, Mr. Zelensky told reporters that he wanted to stay out of United States politics but provided a benign interpretation of the July 25 call in which Mr. Trump asked him to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and any Ukrainian ties to Democrats during the 2016 campaign.

“We had, I think, a good phone call,” Mr. Zelensky said. “It was normal, we spoke about many things. So, I think you read it that nobody pushed it, pushed me.”

“In other words, no pressure,” Mr. Trump chimed in. “And by the way,” he added, addressing a reporter, “you know there was no pressure.”

The timing of the meeting between the two men, scheduled before the revelations that prompted Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open a formal impeachment inquiry, was just one element in a day of rapid-fire developments. After days of resistance, the administration released a memo recounting the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky and then agreed later in the day to give Congress the complaint made by an unidentified government whistle-blower that touched off the furor.

The whistle-blower’s complaint reportedly deals with more than just the single call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky, but its contents have remained shrouded in mystery until now. House Democrats have decided to examine whether Mr. Trump abused his power by leaning on a foreign country to provide dirt on a domestic political adversary.

The complaint was set to be delivered hours before a planned House vote on a resolution that would have condemned Mr. Trump and the administration for withholding the material and would have demanded that Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, promptly furnish it.

The resolution also demands that Mr. Maguire, who is set to testify before the intelligence panel on Thursday, ensure that the whistle-blower is protected from retribution. It chastises the president for comments disparaging the whistle-blower in recent days.

With the complaint heading to Congress, it was not clear whether the vote would happen.

In releasing a reconstructed record of the July call on Wednesday, the White House argued that it proved that Mr. Trump did nothing wrong. But Democrats said it was evidence that the president had betrayed his oath and should be charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.

In the call, Mr. Trump urged Mr. Zelensky to contact Attorney General William P. Barr and talk with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, about opening a potential corruption investigation connected to Mr. Biden, according to the administration’s reconstruction of the conversation.

“I would like you to do us a favor,” Mr. Trump said in response to Mr. Zelensky raising the prospect of acquiring military equipment from the United States. Noting that the United States had “done a lot for Ukraine,” Mr. Trump asked that the Ukrainians examine an unsubstantiated theory about stolen Democratic emails as well as look at Mr. Biden and his younger son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

“So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” the president told Mr. Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president told Mr. Trump that he would have the country’s new top prosecutor look into the matters he raised.

“The next prosecutor general will be 100 percent my person, my candidate,” Mr. Zelensky assured the president. “He or she will look into the situation.”

In their meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said there was nothing wrong with asking for that because Mr. Biden and the Democrats were the corrupt ones. He went on to castigate Ms. Pelosi, saying she had caved into the liberal wing of her party that wants him ousted from office by proceeding with impeachment.

“She’s lost her way,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s been taken over by the radical left.”

Ms. Pelosi and other leading House Democrats said the record of the July call made clear that Mr. Trump was pressuring Ukraine to help benefit his own political prospects. Just days before making the call, Mr. Trump had blocked $391 million in American aid to Ukraine. That decision did not come up during the call, according to the White House record, but the two did discuss United States assistance for Ukraine and Mr. Zelensky made clear he needed more.

“The president has tried to make lawlessness a virtue in America and now is exporting it abroad,” Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. “I respect the responsibility of the president to engage with foreign leaders as part of his job. It is not part of his job to use taxpayer money to shake down other countries for the benefit of his campaign.”

Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that the president did not need to explicitly threaten aid to make his point as he asked for a favor.

“There was only one message that that president of Ukraine got from that call and that was: ‘This is what I need, I know what you need,’” Mr. Schiff said. “Like any mafia boss, the president didn’t need to say, ‘That’s a nice country you’ve have — it would be a shame if something happened to it.’”

Mr. Biden said that the House should “hold Donald Trump to account for his abuse of power,” although he did not directly call for impeachment. “It is a tragedy for this country that our president put personal politics above his sacred oath,” Mr. Biden said. “He has put his own political interests over our national security interest, which is bolstering Ukraine against Russian pressure.”

Publicly at least, though, most leading Republicans who addressed the matter on Wednesday stuck by Mr. Trump and agreed that the record of the call showed nothing impeachable.

“From a quid pro quo aspect, there’s nothing there,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who served as a House prosecutor during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Wednesday’s meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky could hardly have come at a more tense moment in Ukrainian-American relations. Mr. Zelensky, a former comedian with no prior political experience, was elected this year to take over a country torn by Russian military intervention and desperately dependent on help from the United States and Europe.

Mr. Zelensky made clear just how much he needed the good will of Mr. Trump when he opened his meeting on Wednesday noting that the president had invited him to the White House, but “I think you forgot to tell me the date” and pressing Mr. Trump to visit Ukraine.

The two sought to make light of the conflict over their call. “He’s made me more famous,” Mr. Trump joked as he sat down with Mr. Zelensky.

Mr. Zelensky said it was better to meet in person “than on the phone.”

Even as he flattered Mr. Trump, the Ukrainian leader made a point of saying he did not actually order the sought-after investigation.

“We have independent country and independent general security, and I can’t push anyone,” Mr. Zelensky said in halting English, referring to the prosecutor general. “So I didn’t call somebody or the new general security. I didn’t ask him I didn’t push him.”

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thechasefiles · 6 years ago

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 9/9/2018

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Sunrday September 9th 2018. Remember you can read full articles by purchasing Sunday Sun Nation Newspaper (SS), via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS).

POLYCLINIC PUSHBACK – Government’s plan to open selected polyclinics around the clock is meeting with resistance from trade unions and organisations which represent nurses. The Sunday Sun understands that October 1, had been set as the date to have this system implemented at the David Thompson Polyclinic in Colleton, St John and the Winston Scott Polyclinic, in Jemmotts Lane, the City; but trade unions have told officials from the Ministry of Health and Wellness this cannot work, citing the critical shortage of staff, particularly nurses. A source close to the situation, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak, said officials had first earmarked the Randall Phillips Polyclinic at Oistins, Christ Church, and the Winston Scott Polyclinic, both of which already have extended hours but the former has been deemed not suitable for a 24-hour operation. “There are several issues with Randall Phillips such as electrical wiring; mould and the physical environment is just not suitable, so they switched to the David Thompson Polyclinic but nurses are not too pleased about this – they are fuming,” the source said. (SS)

NEW BOARD APPOINTED AT NPC – The National Petroleum Corporation (NPC) has a new Board, which will be chaired by Dr Asquith Thompson. His deputy is Herbert Yearwood. The other members are: Richard Hughes, Janaye Burgess, Ricardo Blackman, Lachmi Connell, Sonya Alleyne, Neil Kirton, Nicole Puckerin, the General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union or her nominee, the Permanent Secretary responsible for Finance in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources and the Chairman of the Barbados National Oil Company Limited, or their nominees. The appointments took effect from July 1, and are for a period of three years. (BGIS)

HAITI – MINISTER REMOVED FROM NEW GOVERNMENT – Minister of Environment Osner Richard has been removed from office less than 48 hours after a new government was named in Haiti. Richard, who was appointed by presidential decree on Wednesday, was nominated by a consortium of political parties. The political parties have since named engineer Joseph Jouthe, a former technical director at the Office of Monetization of Development Assistance Programmes, to replace Richard pending its appointment in the official journal. He was removed from the Cabinet on the grounds of dual nationality. He is reported to be the holder of a United States passport. Prior to being named a minister, Richard had signed a document certifying that he had never given up his Haitian nationality. However, the Senate Commission, in analysing its documents, found that he held a US passport. Media reports said that Richard may be charged in court for making a false statement. The new government was named two months after prime minister Jack Guy Lafontant resigned following days of violent protests against rising fuel price. The unrest started after the government unveiled a proposal to remove fuel subsidies. At least four people were killed with shops and buildings burnt and looted. (BT)

FIANCÉE ROBBED OF SOULMATE – Today, Bernadette Greenidge is nursing a broken heart. Her soulmate of 14 years, and fiancé, Stephen Small died on Friday after being robbed and stabbed the previous day. “I can’t tell you how I feel. I haven’t got that feeling yet. To me, it’s still like a dream and I’m still just hoping,” a visibly shaken Greenidge told the Sunday Sun yesterday at the couple’s home in Henley, St John. “Everyone loved him . . . we still do. He’s like a dad, granddad. He was my best friend; he was my everything,” she later added. Bolstered by her supportive family, Greenidge said she met Small more than 18 years ago and was instantly smitten. Over the years, their growing friendship flourished into a relationship. (SS)

RUN OUT BY THIEVES – An Austrian man who made Barbados his home 33 years ago said he has been forced to flee his million-dollar house after being constantly hit by thieves for the past two years. Friedrich Trausnitzer, 74, who lived in an affluent and secluded St James neighbourhood, told the Sunday Sun thieves were invading his home almost daily stealing thousands of dollars, as well as household items. Frustrated and feeling as if he was getting no assistance from the police, the man, who lived alone, moved out of his house two weeks ago, taking his two dogs, because he feared for his life. He is renting an apartment for $1 600 a month and has posted a sign at his former home declaring he has no money. Trausnitzer is planning to put his house up for sale and possibly move back to Austria. (SS)

BARBADIAN MEN FOUND DEAD IN JAMAICA – Reports coming out of Jamaica say two Barbadian men have been found dead in the eastern parish of St Thomas. An article published by RJR Newssaid the bodies of Dario Yearwood and Daniel Griffiths were found in bushes in Woodbourne on Friday. “The men reportedly arrived in Jamaica on Wednesday close to midday and should have checked in at a Kingston hotel but never did. “Detectives who went to the murder scene recovered an identification card belonging to one of the men. Further checks with the immigration authorities on Saturday revealed that the men were Barbadian nationals,” the article said. The men’s bodies, which reportedly bore gunshot wounds, were discovered by a resident who went to tend to his cattle. (SS)

STABBED BRAZILIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE STABLE, IN THERAPY – A front-running and far-right Brazilian presidential candidate began physical therapy on Saturday and remained in serious but stable condition after being stabbed during a campaign rally earlier this week, doctors and family members said. Congressman Jair Bolsonaro, who is unlikely to return to the campaign trail before the Oct. 7 first-round vote, was being fed intravenously but was in “good clinical condition,” according to a written statement from the Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo. The attack further complicates Brazil’s most unpredictable election in three decades. Corruption investigations have jailed scores of powerful businessmen and politicians in recent years, and alienated infuriated voters. Bolsonaro, 63, has for years angered many Brazilians with extreme statements on race, gender and sexual preference, but is also seen by his many supporters as a politically incorrect gust of fresh air in a broken system. Bolsonaro’s son, Flavio, on Saturday posted on his verified Twitter account a photo of his father wearing a blue hospital gown and sitting in a bedside chair with tubes coming from his arms and nose. The law-and-order candidate was making his trademark “guns up” gesture, with both his hands resembling pistols. Flavio wrote that his father was in physical therapy. Police have a suspect in custody and say only that they are continuing the investigation and that no clear motive was yet known, though the assailant told police he stabbed Bolsonaro on Thursday on “orders from God.” Surveys consistently give Bolsonaro, a member of the Social Liberal Party, around 22 percent in simulated first-round votes. However, those polls find he would badly lose to most rivals in the likely event of a runoff, which takes place if no candidate wins a majority in the first ballot. (SS)

KNIGHT RIDERS SEAL TOP-TWO FINISH WITH SIXTH STRAIGHT WIN – Trinbago Knight Riders guaranteed a top-two finish in the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) with a nine-run victory over Barbados Tridents at Queen’s Park Oval last night. The defending champions are now sure of their place in Tuesday’s Playoff 1 in Guyana, with a second bite of the cherry in the semi-final should they need it. Having been put in to bat by the Tridents, the Knight Riders made an imposing 180/5 but will still feel they could have got more on a night when half of their stellar top six found run-scoring easy and the other half found life far tougher. Chris Lynn got things started with three successive boundaries in the opening over from the first three balls he faced, adding two Hero Maximums before being comprehensively yorked by Chemar Holder for a whirlwind 29 from just 10 balls. Denesh Ramdin then continued to thrive after his recent promotion to number three as the Knight Riders raced to 50 after just 3.3 overs. He struck five fours and two sixes in his 31-ball 51. And at the end of the innings Dwayne Bravo maintained his astonishing hitting form in this season’s Hero CPL with two more sixes and three fours in a cameo of 33 from 20 balls. It wasn’t so easy for everyone, though. In-form Colin Munro found life tougher than at any other time in the tournament. His 28 did take him to the highest ever run tally in a single Hero CPL season with potentially as many as four innings remaining but came at under a run a ball. Brendon McCullum, another mainstay of the Knight Riders’ batting this season, made just 4 from 6 balls before Darren Bravo contributed 20 not out from 24 at the death. Plenty of credit must go to the Tridents bowlers, who hauled things back impressively after Lynn and Ramdin had blasted the Knight Riders to 68/1 after the Power Play. The Knight Riders would have been looking well north of 200 having reached 104/1 at halfway, so 180/5 represented a result for the Tridents. Leg-spinner Imran Khan was excellent in claiming 2/25 from his four overs with the big wickets of Munro and Ramdin to his name, while Mohammad Irfan kept things tight amid the carnage at the start and end of the innings to give up just 28 from his four. The 180 would just about prove sufficient, though, despite a game attempt from an inexperienced Tridents top-order missing Hashim Amla, Steve Smith and Martin Guptill through injury. It was spin that proved the Tridents’ undoing with leg-spinner Fawad Ahmed bowling openers Sunny Sohal and Tion Webster with a pair of googlies after a solid opening stand, and returning to have Shai Hope stumped for 26 in his final over to finish with 3/28. Tridents keeper-batsman Nicholas Pooran further enhanced his growing reputation with 44 from 32 balls, including back-to-back sixes to put a slight dent in Fawad Ahmed’s figures, and when he combined with his skipper Jason Holder to put together a 50-run stand in quick time for the fourth wicket there was a growing chance of Barbados pulling off an upset. But Pooran was brilliantly run out by Dwayne Bravo’s direct hit from cover before Holder was caught in the deep off Ali Khan – who took punishment with the new ball but returned to bowl a brilliant, decisive 19th over that brought that wicket and cost just four runs - condemning the Tridents to a seventh straight defeat to end their 2018 campaign. For the Knight Riders, though, it’s a sixth straight win in a season they will hope is far from done yet. (CPL) Upcoming Fixtures: Saturday 8 September – Guyana Amazon Warriors v Jamaica Tallawahs (8pm), Providence Stadium Sunday 9 September – Guyana Amazon Warriors v Trinbago Knight Riders (6pm), Providence Stadium. (SS)

SOUTH AFRICAN ATTEMPTING TO SWIM AROUND BARBADOS – South African Cameron Bellamy has been on the water for almost 20 hours as he attempts to become the first person to swim around Barbados. Just before 3 p.m. today, he passed Barclays Park after a tough stint along the south-eastern part of the island. "The south-east was difficult,” said volunteer Kristina Evelyn who is handling logistics and communications. “He had to swim a little farther out than he expected because the waves were hitting on the cliffs and then the backwash, it was too choppy. He was not moving forward as he should, so he had to swim out farther to get away from the cliffs. And there was quite a lot of current. “He knew that was going to be his toughest place, so he was quite tired by the time he got to Consett Bay, but after Consett Bay he was going with the current, so then it became a little bit easier.” Bellamy has already swum further than anyone who attempted this challenge. Evelyn is also coordinating the shifts on the support boat. She said currently, there are two medics, two observers, two kayakers/feeders, the captain and two co-pilots. Bellamy is taking on fluid every 30 minutes and eats every hour. He left Pebbles Beach last night around 7 o’clock and is expected to land tomorrow morning, once all goes well. His progress in the water can be tracked at https://track.rs/cameron Bellamy is raising funds for Variety The Children's Charity and Brightwater Kids. (SS)

OSAKA CLAIMS US OPEN TITLE AFTER SERENA MELTDOWN – Naomi Osaka became Japan’s first ever Grand Slam champion after she thumped a raging Serena Williams 6-2 6-4 in a controversial US Open final on Saturday, with the American suffering a meltdown after being handed a game penalty. With Osaka in control of the match, chair umpire Carlos Ramos sent Williams into a rage when he handed the 23-time Grand Slam champion a game penalty for a string of bad behaviour, including a coaching violation and verbal and racket abuse. Williams then launched a verbal attack on Ramos, demanding everything from an apology to accusing him of being a thief. The game penalty put Osaka 5-3 up in second set and the 20-year-old Japanese kept her cool to pull off a historic win. (SS)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 114 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

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investmart007 · 6 years ago

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WASHINGTON | AP FACT CHECK: More Trump falsehoods on NKorea, immigration

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/8WbezI

WASHINGTON | AP FACT CHECK: More Trump falsehoods on NKorea, immigration

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is exaggerating the achievements of his Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, claiming the North has destroyed missile launch sites and no longer has “rockets flying over the place.”

That’s a distorted picture. North Korea has revealed no action on eliminating launch sites, and it announced the suspension of nuclear weapons testing and certain missiles well before the summit, although as part of the diplomatic opening with the U.S.

On other matters over the past week, Trump falsely blamed Democrats for an immigration policy of his administration that is splitting children from parents after their arrests at the border, made incorrect statements on trade and erred in asserting that he had been exonerated in the Russia investigation.

A look at the reality behind a variety of statements from the president:

TRUMP: “No more nuclear testing or rockets flying all over the place, blew up launch sites. Hostages already back, hero remains coming home & much more!” — tweet Sunday.

THE FACTS: This much is true: North Korea announced the suspension of nuclear-weapons testing and testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles in April, to soften the ground for the diplomatic opening with South Korea and the U.S. North Korea has not conducted a missile test since Nov. 28.

But it remains in possession of fissile material for a dozen to 60 nuclear bombs, independent experts say. Last year, it tested long-range missiles that could reach the U.S. mainland, although it’s not certain that the North has mastered the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead that could re-enter the atmosphere and hit its target.

The summit produced a general agreement from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but there were no specific commitments on eliminating or even reducing his country’s nuclear arsenal.

As for Trump’s other points, North Korea has not said it blew up launch sites. And he is premature in asserting “hero remains coming home.” This may happen, as Kim agreed to work toward the return of U.S. troops missing in North Korea from the Korean War. But as of Friday, no remains have been repatriated from North Korea since 2007. ___ TRUMP on a Justice Department report on the 2016 Clinton email investigation: “I think that the report yesterday, maybe more importantly than anything, it totally exonerates me. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. And if you read the report, you’ll see that. … I think that the Mueller investigation has been totally discredited.” — remarks to reporters Friday.

THE FACTS: The report neither exonerated nor implicated Trump. It did not make any findings about collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. It did not discredit, or give credence to, special counsel Robert Mueller’s continuing investigation into Russian interference in the election and ties between the Trump campaign and Russians.

The report was about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices. ___ TRUMP on former FBI director James Comey: “Certainly he, they just seem like criminal acts to me. What he did was criminal. … Should he be locked up? Let somebody make a determination.” — to Fox News on Friday.

THE FACTS: The report does not substantiate Trump’s lock-him-up rhetoric. Comey was roundly faulted by the inspector general for violating FBI practices and for insubordination in making public statements about the Clinton investigation at the height of the presidential campaign. The report also revealed communications among some FBI employees who plainly wanted Trump to lose. But it does not support Trump’s complaint that political bias influenced the conduct of the email investigation into his Democratic rival.

Nor does it allege any criminal behavior by Comey, who has been accused by Clinton supporters of taking actions that hurt her election chances. ___ TRUMP: “Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change! This is why we need more Republicans elected in November…” — tweet Saturday.

TRUMP: “The Democrats forced that law upon our nation. I hate it. I hate to see separation of parents and children.” And: “I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law.” — remarks to reporters Friday.

THE FACTS: It’s not the Democrats’ law. There is no law mandating the separation of children and parents at the border.

The separations are a consequence of a Trump administration policy to maximize criminal prosecutions of people caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally. That means more adults are jailed, pending trial, so their children are removed from them. Before the policy, many people who were accused of illegal entry and did not have a criminal record were merely referred for civil deportation proceedings, which generally did not break up families.

The policy was announced April 6 and went into effect in May. From April 19 to May 31, 1,995 children were separated from 1,940 adults, according to Homeland Security statistics obtained by The Associated Press. The figures are for people who tried to enter the U.S. between official border crossings.

Trump’s repeated, but nonspecific references to a Democratic law appear to involve one enacted in 2008. It passed unanimously in Congress and was signed by Republican President George W. Bush.

It was focused on freeing and otherwise helping children who come to the border without a parent or guardian. It does not call for family separation. ___ TRUMP: “The economy is the best it’s ever been with employment being at an all-time high.” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Thanks largely to population growth, the number of people with jobs is, in fact, at a record high of 155.5 million. But a more relevant measure — the proportion of Americans with jobs — isn’t even close to a record.

Last month, 60.4 percent of Americans 16 and older had jobs. That is up from the recession and its aftermath, when many Americans stopped looking for work. It bottomed out at 58.2 percent in July 2011. Both figures are far below the record high of 64.7 percent, which was briefly reached in 2000. At the beginning of the 2008-2009 recession, 62.7 percent of Americans had jobs.

Economists estimate that at least half of the decline reflects ongoing retirements by the huge baby boom generation. For Americans in their prime working years — age 25 through 54 — roughly 79 percent have jobs. That’s up substantially from the post-recession low of 74.8 percent in November 2010. But it’s below the record of 81.9 percent in April 2000. ___ TRUMP: “Oil prices are too high, OPEC is at it again. Not good!” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: He oversimplifies the reasons for increased prices. OPEC is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Members of the cartel, led by Saudi Arabia, and other big producers including Russia have contributed to reversing the plunge in crude oil prices that started in 2014. They have shown discipline in limiting production since the start of last year, helping push up the benchmark price of international crude.

Prices, however, were already rising on growing demand and expectations that a sharp pullback in new investment by oil companies would reduce the oil supply.

Some estimates put the post-crash reduction in investment by major oil companies such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BP at more than $1 trillion — almost akin to eliminating the fourth-largest oil producer in the world.

Meanwhile, output from Venezuela, a major oil exporter to the U.S., has plunged as the South American country goes through a political and economic crisis.

Then there is Iran, OPEC’s third-biggest producer. Iran boosted production after the U.S. lifted sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program in 2016. But analysts expect output to fall when Trump’s decision to withdraw from the deal takes full effect later this year. ___ TRUMP: “Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal. According to a Canada release, they make almost 100 Billion Dollars in Trade with U.S. (guess they were bragging and got caught!). Minimum is 17B. Tax Dairy from us at 270%.” — tweet June 10. Two days earlier: “Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products! They didn’t tell you that, did they? Not fair to our farmers!”

THE FACTS: He’s not telling the whole story. While Canadian dairy tariffs average nearly 249 percent, the troubles that U.S. dairy farmers face can’t all be blamed on Canada.

Canadian trade policies have had only a “tiny impact” on America’s struggling dairy farmers, says Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis.

Despite Canadian barriers, the United States last year ran a $474 million trade surplus in dairy with Canada, and exported $636 million in dairy products to Canada while importing $162 million, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Dairy is barely a blip — 0.1 percent — in U.S.-Canada trade, which amounted to $680 billion last year. As a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, “99 percent of the trade between Canada and the U.S. is tariff-free,” said Bruce Heyman, former U.S. ambassador to Canada. Overall, the U.S. ran a nearly $3 billion surplus in trade with Canada last year. ___ TRUMP: “Just landed – a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea…” —tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: His claim that there is no nuclear threat is an exaggeration. The five-hour nuclear summit gave the two leaders an opportunity to express optimism. But it didn’t nail down how and when North Korea might denuclearize.

North Korea is still believed to have a significant nuclear arsenal that could potentially threaten the U.S. Independent experts say the North could have enough fissile material for anywhere between about a dozen and 60 nuclear bombs. Last year, it tested long-range missiles that could potentially reach the U.S. mainland. ___ TRUMP: Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President (Barack) Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer – sleep well tonight!” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong to say there was an assumption before he took office that the United States would go to war. Obama had used sanctions to no avail to try to halt North Korea’s nuclear program. But it wasn’t until after Trump took office that North Korea’s testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile and rhetoric between the two leaders heightened talk of war. ___ TRUMP: “Chairman Kim and I just signed a joint statement in which he reaffirms his unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We also agreed to vigorous negotiations to implement the agreement as soon as possible, and he wants to do that. This isn’t the past. This isn’t another administration that never got it started and, therefore, never got it done.” — remarks Tuesday at news conference with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un.

THE FACTS: He’s wrong in suggesting his administration is the first to start on denuclearization with North Korea. The Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations both did so.

Clinton reached an aid-for-disarmament deal in 1994 that halted North Korea’s plutonium production for eight years, freezing what was then a very small nuclear arsenal. Bush took a tougher stance toward North Korea, and the 1994 nuclear deal collapsed because of suspicions that the North was running a secret uranium enrichment program. Bush, too, ultimately pursued negotiations.

That led to a temporary disabling of some nuclear facilities, but talks fell apart because of differences over verification. ___ TRUMP: “He actually mentioned the fact that they proceeded down a path in the past and ultimately as you know nothing got done. In one case, they took billions of dollars during the Clinton regime. … Took billions of dollars and nothing happened.” He said of Clinton: “He spent $3 billion and got nothing.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: His numbers are incorrect. The Clinton administration, which he calls a “regime,” and the Bush administration combined provided some $1.3 billion in assistance from 1995 to 2008, says the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress.

Slightly more than half was for food aid and 40 percent for energy assistance.

He’s also wrong in saying “nothing happened” in return. North Korea stopped producing plutonium for eight years under the 1994 agreement. Just how much was achieved, though, is in question, because of the suspicions that emerged later that North Korea had been secretly seeking to enrich uranium. ___ TRUMP, on Kim’s agreement to work to repatriate the remains of prisoners of the Korean War and those missing in action from the conflict: “He gave us the remains of our great heroes.” — remarks to reporters Friday.

THE FACTS: That’s false. No remains have been returned since the summit, as of Friday. The last time North Korea turned over remains was in 2007, when Bill Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador and New Mexico governor, secured the return of six sets. ___ TRUMP: “He’s giving us back the remains of probably 7,500 soldiers.” — to Fox News on Friday.

TRUMP: “I asked for it today. And we got it. … So, for the thousands and thousands, I guess way over 6,000 that we know of in terms of the remains, they’ll be brought back.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Also wrong. About 5,300 U.S. troops are still unaccounted for from North Korea.

Trump is also glossing over the surely impossible odds of locating the remains of all Americans missing from the war, more than six decades later. Several thousand are still missing in South Korea despite its close alliance and history of cooperation with the U.S.

North Korea and the United States remain technically at war because the 1950-53 fighting ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. But between 1996 and 2005, joint U.S.-North Korea military search teams conducted 33 joint recovery operations and recovered 229 sets of American remains. ___ TRUMP: “I remember a nuclear event took place, 8.8 on the Richter scale, and they announced — I heard it on the radio, they announced that a massive, you know, an earthquake took place somewhere in Asia. And then they said it was in North Korea, and then they found out it was a nuclear test, I said, I never heard of a Richter scale in the high eights.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: North Korea had no earthquake last year approaching that level of severity. This isn’t the first time he has misrepresented the episode.

North Korea tested what it called a hydrogen bomb in September, causing an underground blast so big it registered as a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Other nuclear tests last year were associated with smaller seismic events.

An 8.8 quake would be 316 times bigger — and release 5,623 times more energy — than a 6.3.

In the past 15 years there have been three earthquakes that were an 8.8 or higher: the 9.1 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 that killed nearly 16,000 people, a 9.1 earthquake and tsunami off northern Sumatra in 2004 that killed about 250,000 people and an 8.8 earthquake off Chile in 2010 that killed 524.

By HOPE YEN and CALVIN WOODWARD , By Associated Press

#destroyed missile launch #North Korean leader #rockets flying #TodayNews #Trump is exaggerating #Washington

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melindarowens · 7 years ago

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Democratic Party brand not rebounding, despite GOP woes

With Kevin Robillard, Zach Montellaro and Daniel Strauss

The following newsletter is an abridged version of Campaign Pro’s Morning Score. For an earlier morning read on exponentially more races — and for a more comprehensive aggregation of the day’s most important campaign news — sign up for Campaign Pro today. (http://www.politicopro.com/proinfo)

Story Continued Below

BRAND PROBLEMS — “Democratic brand still suffering despite GOP woes,” by Campaign Pro’s Elena Schneider: “Democrats, fuming with anger at President Donald Trump and the GOP, boil down the current political fight as one of good versus bad. There’s just one problem: Many voters see it as bad versus worse. Approval of the Republican Party is at historic lows, with 62 percent of Americans expressing a negative opinion of the GOP in a September CNN poll. But voters’ views of the Democratic Party are not rising as Republicans sink, and in some polling, the Democrats have continued to slip, threatening their opportunity to make big gains in the next election. An October poll from Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, a progressive nonprofit, showed opinions about the Democratic brand falling by double digits over several months among a handful of key groups, including Hispanics (from 47 percent positive and 34 percent negative to 39 percent positive and 40 percent negative), unmarried women (52-30 to 44-37) and white millennials (34-46 to 29-51). … Democratic strategists say the party’s poor standing with voters is a source of concern heading into a 2018 election that otherwise looks like it is setting up nicely for the party.” Full story.

DEPARTURE LOUNGE — “Lamar Smith won’t seek reelection to House,” by POLITICO’s Darius Dixon: “Rep. Lamar Smith, the controversial chairman of the House Science Committee, announced Thursday that he will leave Congress when his term ends in 2018. The 16-term Texas Republican is one of the longest-serving members of the state’s congressional delegation, and has often tussled with academics, scientific organizations and government regulators since become Science chairman in 2013. In a letter to constituents, Smith said there were several reasons he is choosing not to seek reelection next year, including that he will complete his term as chairman of the House Science Committee.” Full story.

— Potential replacements for TX-05, TX-21: GOP operatives named former Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne as a potential candidate to replace Hensarling, and state Sen. Donna Campbell as a potential candidate to replace Smith.

ON THE AIR — NEW THIS MORNING — Freedom Partners backs Laxalt in Nevada with $1 million buy: The Koch Bros.-backed super PAC Freedom Partners Action Fund is up with a $1 million ad buy boosting GOP Attorney General Adam Laxalt in the Nevada governor’s race. “There is someone different working for us every day. An Iraq war veteran,” the narrator says in the ad. “He’s protecting seniors against fraud. Fighting for a good education for every child. And standing up against higher taxes. He’s Adam Laxalt.” Watch the ad here.

— North Dakota GOP attacks Heitkamp with softball ad: During the World Series, the North Dakota GOP aired a softball-themed ad attacking Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp for supporting Obamacare and siding with Planned Parenthood. The ad is a parody of a famous Heitkamp spot from her 2012 election, featuring her in a batting cage. Watch the ad here.

FIRST IN SCORE — ADLF prepares FEC complaint against America First Action: The liberal-leaning group American Democracy Legal Fund is preparing to file an FEC complaint against the Trump-backing super PAC America First Action because the group reportedly met with Trump advisers at the White House to brief them, even though Trump is already an official candidate for president in 2020. “Federal campaign law exists to prevent candidates, like Donald Trump, from abusing the power of their office by offering favors to wealthy donors in exchange for millions of dollars to supportive super-PACs,” said ADLF President Brad Woodhouse. “But this is the Trump Administration, and Donald Trump hasn’t found a law on the books intended to prevent him from selling out the American people that he hasn’t tried to bend, twist and straight up break for his own gain.”

FIRST IN SCORE — NRCC to target Democrats on CHIP vote: The NRCC will go after Democratic incumbents if they vote against the CHIP program today, a vote that’s expected to fall along partisan lines due to gridlock over how to pay for the legislation. The digital ads will say that incumbents “voted to kill the Children’s Health Insurance Program.” The ad continues: “Washington politicians first voted to jack up our premiums, now they’re protecting subsidies for the 1 percent at our kid’s expense.”

CIVIL WAR WATCH — DFA pulls support for Northam: The progressive group Democracy for America said it was pulling “direct aid” from Northam after he said yesterday he would sign legislation barring sanctuary cities. “We refuse to be silent any longer and even remotely complicit in the disastrous, racist, and voter-turnout-depressing campaign Ralph Northam appears intent on running,” DFA executive director Charles Chamberlain said.

Days until the 2017 election: 4.

Days until the 2018 election: 368.

Thanks for joining us! You can email tips to the Campaign Pro team at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

You can also follow us on Twitter: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin, @danielstrauss4 and @maggieseverns.

TROUBLE AT HOME — “DNC fires its top fundraiser,” by POLITICO’s Gabriel Debenedetti: “The DNC dismissed its top fundraiser today after just five months on the job, two Democrats familiar with the move told POLITICO. Emily Mellencamp Smith, the party’s finance director, was let go in a shakeup of the party’s senior leadership designed to energize the party’s fundraising.

— One reaction: “I’ve seen a lot of bosses scapegoat staff to cover their own failures but Tom Pérez takes the cake for this one. Really really despicable.” Paul Tencher, chief-of-staff to Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, tweeted.

ICYMI — “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC,” by Donna Brazile. Full story.

OPPO FILES — “Report links Chrissy Houlahan’s former company to Chinese ‘sweatshops,’” by City and State PA’s Ryan Briggs: “A 13-year-old report linking US corporations to sweatshop-like conditions in Chinese shoe factories has come back to haunt Democratic Congressional candidate Chrissy Houlahan, who is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello in Pennsylvania’s 6th District. Houlahan had worked for years as an executive at AND1, an athletic apparel company, serving as chief operating officer until the company’s sale in 2005. Findings from a 2004 report by the pro-union Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights outlined financial ties between the sneaker company and factories owned by the Taiwan-based Pou Chen Group that allegedly engaged in ‘abusive working conditions.’” Full story.

LAST CALL FOR VIRGINIA POLLS — A new Suffolk University poll has Democrat Ralph Northam leading Republican Ed Gillespie 47 percent to 43 percent, with Libertarian Clifford Hyra picking up 2 percent. The live caller poll surveyed 500 likely voters between Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 and has a margin or error of 4.4 percentage points.

FINAL ADS — Northam links Gillespie to Trump in new ad: Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam is out with a new ad in the Virginia governor’s race linking Republican Ed Gillespie to President Donald Trump, who is deeply unpopular in the state. The ad suggests Gillespie supports Trump on education, environmental and health care issues. Full story.

— Gillespie campaign airs ad on backlash to LVF spot: “Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie is up with a new, 30-second television ad focused on the backlash to a Latino Victory Fund spot that aired earlier this week.” Full story.

— “After an intentionally slow start, Murphy far outspending Guadagno on TV ads,” by POLITICO’s New Jersey Katherine Landergan: “Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial nominee Phil Murphy is far outspending Republican Kim Guadagno in advertising dollars during the final weeks of the campaign, after allowing her to dominate the airwaves earlier in the race. Murphy’s campaign spent less than $40,000 on advertising in September, when the general election campaign began in earnest, according to Advertising Analytics, a group that tracks ad buys. Guadagno’s team spent $856,709 — more than 20 times that amount. Then things changed dramatically in October. Though Guadagno, the state’s lieutenant governor, accelerated her spending to $1.5 million, Murphy spent more than 2 1/2 times that, or about $3.85 million.” Full story.

ON THE WEB — “Democratic PAC Priorities USA budgeting $50 million for digital ads in 2018,” by The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe: “A Democratic super PAC is planning to spend at least $50 million over the next year on digital advertising to elect Democrats across the country in what is believed to be the largest sum ever set aside for such outreach on the political left.” Full story.

INTERESTING EXPERIMENT — “Fox News is trying to reinvent the exit poll. The survey strategy involves people who don’t vote,” by the Post’s Callum Borchers: “[Arnon Mishkin, who heads the Fox News decision desk] said he and a team of seven others have developed a new projection system that includes doing something counterintuitive. ‘We’re going to be talking to people who tell us they’re not going to vote,’ Mishkin said. ‘We’re going to say, ‘Well, okay, why aren’t you voting? And if you were going to vote, who would you have voted for?’’ Here’s the logic: ‘If you think about American politics since 2004, election results are less about who convinced whom and more about who motivated their base better. Who got their people to the polls?’” Full story.

ABOUT THAT MOORE FUNDRAISER — A day after Sen. Roger Wicker attended a fundraiser for former Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore (also attended by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, among others) the Mississippi senator released a statement explaining his attendance: “I attended a fundraiser in Washington, DC, for Judge Roy Moore. He is our Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Alabama, and I’m glad to support him, contribute to his campaign, and help to see that he is elected. I did the same countless times last cycle as NRSC Chairman. I’ve worked too hard to preserve our Republican majority in the Senate to let Democrats try to divide and defeat us. Republicans have better candidates, better policy ideas, and a better vision for our country’s future. If we’re united we’ll win this race, and both Alabama and the country will be better off for it.”

AWK — Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity lists dead member: A Morning Score reader flagged to us that the White House’s election integrity commission, tasked with studying voter fraud, lists former Arkansas state Rep. David Dunn as a commission member. Only problem? Dunn, 52, died last month.

OUTSIDE HELP — Top GOP strategists form super PAC backing Schuette in Michigan: “A group of top Republican strategists has formed a new super PAC to support Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s gubernatorial bid. Phil Cox, a former executive director of the Republican Governors Association, will chair the super PAC, which is called Better Jobs Stronger Families. Stu Sandler, a former general consultant for the Michigan Republican Party, will be executive director. Veteran Republican lawyer Charlie Spies will serve as legal counsel, and political strategist Russ Schriefer, who served as a top adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012, will be media consultant.” Full story.

STAFFING UP — Senate Majority PAC rolls out senior staff: Senate Majority PAC announced its senior staff for 2018, according to a statement from the group. Diana Astiz, who served as Katie McGinty’s research director in 2016, will reprise the roll for the group. Angelique Cannon Harris, who served as the deputy national finance director for the mid-Atlantic region for Hillary Clinton, will be Senate Majority PAC’s national finance director. Alexandra Shapiro will be the deputy national finance director. Chris Hayden will be the communications director. Alex Katz, who worked on Chuck Schumer’s Senate staff, will be a senior adviser. Pamela Stamoulis will be the group’s first digital director.

CODA — QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I absolutely will use this media circus to sell/promote whatever I damn well please.” — Kid Rock told Buzzfeed in a statement that he “won’t say how much money he made from the ‘Kid Rock For Senate’ stunt or where it went.”

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source https://capitalisthq.com/democratic-party-brand-not-rebounding-despite-gop-woes/ from CapitalistHQ http://capitalisthq.blogspot.com/2017/11/democratic-party-brand-not-rebounding.html

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everettwilkinson · 7 years ago

Text

Democratic Party brand not rebounding, despite GOP woes

With Kevin Robillard, Zach Montellaro and Daniel Strauss

Story Continued Below

Days until the 2017 election: 4.

Days until the 2018 election: 368.

Thanks for joining us! You can email tips to the Campaign Pro team at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

You can also follow us on Twitter: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin, @danielstrauss4 and @maggieseverns.

ICYMI — “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC,” by Donna Brazile. Full story.

Source link

from CapitalistHQ.com https://capitalisthq.com/democratic-party-brand-not-rebounding-despite-gop-woes/

#TrumpNews #CapitalistHQ.com

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endorsereviews · 7 years ago

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David Lindahl – Real Estate Investors Marketing Toolkit

Does this sound like your typical day?

You get to work in the morning, and there already are five messages from sellers in your town, wanting you to consider buying their properties.

That’s on top of the calls you received yesterday, and every day this week.

You are highly confident when you go to see one of these sellers, and make your offer. You’re polite, but inside you truly have a “take it or leave it” attitude. That’s because you know from experience that there are many more deals where this one came from. If the seller accepts your offer, great–You’ve just locked in your five-figure profit on this next deal.

The seller doesn’t grab your offer? No Problemo…you still have those half-dozen other fresh deals to make offers on. Oh, by the way, when you get back to the office, two more sellers have called since you were out….

Fantasy Land? Nope. My name’s Dave Lindahl, and I live that life today. Much more importantly…

I’m going to build the same type of marketing machine for you.

But first, I need to congratulate you. By reading this, you’ve proven to me that you’re head-and-shoulders above the rest, when it comes to knowing how to build a real estate fortune.

You see, people think real estate success is a matter of slick negotiating, being in the right place at the right time, or knowing a lot about the property. Those things can help, but they are missing the point…

You can be mediocre in a lot of other things, if you’ve got a great marketing machine. That’s because you’ll never be short on deals. But if you’re lousy at marketing, then being great at everything else in real estate won’t matter. You’ll be “all dressed up with no place to go”!

I’m not talking about working harder at marketing. I’m talking about plugging in my proven systems, and letting those systems work night and day for you.

But before you think I got there the easy way, think again:

I don’t know where you live, but let me tell you a little about where I live. It’s not unlike the movie “Rocky”, where he’s in a tough neighborhood, and has to scratch his way up to success. My town is Brockton, Massachusetts. We had a real-life “Rocky” grow up in our tough town. His name was Rocky Marciano, World Boxing Champion.

He had to be tough to survive here. And it’s in this same tough, unforgiving environment that I made my first several million dollars.

By the way, I had no rich family to rely on, no fancy education. I didn’t know anyone in the real estate business. But I did have the desire to learn from other successful people…just as you are doing right now! (That’s the most important ingredient!)

Even though my rise to real estate mega-success has been fast, your success can be even faster!

Forget starting from scratch as I did; instead, take my secret marketing shortcuts to real estate wealth.

How Good Is The “Real Estate Investor’s Marketing Tool Kit”?

The very best marketing system must be able to pass six tough tests:

Test #1: It’s got to be proven to work. The materials you get have been street-tested and proven to work, not only by me, but also by hundreds of my students. Let me put it to you another way: I make so much money now, I could afford any marketing system in the world. This is the one I use every day. Because it works.

Test #2: It must require very little money to get going. My system doesn’t rely on any big newspaper ads, fancy websites, or other expensive toys. I couldn’t afford that stuff when I was starting out. Turns out, I didn’t need it! You’ll get a constant stream of leads by using common, inexpensive tools in smart ways.

Test #3: It must be adaptable to your own town. A great system has to work in tough, competitive towns like mine, but also in every other type of community: big cities, rural townships, and suburbs. Not only have I profited in major cities like Boston, and in tiny towns you’ve never heard of, but so have my students. I’m giving you truly portable power tools. For example, I lay out twelve different ways to deliver your message. Some combination of them will work in any community.

Test #4: It has to be crystal clear about what you should do, when. Like the dress code on Venice Beach, I leave nothing to the imagination! You get to see it all: The exact wording of my letters, the precise look of my business card, the specific techniques I use on flyers, right down to the graphics. Even the color of paper is all described for you to “legally rip off”. I even go so far as to lay out a suggested schedule of what marketing you should do, and when during the month to do it, to gain maximum profit. Who else does that!

Test #5: It must cause people to call YOU, rather than require you to chase prospects and be constantly rejected. Forget cold calling. Even if you wanted to beat your head against a wall like that all day, the government’s “Do Not Call” list is making it impossible to pick up the phone and “dial for dollars”. Over 58 million Americans are on that list, and the fine per violation can be as much as $11,000! That’s OK with me, because my system makes pre-qualified prospects call you, and ask for your help.

Test #6: It has to keep working for you day and night, once you set it up. A good system needs to work while you sleep, and work while you’re busy with something else. As far as I’m concerned, if I need to do any more than minimal upkeep, that method is outta here.

My stuff works so well, that I have people calling me to buy their properties as long as two years after I marketed to them. Now that’s what I call being memorable!

I worked and worked on it over the years, and now…

My system passes all six of these tests with flying colors!

So what’s in this amazing thing, anyway?

Let’s Pop The Hood On My Real Estate Marketing System:

How To Make Them Not Nibble…But Bite Like Piranhas In A Feeding Frenzy!

The Five Steps to a Great Marketing Plan. If you don’t know what they are or follow them, you’ll be taking the long road to success (if you ever reach it at all). Follow these Five Specific Steps, and sleep like a baby, knowing your success is in the bag. (Page 116) The one technique you can always fall back on when you need to buy a house in a hurry. Do this and your phone should start to ring within days…or even hours! (Page 11) The one mistake you should never make, even after you’ve made a bundle in real estate! (Page 5) Don’t make these two big blunders with your signs! If you do, it will cost you, Big Time. (Page 13) The 19 reasons why people are motivated to sell, and how you can get them to start calling you. (Page 7) Do this with your signs, and you’ll simply be wasting your money. (Page 14) The right–and wrong–way to install a telephone pole sign. Do it right, and your phone rings off the hook. (Page 15) It’s one thing to have signs; it’s another to know where to put them for maximum effect. Get the answer on page 15. The single most powerful tool you can have to persuade someone to use your services. (Page 27). Six precisely worded letters that get big results, constantly. (Page 51) The two most critical parts of any sales letter; forget these, and you might as well leave the stamp off the envelope. (Page 49 Promotion Techniques That Work In Your Area:

Learn the three components of an effective direct mail campaign, and watch your response rates soar! (Page 42) Make any of these five mistakes, and you’re flushing your direct mail dollars down the toilet. (Page 44) How to create a headline that forces your readers to stop and pay attention! (Page 45) The proven formula for writing money-attracting classified ads. (Page 57) Warning! Don’t listen to your Yellow Pages salesperson when designing your ad or you’ll be sorry! Here’s why. (Page 62) What every moneymaking business card has on it, and where to put it on yours. (Page 69) The “piggy back” phone technique that will draw sellers to call your number instead of your competitors’. (Page 60) Do not fall for this “expert” advice about what type of phone number to get! Here’s why. (Page 59) 21 great places to put your business cards for maximum exposure. (Page 70) The 5 most common money-losing mistakes most people make on their business cards. (Page 69) Four “sweet spot” locations to put out flyers. (Page 73) What NOT to do when handing out your flyers. (Page 74) Four proven flyers, all pre-built and ready for you to insert your contact information. (Page 77) How To Recruit A Willing Army For You!

How to get people to be your eyes and ears all over town, constantly bringing you deals! (Page 81) How to find the real estate agents who are doing all the deals, and how to get them to give you the lion’s share. (Page 87) Make this simple–but often overlooked–mistake with a real estate agent, and your name will be dirt all over town. (Page 89 Four important tips to keep agents sending YOU houses, instead of to your competition. (Page 88) The exact wording of an effective letter you can send to real estate agents to get leads from them. (Page 92) Advertise on these radio stations, and you’re throwing your money away. But advertise on these other ones, and watch your phone light up! (Page 93) Follow this easy way to conduct a radio interview, and be seen as the “Real Estate Expert” in your area. (Page 96) The two types of sales prospecting, and which one will make you boatloads more money. (Page 6) Know Exactly What To Do When Sellers Call:

The single most important question to ask a seller, to determine if you might have a deal, BEFORE you spend any more than 20 seconds with them. (Page 108) Is your answering machine or live answering service actually hurting your business? Here’s how to find out. (Page 111) Ask these Four Golden Questions right up front, and you’ll easily separate the cherry deals from the rest. (Page 108) The exact scripts to use when callers reach you or your answering service. No need to wonder ever again what to say….(Page 114) The critical piece of paper you need in your “Credibility Kit” that gains instant trust when you’ve entered a seller’s home. (Page 12) Special Section On Pre-foreclosures And Auctions

As a way of showing you how to put together a whole direct marketing effort, I devote an entire chapter to pre-foreclosures. These profitable opportunities happen after a homeowner defaults on a mortgage, but before the bank has foreclosed.

This chapter, by itself, is worth the cost of the entire course. Based on my personal experience with over 150 pre-foreclosures, I give you the essence of how to profit in this market. I lay out:

The hands-down best source for finding pre-foreclosure leads. Exactly how to contact homeowners, and what to say. When they respond to you, what worksheet to use, to go through the deal analysis. Killer negotiating tips to get you the big, fat deals you want. How to dress–and the secret place to stand–if you decide to try your hand at an auction. Not one in a thousand investors knows about this technique to up your odds of winning. I even include exact copies of the letters I’ve used to generate millions of dollars in pre-foreclosure business.

You could live very comfortably for the rest of your life, just applying my marketing system to this one single market of pre-foreclosures. But my system will bring you many more deal types than just pre-foreclosures: I’m handing you a giant fishing-trawler for real estate, and into your net will fall all types of real estate opportunities. It will be your enjoyable duty to decide which trophies you keep, and which small fry you throw back, or flip to someone else.

You Might Be Thinking…

“But Dave, how can I compete with so many people who have way bigger budgets than I do!” Once you go through my course, you will laugh at them! You will shake your head with confident knowledge of how to beat the pants off their advertising.

I break out marketing techniques into two categories: the ones to use when you have little or no money, and ones that are effective once you have some cash to spend. Remember: I found out about and used these techniques when I had no money, and I still use them today, so they’re proven to work.

“But Dave, my town’s different.” You live in a cave? Call me and we’ll modify my system to work for you. You say they have homes and apartments where you live? Then my system will work just fine. It’s not based on where you live. It’s based on human nature…on proven ways to stand out from the pack, and have people pick up the phone and call you.

“But Dave, I don’t have full time to work on marketing real estate, the way you do.” I made my first million while busting myself all day in my struggling landscaping business. I HAD to find quick, efficient ways to do real estate, because I only had a few moments here and there to devote to it.

Sure you’ll make more dough when you’re doing real estate full-time; but you can make plenty by using my efficient marketing methods in your bits and pieces of spare time.

Here’s Exactly What You Get For Your Investment:

1. You get my “Real Estate Investor’s Marketing Tool Kit” workbook…a thick, 130-page binder that’s packed with secrets, examples, and lots of straight talk about what doesn’t work–and what works like crazy!

2. Then there are eight studio-quality audio CDs. Turn your time-wasting drives into money-making sessions! Listen as I walk through my system, and make each piece of it crystal clear.

3. Forms CD: You don’t even have to type! I have all the ads, all the letters, and all the scripts…even a couple of commercials, pre-done and ready to make you money.

4. My Special Report: “The 23 Most Costly Mistakes Investors Make, And How to Avoid Them”. I attended the “School of Hard Knocks” to learn these secrets. They cost me a lot of money. You get them handed to you on a silver platter. This report alone will save you thousands of dollars.

5. 3 critique certificates: Send in your business cards, your direct mail pieces, your classified ads–whatever–and have me personally critique them. If you’re using my materials word-for-word, then use the certificates to ask me your questions. Just send them in, and my office will arrange a phone appointment for you to speak directly with me, and get your questions answered.

6. You’ll get 3 more certificates to use to call me with your questions, or have me coach you how to succeed in your particular market. Please understand that I accept a handful of students who gladly pay me $7,500 per year for customized help, and I turn away others at the same price. For you to get this customized help at this price…frankly it doesn’t make sense, but there it is (for now).

7. You’ll receive a Discount Certificate worth $75.00 off the price of any course or boot camp I offer.

If you bought these seven items separately, they would cost you a total of $2,190.00. But, by getting them now, you receive a package-deal discounted price of $897 (+ $20 shipping and handling), for a total of $917. That’s a deep discount of 59%.

David Lindahl – Real Estate Investors Marketing Toolkit posted first on premiumwarezstore.blogspot.com

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sublimedeal · 7 years ago

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David Lindahl – Real Estate Investors Marketing Toolkit

Does this sound like your typical day?

You get to work in the morning, and there already are five messages from sellers in your town, wanting you to consider buying their properties.

That’s on top of the calls you received yesterday, and every day this week.

Fantasy Land? Nope. My name’s Dave Lindahl, and I live that life today. Much more importantly…

I’m going to build the same type of marketing machine for you.

But first, I need to congratulate you. By reading this, you’ve proven to me that you’re head-and-shoulders above the rest, when it comes to knowing how to build a real estate fortune.

I’m not talking about working harder at marketing. I’m talking about plugging in my proven systems, and letting those systems work night and day for you.

But before you think I got there the easy way, think again:

He had to be tough to survive here. And it’s in this same tough, unforgiving environment that I made my first several million dollars.

Even though my rise to real estate mega-success has been fast, your success can be even faster!

Forget starting from scratch as I did; instead, take my secret marketing shortcuts to real estate wealth.

How Good Is The “Real Estate Investor’s Marketing Tool Kit”?

The very best marketing system must be able to pass six tough tests:

My stuff works so well, that I have people calling me to buy their properties as long as two years after I marketed to them. Now that’s what I call being memorable!

I worked and worked on it over the years, and now…

My system passes all six of these tests with flying colors!

So what’s in this amazing thing, anyway?

Let’s Pop The Hood On My Real Estate Marketing System:

How To Make Them Not Nibble…But Bite Like Piranhas In A Feeding Frenzy!

This chapter, by itself, is worth the cost of the entire course. Based on my personal experience with over 150 pre-foreclosures, I give you the essence of how to profit in this market. I lay out:

You Might Be Thinking…

Sure you’ll make more dough when you’re doing real estate full-time; but you can make plenty by using my efficient marketing methods in your bits and pieces of spare time.

Here’s Exactly What You Get For Your Investment:

2. Then there are eight studio-quality audio CDs. Turn your time-wasting drives into money-making sessions! Listen as I walk through my system, and make each piece of it crystal clear.

3. Forms CD: You don’t even have to type! I have all the ads, all the letters, and all the scripts…even a couple of commercials, pre-done and ready to make you money.

7. You’ll receive a Discount Certificate worth $75.00 off the price of any course or boot camp I offer.

David Lindahl – Real Estate Investors Marketing Toolkit published first on http://ift.tt/2qxBbOD

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johnchiarello · 7 years ago

Text

Thursday

THURSDAY

Isaiah 13:2 Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles.

Motorcycle crash-

https://youtu.be/UQ8v1U0jp2U

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-EI

Acts 14:2

But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil affected against the brethren.

Trumps history on race-

https://youtu.be/EQHJqrc8qGY

https://ccoutreach87.com/8-17-17-turmps-history-on-race/

Micah 6:9

The Lord's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.

Good view-

https://youtu.be/DaKTKnKBYms

https://ccoutreach87.com/8-17-17-good-view/

Genesis 1:2

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Rockport criminal cop backed by Mayor and Police force-

https://youtu.be/4NLzLBbiMm8

https://ccoutreach87.com/8-17-17-rockport-cop-mayor-and-police-chief-defend-the-criminal-cop/

NEWS LINKS- [Verses below]

http://www.kztv10.com/story/36154278/aransas-county-da-dont-accept-cases-from-rockport-police-department

http://www.kiiitv.com/news/local/ccpd-motorcycle-officer-involved-in-accident-on-spid/464870913

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450498/domestic-terror-threats-media-mislead-alt-right-leftists-anti-cop-jihadists

http://www.inquisitr.com/3364881/is-donald-trump-actually-racist-or-does-the-media-just-paint-him-that-way/

http://www.timesgazette.com/opinion/10253/hillarys-health-trumps-racism

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/europe/barcelona-spain-van-latest/index.html

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/08/17/injuries-reported-after-vehicle-hits-people-in-barcelona-plaza.html

NOTES-

The big news today was the terrorist vehicle killing in Barcelona- as of now I haven’t done a video talking about that one. If I do- it will be on here when I post. I added some news links above on it- and if you simply look at the front page of the various news sites- it obviously is huge world news- TERROR! TERROR STRIKES!

Now- what would the news be if someone in a car accidentally drove into a crowd- and killed 13 people?

You would have heard about it- but that would be it.

Yet on talk radio- on all the news outlets- this story will be huge for days.

The market lost a ton of money today- down about 270 points.

I actually tried to google ‘how much money did the market lose- today’. No results.

Then I added today’s date- still nothing.

Hmm?

I’m sure I could find it straight from a financial site- but figured the financial world does not want the public to know- that millions/billions of your dollars can be lost- if one affiliated terrorist simply kills people with his car.

In a way- we- the media- have empowered radical groups to control the world financial markets- by simply killing people with a car- which is quite an easy thing to do.

We have shown them- that if they do it- it will rock the world for days.

They no longer need planes flown into buildings- or bombs snuck into a airport.

No- all they have to do- is drive a van into a crowd of people- and it will shake the world.

Something- isn’t it?

Yes- lets all pray for the families of the victims- lets also pray for the many Africans- kids as well- who die on a daily basis by groups like this.

Or those who are dying as migrants trying to escape civil wars in their own countries.

Or those in Venezuela who are on the brink of collapse as I write.

Yes- pray for all the families of victims all over the world- the many that never even make it into the fine print of the paper.

Yes- remember them too on this day- while the world media will be doing non stop coverage of the Innocent victims who died in Barcelona on this tragic day.

And sad to say- because of this coverage- you can be sure it will happen again.

TRUMP- Though not a ‘Trump supporter’ [I did not vote for him] I have found it sad to see so many in the nation think he is one of the worst racists- ever.

I have told some of these people that as a political observer- Trump is much more ‘liberal’ than many establishment Republicans. I have tried to explain to them that Trump is viewed as more of a north eastern Republican than what some deem ‘the good old southern boys’ [to many- the southern Republicans are seen as racist].

So- I find it sad that the main stream media simply ignores their past track record on Trump. The media themselves have seen Trump as a ‘non-racist’ person in the past. I add the section below just so you could read Trumps past record with the media themselves.

Despite current accusations to the contrary, President Trump has an over 30 year record of rejecting racism.

1986: Trump, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali Receive ‘Ellis Island’ Award

As the New York Times reported on October 16, 1986:

Eighty Americans from 42 ethnic groups were named yesterday as recipients of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.

The medals will be presented to the recipients, all either naturalized or native Americans, at a ceremony Oct. 27 on Ellis Island. That is the day before the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, the final event of the 1986 Liberty Centennial observances.

The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations presents the awards based on “integrity, passion, gravitas, humanitarian and ethnic heritage.”

If Trump’s a racist, why would he accept an award alongside civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks?

1991: Trump “Hates Seeing” What David Duke Surging in Politics Represents

In an interview on Larry King Live on November 19, 1991, Trump said he “hated seeing” what the strong political support of white nationalist David Duke meant in Louisiana, which was suffering a deep depression at the time.

KING: Did the David Duke thing bother you? Fifty-five percent of the whites in Louisiana voted for him.

Mr. TRUMP: I hate –

KING: Four hundred New Yorkers contributed.

Mr. TRUMP: I hate seeing what it represents, but I guess it just shows there’s a lot of hostility in this country. There’s a tremendous amount of hostility in the United States.

KING: Anger?

Mr. TRUMP: It’s anger. I mean, that’s an anger vote. People are angry about what’s happened. People are angry about the jobs. If you look at Louisiana, they’re really in deep trouble. When you talk about the East Coast – It’s not the East Coast. It’s the East Coast, the middle coast, the West Coast –

KING: If he runs and Pat Buchanan runs, might you see a really divided vote?

Mr. TRUMP: Well, I think if they run, or even if David Duke- I mean, George Bush was very, very strong against David Duke. I think if he had it to do again, he might not have gotten involved in that campaign because I think David Duke now, if he runs, takes away almost exclusively Bush votes and then a guy like Cuomo runs- I think Cuomo can win the election.

KING: But Bush morally had to come out against him.

Mr. TRUMP: I think Bush had to come out against him. I think Bush- If David Duke runs, David Duke is going to get a lot of votes. Whether that be good or bad, David Duke is going to get a lot of votes. Pat Buchanan – who really has many of the same theories, except it’s in a better package – Pat Buchanan is going to take a lot of votes away from George Bush. So if you have these two guys running, or even one of them running, I think George Bush could be in big trouble.

A Feb. 16, 1989, article from the New York Times explained more:

With a runoff election set for Saturday to fill a seat in the state House of Representatives, David Duke, the 38-year old former grand wizard of the sKnights of the Ku Klux Klan, and John Treen, a 63-year-old long active in the Republican Party, are both predicting victory.

[…]

On the surface, the race in this New Orleans suburb may look like a throwback to an uglier era of racial politics in the South. In fact, almost everything is strikingly contemporary about Mr. Duke – from his ease in front of the television cameras, to his blend of carefully couched racial issues and antitax fervor, to the deep-seated frustrations he is tapping amid Louisiana’s depressed economy.

If some of his support reflects blatant racism, much of it comes from working people convinced that politics as usual has failed to serve the white working class.

It’s ironic how the New York Times was more fair to David Duke than Trump was.

1997: Anti-Defamation League Praises Trump

On April 30, 1997, the Wall Street Journal reported on Trump’s purchase of the famous Mar-a-Largo club in Palm Beach, Florida, and how he opened up the club to Jews and African-Americans, putting him at odds against rival clubs in Palm Beach:

The culture clash began to approach a climax last fall, when Mr. Trump’s lawyer sent members of the town council a copy of the film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a film that deals with upper-class racism.

Mr. Trump then approached the town council about lifting the restrictions that had been placed on the club. He also asked some council members not to vote on the request because their membership in other clubs created a conflict of interest.

Last December, after the council refused to lift the restrictions, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit seeks $100 million in damages.

The former head of the ADL, Abraham Foxman, showered Trump with praise, as the WSJ reported:

Mr. Foxman seems pleased that Mr. Trump has elevated the issue of discriminatory policies at social clubs.

“He put the light on Palm Beach,” Mr. Foxman says. “Not on the beauty and the glitter, but on its seamier side of discrimination. It has an impact.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Foxman says, the league has received calls from Jewish residents telling of how Palm Beach clubs are changing.

2000: Trump Calls David Duke “a Bigot, a Racist and a Problem”

During a NBC interview aired on Feb. 14, 2000, Trump blasted Duke when explaining why he was leaving the Reform Party:

MATT LAUER: When you say the Party is self-destructing, what do you see as the biggest problem with the Reform Party right now?

Mr. TRUMP: Well, you’ve got David Duke just joined–a bigot, a racist, a problem. I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party. Buchanan’s a disaster as we’ve, you know, covered. Jesse’s a terrific guy who just left the Party. And he, you know, it’s unfortunate, but he just left the Party. He’s going to be doing his Independence Party from Minnesota. And he’s a terrific guy and a terrific governor, and he’s got a great future. And I’ve always said, Matt, that I would run if I thought I could win, and in order to win…

LAUER: Not only the nomination, but the presidency.

Mr. TRUMP: …the whole thing. I don’t want to get 20 percent of the vote, I think I could, and I know I could get the nomination. New York wants me. Texas wants me. Many of the states want me. And they’re, you know, they’re rather devastated because they don’t like the alternatives. I always said, and I said to you if you can win the whole thing, you can only win the whole thing with a totally unified party.

2008: Trump Helps African-American Jennifer Hudson After Her Family is Murdered

Jennifer Hudson, a singer who rose to prominence after an an appearance on American Idol, suffered an immense tragedy when three of her family members were murdered.

In the aftermath, Trump offered to put up up at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago free of charge, as reported by NBC:

“They are safe,” Trump told People on Monday night. “She’s a great girl and we’re protecting them well.”

According to E! Online, Hudson has been staying at the hotel since arriving in Chicago on October 24 – the day her mother, Darnell Donerson, and brother, Jason Hudson, were found murdered, and her nephew, Julian King, was found missing.

Since checking into the hotel, the Oscar winner and former “American Idol” star has rarely left the hotel.

“She is still in shock,” a source told E!. “She hasn’t gone out much at all and has a lot of security around her.”

2015: Trump Doesn’t Want Duke’s Support

About two months into Trump’s campaign for the White House, he publicly said he didn’t want Duke’s support.

According to CBS:

Trump was asked Wednesday about Duke’s praise, and he distanced himself from the white supremacist.

“I don’t need his endorsement; I certainly wouldn’t want his endorsement,” Trump said during an interview with Bloomberg News on Wednesday. “I don’t need anyone’s endorsement.”

When he was asked whether he would flat-out reject Duke’s support, Trump replied, “Sure, I would if that would make you feel better.”

He wasn’t surprised by Duke’s kind words, however.

“A lot of people like me,” Trump explained. “Republicans like me, liberals like me. Everybody likes me.”

2016: Trump Disavows Racist Elements of so-called “Alt-Right”

Not long after winning the presidency, Trump disavowed the racist elements of what the mainstream media termed the “alt-right.”

From CNN on Nov. 23, 2016:

“I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group,” Trump told a group of New York Times reporters and columnists during a meeting at the newspaper’s headquarters in New York.

“It’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why,” he added, according to one of the Times reporters in the room, Michael Grynbaum.

There you go, an exhaustive list of how President Trump has disavowed racism over three decades, as documented by contemporary mainstream media outlets.

Ironically, establishment “fact checking” sites, ran by opinion journalists larping as objective reporters, have tried to downplay the examples above, but all they’ve done is ruin their own credibility.

“…Most ‘fact-checkers’ are merely liberal journalists looking to prove their preconceived narrative,” wrote the Washington Times’ Kelly Riddell. “They cherry-pick the statements to ‘fact-check’ and then decide which data to back it up with.”

“Statistics can be manipulated — for every study coming out of the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation can have a counter argument, depending on the methodology and surveys used. Moreover, much of what they decide to ‘fact-check’ is subjective at best… nothing that can be pinned down with undisputed data.”

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealKitDaniels

VERSES-

Isaiah 13:1 The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see.

Isaiah 13:2 Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles.

Isaiah 13:3 I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.

Isaiah 13:4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together: the LORD of hosts mustereth the host of the battle.

Isaiah 13:5 They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the LORD, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.

Isaiah 13:6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.

Isaiah 13:7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:

Isaiah 13:8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

Isaiah 13:9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

Isaiah 13:10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

Isaiah 13:11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

Isaiah 13:12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.

Isaiah 13:13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

Isaiah 13:14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.

Isaiah 13:15 Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.

Isaiah 13:16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.

Isaiah 13:17 Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

Isaiah 13:18 Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.

Isaiah 13:19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

Isaiah 13:20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

Isaiah 13:21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

Isaiah 13:22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

MY SITES

www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com [Main site]

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4GsqTEVWRm0HxQTLsifvg

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Note- Please do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on- Thanks- John.#

#bible #Religion

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martinfzimmerman · 7 years ago

Text

Michael Pento Warns of Exploding Debt, Inverted Yield Curve, and Then “Economic Armageddon”

Your browser does not support the podcast player element. DOWNLOAD MP3 Mike Gleason: Michael, how are you today? Welcome back.

Michael Pento: I’m doing fine, Mike. Thanks for having me back.

Mike Gleason: When we had you on last you commented that you believed the market was pricing in President Trump getting virtually all of his policy agenda pushed through Congress, the tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, and so forth. To say Trump has encountered some resistance in Washington would be a major understatement. The establishment of the right doesn’t seem to like him. The left and the mainstream media of course hate him. So, Michael before we get into the effects this will have on the markets here, first off, handicap for us the chances of Trump, based on what’s been transpiring in recent weeks, miraculously gaining enough allies in Congress in order to get his initiatives passed.

Michael Pento: I did say that the market was pricing in the imminent effect of a massive tax cut — and I meant tax cut, not a tax reform package. In other words, cutting the rate from 30% to 15% or even 20%, but certainly not offset by any spending cuts or an elimination of deductions. The market is still pricing in a lot of that hope and hype, in my opinion. But I had said and warned from the beginning, this was back right after the election, I did say that the Trump “stimulus” package — and I’ll put “stimulus” in quotes and I’ll explain why in a second — I said that the Trump “stimulus” plan would be both diluted and delayed.

It looks like that’s exactly what’s going to happen and is happening. I would be very, very shocked if we see anything before the August recess in the realm of healthcare, certainly in the tax reform package. It is my best guess that in early 2018 Trump will ram through a very adulterated and attenuated package that will be mostly a minor reduction in the rates, which is for the most part offset by some type of a reduction or elimination in write-offs.

In other words, the market is extremely, extremely overvalued, and – and we’ll get to this later – the only thing left holding this market together on top of a massive bubble is the perpetual QE from Europe and Japan. I do not expect the QE from Japan to end any time soon, although I do expect later this year at least some salvos from the BOJ, that that’s something that they might be able to do in the future. I do expect QE to end in 2017 in Europe.

Mike Gleason: Leads me right into my next question here. You summarized things very well in your Pentonomics piece this week. And for folks who aren’t getting those, you simply have got to get on the email list and get those on a regular basis. Go to PentoPort.com and sign up for that. It’s truly fantastic stuff. I want to read an excerpt from that and then get your comments here. You wrote:

“The truth is this extremely complacent and overvalued market has been susceptible to a correction for a very long time. But just like Trump, it has so far behaved like it is coated in Teflon. North Korean atomic bomb tests, Russian election interference, Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice, an earnings recession, GDP with a zero handle; who cares? As long as a tax cut could be on the way and global central banks keep printing money at a record pace, what could go wrong?”

With all that said, talk about the danger and when and where things might finally fall apart here, Michael.

Michael Pento: Wow, what a great question. Let’s just look at the earnings picture for a second here. In Q1 2017, the projected, not the actual yet, but the projected earnings is going to be $30.77. This is from FactSet data. If I look at Q1 2015, and I’m going to explain in a second why I’m going to 2015, the S&P 500 earned $29.01. So, we have earnings growth in this country, if you go two years back, is only 6% over those two years. And, more importantly, let me say, Wall Street loves to cherry pick data, so if you look at the earnings growth year over year, it’s much better. It’s close to 15%. Of course, this is pro-forma earnings that I’m talking about here, not gap earnings.

The reason why Wall Street likes to do that is because we had a vicious draw-down in the oil price right around that time. There was negative earnings in the oil sector. Now the oil sector is displaying year-over-year growth of 630%. I can assure you, that’s not going to be repeated in the future. So, if you look at earnings, the trailing 12 month earnings for all of 2016: $119.27; 2014: $118.96. so, the S&P 500 is up 30% in that time frame with virtually no growth in earnings. You have to ask yourself, why? Why would the stock market be up 30% — after being up, by the way, significantly before then – when there’s no growth in earnings?

People say it’s all about earnings. I’ll tell you, Mike, and this proves my point, I’ve always said the stock market is a function of monetary expansion. It’s a function of the yield curve and it’s a function of central bank money printing and private bank expansion of the money supply. And what we see now – and this is not my data, it’s data you can find very easily – that the first four months of 2017 central banks have printed anew over one trillion dollars of phony fiat confetti credit. That stimulus primarily coming from Europe and Japan is fungible. It finds its way all over the globe.

That’s when I wrote that commentary. I said, “You know what? Literally we have nuclear bombs being tested in North Korea. We just came out of an earnings recession, but the stock market went up 30%. Trump may be impeached. The market goes down one day and it’s buy-the-dip. Why would this ever be the case?” Why would it be the case when the stock market, if you look at it as a percentage of the economy, is virtually at an all-time record high outside of a small window in the year 2000? If you look at price to sales, it is virtually at a record high.

Why is the market so expensive? Why is it so overvalued? Because central banks are still in the process of blowing up asset bubbles. That is changing. It has already started. In December of 2013 the Fed started tapering. That was tightening. They started to raise rates. This will be another rate hike probably in June. I think that’ll be the Fed’s last rate hike, but I do think they try to get one more in. And I’m fairly confident that the yield curve will invert sometime between June of this year and June of 2018.

If I can just have a little more leeway here, Mike, I want to explain why I think that is and why it’s so important. Right now, you have to understand that the yield curve is very important to the economy and to the money flows that I was talking about into the stock market, because we have a fiat, debt-based money system. Banks lend money, and that increases the money supply. Banks will not lend money when the yield curve inverts. In other words, when they’re paying their depositors more than they can collect on their assets, why would they make new loans? They stop. And when new loans dry up, asset bubbles plunge. That happened in the year 2000. It happened in the year 2007. The yield curve inverted, bank loan growth dried up, and the stock market fell 50%.

Right now, we have a 1% Fed Funds rate and a 2.3% 10-year note. A 2-10 spread is what I’m particularly talking about. And the 2-10 spread is 1.3 to 2.3, a little bit less than it is right now, a little bit less than 1%. Very, very narrow spread. The Federal Reserve says that they can raise rates to 2.75%-3% on the Fed Funds rate by the end of 2018. You get that? In the next year-and-a-half, which is not too far away, the Fed is convinced they can take the Fed Funds rate to nearly 3%. I will tell you that if you have a 10-year note at 2.3% and a Fed Funds rate at 3%, economic Armageddon is around the corner.

Now I don’t think they ever get anywhere near there. I don’t think they can ever raise the Fed Funds rate anywhere near 3%. But I do believe they can raise it to around 1.5%. That means that the 10-year note, instead of rising, will fall, because what is the long-term rates most concerned with? They’re most concerned with inflation. So, the long-term rates will fall, short-term rates rise, yield curve inverts, and you look at a chaos and a catastrophe sometime between June of this year and June of 2018.

Mike Gleason: The last time we had you on we were kind of wondering out loud together about whether Trump is going to be aiming for a strong dollar or a weak dollar. Now that we’ve seen him at work here for the last four or five months, what does it look like to you on that? Is what we’re seeing and hearing from his administration and him indicative of his policies being dovish or hawkish?

Michael Pento: I’ve got to tell you, it’s another good question. We don’t know. (During) the campaign Trump was (saying): Janet Yellen must go, the Fed must raise rates rapidly, pop the bubble’s extent in real estate and in equities, and we want a strong dollar. Now that’s candidate Trump. So, President Trump … In fact, even yesterday, I listened to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claiming that we can’t have a border tax adjustment, we cannot have a BAT, because of its potential effect on the U.S. dollar. In other words, surging value of the U.S. dollar. That means to me – and Steven Mnuchin gets his marching orders from Trump – so that means that President Trump is diametrically opposed to candidate Trump as far as what he believes is a bubble and where he thinks the value of the dollar should be.

We have Trump is going to be able to appoint several members, five to six members, on the FOMC, including a chairperson. I think Yellen goes out February 2018. So, we will see for sure what kind of individuals. Are they Taylor-based, rules-based FOMC members? Or are they uber-doves? And it’s my belief looking at what I see from Trump so far that they will be more on the dovish side of the ledger.

Mike Gleason: You have addressed some of the macro events that markets are facing. Let’s get more specific for a minute and talk about the outlook for metals in the months ahead given the larger picture. Gold and silver got off to a strong start in 2017, fell back, and have begun a bit of a rally here the last week or two. Do you think we can expect safe haven buyers to return in force in the months ahead? And are there any drivers in particular you think investors should focus on when it comes to the metals?

Michael Pento: I’m looking very closely at the data, Mike. You had a big divergence between the hard data and the soft data. Now the latest data, if you look at the Richmond Fed manufacturing survey and the Empire State manufacturing survey, these formally erstwhile, very strong soft data points are starting to come out soft. The argument was, will the soft data lead the hard data up, or will the soft data drop down to the hard data? Looks to me like Q2 is not starting out very strongly if you look at new home sales, existing home sales that came out today, and various other soft data metrics that I just mentioned all point to the fact that I don’t think you’re going to have a Federal Reserve that’s going to have the ability to raise rates two or three more times in 2017.

And on the other hand, you see some pretty good strength in Europe. Now I don’t think the European strength is going to last either, but the point of the fact is that the diametrically opposed monetary policies, one of we have 60 billion euros printed a month in Euroland with Mario Draghi, and actually being prepared for quantitative tightening, I’ve called this quantitative tightening, where the Fed, instead of QE, which is when they buy longer-dated assets to push down on the yield curve, they are actually going to be unwinding their balance sheet, supposedly, later this year or early next year. We’ll find out more when the FOMC minutes are released today. So, you have a fact that the Fed is actually threatening to sell trillions of dollars’ worth of bonds.

I don’t think any of that’s going to happen. As I said before, watch the yield curve for the value of equities. As the value of equities and real estate go, so goes the economy. That’s been proven over and over again. Watch the yield curve. Watch these asset prices. I think as the yield curve continues to tighten, and all of your listeners should go and look at a 10-2 spread, look at a chart and notice how trenchantly dynamically that is tightening very, very rapidly. I think that we’re going to have an inverted or very, very shallow real curve by the end of 2017, and that’s going to bring about a change in monetary policy. This change in monetary policy to equal that of the ECB will cause the dollar to fall, and that is the big watershed change in precious metals prices.

That’s what’s holding gold back, especially in the miners. We haven’t had stellar performance from the miners, or even gold, even though gold is up about 9% so far, 8%, 9% this year. I think we’re going to go right back to all-time highs once that watershed event occurs. Again, what is that event? That event is when the Fed has to admit that it can no longer follow its dot plot and it reverts from a tightening monetary policy to one that is static or easing.

Mike Gleason: A bit off topic here, and as we begin to close, Michael, at what point do you see the banksters on Wall Street coming up with a way to short Bitcoin? Because you know the Wall Street and central banking elites cannot be too thrilled with seeing Bitcoin’s amazing rise.

Michael Pento: Well, I’ve got to tell you, I understand the philosophy behind Bitcoin. I’m not a huge fan of Bitcoin, because while I believe it’s a wonderful currency and it represents the desire to get out of a fiat currency regime, we already have something called gold, which is not only a pretty good currency, but it’s also perfect money. It’s transferable. It’s portable. It’s beautiful. It’s very rare and virtually indestructible. Where Bitcoin fails is that it’s not money. It’s not virtually indestructible. If you bring down the internet, your Bitcoin is worthless, or the grid or the internet. And it is not very rare because there’s a virtually unlimited number of these digital currencies. So, it’s trying to be money, and even though it’s a perfect form of currency, it lacks all the qualities necessary to become money.

Gold, on the other hand, is perfect money, but it’s an okay currency. But, if you ask me, what’s the rationale behind Bitcoin? The rationale behind Bitcoin is very solvent and very true in that we need another alternative to central banks. Because I believe in the coming few years, and it might not even be that long, Mike, that physical currency will be banned and you will have negative interest rates in your bank deposits. So, the government will steal your money, telling you that you get a negative rate for this period of time, quarter or year — say negative 5%, negative 10% — and you must spend your money. You can either keep your money in the bank and lose the nominal purchasing power as well as in inflated adjusted terms, or spend it. And that is their way to get inflation going.

That’s I think where we’re headed down the road. It’s a very real and credible danger. It’s not my imagination. It’s not my conspiracy theory. It’s what they’re actually discussing, and things of this nature have already happened around the world in countries such as India.

Mike Gleason: That’s a very real possibility, and if the time does come when that happens, those that actually have something other than dollars, whether it be gold or Bitcoin or something along those lines, are going to be very glad that they had it when the time comes.

Michael Pento: Mike, one more thing I wanted to mention about gold. And for those who are temporarily suffering under gold, you should understand this, that we are in a condition in this country, in this nation that uses dollars, which is the world’s reserve currency for now, we are in a condition now where deficits are set to absolutely explode in the next few years. I want to just go over it real briefly. The CBO projects that our deficit will be a trillion dollars per annum in the next 10 years, very early in that time frame. If we have a recession, you can add another $1.4 trillion, like we did last time, to the annual deficit.

The Fed is threatening to do something called quantitative tightening, like I mentioned before. They’re going to sell around $3 trillion worth of treasuries and mortgage-backed securities over the next seven years. You can add that several hundred billion to that total. If we do have tax cuts that are not paid for, you can add about $5 trillion – even after assessing for growth – $5 trillion over the next 10 years. And for every 1% move higher in interest rates, you’re looking at $200 billion each year.

So, deficits in the next few years have a very real chance, especially when we enter a recession — and I don’t think the Fed has repealed the business cycle — to be multiple trillions of dollars in the next recession. That’s a very, very real danger. And if you don’t think that’s going to bring back a change in monetary policy, you’re sadly mistaken. That’s when I think gold really hits its full stride.

Mike Gleason: Excellent stuff as always, Michael. It’s great to have you on again. We certainly appreciate you making some time for us today. Now before we let you go, as we always do, please tell people who want to both read and hear more of your wonderful market commentaries and also learn about your firm and how they could potentially become a client if they’re so inclined, tell them how they could do all that.

Michael Pento: The website is PentoPort.com. You can look under my Mid-week Reality Check there, sign up for it. You get a free trial. It’s only $49 a year. You get all kinds of arcane facts and details and statistics that the mainstream media won’t get you, but people like you, thank God, will have people like me on to talk about. So, it’s PentoPort.com. The email here is [email protected], if you want to email me directly. The phone number for the office is 732-772-9500.

Mike Gleason: Again, wonderful insights, Michael. Thanks so much for joining us. Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend, and we look forward to having you back on again soon. Take care.

Michael Pento: Thanks again, Mike.

Mike Gleason: Well that will wrap it up for this week. Thanks again to Michael Pento of Pento Portfolio Strategies. For more information just visit PentoPort.com. You can sign up for his email list, listen to the midweek podcast and get his fantastic market commentaries on a regular basis. Again, just go to PentoPort.com.

Mike Gleason is a Director with Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer with over 50,000 customers. Gleason is a hard money advocate and a strong proponent of personal liberty, limited government and the Austrian School of Economics. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason has extensive experience in management, sales and logistics as well as precious metals investing. He also puts his longtime broadcasting background to good use, hosting a weekly precious metals podcast since 2011, a program listened to by tens of thousands each week.

The post Michael Pento Warns of Exploding Debt, Inverted Yield Curve, and Then “Economic Armageddon” appeared first on Gold Silver Worlds.

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rebeccahpedersen · 8 years ago

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Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan: Have Your Say!

TorontoRealtyBlog

Seriously, folks – do you know what I had in the queue for Friday’s blog post? A video about water damage. Yeah. I guess I can shelve that for one day next week…

The “Ontario Fair Housing Plan” was dropped on our heads yesterday by the Ontario Liberals, and there has been no shortage of media coverage on the subject.

Since this news is fresh, and because it’s Friday, today I merely want to outline the changes, and give readers a chance to have their say.

I’ll follow up on Monday with my two cents…

The following is from the government of Ontario website.

The link can be found HERE.

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Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan introduces a comprehensive package of measures to help more people find affordable homes, increase supply, protect buyers and renters and bring stability to the real estate market. The plan includes:

Actions to Address Demand for Housing:

1) Introducing legislation that would, if passed, implement a new 15-per-cent Non-Resident Speculation Tax (NRST) on the price of homes in the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) purchased by individuals who are not citizens or permanent residents of Canada or by foreign corporations. Ontario’s economy benefits enormously from newcomers who decide to make the province home. The NRST would help to address unsustainable demand in this region and make housing more available and affordable, while ensuring Ontario continues to be a place that welcomes all new residents. The proposed tax would apply to transfers of land that contain at least one and not more than six single family residences. “Single family residences” include, for example, detached and semi-detached homes, townhomes and condominiums. The NRST would not apply to transfers of other types of land including multi-residential rental apartment buildings, agricultural land or commercial/industrial land. The NRST would be effective as of April 21, 2017, upon the enactment of the amending legislation.

Refugees and nominees under the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program would not be subject to the NRST. Subject to eligibility requirements, a rebate would be available for those who subsequently attain citizenship or permanent resident status as a well as foreign nationals working in Ontario and international students. See technical bulletin for further information.

Actions to Protect Renters:

2) Expanding rent control to all private rental units in Ontario, including those built after 1991. This will ensure increases in rental costs can only rise at the rate posted in the annual provincial rent increase guideline. Over the past ten years, the annual rent increase guideline has averaged two per cent. The increase is capped at a maximum of 2.5 per cent. Under these changes, landlords would still be able to apply vacancy decontrol and seek above guideline increases where permitted. Legislation will be introduced that, if passed, will enact this change effective April 20.‎

3) The government will introduce legislation that would, if passed, strengthen the Residential Tenancies Act to further protect tenants and ensure predictability for landlords. This will include developing a standard lease with explanatory information available in multiple languages, tightening provisions for “landlord’s own use” evictions, and ensuring that tenants are adequately compensated if asked to vacate under this rule; prohibiting above-guideline increases where elevator work orders have not been completed; and making technical changes at the Landlord-Tenant Board to make the process fairer and easier for renters and landlords. These changes would apply to the entire province. Actions to Increase Housing Supply

4) Establishing a program to leverage the value of surplus provincial land assets across the province to develop a mix of market housing and new, permanent, sustainable and affordable housing supply. Potential sites under consideration for a pilot project include the West Don Lands, 27 Grosvenor/26 Grenville Streets in Toronto, and other sites in the province. This builds on an agreement reached previously with the City of Toronto to ensure a minimum of 20 per cent of residential units within the West Don Lands are available for affordable rental, with an additional 5 per cent of units for affordable ownership.

5) Introducing legislation that would, if passed, empower the City of Toronto, and potentially other interested municipalities, to introduce a vacant homes property tax to encourage property owners to sell unoccupied units or rent them out, to address concerns about residential units potentially being left vacant by speculators.

6) Ensuring that property tax for new multi-residential apartment buildings is charged at a similar rate as other residential properties. This will encourage developers to build more new purpose-built rental housing and will apply to the entire province.

7) Introducing a targeted $125-million, five-year program to further encourage the construction of new rental apartment buildings by rebating a portion of development charges. Working with municipalities, the government would target projects in those communities that are most in need of new purpose-built rental housing.

8) Providing municipalities with the flexibility to use property tax tools to help unlock development opportunities. For example, municipalities could be permitted to impose a higher tax on vacant land that has been approved for new housing.

9) Creating a new Housing Supply Team with dedicated provincial employees to identify barriers to specific housing development projects and work with developers and municipalities to find solutions. As well, a multi-ministry working group will be established to work with the development industry and municipalities to identify opportunities to streamline the development approvals process.

Other Actions to Protect Homebuyers and Increase Information Sharing:

10) The province will work to understand and tackle practices that may be contributing to tax avoidance and excessive speculation in the housing market such as “paper flipping,” a practice that includes entering into a contractual agreement to buy a residential unit and assigning it to another person prior to closing.

11) Working with the real estate profession and consumers, the province is committing to review the rules real estate agents are required to follow to ensure that consumers are fairly represented in real estate transactions. This includes practices such as double ending. The government will modernize its rules, strengthen professionalism and improve the home-buying experience with a goal to make Ontario a leader in real estate standards.

12) Establishing a housing advisory group which will meet quarterly to provide the government with ongoing advice about the state of the housing market and discuss the impact of the measures in the Fair Housing Plan and any additional steps that are needed. The group will have a diverse range of expertise, including economists, academics, developers, community groups and the real estate sector.

13) Educating consumers on their rights, particularly on the issue of one real estate professional representing more than one party in a real estate transaction.

14) Partnering with the Canada Revenue Agency to explore more comprehensive reporting requirements so that correct federal and provincial taxes, including income and sales taxes, are paid on purchases and sales of real estate in Ontario.

15) Making elevators in Ontario buildings more reliable by establishing timelines for elevator repair in consultation with the sector and the Technical Standards & Safety Authority (TSSA).

16) Working with municipalities to better reflect the needs of a growing Greater Golden Horseshoe through an updated Growth Plan. New provisions will include requiring that municipalities consider the appropriate range of unit sizes in higher density residential buildings to accommodate a diverse range of household sizes and incomes. This will help support the goals of creating complete communities that are vibrant, transit-supportive and economically competitive, while doing more to address climate change, protect the region’s natural heritage and prevent the loss of irreplaceable farmland. As part of the implementation of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, 2006, enough land was set aside in municipal official plans to accommodate forecasted growth to at least 2031. Based on discussions with municipalities across the region, the government is confident that there is enough serviced land to meet the Provincial Policy Statement requirement for a three year supply of residential units. The Greenbelt provides important protection of natural heritage and farmland, and neither the area of the Greenbelt or the rules about what can occur inside of it will be weakened. The upcoming Growth Plan will promote intensification around existing and planned transit stations and will promote higher densities in the suburbs to support transit.

Actions to Date:

The government has taken a number of actions over recent months and years in order to support homebuyers, increase supply of affordable and rental housing and promote fairness. These include:

*Helping more people purchase their first home by doubling the maximum Land Transfer Tax refund for eligible first-time homebuyers to $4,000. This means eligible homebuyers in Ontario pay no Land Transfer Tax on the first $368,000 of the cost of their first home.

*Modernizing the Land Transfer Tax to reflect the current real estate market, including increasing rates on one or two single-family residence over $2 million. Revenue generated from the increased rates is being used to fund the enhancements to the First-Time Homebuyers Refund.

*Making it easier for not-for-profit affordable housing providers to buy surplus government lands.

*Introducing an inclusionary zoning framework for municipalities that will enable affordable housing units as part of residential developments.

*Amending the Planning Act and the Development Charges Act to support second units, allowing homeowners to create rental units in their primary residence and creating additional supply.

*Freezing the municipal property tax burden for multi-residential apartment buildings in communities where these taxes are high.

*Collecting information about Ontario’s real estate market to support evidence-based policy development

Wow!

There’s a lot to sort through here, folks!

There are sixteen points, albeit some that are complete fluff, and the fact that most of them start with verbs in the continuing sense (educating, partnering, working, establishing, informing), show me that nothing has been done, yet.

I need the weekend to digest all of this, and to gauge the response, although HERE is a must-read already in the National Post.

I’ll come back on Monday with my thoughts.

But let me leave you with this nugget: I had eleven clients, past and present, email me today to ask “What does all this mean?”

So if you find yourself expressing any emotion about this, positive or negative, you’re not alone…

The post Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan: Have Your Say! appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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