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thecoroutfitters · 7 years ago

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Written by John Hertig on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: This is the second of a two-part article on silencers by John Hertig. Part 1 was posted yesterday and provides valuable information that you should know before making any decisions. And don’t forget to vote in our current Prepper Journal Writing Contest!

So Should You Get a Suppressor?

The primary advantage to a suppressor is that it reduces the sound level of each shot so as to cause less hearing damage and annoyance to others. Using a suppressor in conjunction with hearing protection can make long, indoor shooting sessions more hearing safe and pleasant. And reduces the hearing damage from a few indoor shots without hearing protection. Perhaps the greatest benefit would be in hunting, where you would not need to wear hearing protection, and would have less noise to annoy the game or other people. But there are other benefits as well. Suppressors tend to reduce recoil, which makes the weapon easier and more pleasant to shoot, and significantly reduce muzzle blast, which can negatively affect both the shooter and those close by. If you are shooting from the prone position, reduced muzzle blast means reduced dust problems.

And suppressors also reduce muzzle flash, which helps preserve your vision when shooting in low light. Finally, some suppressors can change the sound of the shot so that in addition to being less loud, it is less “sharp” as well. In Europe, suppressors are not overly regulated, and at some shooting ranges, are required equipment.

But there are negative factors, as you might expect because relatively few shooters (in the USA) have suppressors.

A major downside is that commercially made suppressors are expensive. Because of the bureaucratic nonsense involved in getting one, the market is limited, and with the extra taxes and fees which manufacturers need to pay, they have to charge a high price to cover costs and research, which further limits the market. A center fire rifle caliber suppressor itself will probably have a list price of $600 to $1,600. Then there is the $200 tax and any dealer fees, and if you go that way, Trust costs. Of course, you can cut the cost significantly by making your own suppressor; you still have to go through the bureaucratic hoops and pay the $200 tax, but any other costs are just parts and your (only you, by law) labor. This could be under $30 dollars. It used to be popular to sell a device which screws onto your barrel and accepts an empty two liter pop bottle. It did not work all that well and the bottle quickly self-destructed, but it could be “enhanced” to make it work better. I’ve also heard of a similar adapter which allows screwing on an oil filter, but I have no idea how well it works. I’m surprised you can still get those adapters these days, but I found one place right off the bat which claims to sell them for $25 or so. It would not be legal to add the pop bottle and put it on (or even keep it ‘near’) the gun without the tax stamp, and I think it likely would be risky (without a legal alternate use) to even possess the adapter without the tax stamp. It probably would be better to go ahead and make a “real” suppressor as the performance would be better, it would be more durable, and the temptation to do without the tax stamp would be less. And that would make the higher cost worthwhile.

Once you receive the suppressor, you have to be careful to treat it as required by law, including if you ever want to get rid of it. This is one area where failing to dot all the “i”s and cross all the “t”s can have a seriously unhappy ending. For most NFA items, you are supposed to write the BATFE if you are going to take it out of your state, but it appears that is not necessary for short term jaunts with just a suppressor. Then again, who’s definition of “short term” applies?

Many suppressors force gas back through the ejection port due to “back pressure”, which is a source of noise and will bother your eyes (unless you are smart enough to be wearing protective glasses), as well as dirty the magazine and any rounds remaining in it. And if the suppressor screws on, some can unscrew themselves during use. Better ones either have a locking mechanism or tighten as you fire them. Some affect the point of aim; others not so much.

If you don’t want to mess with the BATFE or laws about suppressors, but do want to play with them, there is an interesting alternative. Because black powder muzzle loading weapons are considered “antiques” by the BATFE and thus not under their control, at least one company will sell, through the mail, without any tax or paperwork, a black powder rifle with integrated sound reduction device. Since it is integrated (cannot be removed and attached to a modern firearm), it is not considered a suppressor by the BATFE. Of course, California, New Jersey and Massachusetts are raising a fuss, so if you live there, you can’t get one currently. Illinois, New York and DC make you go through a FFL to get one, but seem to allow it currently.

(Editor’s Note: I have one and have fired it. The integrated “modifier” is a series of baffle chambers, like all suppressors, and this black powder rifle, in .50 cal, uses no wad as the wad residue will collect in the modifier and diminish its performance over time. The rounds are designed to sit on top of the compacted black powder with a cavity that is filled with the black powder when rammed home. NOT paying the $200 tax stamp and NOT doing all the required extra paperwork still brings a smile to my face.)

If cost is a problem, 22LR suppressors appear to be the least expensive option, with a list price of $200 to $500. Or occasionally you’ll find a “1/2 price” or better sale online. And keep an eye on the small companies; some of them are innovating like mad. A Texas company, rebelsilencers.com have “tubeless” suppressors, which mean the length (and thus the degree of quieting) can be easily changed. .22LR for $150 and .30 (good for any .30 caliber up to 300 Win Mag and any smaller caliber) for $300. And blackacestactical.com has the “Po Boy” line of rifle silencers for $199 each.

The Hearing Protection Act

There was a bill in Congress to remove suppressors from the NFA controls, allowing you to buy one exactly the same as buying a “regular” gun. This bill seemed to have had a pretty good chance, being good for people’s hearing and the environment and there being insignificant history of people using silencers in crimes. This bill died due to the Las Vegas shooting even though there was no suppressor involved directly or indirectly in that incident, since it was felt any pro-gun legislation would cause consternation amongst the feeble minded. Never mind the angst which anti-gun legislation would force on legal gun owners.

My Investigation

The costs of suppressors and annoyance of dealing with the BATFE have dissuaded me from getting a suppressor in the past, but then I got an offer from a place which was selling a major brand at half price. Apparently it was more the cost than the bureaucracy, and also the latest technology quickly fastens to and releases from the muzzle break rather than screwing on, so requires less fumbling and the gun does not look weird or have easily damaged threads when the suppressor is not installed. This was enough to tempt me, but before I got all my ducks in a row, they sold out. Thus, I decided to do in advance what I can so if I ever come across a deal like that again, I will be able to jump on it fast enough to take advantage.

First I went to a dealer I knew of right around the corner from me. The sign said they were closed, and looking through the windows, they looked really, really closed. This brings up an interesting point. What if the dealer who is holding your suppressor goes out of business or loses his license? It would likely be difficult to resolve; some people claim you own the silencer because you paid for it (keep your receipt!) and others claim that the store owns it because it has not been transferred to you yet (so you are just another creditor of the store). Fortunately, I knew of another place (big, with a long history) a few miles away. I got to fondle a few silencers; some of them were fairly heavy. The guy was able to answer my questions. Their transfer fee was $100, which included them filling out all the forms and taking the fingerprints and sending them where they need to go; there was no charge for these services if the suppressor was purchased from them. All I would need would be the two passport style photographs (like from Walgreens) and, if a Trust were used, two copies of the Trust document.

The fellow brought up an interesting point; .30 caliber suppressors actually work pretty good on a 5.56 as well. Neat; you can have one (heavy duty) suppressor and use it on all center fire rifles between .22 and .30 caliber.

Next I went looking for a Trust. I didn’t really find a local gun lawyer advertised who inspired confidence. I did find a Trust online which appears to be head and shoulders above the rest, and overcomes some of the problems with a “standard” NFA trust. This Trust is by Jim Willi, one of the top gun trust attorneys in Texas, and I could find only positive comments about him and his Trust. I could not understand how it could do what it says it can, so sent them an email. I actually got a call from Mr. Willi himself, who explained how it meets the letter of the new NFA regulations encouraged by a President Obama Executive Order. On the minus side of the new rules, the Trustees of the Trust now have to submit personal data, picture and fingerprints to the BATFE, but on the plus side, you don’t need CLEO approval any more, so your transfer can’t be blocked without cause (some CLEOs have been known to blanket refuse approval). It is still more involved than I hoped for, but much easier than I feared. Normally $130, it was on sale for $100. Before buying this (or probably any) Trust, make sure you have the full legal name of all the people who will be listed in the document, your own (hopefully), at least one Successor Trustee and at least one Primary Beneficiary. Including Secondary Beneficiaries might be a good idea in case all Primary Beneficiaries are unable to be used due to death, refusal or ineligibility. None of these people will have access to the suppressor until you die, so they don’t need to provide any information to the BATFE, sign the trust document, or even know they are listed in the Trust. You can also specify Co-Trustees in the original Trust, but then they will also have to send personal information, photo and fingerprints to the BATFE because they do have access to the suppressor. Plus, they must all sign the Trust document with you, in the presence of a notary, and removing them requires the Trust to be amended. It is easier to add or remove Co-Trustees in a separate document, and if they are added after the transfer is approved, they don’t need to submit anything to the BATFE until the next transfer is requested. You can add non-NFA guns to the Trust, which would also remove them from probate and public records, and would be useful if you ever decided to convert a regular gun to a NFA configuration. It might also be useful if some of the upcoming “assault weapon” legislation passes.

Now I should be ready for any future suppressor bargains. At any future time, I can:

1) Find a desired suppressor online or at a dealer

2) Make sure the dealer (still) does transfers for a reasonable price

3) Pay for the suppressor or order it to be sent to the dealer.

4) Have the dealer fill out the NFA paper work; I sign each copy and pay any fees and provide the $200 for the tax stamp

5) Provide two copies of the Trust document and passport style photos; They take my fingerprints

6) Wait for the tax stamp to be returned (per a call from the dealer)

7) Fill out form 4473

8) Take the suppressor home

9) Add Co-Trustees as desired (tax stamp should be approved before adding new Trustees but Trustees MUST be added before they have access to the suppressor)

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The post Introduction to Silencers – Part 2 of 2 appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

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plasticproductsmfg · 5 years ago

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nevadarafiilaw · 1 year ago

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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Beto O’Rourke’s Campaign Found New Meaning in the Gun Debate. But Is He Hurting the Cause?

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/beto-orourkes-campaign-found-new-meaning-in-the-gun-debate-but-is-he-hurting-the-cause/

Beto O’Rourke’s Campaign Found New Meaning in the Gun Debate. But Is He Hurting the Cause?

DENVER—Tom Sullivan, a Colorado state lawmaker whose son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, met Beto O’Rourke one cloudless morning in September and, inside a glass-and-brick office building in downtown Denver, introduced him to several other people whose friends or relatives had been killed in mass shootings.

They were seated at a table in a third-floor conference room of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, beside a largely untouched basket of bagels and a box of Starbucks coffee. Jane Dougherty, whose sister Mary Sherlach was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, brought up the moment, at a presidential debate in Houston the previous week,when O’Rourke had said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

Story Continued Below

“I think I was jumping around in my family room, because my sister was murdered by an AR-15,” Dougherty said.

Coni Sanders, whose father, Dave, was killed in the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, where he was a teacher, said she had rushed toward the television in her living room, hurting her head on a door jamb before sitting down on the floor and watching in disbelief. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Sanders said. Brandon Kellogg, a student at Columbine during the massacre, said that, sitting on his couch watching the debate that night, he cried.

O’Rourke swallowed.

In March, when the former Texas congressman entered the presidential race amid soaring expectations, his biggest liability was a perceived lack of solemnity. That perception was reinforced by a meandering road trip throughout the Southwest, a “born to be in it”Vanity Faircover story,and a penchant for standing on tables and chairs. Then, he sank in public opinion polls, watched his fundraising fall off and drifted throughout the early stages of the primary, overwhelmed by a field of more experienced competitors.

But now O’Rourke, while still running far behind in the 2020 field, finds himself at the center of one of the Democratic primary’s gravest and most divisive policy disputes. After the shooting massacre at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso, Texas, in August, O’Rourke proposed a mandatory buyback of all assault weapons—a kind of eminent domain for guns. The proposal—and the pressure it has put on his competitors to respond—has amplified the gun control discussion in the 2020 primary and pushed it further to the left. And O’Rourke’s intense focus on the issue, including events like the one in Denver, has given his faltering campaign new meaning.

“We have to continue to keep this issue front and center if we’re going to make any progress on it,” O’Rourke told me recently over pasta at Fish Nor Fowl, a restaurant in Pittsburgh’s east end, during a campaign swing through Pennsylvania on the day he turned 47. “And I have an opportunity to do that.”

How long O’Rourke will have that opportunity is unclear. He is polling at 2 percent or 3 percent nationally in the primary. And, he told me, “I cannot fathom a scenario where I would run for public office again if I’m not the nominee.”

Barring upheaval in the primary, O’Rourke’s focus on gun control will not make him president. More than that, he might be hurting his own crusade. His buyback proposal thrust him into conflict, not only with President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association, but with some of his party’s leaders, who fear O’Rourke will alienate moderate voters and hinder Democrats’ ability to negotiate more modest gun reforms in Congress, especially if the Senate remains in Republican hands after the 2020 election.

“Dummy Beto made it much harder to make a deal,” Trump tweeted last month, and many Democrats on Capitol Hill agreed.

O’Rourke acknowledges that calling for a mandatory buyback “may be politically difficult” and “might diminish our prospects in the next election, whether you’re a member of Congress or whether you’re a candidate for the presidency.” But he also believes his critics are misreading shifts in public opinion. Near the end of the meeting in Denver, he pledged, “I’m in all the way.”

Lonnie Phillips, whose daughter was killed in Aurora, told O’Rourke that he had “stepped in shit.”

“They’re going to come after you,” Phillips said, while assuring O’Rourke that he has “an army behind you.”

“You don’t back down,” he added.

***

O’Rourke no longer owns a gun,but he grew up around them in West Texas. He told me his father, Pat, kept a handgun in his sock drawer and an inherited “arsenal” of handguns, shotguns and rifles in a basement closet. O’Rourke used to take a .22-caliber rifle into the desert to shoot bottles and cans, and he has gone hunting with friends.

Early in his near-miss Senate run against Ted Cruz last year, a friend advised O’Rourke to “make sure that you’re seen in church every Sunday, make sure that they get a picture of you wearing boots and carrying a gun around,” O’Rourke said. “And I was just like, you know what, none of that is me. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I don’t carry a gun. I don’t have a gun.”

During his Senate campaign, O’Rourke supported renewed efforts to pass an assault weapons ban. But running in a Republican- and gun-rich state, he repeatedly said he had no desire to take weapons from people who already owned them. Early in his presidential run, O’Rourke pursued a standard Democratic menu of gun reforms, including universal background checks and red-flag laws.

The idea of a mandatory buyback, he said, “just was not part of the dialogue. And it doesn’t justify the position or make it OK … but that is, perhaps like a lot of people, where I was.”

That changed after a gunman wielding an AK-47-style riflekilled 22 people in El Paso. On the morning of the shooting, O’Rourke was speaking at a labor forum in Las Vegas and became shaken when the first reports of deaths came in. “Keep that shit on the battlefield,” he pleaded, before suspending his campaign and returning home to mourn the victims and meet with survivors.

Then he asked himself, “What is the most that we could possibly do?”

Gathered around his dinner table one day, he said he told a clutch of advisers, “I can’t escape the conclusion that if we want to stop selling these, then we should also buy the 10 million or more that are out there off the streets. I said, ‘Give me the best argument against this.’ And the only real argument against it was a political argument.”

Until the El Paso shooting, O’Rourke told me, “I never forced myself to answer the question, ‘If it’s important to stop selling these, then shouldn’t we do something to address the fact that there are those weapons of war out on the streets or in people’s homes that can and will be used against us?’ And I don’t know how to say it other than, ‘The reason I never asked myself that question is I just never entertained the possibility that it was possible.”

O’Rourke is now calling for a mandatory buyback for assault weapons and a voluntary buyback for handguns. The funding for the buybacks, he says, would come from increasing the excise tax on gun manufacturers and increasing fines on traffickers. People who do not sell back their assault weapons would be fined.

The proposal is similar to a policy advanced by one of his former competitors, California Congressman Eric Swalwell. Now it is O’Rourke arguing, as Swalwell did with less notice, that Democrats have approached gun control negotiations all wrong, by allowing gun rights activists to frame the parameters of the debate. At a recent campaign event, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, an early O’Rourke supporter, told me, “I’m proud of the fearless way that my candidate is speaking the truth to people.” Swalwell said O’Rourke’s “Hell yes” answer “gave me goosebumps.” And David Axelrod, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Twitter that O’Rourke “is really moving on this issue of banning assault weapons. Very, very powerful.”

At his rallies, O’Rourke still swivels from impeachment and climate change to immigration and jobs. He is not a single-issue candidate. But it is on gun control that he is distinguishing himself. He told me he “can certainly tell from the way that people have responded and their passion around gun violence, that this has resonated, and that they associate me with this issue.”

During an early October town hall at Casa del Mexicano, a cultural center in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighborhood, an elderly woman in the crowd winced when O’Rourke described the impact of an AR-15 or an AK-47, saying, “You talk to the surgeons who treat the victims, and they say it just shreds to shit everything inside of your body.” A high school student told O’Rourke that “all of my friends are scared” that they will be shot at school, and asked him, “What do we do?” O’Rourke, sweating through his shirt, his sleeves rolled up, told her, “We are not going to accept what is happening right now,” and he suggested that young people would alter the politics surrounding the issue. A cheer went up when he repeated his “Hell, yes,” refrain.

For the purposes of the election, an adviser to one of O’Rourke’s competitors told me, “He did the smart thing, which was to take the pure position.”

The adviser added, “I don’t know quite what it’s adding up to.”

***

For a Democratic presidential candidate,taking a stand on gun control would appear to be advantageous.

Bulletproof backpacks hit the market, active shooter drills have become commonplace in schools, and gun policy ranks among Democratic voters’ top concerns. Forty-five percent of Americans worry they or someone in their family will be victimized in a mass shooting, according to Gallup. In the midterm elections last year, Everytown for Gun Safety, the pro-gun control group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, spent millions of dollars, and gun control advocates claimed a number of victories in congressional swing districts.

“The myth that gun safety is the ‘third rail’ of American politics, I think, is buried,” says John Feinblatt, Everytown’s president. “Candidates are now running on their gun safety credentials from Day 1. … That’s just a seismic shift.”

A Quinnipiac University poll released in August found that 60 percent of voters support a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons, and 82 percent favor requiring people to be licensed before purchasing a gun. Support for a mandatory assault weapon buyback program is more mixed—46 percent, according to Quinnipiac, or 52 percent according to aWashington Post-ABC News poll. But support for a mandatory buyback soars among Democratic voters, reaching 71 percent in the Quinnipiac poll. Even in Texas, 49 percent of the state’s voters support a mandatory buyback, according to a University of Texas, Tyler, poll released after the Houston debate.

O’Rourke, who frequently cites the Texas poll, told me, “That’s amazing. That’s without any money being spent to support that position. That’s without—with the exception of Eric Swalwell—without a single national political figure advocating for or endorsing the idea. So that’s just where people are.”

Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris have expressed support for a mandatory gun buyback, but the vast majority of the Democratic candidates have not. The field’s early front-runner, Vice President Joe Biden, came close to endorsing the idea over the summer, in a CNN interview, before his campaign clarified that Biden supports a voluntary—not a mandatory—buyback. He has since proposed giving people who own assault weapons or high-capacity magazines a choice: sell them back or register them.

Other candidates don’t just oppose buybacks; they also criticize O’Rourke for advocating one. At a gun control forum in Las Vegas in early October, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said buybacks have had “mixed results” and questioned the utility of pursuing them.

“We’ve got to do something now,” Buttigieg said. “And we have a way sometimes as a party—my party—of getting caught just when we’ve amassed the discipline and the force to get something done right away, a shiny object makes it harder for us to focus.”

When O’Rourke appeared at the forum that same afternoon, he condemned Buttigieg’s rhetoric. To “those who are worried about the polls and want to triangulate or talk to the consultants or listen to the focus groups—and I’m thinking about Mayor Pete on this one, who I think probably wants to get to the right place but is afraid of doing the right thing right now—to those who need a weatherman, let me tell you that in this country, mandatory buybacks are supported by a majority of Americans,” he said.

O’Rourke told me, “I think that the political leadership, including Democrats, has not caught up to where the people are on this.”

The reaction to his “Hell, yes” moment underscores his point. Congressman David Cicilline of Rhode Island said on Fox News after the debate that O’Rourke’s “message doesn’t help,” while Senator Chris Coons of Delaware told CNN, “I frankly think that that clip will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies with organizations that try to scare people by saying Democrats are coming for your guns.”

“The issue that a lot of gun owners have is that they think Democrats want to take away their guns,” says Mathew Littman, a former Biden speechwriter who now supports Harris and works on gun reform. “So, saying that you want to take away their guns may prove that they’re right. And the problem with it is gun owners and non-gun owners agree on so many things that we could do—universal background checks, red-flag laws. Why don’t we start on the areas we agree upon?”

Sure enough, Republicans pounced on O’Rourke for his buyback plan. A GOP state representative in Texas tweeted, “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis,” while the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, rejoiced that O’Rourke “will never be a threat in Texas politics again.” John Thomas, a Republican strategist, told me he is using O’Rourke’s remarks to raise money for congressional races in New York, California and Michigan.

“Beto has fundamentally shifted the messaging on guns in the Democratic primary going forward,” Thomas says. “If you’re a second-tier candidate in the next debate, why wouldn’t you go even a step further than that? Say, ‘Yes, why stop there? We’ve got to do the sin tax on guns, tax ammunition and guns, and give the proceeds to gun victims.’”

O’Rourke could have expected blowback from the right, but he was incredulous at the Democratic criticism of his plan. After Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader with a long record on gun control, brushed aside mandatory buybacks, saying, “I don’t know of any other Democrat who agrees with Beto O’Rourke,” the candidate responded by telling reporters to “ask Chuck Schumer what he’s been able to get done.”

***

“Somebody told me—I don’t know if this is true—that the average attention span nationally on gun violence after a horrific mass shooting is three weeks,” O’Rourke said at our dinner in Pittsburgh. He said he does not sense that this time—not for the electorate and, he added, “Not for me.”

Yet it is possible that national attention has already moved past O’Rourke two months after the El Paso shooting and one month after the Houston debate. After the impeachment inquiry into Trump engulfed Washington, Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who had been in talks with the White House on gun control, acknowledged that the turmoil “may temporarily be the end of the road for a lot of legislative initiatives,” including on guns. In the presidential campaign, the topic has reverted from its once-charged status to its usual, less prominent place among other priorities.

O’Rourke, like many congressional observers, was never optimistic for negotiations with Trump on gun control. Long before Democrats opened their impeachment inquiry, the Republican president spurned a universal background checks bill passed by the House. Talks between Democrats and the White House, O’Rourke said, “never seemed on.”

O’Rourke’s own proposal has been criticized as politically impractical or potentially unconstitutional. When CNN’s Chris Cuomo told O’Rourke last month that he doubted the legality of mandatory buybacks, O’Rourke replied that under the Second Amendment, “the government does have a power to regulate those kinds of weapons that are extraordinarily unusual or deadly.” He told Cuomo he is “willing to fight that one all the way to the end.”

The measure O’Rourke is proposing, he says, is not unlike laws banning any other illegal weapon or substance. “We don’t go door to door to enforce any part of the criminal code,” he told me, “nor would we in this case.” When asked whether penalties could include imprisonment, he said, “A fine, certainly. I don’t know about imprisonment. But it’s something that I’d like to listen to.”

In its uncertainty—surrounding the specifics of the legislation that O’Rourke would support, as well as its prospect of passage—O’Rourke’s proposal is not unlike plans advanced by Democrats on any number of issues, including health care and climate change. And politicians of both parties have long found political value in advancing agendas that are not immediately likely to pass.

Although O’Rourke’s buybacks proposal has had little effect on his campaign’s weak polling, it has allowed him to “put a mark in the book on something relevant,” says Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist. “It takes him out of the abyss and puts him on the trampoline to another office.”

O’Rourke, for now, rejects that possibility. When I pressed at our dinner in Pittsburgh whether any other political office might appeal to him—if not a run for Senate, which he has consistently resisted, perhaps Texas governor, even mayor of El Paso—O’Rourke said no. “I can’t tell you all the reasons why,” he said. “I just can’t even imagine.”

“No,” he said. “I’m running for president.”

If he doesn’t win the presidency, O’Rourke said that “in whatever way I can contribute, I’m going to do that.”

He recalled Lonnie Phillips telling him in Denver that if O’Rourke stopped talking about gun control, he would be “pissed,” and Sean Whalen, a pediatric dentist whose patient was shot to death last year, warning him that “if you lose this election or you don’t get the nomination, if you walk away from this, I would be personally offended.”

O’Rourke told me, “I’m in this for the long haul.”

#cause #Foreign #Hurting #Politics

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dippedanddripped · 5 years ago

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In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg made a rare public appearance wearing a suit. Congress had compelled him to testify on Capitol Hill, the lawmakers curious why Facebook had been so adept at harvesting personal data and so inept at policing Russian spies.

Zuckerberg’s suit was navy and his tie was bright blue, a shade or two lighter than Facebook’s color scheme. The New York Times called it his “I’m Sorry Suit” and, like many outlets, praised his appearance and poise. He was lauded for a “strategic” decision to make a visual statement of contrition.

Had he? Or was he in a suit because Congress had dictated the terms for him? For one of the few times in his adult life, sweating through a barrage of government questions, Zuckerberg was not in control. And these days, when you are not in control you wear a suit.

“They put Mark Zuckerberg in that suit,” says Deirdre Clemente, a fashion and culture historian and author of Dress Casual: How College Students Redefined American Style, referring to Congress. “I would’ve had a lot more respect if he showed up in a hoodie: ‘This is who I am and what I do.’”

Although the suit is historically associated with projecting elegance, authority, and mastery of a profession, those qualities hearken back to the days when suits were prevalent, worn by the Atticus Finches and Don Drapers of the world. How long until we realize the suit — while still used for special occasions and by a shrinking number of traditionalists — has become associated with the opposite? The suit has become a uniform for the powerless.

There are exceptions. Women celebrities have recently donned suits in glitter and velvet and purple, modernizing a Marlene Dietrich staple, and the suit is an important component of non-binary clothing trends. Those choices are made to subvert expectations of the suit. But most people who wear suits are men. And they wear them because they have to please someone else, whether it’s an employer or Congress. Unless you live on Park Avenue, the suit brings to mind job interviews, junior salespeople, young employees behind the counter at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, hotel clerks, and court appearances.

When you’re in control, at least in relative control, from the C-suite down to the long rectangular table in the open-air office, you wear whatever you want, which is almost never a suit. It is the vest or bomber jacket for men, a blouse or a shell top for women. For people wealthy enough to attend wine country casual weddings, the male guests (and potentially the groom) can get by with light slacks and a button-down. At this year’s Oscars, the male celebrities who garnered the most headlines, like Chadwick Boseman, spurned suits for outfits that resembled dresses. JPMorgan lightened its dress code to business casual for most of its 237,000 employees in 2016. Goldman Sachs, the financial firm reputed to “rule the world,” nixed its suit requirement in March.

WHEN YOU’RE IN CONTROL, YOU WEAR WHATEVER YOU WANT, WHICH IS ALMOST NEVER A SUIT

The numbers alone suggest suits lack the value and influence they once had. The Consumer Price Index for suits in June 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was about 25 percent lower than in June 2000. This descent began well before the Great Recession and during a period in which the CPI for the general apparel market has declined 4 percent and risen since the financial crisis. The CPI, which measures the price paid by consumers over time, is considered a proxy for inflation, so a CPI decline is the opposite of what would be expected in an economy with high consumer confidence.

Americans are also buying fewer suits. US revenue for men’s suits declined to $1.9 billion in 2018 from $2.2 billion in 2013, according to the research firm Euromonitor (revenue for women’s suits tumbled in the same timeframe to $402 million from $795 million). The total number of men’s suits sold in 2018 was 8.6 million — or about .07 suits per man.

Compare this to the late 1940s. A board member of the National Clothing Manufacturers Association estimated back then that half a suit was bought per man per year, which would equal roughly 25 million suits. At the average price for a suit at the time, about $50, revenue would have been $1.25 billion. And that’s in 1940s money. Accounting for inflation, the market would have been $12.5 billion. And that’s for a United States that had half the adult male population the country has now. And — a final and — this board member suggested the industry needed to increase sales to one suit per man per year. The rate of half a suit per man, he said, “should cause us to hang our heads in shame.”

This was when men wore suits all the time. They wore them to protest for higher wages. They wore them to watch sports. They wore them to play sports. Norman Tabler, a 74-year-old lawyer, grew up in this era, in 1950s Indiana. He dreamed of the day he could wear one. “I yearned to be one of those guys that seemed to run the world,” Tabler says, “and they always wore suits.”

Yet even back then, the powerful had already started rebelling against the suit. Princeton students in the 1920s, according to Clemente’s book, experimented with blazers. In the 1940s, they started wearing khakis. These were the sons of America’s upper crust and they were pushing formal boundaries, especially in social settings.

“The guys who made [the standard] are the guys who killed it,” Clemente says.

Unlike what Tabler observed in the 1950s about the powerful men around town, Gen Z and whatever we’re going to call the generation being born right now won’t see high-status workers in suits, further reducing their cachet. “We’re so far from people ... who grew up with examples [at] home and on TV and in media culture where going to work meant a suit and tie,” says Lauren A. Rothman, a fashion consultant for leaders, corporations, and politicians and author of Style Bible: What to Wear to Work.

Even at prestigious jobs, the people who wear suits can raise suspicion. Earlier this year in Dallas, attorney Christopher Kratovil was at the end of his laundry cycle and out of business casual garb. He had to make the awkward choice of wearing a suit to his corporate law firm on a day he didn’t have to appear in court. That day, one of Dykema’s partners pulled Kratovil aside and asked if he was interviewing for a new position at another firm. “She expressed genuine concern I might be thinking about or flirting with leaving,” he says.

In certain courts in England and Canada, lawyers must wear the white wigs favored by the likes of William Penn and George Washington, but they take them off as soon as they leave the courtroom lest the public see their ridiculous appearance. Kratovil believes the day will come when American lawyers look at suits like wigs and change out of them before re-entering the outside world. He wants that day to come, too, for the good of attorneys as much as the people they encounter. “(The suit) can create a stir. ‘Why are the guys in suits here? Has something gone wrong?’” Kratovil says.

“‘WHY ARE THE GUYS IN SUITS HERE? HAS SOMETHING GONE WRONG?’”

The disappearance of the suit at the executive level has also possibly benefited women, according to Karen Pine, a fashion psychologist at Hertfordshire University in England. “In the past, women had to dress like men to reach senior positions in the workplace,” she has said. “Now they can dress as they like and assert their individuality through their work attire, without fear of bumping up against the glass ceiling.”

Tabler, though he still wears a suit to the office (he says he’d feel naked without one), mentions that younger male lawyers have perhaps moved beyond the suit because formal attire leaves them ill-equipped to handle expanded duties in their family life. That was a problem with the power suit. Physically and symbolically, it insulated men from work around the home.

But middle-class hotel clerks, salespeople, and job candidates cannot decide to ditch their suits the way tech workers, bankers, and lawyers have. “There’s a class element to it,” Clemente says. “In order to say I don’t have to wear a suit you have to be of a certain socioeconomic class.”

At the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, where Clemente is a professor, she sees at job fairs “baggy-ass black suits on skinny 19-year olds” who can’t afford anything else. “The suits are cheap; they look cheap. It’s one of these things in society, I wish we could just let it go,” she says.

Others suggest a correction is coming and suits will return in force. For one thing, there are signs of a recession. Recessions lead to unpredictability, and people seek comfort in old traditions, even expensive, uncomfortable traditions. After the 2008 financial crisis, Zuckerberg announced a goal of wearing a tie throughout 2009.

Rothman, who hopes the suit “doesn’t go to the mausoleum of where bad trends in life have gone,” has recently seen more upscale clients replacing casual dress with suits made of linen or paired with non-traditional colors.

To her, there was no more visible an instance of the power of a suit than the July Democratic presidential debates. She described the 20-plus Democratic hopefuls as the best-dressed group of candidates she had seen. “You’re not coming away wanting to make fun of Hillary’s suits or Bernie’s oversized jackets,” Rothman says.

Except these politicians weren’t in their usual positions of power. On national TV, trying to answer questions from CNN personalities in tidy soundbites, what were they doing but interviewing for a job?

#powersuits #suits #menswear blog #fashion blog

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kacydeneen · 6 years ago

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Analysis: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Leaves White House After Contentious Encounters, Credibility Issues

Sarah Huckabee Sanders will leave her post as White House press secretary at the end of the month having lost credibility as she tried to defend Trump’s misstatements, exaggerations and falsehoods in increasingly testy exchanges with reporters.

Sanders’ relationship with the press had so deteriorated by the end of her two-year tenure that once frequent press briefings had become nonexistent. Her last formal briefing was on March 11 unless you count the "kids-only" briefing in April held for "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day."

1st Dem Debate Lineups Are Out, Setting Up Biden Vs. Sanders

Sanders took over the lectern in the West Wing’s briefing room on July 23, 2017, after her predecessor, Sean Spicer, resigned. Initially Sanders joked with reporters, deflected questions she did not want to answer and even got a shout out from the White House communications director in the Obama administration, Jen Psaki. But she also accused reporters of deliberately putting out information that they knew to be untrue and as Trump made demonstrably false statements, she criticized journalists by name and called them the “enemy of the American people.”

Journalists weren't the only ones who questioned her truthfulness, in turn. Special counsel Robert Mueller's report revealed that Sanders' had made up comments in defending the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

Flynn's New Lawyer Is a Mueller Critic, Praised by Trump

On May 10, 2017, Sanders said "countless" FBI agents had told the White House they had lost confidence Comey, but Mueller determined that Sanders' "comments were not founded on anything."

"Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from 'countless members of the FBI' was a 'slip of the tongue,'" Mueller's report said. "She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made 'in the heat of the moment' that was not founded on anything."

Trump Now Says 'of Course' He'd Tell FBI If He Gets Foreign Dirt

Following the release of Mueller's report, Sanders continued to defend her evidence-free remarks, apologizing only for not being "a robot like the Democratic Party."

The daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sanders made other headlines at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April 2017 when she was subjected to a scorching roast by comedian Michelle Wolf, who joked that Sanders burns facts and uses the ash to create “a prefect smoky eye,” and again in June of that year when the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, asked her to leave.

Trump described her on Thursday as a "warrior" while Sanders, for her part, said she would remain a loyal supporter to the president.

With Sanders on her way out the door to return with her family to Arkansas -- where she may run for governor -- here is a look back at some of her top contentious encounters with reporters covering the White House.

Confrontations With CNN’s Acosta Sanders was accused of tweeting out a doctored video in November 2018 that made it appear that CNN’s White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, had touched a White House intern who was trying to take a microphone from him. Acosta’s press pass was suspended after he refused to relinquish the microphone to the intern during a heated exchange with Trump during a press conference.

Sanders said Acosta put “his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job,” an assertion that did not appear to be supported by the original version of the video.

Sanders already had a difficult relationship with Acosta, who earlier had asked her to disavow President Donald Trump’s characterization of the media as “the enemy of the people.” She deflected the request and instead said, without offering evidence, that “The media has attacked me personally on a number of occasions, including your own network. Said I should be harassed as a life sentence, that I should be choked.”

The White House quickly reinstated Acosta’s press pass after CNN filed a lawsuit and a federal judge ordered his pass be restored temporarily.

Arrests at the Border Sanders admitted that she misspoke when she said that Customs and Border Protection officers in 2018 arrested 4,000 known or suspected terrorists who came across “our southern border.”

“I should have said 4,000 at all points of entry, not just at the southern border,” she said in January.

NBC News wrote that the 4,000 figure was from 2017 not 2018 data and referred to stops made by the Department of Homeland Security across the globe, mostly at airports, in the 2017 fiscal year not 2018. The Department of Homeland Security prevented nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists from "traveling to or entering the United States."

No immigrant has been arrested on the southern border on terrorism charges in recent years.

Hush Money to Stormy Daniels After Rudy Giuliani revealed in May 2018 that Trump had reimbursed his personal lawyer for a $130,000 payment to hush up Stormy Daniels, Sanders struggled to explain her comments echoing Trump’s assertions just a month earlier that he did not know about the payment.

“We give the very best information that we have at the time,” she responded on May 3, 2018. “I do that every single day and will continue to do that every day I’m in this position.”

One reporter asked: “Were you lying to us at the time? Or were you in the dark?”

Daniels has claimed a sexual encounter with the president, which Trump denies.

In April 2018 aboard Air Force One, Trump responded “no” when asked if he knew about the payment. As to why his lawyer, Michael Cohen, had made the payment if there was no truth to the allegation, Trump told the reporters that they would have to ask Cohen. He also claimed that he did not know where Cohen had gotten the money from to make the payment. The next month Giuliani, without first warning Sanders, admitted on “Hannity” on Fox News that Trump had reimbursed Cohen.

That August, as Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws, he implicated the president in the payments, saying “a candidate for federal office” (in other words Trump) had directed him to make them.

Trump Tower Meeting Sanders refused to explain in June 2018 why she told reporters Trump “certainly didn’t dictate” the statement released by his son Donald Trump Jr. about the 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Trump’s campaign, a Russian lawyer and others — when in fact he did.

The president’s lawyers in a letter to Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote that Trump “dictated a short but accurate” statement.

Donald Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting after he was promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, but later said the meeting was about adoptions.

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, reportedly focused on efforts to repeal the Magnitsky Act, which has been used to impose sanctions on Russians officials believed to be responsible for human rights violations. Their assets have been frozen and they are banned from entering the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin retaliated when the law was passed in 2012 by banning adoptions of Russian children by Americans.

In January 2019, Veselnitskaya was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan of obstructing a separate investigation into money laundering. She is not in the United States.

African American employment Last August, Sanders said that Trump, in his first year and a half in office, had tripled what President Barack Obama had in eight years for African American employment. Politifact.com called her statement false. Sanders said Trump had created 700,000 new jobs for African Americans compared to only for 195,000 for Obama, but the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that under Obama, African American employment rose just under 3 million.

Sanders later tweeted a correction.

Vetting of Diversity Visa Applicants In a press briefing in November 2017, Sanders claimed a day after a terrorist attack in New York City left eight people dead, that diversity visa applicants were not vetted.

“You can’t randomly select people and not have them thoroughly vetted and not have the ability to know whether or not these people want to do good things or bad things when they get here,” she said.

PolitiFact.com noted that those eligible for a visa through the diversity lottery must undergo a review of their passport, police and medical records and education or work experience.

Chicago Gun Violence Sanders, in a claim after the massacre in Las Vegas that PolitiFact.com called “Pants on Fire,” said that Chicago provided evidence that gun control laws do not work.

"I think if you look to Chicago, where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country. That certainly hasn’t helped there," Sanders said.

Chicago does not have the toughest gun laws in the United States, PolitiFact.com wrote, and called some Illinois’ laws lenient.

More on James Comey’s Firing On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Sanders repeated the assertion from the White House that Trump fired FBI Director James Comes in May 2017 on the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general.

“I think he’s heard from the rank and file of the FBI, but particularly someone who had done a thorough review and someone who has the respect and reputation that the deputy attorney general has, he took that seriously,” FactCheck.org quoted Sanders as saying in the May 10, 2017, interview. “He took the recommendation seriously. And he made a decision based on that.”

The next day Trump undercut Sanders and other White House officials by telling NBC’s Lester Holt that he was going to fire Comey regardless of the recommendation and that “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia” played into his decision.

"Substantial evidence indicates that the catalyst for the President’s decision to fire Comey was Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the President was not personally under investigation, despite the President’s repeated requests that Comey make such an announcement," Mueller wrote in his report, which was released to the public in a redacted form on April 18, 2019.

Mueller determined that "the President and White House aides initially advanced a pretextual reason to the press and the public for Comey’s termination."

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/AP Analysis: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Leaves White House After Contentious Encounters, Credibility Issues published first on Miami News

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sabrinajulie · 6 years ago

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Regulations for Business

Businesses and companies operating in the U.S. must adhere to many levels of federal, state, and local regulations meant to balance the interests of business with those of the public as a whole. This section provides an overview of business regulations and information to help businesses become compliant, including links to important federal regulatory forms, state-specific links to information and contacts pertaining to licenses and permits, and a collection of links to important federal business regulations.

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Business Compliance Lawyer

The United States Department of Labor (DOL) regulates many business activities and “compliance” in a business context frequently refers specifically to the employer’s compliance with DOL regulations regarding to employer/employee relations and workplace conditions. Complying with DOL regulations requires following regulations and laws relating to – Wages & Hours Worked – Benefits: Health, Retirement, and Leave – Hiring Issues – Termination Issues – Equal Opportunity (think also of the EEOC) – Safety and Health In the Workplace (think of OSHA) – Whistleblower and Non-Retaliation Protections – Plant Closings and Layoffs – Unions and Union Members – Posters – Recordkeeping.

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In addition to regulation of these issues by the federal government it is important to be mindful of the fact that states and localities may issue their own regulations on these and other topics that also require businesses within their jurisdiction to remain compliant with their terms.

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Strip Club Laws and the Regulation of Sexually Oriented Business Sexually oriented businesses (SOB) such as a strip club, a sexually explicit theater, an adult video store, or other kinds of adult oriented businesses are subject to regulations above and beyond the typical regulations that all businesses are subject to. These regulations may severely restrict or ban activities significantly and are best considered well in advance of establishing a new business. Common regulations include – Zoning – Zoning laws impact many different kinds of businesses, but SOBs may be subject to additional restrictions that prevent opening an SOB close to a school or church, or ban SOBs from designated areas such as the downtown commercial district of a city. Zoning laws specific to SOBs are valid as long as they are intended to minimize the negative effects of these businesses.

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Alcohol can be an issue – some local ordinances prevent the service of alcohol in certain kinds of SOBs. In Las Vegas, for example, topless clubs may serve alcohol, but fully nude clubs may not. Age Requirements – Most ordinances set a minimum age for patrons, frequently 18 years and older or 21 and older where alcohol is served. Nudity Rules – Some localities ban full nudity, require nipple or genital covering, or allow full nudity only if alcohol is not served. Contact with Patrons – Some regulations permit “lap dancing,” or other forms of limited contact, while others have strict distances that performers must keep between themselves and patrons. Licensing – Some jurisdictions require exotic dancers to register, maintain a valid license, and pass a background check in order to perform. Taxation can also be an issue.

Business Lawyer Free Consultation

When you need help with your business, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

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from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/regulations-for-business/ from Top Rated Utah Lawyer https://topratedutahlawyer.tumblr.com/post/182055164181

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deniscollins · 6 years ago

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A $21,000 Cosmetology School Debt, and a $9-an-Hour Job

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for a cosmetologist is $24,850. Those in the top 10 percent earn more than $50,000, or nearly $25 an hour. In Iowa, for-business cosmology schools charge about $20,000 for education, training, and supplies to obtain a license, often paid for by student loans, which, if earning $24,500 a year, then takes years to pay back and makes paying daily living expenses very difficult. Who is to blame for this crippling student debt: (1) the student who borrowed the money, (2) the loan providers, or (3) the licensing schools? Why? What are the ethics underlying your choice?

When she was in cosmetology school, Tracy Lozano had a love-hate relationship with weekday mornings. Those predawn moments were the only time she saw her infant daughter awake, and she savored them. When the time came to hand the baby to her own mother, she said in a recent interview, she would stifle her tears, letting them roll only when she had closed the door behind her.

She would put on her game face when she pulled into the parking lot of the Iowa School of Beauty, just outside Des Moines. From what Ms. Lozano could tell, a cosmetology license was a realistic way to ensure a better life, and she was willing to make sacrifices. While also working nights at a Pizza Hut, she borrowed $21,000 to cover tuition and salon supplies and put in eight-hour days at the school for the better part of a year.

The amount of time Ms. Lozano spent learning to give haircuts, manicures and facials was enormous, but the requirement was set by the state, and she didn’t much question it. She was determined to earn enough money to move out of her mother’s house. Only a few weeks after getting her cosmetology license in 2005, she was hired at a local Great Clips.

The job, though, paid just $9 an hour, which meant that her days double-shifting at Pizza Hut weren’t over. Even with tips, Ms. Lozano didn’t earn more than $25,000 in any of her first few years as a cosmetologist. For years, she relied on food stamps and health insurance from the state. She couldn’t cover living expenses and keep chipping away at her loan payments. Thirteen years after graduating, she still owes more than $8,000.

What Ms. Lozano didn’t know was that the state-regulated school system she had put her faith in relies on a business model in which the drive for revenue often trumps students’ educational needs. For-profit schools dominate the cosmetology training world and reap money from taxpayers, students and salon customers. They have beaten back attempts to create cheaper alternatives, even while miring their students in debt. In Iowa in particular, the companies charge steep prices — nearly $20,000 on average for a cosmetology certificate, equivalent to the cost of a two-year community-college degree twice over — and they have fought to keep the required number of school hours higher than anywhere else in the country.

Each state sets its own standards. Most require 1,500 hours, and some, like New York and Massachusetts, require only 1,000. Iowa requires 2,100 — that’s a full year’s worth of 40-hour workweeks, plus an extra 20. By comparison, you can become an emergency medical technician in the state after 132 hours at a community college. Put another way: An Iowa cosmetologist who has a heart attack can have her life saved by a medic with one-sixteenth her training.

There’s little evidence that spending more hours in school leads to higher wages. Nor is there proof that extra hours result in improved public safety. But one relationship is clear: The more hours that students are forced to be in school, the more debt they accrue. Among cosmetology programs across the nation, Iowa’s had the fourth-highest median student debt in 2014, according to federal data.

Walk into any hair salon in Iowa and you’re likely to find a stylist making $10 an hour who loves her job but is struggling to pay off her student loans. Over 10 months, in visits to a dozen salons and in conversations with 37 former Iowa cosmetology students — and an additional 25 in other states — we heard a variety of opinions about how much training the profession requires and the financial returns it offers. And we heard again and again how the dream of becoming a professional hairstylist, or someday owning a salon, can be stymied by debt.

The issue is national. More than 177,000 people enroll in for-profit beauty schools across the United States each year, which on average charge more than $17,000 for tuition, fees and supplies to earn a cosmetology certificate.

Across the Iowa border, in Fremont, Neb., Ashley Sandoval makes $10.50 an hour at another Great Clips location. In the five years since she graduated from cosmetology school, she said, interest has ballooned her debt from $22,000 to $29,000. “I’ll be paying it off for the rest of my life,” Ms. Sandoval said.

The Iowa Cosmetology School Association, which acts on behalf of several of the 13 companies that own schools in the state, would not make a representative available for an interview. But the association did provide written responses to questions through its lobbyist, Threase A. Harms. The group said that its primary concern was successfully preparing students, not making money, and that differences in state regulations made comparing hours difficult. The association also doesn’t see the crippling student debt as the schools’ fault, citing the fact that students are allowed to take out more in loans than is necessary to cover educational expenses. “We have students graduating with minimal debt because they made wise choices,” the association said.

‘A business first, and a school second’

Cosmetology schools have a unique business model in the for-profit school world. They have two main streams of revenue. The first comes from students, often in the form of taxpayer-funded grants and loans to pay for the tuition. Cosmetology schools took in nearly $1.2 billion in federal grants and loans during the 2015-16 school year.

The second stream is the salon work the students do while in school. They spend some time in classrooms learning about, for example, chemicals and how to sanitize the work space, but once they’ve hit a certain number of hours, they start working on real clients in salons run by the schools. In full-time programs, going to school becomes a full-time job, where students clock in and out for seven- or eight-hour shifts.

The total number of required hours varies, but all states require some amount of practice with paying customers. In Iowa, students spend 715 hours in the classroom and 1,385 hours on the floor.

Prices for these salon services — which include haircuts, manicures, facials and, at some schools, massages — are typically set below market rates to attract customers. The salons also sell shampoo, conditioner and other beauty products. One Iowa student said he and others had gotten perks (such as trips and special training) if they sold enough products. Another student, who sued a school in Pennsylvania, reported that her grades were partly based on whether she offered salon products to clients.

The schools don’t have to pay students for the services they provide; in fact, the students pay tuition for the hours they work in the salons.

All told, for-profit cosmetology schools nationwide brought in more than $200 million in revenue from their salons in the 2015-16 school year, according to federal statistics. Most schools are small, privately owned entities that do not have to disclose their profits.

“Without the revenue coming from those salons, most of these schools wouldn’t be profitable, or it would be marginal,” said Leon Greenberg, a lawyer in Las Vegas who has examined the financial documents of several schools he unsuccessfully sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act. “It’s pretty much ingrained in their business model.”

Some schools have pushed their business models to the legal limit — and beyond, according to government regulators.

La’ James International College owns six of the 27 cosmetology schools in Iowa, plus one in Nebraska and another in Illinois. Iowa’s attorney general sued the school in 2014, accusing it of defrauding students through deceptive marketing and enrollment practices. Under a settlement, the school admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to forgive almost $2.2 million in student debt. It had to pay a $500,000 fine, and the owners — Cynthia Becher and her son, Travis Becher — had to personally pay fines of $25,000 each. The federal government also placed La’ James under restrictive monitoring for alleged mishandling of students’ financial aid. (The Bechers declined to comment on the suit.)

Lisa Shaw, a former La’ James massage instructor, said Ms. Becher had met with staff members regularly and often told them, “This is a business first, and a school second.”

Ms. Shaw and Bez Lancial-McMullen, a former La’ James cosmetology instructor at the campus in Davenport, Iowa, recalled attending meetings in which company officials spoke of the need to maintain sizable profits. Students were regularly pulled out of Ms. Lancial-McMullen’s classes to work in the salon, she said. Other complaints submitted to the attorney general’s office about the school describe similar practices, although the Bechers have consistently denied the claims.

Both women eventually resigned because they objected to the way students were being treated. Ms. Shaw left in 2014, saying the company’s owners looked at students “as dollar signs.”

“I feel like the school is predatory,” Ms. Shaw said. “I could no longer be a part of taking people’s money and then treating them like that.”

Stephanie Wood Becher, who is the school’s director of marketing (and Travis Becher’s wife), denied that Cynthia Becher would ever tell employees to put the school’s business needs first.

“Education and betterment of the student is always and has always been the #1 priority for her and L.J.I.C.,” Ms. Wood Becher wrote in an email.

La’ James had to open its books during the attorney general’s lawsuit, revealing annual profits that ranged from $1.2 million to $3.4 million from 2009 through 2012. In Iowa, tuition, fees and supplies for its cosmetology program come to $21,500 per student.

Compared with other institutions, “I think we’re cheap,” Mr. Becher said, noting that the cost includes books and supply kits. “We’re private. We’re not public. We don’t get tax breaks.”

The Becher family also owns more than a dozen limited liability companies, which include a distribution center for its salon products. In 2017, the United States Department of Education reprimanded La’ James for failing to publicly disclose a rape in a dorm in Nebraska. Federal law requires colleges to publish annual security reports and logs about crimes on campus, which La’ James failed to do, “exposing students and staff to potential harm,” according to government reviewers.

Joni Buresh, the school’s compliance officer, said in an email that the security reports were available to students, and that she believed that the law requiring crime logs didn’t apply to campuses like the one in Nebraska. She acknowledged that a rape had been reported to the police but said that school officials “honestly are not confident that this rape incident ever occurred.” Ms. Buresh said they had now filed the paperwork requested by the federal reviewers.

Doing ‘absolutely nothing,’ for credit

In 2016, Glenda Martin wasn’t aware of any trouble brewing between La’ James and the federal government, or that the school had spent the previous two years in a legal dispute with the Iowa attorney general’s office.

All she knew was that cosmetology was in her blood, as she likes to say. Her mother was a cosmetologist, and started teaching her how to style hair when she was a preteen. There was never any doubt about what career Ms. Martin would pursue. The only question was where to enroll.

The way she saw it, she had only for-profit options: PCI Academy, an hour away in Ames, or La’ James International College in Fort Dodge, where she lived. (One community college campus offers a cosmetology degree, but it’s in a sparsely populated corner of the state, three hours from Fort Dodge.) She had heard that PCI students were pressured to push a certain number of products before they could get their own kits.

“I would have enjoyed another choice here in town,” she said. “I would have definitely checked it out.”

Unknown to Ms. Martin, there could have been another option, just a few miles down the road: Iowa Central Community College. In the fall of 2004, the college submitted an application to the state cosmetology board to open a program. But in early 2005, the Iowa Cosmetology School Association and La’ James sued Iowa Central and got a temporary injunction that prevented it from moving forward with the program.

The lawsuit argued that the state code prohibits public entities from competing with private ones. If Iowa Central opened a cheaper program, the suit contended, La’ James would be “irreparably harmed by the loss of employees, members, clients, students, potential employees, potential clients, potential students” and other factors.

Mr. Becher said the company had sued to “protect the students” from a subpar education. Ms. Wood Becher added, “It’s kind of a quality control thing.”

The two sides ultimately compromised; students could earn associate degrees by completing cosmetology certificates at La’ James and taking six business classes at Iowa Central. La’ James lost nothing in the deal, but students lost the option of paying significantly less.

The Iowa Cosmetology School Association said its members’ prices are “consistent with the cost of all postsecondary education today” — particularly considering that they do not receive state subsidies. The average annual in-state cost of attendance at Iowa’s community colleges is $4,697. The University of Iowa, the state’s most expensive public four-year institution, costs $9,492 per year for in-state students.

This year, Iowa Lakes Community College, about three hours northwest of Des Moines, announced plans to offer a cosmetics degree. The college’s president, Valerie Newhouse, said one cosmetology school had already threatened litigation.

In 2016, Ms. Martin went for a short tour of the La’ James campus in Fort Dodge. The school’s storefront was airy and glamorous. Hair products lined the walls under enlarged photographs of well-coiffed women. Makeup displays were fronted by placards advertising the services available in the student-staffed salon. Students dressed in black shirts and pants.

Before her visit was over, Ms. Martin filled out her enrollment and financial aid paperwork. She took out $23,000 in loans.

Ms. Martin liked La’ James at first, she said, but quickly discovered problems. She found the classes boring and repetitive. Some instructors had students read aloud from textbooks and watch instructional videos.

Ms. Martin said that she supported Iowa’s 2,100-hour requirement in theory — as did several of the women we spoke with — but that in practice, many of those hours were wasted, particularly once she got to the salon floor.

Although Fridays and Saturdays would be busy, the rest of the week generally dragged. She’d be itching to practice what she had been learning in class. But some days there were so few customers that she’d sit and wait for hours.

One day, she braved a snowstorm to get to the salon. The school had stayed open, requiring students to come in. Ms. Martin was the only one who did. She left at the end of the day without having seen a single customer — but those hours still counted toward the 2,100.

She would shake her head when she saw other students, sick of the boredom, go home early. “That only works against you,” she said. “You have to stay here and do absolutely nothing or you go home and lose the hours.”

The Iowa Cosmetology School Association said the state’s system “provides the right amount of training time to practice on actual people.” It also said that if some students waste hours sitting around, “it is unfortunate for both the student and the school.”

In interviews, more than 20 former students at schools represented by the association described experiences like Ms. Martin’s. One former La’ James student, Michelle Wipperman, said foot traffic in the salon at the Cedar Rapids school was so low, some students asked administrators if they could advertise more. She recalls being told that it would be too expensive.

“I would say probably 60 percent of our time was sitting around waiting for people,” Ms. Wipperman said. “There were times where I personally had met all my goals that I needed to meet. I was literally just waiting. I had to finish my clock hours.”

Despite these experiences, when Ms. Martin finished her cosmetology certificate, she re-enrolled for further training in esthetics. She thought the extra skills would help her someday in her own salon.

Ms. Martin passed both her exams. But the school will not release her transcripts, so she can get her licenses, until she pays the several hundred dollars it says she owes. She disputes the debt and says she can’t afford to pay.

The fight to reduce hours

In the last five years, legislators in at least 11 states have introduced bills to lower the number of hours required for a cosmetology certificate. These efforts are driven by a mix of antiregulatory libertarians, national salon chains that are having trouble hiring enough qualified stylists and the national association for cosmetologists, which wants its members to be able to carry their licenses across state lines.

While aggressive lobbying by schools has managed to stall or defeat legislation in several states, at least eight have reduced the number of hours in their regulations. In recent years, required hours were lowered to 1,500 in South Dakota and Montana. And Nebraska legislators, after a long battle with the schools, trimmed their mandate to 1,800 hours.

Administrators from schools in those states disagreed with the reductions, but said they were still able to cover the same material as before.

Iowa, with its 2,100-hour standard, remains “an embarrassment,” said Dawn Pettengill, a Republican state representative who will retire next month. Hoping to lower the profession’s barrier to entry, Ms. Pettengill this year introduced legislation that would drop the hours to 1,500. Republicans in the Senate proposed a similar bill.

Schools and their lobbyists mounted a fierce pushback. The schools “were livid,” said State Senator Jason Schultz, a Republican subcommittee chairman. “I didn’t expect the amount of opposition.”

The school association’s political action committee had given more than $20,000 to Iowa candidates since 2014. It also had three lobbyists registered with the state; for the last session, the organization paid the lobbyists’ company $12,500.

While the dollar amounts weren’t huge, a little goes a long way in Des Moines. Hearings weren’t publicized, or even required, giving an advantage to the well-organized group.

The schools argued that maintaining 2,100 hours was crucial to ensuring that students were able to learn everything needed to run salons in rural parts of the state, including nails, esthetics, business and state law, not just hairstyling. Their courses, they said, provide more depth than those in other states.

A review of cosmetology curriculums nationally, however, shows that most states teach subjects beyond hairstyling. More than half explicitly mandate instruction in law or business topics.

The Iowa school association also maintained that important differences in regulations complicated comparisons of schools across state lines. In Massachusetts, for example, a recent graduate must work under supervision for two years.

“We do not feel it is necessary to lower the standards of Iowa’s education just because other states have done so,” the association said. “It doesn’t make sense to us to produce graduates that come out of our programs with less skills, less confidence and who are less likely to succeed.”

At a subcommittee hearing on the Senate bill, only one person testified in favor of fewer hours. Senator Schultz said that he had wanted the bill to move forward, but that since “only one side showed up,” he couldn’t justify it. Both bills died in committee.

It’s not clear how much money the schools would lose if they no longer had students working on salon floors for so many hours. In Nebraska, schools argued at hearings that they would have to raise their tuition to make up for lost revenue if the state reduced the hours. La’ James supported, but did not testify in favor of, Iowa’s legislation, and the Empire Education Group, which owns the nation’s largest chain of cosmetology schools, has backed legislation in Ohio to drop the hour requirement to 1,000.

The increased scrutiny on cosmetology regulations at the state level follows a federal Department of Education effort, starting in 2009, to crack down on for-profit schools that charge high tuitions for credentials that do not lead to well-paying jobs. For each program, the department compiled so-called gainful employment information, which compared student debt with earnings after graduation and issued ratings. The figure for all programs nationally was 24 percent.

Cosmetology programs fared particularly poorly: Nearly 40 percent of them, including 12 in Iowa, either failed or were in a warning “zone,” indicating that their students were not making enough to comfortably pay back their debts.

Cosmetology schools say the numbers do not accurately capture what their graduates earn in an industry with so many tips. And it is true that cosmetologists have the potential to make a good living. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for a cosmetologist is $24,850. Those in the top 10 percent earn more than $50,000, or nearly $25 an hour. The problem is that most of these professionals flounder for years before getting to that point, if they reach it at all.

After more than seven years on the job, Ms. Lozano finally got a raise. But that meant the loan payments she had been able to defer came due.

The money she’ll use to finish paying them most likely won’t come from haircuts. Ms. Lozano plans to go back to school to become a registered nurse. If she’s able to find a position in that line of work, she could more than double her current salary. And it will give her and her daughter, who wants to be a doctor, another thing to bond over.

“I told her she wasn’t allowed to go to school for hair,” Ms. Lozano said. “I don’t want her going through the same thing that I did — the debt, and everything after the fact. I won’t let her do it.”

#School Debt

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investmart007 · 6 years ago

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LAS VEGAS | Nevada Democrats hope Latinos can propel them to victory

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/Bgi9xm

LAS VEGAS | Nevada Democrats hope Latinos can propel them to victory

LAS VEGAS — As temperatures topped 110 degrees last week outside a Latin American grocery store in Las Vegas, 19-year-old Diara Hernandez bounded up to customers, greeting them with a smile and a clipboard to ask in Spanish if they’re registered to vote — or can vote.

Hernandez, a College of Southern Nevada political science student and aspiring immigration lawyer, is part of the Democratic Party’s battalion of volunteers working to register and engage Latino voters in this year’s midterms. Democrats hope to re-create the big wins the state’s Hispanic and immigrant community are credited with delivering for the party two years ago.

Backlash against President Donald Trump’s tougher immigration policies may help Democrats, but the party is also running into headwinds as they try to engage communities facing fear and uncertainty.

“When I go to the grocery store, I’m not being asked about candidates. I’m not being asked about when the election is,” said Astrid Silva, one of 13,000 young immigrants in Nevada shielded from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “I’m being asked what’s going to happen the next day to people’s families.”

Silva, a 30-year-old woman in Las Vegas who was brought to the U.S. without authorization at age 4, said that while she feels energized by the prospects of a “blue wave” in November, many in her community are grappling with deportations from routine check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the uncertain future of DACA.

At a Las Vegas kickoff of a Democratic Latina organizing initiative called “¡Mujeres Mobilized!,” Silva said she’s heard many people say they won’t vote because they don’t think it will make a difference. “Our political power is there, I just think it’s buried under a lot of fear, a lot of frustration and also a lot of misinformation,” she later told The Associated Press.

Kate Marshall, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor whose family came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1921, said in the Latino community, Democrats “must spend some time talking to people about how our government is legitimate and worthwhile and needs your participation.”

Twenty-nine percent of people in Nevada are Latino and turning them out to vote makes a big difference in this swing state.

In 2014, lagging Hispanic turnout in the midterm election was cited as one reason Republicans won key victories across the state. Two years later, heavy organizing among Latinos and immigrant-dominated labor unions was credited with delivering Nevada to Hillary Clinton, along with helping Democrats keep a U.S. Senate seat, flip two U.S. House seats and take control of both state legislative houses.

Christina Lopez, a state Democratic Party organizer, said her goal is to “destroy the narrative” that communities of color fail to turn out for midterm elections.

“We’re here to prove that communities of color swing them,” Lopez said.

Republicans, too, are making concentrated efforts to reach out to Hispanics. The state and national party’s strategic initiatives have included meetings with community leaders, political operative trainings in Spanish and relationships with groups like the Latin Chamber of Commerce and Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

Elisa Slider, chair of the assembly’s Nevada branch, said her organization promotes conservativism by putting an emphasis on issues like family values, religious freedom and fiscal conservativism. Slider, who is of Cuban heritage and a cousin of Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, said she reminds people that families like hers left socialist and communist countries – such as Cuba and Venezuela – for the United States.

“They’ve been told that they’re Democrats,” she said. “But when you talk to them about the issues, they realize they’re actually conservatives.”

Still, the president’s harsh rhetoric, policies and racially-tinged comments remain a roadblock for some Latinos who would otherwise vote Republican.

Christian Silva, a 41-year-old Las Vegas bakery driver and registered Democrat, said he’s become more attracted to Republicans because he thinks the U.S. government needs to take a stricter approach to social programs like welfare.

“I’m thinking about maybe changing my vote,” he said. “Republicans are a little more straight about that.”

But Silva said despite considering a vote for GOP candidates, he won’t support the party’s leader.

“Oh no, I’m Latino. I’d never vote for Trump,” Silva said. “I think a lot of things Trump is doing is right. But he’s a racist guy.”

Erik Baltazar, a 21-year-old who moved to Las Vegas a few months ago from Mexico, said he can appreciate Trump trying to crack down on illegal immigration, but the president “has the worst approach ever.”

Baltazar, a U.S. citizen born in Phoenix, cited the Trump administration’s separation of families and children being held in cages at border facilities, saying “I think it’s not human to do that stuff.”

If he doesn’t hear a message of compassion or tolerance, Baltazar said he’s not planning to vote at all.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE , Associated Press

#Christian Silva #Hernandez bounded #Las Vegas #Latin American grocery #Nevada Democrats #Southern Nevada political #temperatures topped #TodayNews #U.S. citizen

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nevadarafiilaw · 1 year ago

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democratsunited-blog · 7 years ago

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Democratic strategist launches new firm

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=7025

Democratic strategist launches new firm

With David Beavers, Garrett Ross and Daniel Lippman

FIRST IN PI — DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST LAUNCHES NEW FIRM: Brandon Neal, who was political director for the Democratic National Committee and director of the Transportation Department’s small business office under former President Barack Obama, will launch his own fundraising, political strategy and lobbying firm Tuesday. Neal was most recently a senior adviser and national political director for Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.).

Story Continued Below

— In an interview with PI, Neal said that the firm, Pylorus Strategies, will focus on political strategy and planning for candidates running for Congress. “Now is the time, now is the space and opportunity,” he told PI. “You don’t see a lot of African-American firms focused on political fundraising and strategy.” Neal plans to work with various arms of the Democratic Party, as well as with celebrities interested in getting involved in the political process. He will also assist small businesses competing for federal contracts and work on transportation, infrastructure, labor workforce development, and small business and economic development issues for clients. He plans to register as a lobbyist.

— So far, Neal’s clients include two members of Congress, an IT firm and a small business providing professional services to the DoD. He is also in talks to work on political strategy and fundraising for House candidates Antonio Delgado, who is running to represent New York’s 19th congressional district, Lauren Underwood, who is running to represent Illinois’ 14th congressional district, and Mary Scanlon, who is running to represent Pennsylvania’s 5th congressional district. He plans to eventually make the firm bipartisan and bring on a partner with experience fundraising for Republicans.

Good afternoon, and welcome to PI. Did you spend the weekend relaxing on the Eastern Shore with a cold drink and a good book? Just remember there are younger, better-looking lobbyists who work weekends nipping at your heels. Send us your tips: [email protected] and [email protected]. You can also follow us on Twitter: @theodoricmeyer and @marianne_levine.

THE LATEST ON MANAFORT’S TRIAL: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team filed a motion this morning pushing back against a request from Paul Manafort’s lawyers to exclude more than 50 pieces of evidence from the jury during Manafort’s trial, which is set to start on Tuesday. Mueller’s team argues the exhibits are necessary “to prove the source and amount of Manafort’s income.” (Manafort is facing trial on bank fraud and tax charges in federal court in Alexandria. He’s set to go on trial a second time in federal court in Washington in September on other charges, including violating foreign lobbying law.)

— The motion filed this morning provides a good summary of what Mueller’s seeking to do in the trial. Mueller “expects to prove that Manafort earned more than $60 million dollars from his Ukraine work during the period at issue and failed to report a significant percentage of it on his tax returns. … No ‘pay stub[s]’ or ‘paychecks’ reflect that income … rather, the invoices and bills submitted by various consultants provide proof on that issue. Accordingly, to prove that Manafort earned that much income, the government must be able to show the extent of the work that he performed for Ukraine.”

— Separately, Mueller’s team on Friday afternoon “submitted a roster of 35 witnesses the prosecution may call” during the trial set to start on Tuesday, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein reports. “The deep dive into Manafort’s pricey tastes is expected to include testimony from a proprietor of a New York boutique where he allegedly spent more than $850,000 on high-end suits, an employee of a car dealership where Manafort’s wife bought a $130,000 Mercedes, the owner of a Florida home-theater company and a manager of season-ticket sales for the New York Yankees.” Full story.

SPEAKING OF MANAFORT: The New York Times’ Jason Horowitz is out with a story on how former journalist Alan Friedman put Manafortin jail. “Documents filed last month by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as part of the investigation into Russia’s influence campaign in the 2016 American presidential election, showed that Mr. Friedman worked closely with Mr. Manafort in creating the so-called Hapsburg Group,” Horowitz writes. “Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Friedman registered as lobbyists, a potential violation of an American law intended as a bulwark against foreign agents peddling influence in American politics. … When the group was revealed in February, Mr. Manafort desperately sought to give Mr. Friedman a ‘heads up about Hapsburg,’ Mr. Friedman’s lawyer has said. That included messages on WhatsApp saying ‘This is Paul.’ Mr. Friedman told investigators that he considered the messages an effort to ‘suborn perjury.’ A judge agreed and in June revoked Mr. Manafort’s bail for witness tampering.

—“Now Mr. Friedman, 62, has gone uncharacteristically silent on the issue even as he travels around Italy promoting his book, ‘This Is Not America,’ which begins with his 2016 interview with Donald J. Trump, then a presidential candidate. Mr. Manafort and his associate Rick Gates had a hand in arranging the interview, which was outside the usual media channels and led campaign aides to question its purpose, according to a person familiar with the issue who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.” Full story.

LAW FIRMS GIVE RAINMAKERS ACCUSED OF BAD BEHAVIOR MULTIPLE CHANCES: “Law firms stand out in a corporate landscape where rainmakers accused of bad behavior often receive second and third chances, according to interviews with dozens of lawyers, legal recruiters, consultants and leaders at some of the country’s largest firms,” the Wall Street Journal’s Sara Randazzo and Nicole Hong report. “Firms’ sole assets are lawyers and their client relationships. As demand for work from the biggest law firms has softened since the financial crisis, poaching top partners has become one of few ways to boost revenue. Many firms ask about prior complaints in new-hire questionnaires but do nothing to vet the answers, lawyers say. Firms rarely ask partners for references at their old firm, for fear of alerting competitors a star lawyer is in play.

— “Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Jeffrey Reeves departed in December after an investigation into sexual-harassment allegations, the firm said. Mr. Reeves was the partner in charge of the firm’s Orange County, Calif., office in October 2015 when co-workers saw him making out with a junior associate at a Las Vegas nightclub during an office retreat, current and former Gibson lawyers said. … Mr. Reeves, who had worked at Gibson Dunn for 26 years, quickly joined litigation boutique Umberg Zipser in January. The next month he moved to a different boutique, Theodora Oringher.” Full story.

DISPATCH FROM KOCH DONOR RETREAT: “Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch extended an olive branch to Democrats during a weekend donor confab, saying Sunday that he wants to work with lawmakers regardless of party — so long as they work on issues he cares about — and admitting he has regrets about politicians his powerful network supported in the past,” POLITICO’s Maggie Severns reports. “‘I don’t care what initials are in front or after somebody’s name — I’d like there to be many more politicians who would embrace and have the courage to run on a platform’ that embraces the values he espouses, Koch told reporters when asked how he would feel about Democrats flipping the House of Representatives.

— “The Kochs’ political network has been bombarding the 2018 midterm elections with millions of dollars to help Republicans keep their seats in Congress, but the tone of the weekend was a departure from previous years, when the Kochs engineered tea party opposition to Obamacare and positioned themselves as the archnemesis of the Democratic Party. Charles Koch said he has sometimes regretted his network’s financial support for Republican lawmakers in the past and will be more careful with how he spends money going forward.” Full story.

SPOTTED: On Air Force One Sunday, according to a White House pool report, Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union. Schlapp is married to Mercedes Schlapp, White House director of strategic communications.

JOBS REPORT

— Stan Garnett and Greg Brower will co-chair Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s government investigations and white collar defense group. They are both shareholders at the firm.

— Patrick Ronk has left Cornerstone Government Affairs, where he was a senior associate. He is headed to the London School of Economics in September for a two-year Master of Public Administration program.

— Michael Fields is now executive director of Colorado Rising Action. He was previously state director for Americans for Prosperity Colorado.

— TJ Chase is a senior associate at Glen Echo Group. He was previously a graphic designer at the Association for Psychological Science.

NEW JOINT FUNDRAISERS:

Illinois Democrats 2018 (Betsy Dirksen Londrigan for Congress, Casten for Congress, Lauren Underwood for Congress, Brendan Kelly for Southern Illinois, Tammy for Illinois, Friends of Dick Durbin Committee) Lizzie Fletcher Victory Fund (Elizabeth Pannill Fletcher for Congress, Texas Democratic Party)

NEW PACs:

America Fighting Back PAC (PAC) Wisconsin Beer (PAC)

NEW LOBBYING REGISTRATIONS:

None.

NEW LOBBYING TERMINATIONS:

Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, a Novelion Therapeutics Company: Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, a Novelion Therapeutics Company Christie Strategy Group: Columbia Southern University Sobba Public, LLC: Gephardt group on behalf of Bayer AG The Chertoff Group: Veritas Capital The Nardelli Group: Alexium, Inc.

Read full story here

#Democrats

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