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xtruss · 8 months ago

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Chuck Schumer Privately Warns Pakistan : Don’t Kill Imran Khan In Prison

Supporters worry Khan’s life is in danger and with good reason: The military has a long history of killing deposed leaders.

— Ryan Grim, Murtaza Hussain | April 23 2024

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 28, 2023. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Warned In A Conversation With Pakistan’s Ambassador To Washington that the safety of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan was a high priority of the United States, multiple sources familiar with the exchange told The Intercept.

The warning issued late last month by Schumer, the most powerful Democrat in Congress, to Pakistan came after intense activism by members of the Pakistani diaspora amid concerns that the Pakistani military may harm Khan, the former prime minister who was ousted from office in 2022.

“The Pakistani American diaspora has felt let down by Washington’s failure to engage power brokers in Pakistan and hold them accountable for blatant violations of human rights.”

“Chuck Schumer speaking to the ambassador regarding the safety of Imran Khan is very constructive,” Mohammad Munir Khan, a Pakistani American political activist in the U.S., told The Intercept. “The Pakistani American diaspora has felt let down by Washington’s failure to engage power brokers in Pakistan and hold them accountable for blatant violations of human rights, and destruction of basic fundamentals of democracy.”

Imran Khan is currently incarcerated on corruption charges that are widely seen as politically motivated. Khan, who is regarded as the most popular politician in Pakistan, was removed from power in an April 2022 no-confidence vote orchestrated by the country’s powerful military establishment and encouraged by the U.S. Since then, Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, has faced a brutal repression that has raised international alarms and been denounced by human rights groups.

The concerns about Khan’s life that prompted Schumer’s call to the Pakistani Ambassador Masood Khan reflect a growing fear that the military may deal with Khan’s stubborn popularity by simply putting an end to his life behind bars. (Schumer’s office declined to comment for this story. The Pakistani Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The outreach from Schumer, who represents a large, vocal Pakistani American community in New York, came as a new governing coalition in the South Asian country seeks to consolidate power despite public disaffection over a February election rife with fraud.

In addition to banning PTI, Pakistan engaged in heavy repression ahead of the February vote. A record turnout suggested PTI-aligned candidates had the upper hand. Ignoring widespread fraud, however, a coalition of parties supported by the Pakistani military successfully formed a government led by Shehbaz Sharif in the vote’s aftermath.

The international community, including the U.S., noted voting irregularities, and credible allegations arose of vote rigging and flagrant fraud in the election.

“There is undeniable evidence, which the State Department agrees with, that there were problems with this election,” Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, told The Intercept in March. At the time, Casar and other members of Congress had just called on President Joe Biden to withhold recognition of the government, but Washington’s ambassador to Pakistan congratulated Sharif in early March.

“There is undeniable evidence, which the State Department agrees with, that there were problems with this election.”

Foreign policy experts in Washington said the Biden administration’s approach risked transgressing democratic principles in the name of security. Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, said, “This appears to be an example where the administration is allowing its security relationship with a foreign government to crowd out other critical concerns like democratic backsliding and human rights.”

Imran Khan himself has reportedly been held in dire conditions at a prison in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi. Last month, his visitor privileges were abruptly suspended for two weeks, prompting fears from his supporters about his physical conditions in custody. Earlier this month, one of his lawyers claimed that his personal physician was not being allowed to see him in jail. Khan’s wife, who is imprisoned on politically motivated charges of an un-Islamic marriage and graft, has also reportedly suffered health problems due to conditions of her confinement, according to remarks from her lawyer this week.

In a statement given to reporters from prison and later shared on social media, Khan, who was wounded in an attempted assassination in November 2022 at a political rally, alleged that there had been a plot to kill him while behind bars. Khan suggested his fate was in the hands of Gen. Asim Munir, Pakistan’s powerful army chief.

“Let it be known that if anything happens to me or my wife, it’ll be him who will be responsible,” Khan said.

Schumer’s call to the Pakistani ambassador, however, may play into the military’s calculations about killing Khan. “A senior Democrat influential in the Biden administration is sending a warning, which is somewhat significant,” said Adam Weinstein, the deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, adding that he did not believe the military would kill Khan in prison.

As extreme as a step it would be, the military harming or even killing a leader it ousted, even one as popular as Khan, would fit a pattern in Pakistani history. Several Pakistani leaders have died violently in the past few decades after falling out with the military, some under murky circumstances, while others, like former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, were executed by military rulers after being deposed from power.

Although nominally led by a civilian government today, Pakistan’s military is widely known to call the shots in the country politically and is currently led by Munir, whose clashes with Khan and his party have been the main political storyline in the country for over a year.

For Pakistani activists in the U.S., the American relationship with Pakistan creates leverage that can be used to ensure that Khan is not murdered behind bars. Mohammad Munir Khan, the Pakistani American activist, said, “The least Washington can do is to ensure Imran Khan is not harmed physically.”

Supporters of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party hold a March 10, 2024, protest in Peshawar against election fraud. Photo: Abdul Majeed/AFP via Getty Images

Capitol Hill Hearing

The U.S. has played an outsized role in Pakistan’s internal politics, especially over the past several years, including a pivotal role in Khan’s ouster from power.

In August 2023, The Intercept reported on and published a classified Pakistani diplomatic cable — a contentious document that had become a centerpiece of political drama, though its contents had remained unknown — showing that Khan’s removal from power had taken place following intense pressure placed on the Pakistani government by U.S. State Department officials.

In the cable, Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu, whose office covers South Asia at the State Department, is quoted as telling the Pakistani ambassador to Washington that the countries’ relations would be seriously damaged if Khan were to remain in power.

“I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington,” Lu said, according to the Pakistani cable.

Since Khan’s removal from power, the U.S. has worked closely with the new military-backed Pakistani regime. Pakistan provided weapons to Ukraine in exchange for the U.S. brokering a favorable International Monetary Fund loan package, according to previous reporting from The Intercept.

Before being imprisoned, Khan made frequent reference to the classified cypher and even claimed to be brandishing a physical copy during a political rally. He is now facing a lengthy prison sentence on charges related to his handling of classified information, in addition to the raft of corruption charges that initially landed him in custody.

Coming in the context of a broader crackdown on his party — which has including killings, extrajudicial disappearances, and torture targeting supporters of PTI and members of the press — most observers believe Khan’s continued imprisonment is a politically motivated gambit to keep him and his movement out of power.

Following this year’s election, with Casar and others in Congress raising questions about Khan’s removal and the vote, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing featuring Lu, the assistant secretary of state.

The sole person testifying, Lu denied that he had been involved in a “regime change” in Pakistan — a reference to Khan’s comments about his role and the content of the cable reported by The Intercept.

On the election, Lu paid lip service to concerns about how the ballot was carried off, while failing to outline what consequences there would be for the vote rigging.

“You have seen actions by our ambassador and our embassy,” Lu said, alluding the congratulations extended by the U.S. to Pakistan’s new prime minister. He then quickly added: “We are in every interaction with this government stressing the importance of accountability for election irregularities.”

“In the long term it has never worked out in the United States’ benefit to be seen as propping up illegitimate, military-led governments.”

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., raised the issue of Khan’s safety in detention at the hearing. Sherman urged Lu to meet directly with Khan in prison, earning applause from the mostly Pakistani audience in hand.

“Ensuring the safety of leaders, regardless of political differences, is paramount,” said Atif Khan, another Pakistan American diaspora activist. “Congressman Brad Sherman rightly advocated for accountability and protection, urging the US Ambassador to visit former Prime Minister Imran Khan and prioritize his well-being.”

While Khan’s fate hangs in the balance, members of Congress have warned that continued U.S. support for a government seen as illegitimate by most Pakistanis risks harming not just Pakistan, but also the U.S. position in a critical region.

“Promoting democracy is important in itself, but it’s in our interests as well,” Casar, the Texas Democrat, told The Intercept. “Regardless of the short-term military benefits, in the long term it has never worked out in the United States’ benefit to be seen as propping up illegitimate, military-led governments.”

#The Intercept #Pakistan 🇵🇰#Imran Khan #Senate Majority Leader | Chuck Schumer #Chuck Schumer’s Warning #Deposed Leaders

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cksmart-world · 10 months ago

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Smart Bomb III Cox

SMART BOMB

The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis

By Christopher Smart

February 20, 2024

IS THAT THE SUN OR IS THAT THE MOON

GOV. COX WEIGHS IN ON BORDER SECURITY

Two drunks are sitting on a curb. The first one looks up and says, is that the sun or is that the moon. The second drunk looks up and says, I don't know, I'm new around here.

When it comes to issues surrounding the U.S. southern border, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox looks like he's new around here.

Recently, Cox scurried down to Eagle Pass, Texas, with a gaggle of 14 other Red-State governors to stand in solidarity — and photo ops — with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who apparently thinks he's in a remake of the old John Wayne movie, “The Alamo.”

Abbot has mobilized the Texas National Guard, he says, to secure the border and, coincidentally, keep the U.S. Border Patrol at bay. Abbot says he can do that under Article 1 Section 10 of the Constitution, arguing that if U.S. authorities, i.e. President Joe Biden, don't enforce federal law during an “invasion” states can engage in self defense.

The Alamo? Well, not exactly. The invasion Abbott refers to is really an influx of asylum seekers — hardly like General Santa Anna's 1836 armed incursion near San Antonio. Second, the Constitution prevents states from deciding on their own if the country is under armed assault. And third, the constitutional provision that Abbot refers to was written to allow states to defend themselves until federal troops arrive.

But lets not bother Abbott or Cox with history. This is political theater — a “B” movie at best — where facts can get in the way of a good story. If Abbott wants to be Col. Jim Bowie, that would make Cox the alfalfa farmer played by the dufus Andy Devine. Oh my gosh, look at all them people. So this is what an invasion looks like.

It really is puzzling what Cox thinks he could to do up here in Utah about the invasion of aliens. Put a tariff on tacos?

But Utah Senate President Stuart Adams had a brainstorm — send the Utah National Guard to the southern border to help gird the troops at The Alamo. And so Gov. Cox will deploy five — count 'em, f-i-v-e — members of the Utah guard and five members of the Utah Highway Patrol to the border to help fight off the invasion and show the country what we're made of here in Zion.

“Whatever is needed,” Adams said. “More than the troops, this would be a signal of unification of the states.”

Unification of the states, as in United States? The unified states fighting the... United States? It's all rather mind boggling.

Maybe this helps explain it: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, both Republican patriots, have suggested that civil war could be in the offing. In the past Greene has suggested that red states and blue states should “divorce,” on account of blue states keep shoving immoral woke stuff down the throats of red-state patriots.

Spoiler Alert: Immigration challenges are nothing new. In 2006, 2013 and 2018, bipartisan agreements were reached that included pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and additional border security to keep others out. Each time, Republicans walked away. Funny thing, that.

President Joe Biden continues to poll poorly, particularly on immigration. It's no secret that's why former President Donald Trump instructed his dutiful servant, House Speaker Mike Johnson, to scuttle the bi-partisan Senate bill that would have provided $20 billion for additional border security as well as more funding for Ukraine and Israel.

If it were passed how could Trump campaign against Biden's border failures. On the other hand, he'd find a way. If he were president, he would have fixed it a long time ago. But wait a second, wasn't he already... never mind.

That immigration legislation could also screw up Greg Abbott's starring role in is remake of The Alamo and blow holes in Spencer Cox's new profile as red-state warrior and his promising acting career on “As TrumpWorld Turns.”

Post script — That's going to do it for another white-knuckle week here at Smart Bomb where we keep track of Donald Trump's new shoe line so you don't have to. That's right Wilson, Big Orange has come out with gold high-top sneakers selling for a cool $399. It's the latest in MAGA-wear. Just think of all those middle-age Trump supporters in MAGA hats and gold high-tops — they'll be stylin'. Trump will have to sell a lot of the “Never Surrender High-Tops” to cover legal fines and penalties of about half a billion — with a “B” — dollars. But if his “Wanted” mug-shot T-shirts and his Trump Hero trading cards are any indicator they're going to be hot. No Wilson, Trump's face is not on the sneakers but they are emblazoned with a “T” and Old Glory. You're right, it's just not the same. Speaking of gold, Trump says the U.S. would not defend western European NATO members from Russia if they don't pay their bills — 2 percent of each country's GDP. That's pretty rich coming from a guy who is famous for not paying his bills. That said, western Europeans are messing their pants because Putin is off the rails — something he has in common with Trump — and crazy Americans could again elect the big, orange felonious gasbag as president. Are we really that stupid? Don't answer that.

Well Wilson, there are 37 weeks left until the election. That's 260 days – give or take. 'Till then we'll be sitting on pins and needles or nail-guns wondering if Trump will return to power and get even with everyone who didn't kiss his fat ass. So get the band, Wilson, and strike up a ditty to relieve our raging anxiety and heart palpitations:

Sitting here in limbo But I know it won't be long Sitting here in limbo Like a bird without a song Well, they're putting up a resistance But I know that my faith will lead me on Sitting here in limbo Waiting for the dice to roll Yeah, now, sitting here in limbo Got some time to search my soul Well, they're putting up a resistance But I know that my faith will lead me on Sitting here in limbo Waiting for the tide to flow Sitting here in limbo Knowing that I have to go Well, they're putting up a resistance But I know that my faith will lead me on I don't know where life will take me But I know where I have been I don't know what life will show me But I know what I have seen Tried my hand at love and friendship That is past and gone And now it's time to move along Sitting in limbo, limbo, limbo, Sitting in limbo...

(Sitting In Limbo — Jimmy Cliff)

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lastsonlost · 4 years ago

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I’m not sure if people have completely wrapped their minds around this, but we have an entire political party that has converted into an authoritarian—albeit Americanized version—style of politics that cares nothing about U.S. democracy or anyone who is not white.

With the exception of a few dissenting Republican senators who aren’t up for reelection until 2024 or 2026 (only Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is on the ballot in 2022) or are retiring, the GOP not only acquitted Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection that he clearly incited, but they told Republican voters that the lies Trump told them were true: The election was stolen and you have a right to be angry about that.

And it’s working.

During the impeachment trial last week, his defense lawyers reinforced those lies, and Republicans basically sat by and said nothing to counter them. They, in effect, are a party of turncoats. What makes their behavior so terrifying is that Democrats, who hold control of the Senate by only Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, are left with no choice but to negotiate with the very people whose leading members encouraged the coup and instigated supporters to undermine American institutions.

Pam Keith, a U.S. Navy veteran who ran out of Florida’s 18th Congressional District as the Democratic nominee, told The Root that Democrats should give up on working with Republicans as if they are operating in good faith and have shown that they will be as corrupt and obstructionist as Trump.

“What they’re saying is we don’t care that he broke the law,” said Keith, who also hosts the politics show But What It Really Means. “He’s our guy and we’re with our guy and there’s nothing you can say to make us turn on our guy. He’s above the law. He’s above the Constitution. He is above the well-being of the United States because he’s our mechanism to retaining power. That is the absolute definition of totalitarian dictatorship. We don’t care what he does—especially if what he does hurts you,” she said.

“You cannot live in a diverse country when the paradigm is oppressed or be oppressed. That’s what’s going on in South Sudan right now. There’s only one way: bloody conflict. The only way a country like ours survives is through mutual agreement to set a standard. That’s what the Constitution is. That’s what the rule of law is. If you don’t have that, then there’s no incentive to peacefully allow the other sides to exercise power.”

Kyle Bibby, national campaign manager at Common Defense and a former Marine Corps Infantry officer, told The Root that had a foreign entity engaged in an attack similar to the Jan. 6 coup attempt or rallied the support of the main culprit thereafter, the U.S. military would have responded with an offensive strike or at the minimum stiff economic penalties. But he added that the militias and Trump supporters who were there are ultimately not so much the issue as is the Republican Party that empowers them.

When asked about the violent insurrectionists, Bibby said, “If they were in Afghanistan, we would’ve hit them. Either a raid, drop a bomb on them, whatever it is.” He continued, “But the organizations that are funding this and who are backing this that are creating the political movement behind this are organizations like Fox News, Breitbart, One America News Network, and the Republican Party. If these organizations existed in another country, we would be sanctioning them. We would be seizing their assets for inciting terroristic threats against an American ally or against U.S. interests.”

Mind you, Republicans lead a meaningless investigation into the Benghazi attack, accusing Democrats of being soft on terrorism. They forced Susan Rice to withdraw her name from consideration for Obama’s secretary of state because of their unfounded claims that she did not react appropriately to the 2012 attacks on the American consulate in Libya. They drilled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in very bad faith, for hours over her management of the tragedy during a hearing in 2015. Meanwhile, when it comes to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Republican Congress members called for the nation to move on and acquitted the man responsible for inciting it.

“The bottom line is that this kind of white nationalist violence was never taken seriously,” Pam Campos-Palma, director of Peace & Security at the Working Families Party, told The Root, “because it is inherent to the GOP, policing and national security institutions.”

In addition to terrorism against their fellow citizens and authoritarian behavior, Republicans also traffic in conspiracy theories. Newly sworn member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) has become Trump’s loudest disseminator of conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election, according to CNN:

Greene also peddled in 2017 the debunked “Clinton Kill List” or “Clinton Body Count” conspiracy, which alleges the Clintons have assassinated their associates. She spread false conspiracies the Clintons were involved in sextrafficking and peddled the cruel conspiracy that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was not killed during an attempted robbery but murdered by Democratic actors.

CNN’s KFile previously reported that Greene in 2017 peddled the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, a debunked conspiracy alleging that Clinton and other Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring out of a pizzeria in Washington, DC. In a blog post, she suggested that the White supremacist rally held in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, that killed one woman was an “inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites.” Greene also endorsed 9/11 trutherism conspiracies and falsely claimed there was no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon, according to reporting from Media Matters.

She was stripped of her committee assignments, but the GOP leadership still supported her.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is blaming wind turbines and the Green New Deal for power outages across his state—which are lies. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent more than seven minutes debunking right-wing media lies about the outages, but Republicans in Congress aren’t doing much to quell them. In fact, they are spreading them. Much of why they are doing this is because they feel their power is being threatened and the only way to galvanize support for their causes is through lying and scaring people so intensely that they will see lies as truth. Those people are the ideal type of supporters Republicans can groom into ill-informed and lethal insurrectionists and white supremacists who will help you maintain power—even if it destroys the country, so long as enough of the “enemy”—Black folks and people of color—suffer and/or die as a result.

Malcolm Nance, a national security expert and author of the upcoming book, They Want to Kill Americans: The Armed Militias, The Fanatical Terrorists, and The Deranged Ideology of the Coming Trump Insurgency, told The Root that not only is the Republican Party behaving like a terror group, he predicted soon after the Charlottesville, Va., attacks in 2017 that Trump’s use of insurrectionist language—“stand down and stand by”—essentially would become a white supremacist call to arms akin to kind of terrorist extremism he saw as a military intelligence officer.

“If Trump wins, these unofficial paramilitaries, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys, the state militias, all these other groups, are essentially going to become semi-official Brownshirts [the original paramilitary of Germany’s Nazi Party] of the Trump campaign,” he said. “If Trump loses, these people are going to become the Iraq insurgents. They’re going to go underground. They’re going to be furious and, over time, with the Trump campaign leading as the political wing of this insurgency. With a president in exile, those people will resort to armed violence, political standoffs, and terrorism.”

He said the reason why these threats aren’t taken seriously is because white people do not take white terrorism seriously. He brought up a post-election appearance on Bill Maher where he was a guest with an expert from George Washington University who said his analysis was over the top.

“She’s all, ‘Tone it down. Kumbaya,’ and I’m telling her what I’ve seen for the last six months, which is, the alt-right has transformed itself into the paramilitary arm of the Trump campaign,” he said. “Now that Trump has lost that election, they are going to be the Iraq insurgents. The Republican Party will view themselves as Sinn Fein and the Republican base will view themselves as the white Catholics who think they’ve got to support the IRA.”

Nance added: “Black evidence is never believed until a white person confirms it.”

Democrats introduced a resolution calling for an investigation into white supremacy earlier this month. This week, the NAACP, civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) are suing Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and two white nationalist groups over the coup. While these are promising steps, Democrats have few options to get to the heart of white terrorism because their Republican colleagues in Congress benefit from it politically. We have to view the GOP as enemy combatants because, for years, they have proven that Democrats are theirs.

As far as Keith is concerned, Democrats have to go hard. That means going as far as pressuring any Democrat who supports the filibuster into changing their mind or face a primary challenge. The days of compromise are dead. Obama should have taught us that much. The GOP went to war with him for eight years and Democrats, along with much of America, suffered.

We don’t want to be as gangsta as they are,” Keith said of Democrats in Congress. “We still have this delusion of bipartisanship. There’s no fucking bipartisanship. Get off that ship. It does not work. It’s sinking. It’s done. It’s at the bottom of the ocean. It’s the fucking Titanic. It’s down in the water. Let it go.”

Update: 2/19/2012, 5:23 p.m. ET: A quote by Kyle Bibby was clarified to reflect that he meant that the insurrectionists would be bombed not the GOP.

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afrolesbikita · 4 years ago

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News & important up-dates on POS System Equipment & Point of Sale.

The Texas House has advanced legislation that would require K-12 school districts and open-enrollment charter schools to teach “informed American patriotism” through the founding documents of the U.S. starting in the 2021-22 school year.

The House passed House Bill 4509, by state Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, by a voice vote Thursday afternoon. It will need one more vote before it can be sent to the Texas Senate, which has already approved the similar Senate Bill 2026, authored by state Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood.

HB 4509 would, among other things, mandate that students study documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers to promote understanding of the “fundamental moral principles” of the country.

Before voting on the bill Thursday, the House adopted an amendment proposed by Bonnen to include speeches by Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech as part of the required texts mentioned in the bill. That came after criticism that the bill initially focused on writings by white historical figures.

At a House Public Education Committee hearing last month, Bonnen said documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence captured “firsthand struggles, triumphs, challenges and beliefs” upon which America was founded.

“To ensure Texas students gain access to receive exposure to these founding documents, we must ensure these primary historic sources are incorporated into the state education curriculum across all grade levels,” he said last month.

But Maggie Stern, a youth civic engagement and education coordinator at Children’s Defense Fund, said at last month’s hearing that the curriculum should also highlight the contributions of women; Black, Native, Latino and Asian people; and other people of color in addition to the white Founding Fathers.

“In a state with a growing multiracial youth population, it’s particularly vital that this education is inclusive and relevant to all students,” Stern said. “Comprehensive civic education requires more than just memorizing facts without context or application. Civic knowledge is important.”

The approval of HB 4509 came only a few days after the Texas House gave final approval to House Bill 3979 amid pushback from education, business and community groups and multiple proposed amendments from Democrats. HB 3979 would limit what public school students can be taught about the United States’ history of racism and how racism has shaped systems within the nation. That includes limits on critical race theory. And critics of HB 3979 said some of its provisions would discourage students’ civic engagement.

While HB 3979 focuses on what teachers cannot teach, HB 4509 outlines what concepts must be taught, such as “the structure, function, and processes of government institutions.” The bill also lists the instructional materials students will be required to learn from, including the first Lincoln-Douglas debates and excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville ’s “Democracy in America.”

Bonnen said at last month’s hearing that only 23% of Texans under age 45 can pass the civics test from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services while 90% of immigrants can pass the test. He said founding documents make up the “historical truths surrounding America’s birth,” and they need to be incorporated into K-12 education.

The proposal comes after Gov. Greg Abbott asked lawmakers to prioritize expanding civics education in Texas during the 2021 session. Republican state legislators have proposed multiple bills to modify what children are taught in schools, including limiting the teaching of critical race theory and a greater emphasis on the country’s founding documents.

Thomas Lindsay, distinguished senior fellow of higher education and constitutional studies at the conservative-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, testified last month that the bill would lead to more-informed voting.

“We’ve got a lot of action and we’ve got a lot of passion,” Lindsay said. “We need thinkers. Think first. Learn first. Understand the U.S. Constitution first, and then you will see the stakes involved and then you will become involved in an informed way.”

Michael Baumgartner is a representative of Civics 4 Y’all, a student-led advocacy group at St. Edward’s University working to provide young Texans with civic engagement opportunities. He said the founding documents are vital to learn, but civics education should also promote active citizenship and student activities outside of the classroom.

“Civics education should be about learning the history of our great nation and providing young citizens a place to discuss policy problems while being taught efficient ways to engage in the process of solving them,” Baumgartner said.

Disclosure: St. Edward’s University and the Texas Public Policy Foundation have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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phroyd · 4 years ago

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Louis DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising, which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates — money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say.

Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece.

Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.

“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said the former employee, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from DeJoy.

In response to a series of detailed questions from The Washington Post, Monty Hagler, a spokesman for DeJoy, said the former New Breed chief executive was not aware that any employees had felt pressured to make donations.

After repeatedly being asked, Hagler did not directly address the assertions that DeJoy reimbursed workers for making contributions, pointing to a statement in which he said DeJoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”

Hagler said DeJoy “sought and received legal advice” from a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission “to ensure that he, New Breed Logistics and any person affiliated with New Breed fully complied with any and all laws. Mr. DeJoy believes that all campaign fundraising laws and regulations should be complied with in all respects.”

He added that DeJoy “encouraged employees and family members to be active in their communities, schools, churches, civic groups, sporting events and the politics that governs our nation.”

“Mr. DeJoy was never notified by the New Breed employees referenced by the Washington Post of any pressure they might have felt to make a political contribution, and he regrets if any employee felt uncomfortable for any reason,” he added.

A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

The former employees who spoke to The Post all described donations they gave between 2003 and 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by a Connecticut-based company called XPO Logistics. DeJoy remained at XPO briefly in a leadership role, then retired at the end of 2015. By a year after the sale, several New Breed employees who had stayed on with XPO were giving significantly smaller political contributions and many stopped making them altogether, campaign finance records show.

In a statement, XPO spokesman Joe Checkler said the company “stays out of politics but our employees have the same individual right as anyone else to support candidates of their choosing in their free time. When they do so, we expect them to adhere strictly to the rules.”

The accounts of DeJoy’s former employees, which have not been previously reported, come as his brief tenure so far at the helm of the U.S. Postal Service has been marked by tumult. After his appointment in May, he swiftly instituted changes he said were aimed at cutting costs, leading to a reduction of overtime and limits on mail trips that postal carriers said created backlogs across the country.

Democrats have accused DeJoy, who has personally given more than $1.1 million to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle of the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of seeking to hobble the Postal Service because of the president’s antipathy to voting by mail. As states have expanded access to mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly attacked the practice and claimed without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud.

The Postal Service chief emphasized to House lawmakers last month that the agency will prioritize election mail. Responding to questions about his fundraising, DeJoy scoffed. “Yes, I am a Republican. . . . I give a lot of money to Republicans.” But he pushed back fiercely on accusations that he was seeking to undermine the November vote. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

During his testimony, DeJoy was asked by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) if he had repaid executives for making donations to the Trump campaign.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it. . . . The answer is no,” DeJoy responded angrily.

DeJoy had retired from XPO management by 2016. He hosted Trump at his Greensboro estate, known locally as The Castle, for a birthday party and fundraiser in June 2016.

Earlier this year, DeJoy was leading fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte when he was selected by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in May.

DeJoy was not originally on a list of prospective candidates for the job, Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, told House lawmakers in testimony last month. Duncan, a longtime GOP fundraiser, said he submitted DeJoy’s name as a candidate after his “interest, or availability, became known to me.”

A pattern of requests

Multiple New Breed employees said DeJoy’s ascent in Republican politics was powered in part by his ability to multiply his fundraising through his company, describing him as a chief executive who was single-minded in his focus on increasing his influence in the GOP.

In his office, DeJoy prominently displayed pictures of himself with former president George W. Bush; Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018; former New Jersey governor Chris Christie; former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and others, according to former employees.

Several employees said DeJoy reveled in the access his fundraising afforded him.

At a local PGA tournament sponsored by New Breed, he played alongside top North Carolina Republicans such as then-Gov. Pat McCrory and Sen. Richard Burr, according to schedules posted online. “He always had to be the guy in the golf cart with the politicians,” said one person who worked with him who attended the tournaments.

As DeJoy’s profile as a Republican bundler grew, his wife, Aldona Wos, won presidential and gubernatorial appointments — first as an ambassador to Estonia in 2004, then as head of North Carolina’s health and human services agency in 2013. Trump appointed her in May 2017 to serve on the president’s commission on White House fellowships, and earlier this year, he nominated her to be ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy and trusted aides at the company made clear that he wanted employees to support his endeavors — through emails inviting employees to fundraisers, follow-up calls and visits to staffers’ desks, many said.

“He would put pressure on the executives over each of the areas to go to their employees and give contributions,” one former employee said.

While some employees told The Post that they were happy to make the donations, others said they felt little choice, saying DeJoy had a heavy-handed demeanor and a reputation for angering easily.

Plant managers at New Breed said they received strongly worded admonitions from superiors that they should give money when DeJoy was holding fundraisers. A program manager said that when he was handed his first company bonus, a New Breed vice president told him he should buy a ticket to DeJoy’s next fundraiser.

Several employees said New Breed often distributed large bonuses of five figures or higher. Bonuses did not usually correlate with the exact amount of political contributions, but were large enough to account for both performance payments and donations, according to the two people with knowledge of company finances.

Five former employees said DeJoy’s executive assistant, Heather Clarke, personally called senior staffers, checking on whether executives were coming to fundraisers and collecting checks for candidates.

Clarke, who now works alongside DeJoy at the Postal Service as his chief of staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Phone messages left with Clarke’s husband were returned Friday by Hagler, who said she would have no comment.

Clarke was among several nonexecutive employees who gave substantial political donations, public records show: She alone contributed $47,000 from 2002 to 2014. Clarke has continued to donate since then, but at about half the annual rate as when she worked at New Breed.

Another longtime senior official in DeJoy’s company, Joe Hauck, also routinely contacted company employees urging them to contribute, former workers said.

In an interview, Hauck denied that the company reimbursed New Breed employees for political contributions. He said he never received any bonuses for that purpose, nor was he offered any. “That’s illegal — you can’t do that,” said Hauck, who was vice president for sales, marketing and communications when the company was sold.

Hauck did acknowledge approaching employees and asking them to contribute, but disputed that he pressured anyone.

“I created a list of people that had indicated that they were interested. And whenever there was an event coming up, I would let them know about the event and they would either say, ‘Yeah, I want to participate’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” he said.

Hauck said he sometimes did collect checks for candidates in the office, but only because some employees “happened to have their checkbooks on them.”

Another manager also said he was not aware of employees being reimbursed, but acknowledged that workers were asked to make donations.

William Church, a former New Breed vice president, said he handed out many bonuses to his employees in the company’s aerospace division and never had knowledge of such payments being connected to political contributions. He said bonus targets in his division were rigid and well-established.

Church, who donated over $21,000 to Republican candidates while at New Breed and said he received substantial bonuses, said he never felt pressured to make the contributions and was never reimbursed for them. “Ask my wife, boy, she would have loved that,” Church said.

Asked whether he believed employees could have felt pressure to attend fundraisers, Church responded: “Now, what’s in somebody’s heart when they’re doing it, when the CEO invites you to one of these things and they think, ‘Oh, I should do that?’ — I don’t know.”

Steve Moore, who took a job as plant manager of a New Breed facility in Bolingbrook, Ill., in 2007, said he felt pressured to contribute just a few months into his job. DeJoy sent managers an email announcing a fundraising event at his house for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a candidate for president.

Moore said his manager, Philip Meyer, soon followed up, telling him that making a contribution was “highly recommended,” even if he would not attend.

“I took that to mean my job is on the line here, or things won’t go smooth for me here at New Breed if I didn’t contribute,” Moore said in an interview. He donated $250. “I didn’t really agree with what was going on,” he said. Moore said he was terminated in 2008 after a dispute with his supervisors.

In a text message, Meyer declined to comment.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

When asked for comment on the accounts of employees who said they were pressured to donate to DeJoy’s favored candidates, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Tillis’s campaign, said in an email: “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.”

'You feel the pressure'

DeJoy did not always seem destined for a life as an influential GOP power broker. As a young man in New York working at his father’s trucking business, DeJoy donated to Democrats, including the party’s 1988 presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, according to federal campaign finance filings.

After his marriage to Wos, a physician born in Poland who emigrated to New York as a child, DeJoy followed her into conservative politics.

Under DeJoy, New Breed expanded from trucking to logistics, managing delivery and returns of the first iPhones sold by Verizon, airplane parts for Boeing and Disney merchandise, including shipments of MagicBands, employees said.

By the late 1990s, as the family business flourished, thanks in part to contracts with the U.S. Postal Service, DeJoy moved New Breed to North Carolina — and closer to the work it was doing repositioning mail crates, folding mail bags, and other logistical work that the government had begun to outsource.

The move provided new political opportunities for the couple. Wos embraced North Carolina Republican politics and, by the early 2000s, was stepping into national campaigns. She helped lead fundraising efforts in the state for Elizabeth Dole’s 2002 Senate run, and then for Bush’s reelection campaign, according to campaign statements and news articles from the time.

DeJoy began to marshal his resources to support GOP candidates, as well. On one day in February 2002, DeJoy donated $50,000 to a Republican Party fund supporting Bush’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. Another $10,000 came from DeJoy’s brother, Michael, who worked then for New Breed in New York. Another 10 New Breed employees also chipped in $1,000 each that day to Bush, and another $900 or $1,000 each to Dole, campaign finance data show.

In response to a request to Wos for comment, Hagler said, “Dr. Wos had her own career, and she was not involved with New Breed Logistics.”

Young, the retired director of human resources, said it was during the 2004 Bush reelection campaign that he saw DeJoy begin to “take advantage” of his power as CEO to move money for politics.

“No one was ever forced to or lost a job because they didn’t, but if people contributed, their raises and their bonuses were bumped up to accommodate that,” said Young, who gave more than $19,000 in donations while he worked at New Breed.

Ted Le Jeune, a New Breed project manager in North Carolina, said he made a $500 contribution to the Bush campaign in November 2003 after DeJoy took him aside for a discussion in a conference room about donating.

“I was of the same political orientation, so it was not coerced in any way and there was no quid pro quo,” Le Jeune said in an interview. Le Jeune said he has not donated to any political campaign since then.

In 2002, DeJoy and New Breed employees contributed more than $87,000 to support Dole, and before the 2004 presidential election, more than $121,000 to Bush.

Wos was named a Bush “Ranger,” an honorary term for those who delivered at least $200,000 for the Texan’s reelection bid. In a recess appointment before the election, Bush appointed her ambassador to Estonia, a post she held for two years.

Freddy Ford, a spokesman for Bush, declined to comment. Wos did not respond to a request for comment about her appointment.

By 2007, DeJoy was carving his own path politically. With Giuliani leading in early polls for the Republican nomination for president, DeJoy signed on as co-chair of the former mayor’s North Carolina finance committee.

New Breed employees quickly followed.

DeJoy kicked off his fundraising effort by inviting a group of senior New Breed executives who had previously donated to Republicans while at the company to contribute, according to one of those who wrote a check. Campaign finance records show that New Breed employees gave Giuliani’s campaign more than $27,000 in one day.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a month later, when Giuliani made a swing through North Carolina, DeJoy invited a broader group of New Breed employees to contribute and take part in a fundraiser, according to people familiar with his outreach. The second effort netted about $40,000 from employees, campaign finance records show.

Moore, the plant director in Illinois, said he received the email inviting employees to give — and he donated reluctantly.

Another middle manager at another New Breed facility said he received the solicitation, too, as well as encouragement in person from Meyer during a plant visit.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Louis is having this thing, and he really wants all the managers there, and you need to contribute,’ ” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he fears DeJoy could sue him.

The former employee said he recalled Meyer saying that not contributing was “not going to have any bearing on your job.”

But he worried that the reverse was true, he said. “You feel the pressure. They tell you it’s not there, and then they put it on you,” he said.

In the North Carolina headquarters, Joel Shepard, who had joined New Breed as director of transportation after stints at Ryder and UPS, said he got a call from Clarke, DeJoy’s executive assistant, making sure Shepard knew that he, too, was invited.

Shepard had never donated to a political candidate before, and he wrote a check for $1,000. He said he did not feel pressured, however. He said he admired Giuliani and “wanted to do it.”

Shepard said he still recalls the donation because he mistakenly wrote the check from an account that was low on funds and it bounced. Clarke, DeJoy’s executive assistant, “came to me and said, ‘Joel, your check bounced.’ I had to write her another one,” he recalled.

In all, dozens of New Breed employees contributed more than $85,000 to Giuliani’s campaign during the primary, including a $16,000 in excess contributions that the campaign returned after Giuliani dropped his bid because multiple employees gave identical contributions that were twice the legal limit.

The only other GOP presidential contender to receive donations from New Breed employees during that year’s primary was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, campaign finance records show. Together, two employees gave him about $550.

Expanding influence

After Giuliani’s campaign faltered, DeJoy pivoted and put his energy into backing the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, organizing and hosting multiple fundraisers over the next year. Again, New Breed employees followed. Along with DeJoy, they contributed more than $180,000, FEC records show.

Four years later, an additional $193,000 flowed from DeJoy and other New Breed employees to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah.

Before the 2012 election, more than $170,000 in contributions from DeJoy and New Breed employees would also go to help lift McCrory to the North Carolina governor’s mansion, state campaign finance records show.

The following month, McCrory named Wos, DeJoy’s wife and a retired physician, as his choice for state health secretary.

In an interview, McCrory said Wos’s appointment had no connection to campaign contributions he received. “She was the most qualified person and I had to beg her to take the job,” he said.

Told of The Post’s findings, McCrory said: “I’m not aware of any of these claims.”

During her tenure, Wos drew scrutiny from Democrats after awarding a $310,000 state contract to Hauck, the New Breed employee who colleagues said had urged them to support DeJoy’s fundraising efforts.

At the time, Wos defended her pick, saying Hauck worked on a major restructuring of the department’s bureaucracy.

Hauck said he took a pay cut by going on leave from New Breed to work for Wos for 11 months. “I looked at it as serving,” he said in an interview.

By 2013, Warburg Pincus, a New York-based private-equity firm that had acquired a controlling stake in New Breed eight years earlier, had begun agitating for the company to go public or find another way to return value to its investors, according to three former New Breed employees with knowledge of the company’s finances. News articles in subsequent months quoted people familiar with the company saying Warburg was exploring a sale.

DeJoy tested the market for an initial public offering, filing a confidential draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to correspondence detailing concerns about the offering flagged by the SEC, which remain archived on the agency’s website.

As the agency began scrutinizing the company’s finances, the SEC appeared to question a lack of information about New Breed executive bonuses and how the company decided they had met their goals for the payments in the previous year. “Please disclose the target and how the target was met or not met or advise,” the SEC’s accounting branch chief wrote in a June 2013 letter to DeJoy. It is unclear whether or how the company responded.

Ultimately, New Breed did not go public. Instead, Warburg Pincus sold it to XPO Logistics the following year for $615 million, according to company announcements and SEC records.

A spokeswoman for Warburg Pincus declined to comment.

The month the deal closed, New Breed employees made a slew of political donations in a two-day period — more than $407,000. Almost three-quarters of that went to support Tillis’s Senate bid.

Clarke, Hauck and DeJoy were among 10 New Breed employees who led the giving. On Sept. 29, each gave identical donations of $12,600 to the Thom Tillis Victory Committee, campaign finance data shows. The next day, the same 10 employees each gave $10,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party.

Since then, five of those individuals have significantly cut back their political contributions, and one has not given again at all, FEC filings show.

Young, who retired that fall, said he sent a note to DeJoy this summer congratulating him upon being named postmaster general. DeJoy may have the skills needed to improve the agency, Young said. But the fundraising that permeated New Breed will remain a mark on his legacy there, he said, adding: “He had an agenda, and would take advantage of people.”

DeJoy never replied to his note, Young said. One of the last things he heard from anyone at New Breed came about a year after he left. Hauck, who by then was working with DeJoy at XPO, called and asked Young to donate to Tillis and other Republicans. “I said, ‘No, thank you.’ ”

Jacob Bogage, Alice Crites, Dan Zak and Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this report. Ken Otterbourg reported from Greensboro, N.C.

Phroyd

#usps #trump #dejoy #criminal

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The U.S. doesn’t have what it needs to fight the novel coronavirus. N95 respirator masks are emergency room workers’ ideal line of defense against the small particles of spittle that can transmit COVID-19. It’s a banal-looking medical product — like a baseball straining under a small tarp of synthetic cloth — but its mundanity doesn’t make it easy to find. A recent NBC News survey of health care workers reported widespread rationing of N95 masks in hospitals. The country also doesn’t have enough ventilators — machines that assist breathing — and the need for those will be a matter of life and death in the coming days. There are around 160,000 ventilators in U.S. hospitals and only 16,600 ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile, according to a recent report from the Center for Public Integrity. New York state alone is requesting an additional 30,000. While it’s unclear how many ventilators the country might need in the coming weeks and months, one estimate from a 2005 Department of Health and Human Services pandemic simulation put the number at 742,500.

The shortage of critical supplies has led many public officials to ask President Trump to make full use of a little-known-until-a-week-ago law, the Defense Production Act. So far Trump has been reluctant to fully deploy it, to the consternation of many (including those in his own party). White House statements on the use of the DPA have been muddled, suggesting a deeper bureaucratic confusion about how to even implement the act. But even with the law’s powers in full use, the pandemic has revealed America’s precarious place in the global marketplace as just another buyer, rather than an industrial fortress ready for a fight on its own shores.

Passed in 1950 in response to the Korean War, the DPA allows the government to jump the supply chain line for needed goods in the midst of emergencies — it was invoked in 2017 to procure supplies for hurricane victims, for example — and authorizes it to incentivize the production of needed supplies.

Trump’s stance on deploying the DPA fully has been hazy, and his statements about the gravity of the supply shortage has varied — during a Thursday evening appearance on Fox News, he cast doubt on New York’s need for 30,000 ventilators. On March 18, he said that he would be “invoking the Defense Production Act just in case we need it.” The administration has said it would use some powers in the act, like the one that goes after hoarding and price-gouging of emergency supplies and one that requires companies to prioritize government contracts and allows the federal government to allocate emergency resources (it’s not clear how efficiently that’s actually being done yet). But groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have reportedly lobbied the Trump administration against using the law to its full effect. The past week has seen Democratic lawmakers and former national security officials pillorying Trump for what they see as inadequate use of the law. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday, “I do not understand the reluctance to use the federal Defense Production Act to manufacture ventilators. If not now, when?”

The short answer is that’s not quite how the law works.

Those familiar with the workings of the DPA are quick to note its implementation is not a panacea. Dave Kaufman was in charge of DPA authorities in his role at FEMA during the Obama administration. He told me that there seems to be a fundamental public misunderstanding of what the law can do. “It’s being talked about in the media as restructuring the economy a la WWII. It’s not actually really that — it’s a powerful authority, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not nationalization of industry, which is kind of the way we’re talking about it.” Industrial leaders like General Motors Co. reportedly balked at the idea of the White House invoking the DPA.

The kind of DPA powers that Cuomo and the media have largely been talking about are the ones vested in Article III of the act. That portion of the law is meant to “create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore domestic industrial base capabilities essential for the national defense.” To go about that, the government is authorized to provide loans and loan guarantees to stimulate domestic production of needed goods, to make agreements to purchase products on a long term basis in order to encourage the production of needed goods and “to procure and install equipment in private industrial facilities,” in the words of a Congressional Research Service analysis of the DPA.

Kaufman said that invocation of the DPA isn’t always needed to get a job done. “You could also just make a commitment to a multi-year procurement and send the pricing signal to the market to stimulate development of supply,” he said. Ford, 3M and GE Healthcare pledged this week to jump-start production of ventilators and masks, though they didn’t give a timeline for the needed scale-up of production — it would likely be months. (On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that “General Motors MUST immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio, or some other plant, and START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!!” As Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan quickly pointed out, GM no longer owns the plant.)

But with N95 masks and ventilators, many of which are made overseas, things are tricky. “DPA authority is great to talk about, but if the commodities don’t exist here in the scale and quantity needed for demand, claiming the first off the line for what does exist is not really solving the problem,” Kaufman said, referring to the DPA power that allows the government to jump the supply chain.

China is a major producer of N95 masks and ventilators and the U.S. is competing for emergency supplies manufactured there, much like the rest of the world. It’s a stark reminder that despite Trump’s trade wars and inflammatory rhetoric, China remains a manufacturing behemoth. Well before the coronavirus pandemic began, the U.S.’s reliance on China for key goods dismayed government officials. A September 2019 NBC News report detailed the alarm of national security officials over how dependent the U.S. is on Chinese-manufactured pharmaceutical products. A Council of Foreign Relations analysis from December 2019 noted the rapid growth of the Chinese medical device manufacturing sector, aided by its government’s protectionist policies.

There is some production of the needed emergency products in the United States. 3M is a major producer of respirator masks: A spokesperson said in an email that it makes them in two locations in the U.S., South Dakota and Nebraska. A March 22 statement from 3M’s CEO noted that the company produces 35 million respirators per month and that “more than 500,000 respirators are on the way from our South Dakota plant to two of the more critically impacted areas, New York and Seattle.” At the time of publication, it was unclear how the masks would be apportioned to each region.

Governors have asked the federal government to take control of the allocation of ventilators and masks by using the DPA. Under Title I of the law — which technically, the Trump administration has said it has put into effect — the federal government can take charge of the allocation of emergency supplies. It’s not clear how well it’s doing that or communicating its plans to the states. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, the chief executive of the state that produces so many N95 masks, expressed frustration during a call with Trump last week. “I need to understand how you’re triaging supplies,” she said, with other governors on the line. “I don’t want to be less of a priority because we’re a smaller state or less populated,” she said. According to The New York Times, Trump assured her that would “never” happen. Subsequently, the report noted, “Ms. Noem’s telephone line was disconnected.” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker was referring to similar allocation concerns when he said that his state was “competing” with other states and federal agencies on the open market for emergency medical supplies.

Confusion over how or whether the Trump administration is using the DPA has grown over the last few days, a worrisome sign given the bureaucratic organization needed to oversee so many moving parts of government and industry that should ostensibly be working together. News came from the White House this week that the production of 60,000 testing kits had been expedited under the auspices of the act, but FEMA later said that in the end, it hadn’t needed to invoke the DPA. In an email to FiveThirtyEight over the weekend, a FEMA spokesperson wrote that it was “actively engaged with private industry partners through the National Business Emergency Operations Center. One outcome from this engagement is the stand-up of a cell that is coordinating needs and sourcing re-supply for the community-based testing sites.” Over the course of the week, it became clear that FEMA’s newly established Supply Chain Stabilization Task Force, headed by Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, was the agency’s attempt at centralizing interactions with private industry.

If a recent Democratic proposal from the Senate is any indication, there is a worry about the administration’s ability to marshal and organize critical information from private companies in the time of crisis. The proposal calls for basic information-gathering provisions, like an assessment of the country’s emergency medical protective gear, a point person to communicate with states and companies, and a hotline for companies to call for information.

Banal bureaucratic organization problems seem, for now, to be blunting the collective power of American capitalism in a time of crisis.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

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alaminshorkar76 · 2 years ago

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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When Do Democrats And Republicans Compromise

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/when-do-democrats-and-republicans-compromise/

When Do Democrats And Republicans Compromise

A Coalition To ‘protect Its Self

Do Democrats Keep Falling For It? GOP Squashes Manchin’s Compromise

The modern-day 1st District can trace its origins to the 1960s.

As former Congressman Bill Clay explained in his book,13 Black legislators, 57 Republicans and nine white Democrats from rural areas voted to establish a St. Louis-based district that would be highly possible for an African American to win. In the book, “Bill Clay: A Political Voice at the Grassroots,” he said the unusual coalition held strong to protect its self-interests.

The newly drawn congressional districts provided representation in the cotton-driven, agricultural economy of the Bootheel section of the southeastern part of the state, maintained a substantial number of Republican voters in the suburban area of St. Louis County, and created a Black-majority district located mostly in the city of St. Louis, Clay wrote. Democrats and Governor , a Democrat, opposed the redistricting proposal. They filed a lawsuit supporting a plan to place the Black population in three separate districts. However, the U.S. Supreme Court thwarted the will of the Democrats and ruled that the district drawn by legislators was legal.

Bill Clay was elected to the 1st Congressional District in 1968. No white candidate has even come close to prevailing in that district since that election. And because of the Voting Rights Act, lawmakers cannot draw the 1st District in a way that diminishes the ability of a racial or language minority to elect its candidates of choice.

Senator Vandenbergs Bipartisan Foreign Policy

While Americans were fighting overseas in World War II, many congressional Republicans were increasingly wary of a lengthy American involvement in Europe after the war ended. Among these isolationists, Michigan Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg was the unofficial spokesman. But seeing Democrats and Republicans growing increasingly polarized about Americas role in the world while recognizing the threat a remilitarized Germany and Japan might pose, Vandenberg was moved to address the Senate in 1945, declaring that no country could immunize itself from the rest of the world. Vandenberg offered his cooperation to FDR in post-war planning that eventually encompassed Americas role in both the United Nations and NATO. Years later, Vandenberg summed up his view of bipartisan foreign policy: In a word, it simply seeks national security ahead of partisan advantage. Politics, he famously said, stops at the waters edge.

In Bidens Washington Democrats And Republicans Are Not United On Unity

The new president seeks bipartisanship, but he is caught between Republicans who want tangible concessions and Democrats who are in no mood to compromise.

WASHINGTON In defining his mission for history as bringing together a divided country, President Biden has made unity the watchword of his fledgling administration. But one thing that divides America is what unity actually means.

In his Inaugural Address on Wednesday and in other public appearances, Mr. Biden reached out to Republicans with messages of conciliation, vowing to work together to tackle the nations enormous challenges a starkly different tone than President Donald J. Trump typically took. But in Mr. Bidens opening hours at least, the outreach was more about words and symbols than tangible actions.

He did not appoint any members of the opposition party to his cabinet, as Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama did, and many of the executive orders he signed in his first two days in office were aimed at reversing Mr. Trumps policies and enacting liberal ideas, not finding common ground. He has offered no examples of Republican priorities he was willing to adopt in the interest of bipartisan cooperation nor described what compromises would be acceptable to win congressional approval of his initiatives.

Also Check: Gop Cut Funding For Benghazi

Senate Democrats Introduce Joe Manchin

A group of eight Senate Democrats have introduced a new version of comprehensive voting rights legislation after months of negotiation to secure the support of Sen. Joe Manchin .

The bill, now called the Freedom to Vote Act, is a streamlined version of the For The People Act, which the House passed in May and Senate Republicans blocked twice over the summer. It contains most of the former bills voting access enhancements, its ban on partisan gerrymandering and some of its campaign finance reforms. But it also adds new provisions including a national standard for voter identification and protections against partisan election subversion; while jettisoning all of the federal ethics enhancements in the old bill.

Negotiations between Manchin and Democratic Sens. Amy Klobucher , Jeff Merkley , Raphael Warnock , Alex Padilla , Jon Tester , Tim Kaine and Independent Sen. Angus King began over the summer, after Manchin announced his opposition to the For The People Act and then released an outline of provisions;he could support in a compromise bill. The new Manchin-led bill released Tuesday largely sticks to this outline while maintaining some provisions from the old bill.;

Democrats push for voting rights legislation comes as Republican-led states pass a historic wave of new voting restrictions, which are based on former President Donald Trumps lies about election fraud that led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol earlier this year.;

Bipartisan Budget Act Of 2013

Two years after reaching a bipartisan agreement on the debt ceiling, Congress announced a two-year budget agreement prior to the budget conference in December. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 set overall discretionary spending for the 2013 fiscal year at $1.012 trillion, which was about half-way between the proposed budgets of the House and the Senate. Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray stated that both sides of the aisle agreed to the proposed legislation after having several extended discussions. During the announcement of the agreement, Ryan and Murray noted that they specifically avoided striking a grand bargain, which required the Democrats to agree to reduced entitlement spending in exchange for the Republicans agreeing to higher tax rights. As an alternative, Ryan stated that congressional members strived to focus on common ground to get some minimal accomplishments. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 was a rare, but promising act of across-the-aisle collaboration in a time of intense gridlock.

Don’t Miss: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Blue Dog Democrats Formed

In the historic 1994 mid-term elections, House Republicans staged an unprecedented takeover of the congressional body, turning a large Democratic majority in a serious minority. For some Democrats, though, the election-day thumping wasnt surprising. Forty-seven House Democrats, fiscally moderate if not downright conservative and mostly from conservative-leaning districts, had long grown wary of what they saw as their partys drift to the left and its unyielding demand to toe an orthodox party line. Feeling theyd been choked blue by their partys leaders, they named themselves the Blue Dog Coalition and set about finding a middle ground between the warring edges of both parties. Encompassing a variety of viewpoints, the Blue Dogs are, to this day, engaged in the search for common fiscal ground between the political parties.

Compromise Of 1: The 1876 Election

By the 1870s, support was waning for the racially egalitarian policies of Reconstruction, a series of laws put in place after the Civil War to protect the rights of African Americans, especially in the South. Many southern whites had resorted to intimidation and violence to keep blacks from voting and restore white supremacy in the region. Beginning in 1873, a series of Supreme Court decisions limited the scope of Reconstruction-era laws and federal support for the so-called Reconstruction Amendments, particularly the 14th Amendment and 15 Amendment, which gave African Americans the status of citizenship and the protection of the Constitution, including the all-important right to vote.

Did you know? After the most disputed election in American history, the Compromise of 1877 put Rutherford Hayes into office as the nation’s 19th president; outraged northern Democrats derided Hayes as “His Fraudulency.”

You May Like: When Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

Exclusive: Abbott Says Republicans Are In No Mood For Additional Compromise Over Voting Bill

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott spoke with Texas Standard host David Brown about Texas House Democrats leaving the state during a special session for Washington, D.C. to prevent a vote on Republican-backed election legislation.

DAVID BROWN, HOST:

No matter where you are, its Texas Standard time on this 15th day of July 2021. Im David Brown. Great to have you with us. And for many Texans and folks who just follow the news nationwide, it remains one of the biggest stories of the week: the quorum-busting exodus to D.C. of more than 50 Texas House Democrats a last-ditch attempt to derail Republican proposals to tighten Texas voting laws. The governor called the special session after lawmakers failed to pass GOP-led changes during the regular session, which itself ended with a walkout of House Democrats. This time, the move was much more high profile not without precedent, as weve reported here, since something similar happened at the Lege almost 20 years back during a redistricting battle. But with House Democrats now pledging that they wont return before the end of the 30-day special session underway, the Legislature has effectively been brought to a halt. And Gov. Greg Abbott has pledged to have the missing lawmakers arrested upon their return to Texas. And weve been asking listeners across the Lone Star State to pass along their questions for the governor so we can put some of them to him as he joins us today. Gov. Greg Abbott, welcome to the Texas Standard.

Senate Democrats Unveil Compromise Bill On Voting Rights

Does GOP compromise on immigration mean disregarding voters?

WASHINGTON A group of eight Senate Democrats introduced new voting rights legislation Tuesday after reaching a compromise with moderate Sen. Joe Manchin on the bill, which focuses on expanding voter access, boosting election integrity and encouraging civil participation.

The bill, dubbed the “Freedom to Vote Act,” contains a long list of provisions that includes making Election Day a public holiday, requiring same-day registration at all polling locations by 2024, and ensuring at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections.

House Democrats have previously passed two other voting bills, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act along party lines, but the legislation did not advance in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday on the Senate floor that he intends to hold a vote to proceed to the compromise measure as early as next week, which would require 60 senators to support advancing to the bill. It’s unclear whether Democrats can garner the support of 10 Republicans, though Schumer said that Manchin has been discussing the bill with GOP senators.

“This is a good proposal, and I encourage all my Senate colleagues to support it,” Schumer said, adding that “time is of the essence.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said Monday evening on MSNBC that the bill “will have the support of every Democrat and Joe will be working to solicit the support of Republicans.

You May Like: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

The Public Says It Prefers Compromise But Compromisers Often Face Anger From Their Own Party

Congress nearly always fares poorly in the eyes of the American public no matter which party is in charge. Only in cases of national crises, like the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks does it seem that Congressional approval rises.;In recent Economist/YouGov polls, congressional approval rarely rises above 20% and a majority of Americans disapprove of how Congress is handling its job.

Sometimes, the level of disapproval is bipartisan, but not this week. With Democrats narrowly in control of both Houses, Republican approval of Congress drops to single digits , while Democrats are as likely to disapprove as approve .

Americans claim they prefer compromise from their representatives but thats assuming the compromise can help get things accomplished. Democrats and Independents say they overwhelmingly favor compromise over sticking to principles, while a majority of Republicans reject it .

Those Republicans who call themselves very conservative are the ones who; prioritize sticking to their principles over compromising to get things done and by a more than two to one margin. Democrats, whether they think of themselves as liberals or moderates , claim to overwhelmingly support compromises to get things done.;

Advocates Fear Montana’s New Ballot Law Could Harm Voters Who Struggle To Be Heard

The efforts come amid unprecedented action at the state level over voting and elections. While several states have expanded access to the ballot box in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a number of Republican-led states, including Georgia, Florida and Arizona, have enacted restrictive voting measures. Many GOP officials in those states and others are repeating former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Democrats in Texas recently blocked election legislation there a dramatic step that got many of them invited to Washington, D.C., this week to meet with congressional Democrats and Vice President Harris, the White House point person on voting issues.

Their visit was designed to drum up support for a federal elections overhaul, and pressure Democrats to get it over the finish line. On Tuesday the Texas contingent met with Manchin’s staff, not the senator himself.

Also Check: Last Time Republicans Controlled Congress

Why Cant Democrats Republicans Compromise And Reach Agreements

In the past two decades, various sequences of divided government have prevented Washington from performing even basic tasks – such as passing the U.S. budget.

Photo: Reuters

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, faces perhaps the biggest dilemma of his leadership of the lower chamber one with potentially large implications for the U.S. economy and domestic and global financial markets: whether to try to lobby a fiscal cliff deal through his fractious, Tea Party-dominated House Republican caucus or hold firm against tax rate increases that a bipartisan Senate bill contains.

If Boehner lobbies for the bill, the fiscal cliff will be averted, but he will likely lose support in his caucus, and there is a better-than-decent chance the right wing will attempt to oust him as speaker.

On the other hand, if Boehner refuses to compromise and holds firm against any bipartisan Senate bill that contains a tax increase one rooted in higher income tax rates at the top end or other tax increases hell retain the support of the Tea Party and other conservatives, but the United States will have fallen over the fiscal cliff with likely serious consequences for the U.S. economy and domestic and global financial markets.

Under the latter scenario, stock, bond and currency markets — perhaps as soon as Wednesday — will likely react negatively to the inability of the U.S. Congress to forge a plan to enable the nation to pay its bills.

How To Fix This Mess

Corn Dogs Butter Sculptures And Political Civility: Republican Democrat Model Civil Bipartisan Exchange

Two congressmen look for common ground at the Minnesota State Fair.

America Strong: Bipartisan problem solvers find common ground

More than 1 million people attended the Minnesota State Fair this year — snacking on pork chops, sizing up the famed butter sculptures and posing with prize-winning farm animals.

But Reps. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Dusty Johnson of South Dakota were looking for something else: an opportunity to find common ground and prove that civility in the country’s politics is not extinct.

At a time when partisanship is uglier than ever in the halls of Congress, Phillips, a blue state Democrat, and Johnson, a Trump country Republican, are piloting a novel bipartisan political exchange program, featuring joint visits to each other’s districts and intimate joint town hall meetings with a diverse mix of constituents.

“There are lots of good people in Congress,” Johnson told ABC at the Minnesota State Fair where both men poured fresh milk together, visited a barn filled with pregnant livestock and rode down a giant slide.

“You cant work with people you dont trust, and you cant trust people you dont know,” Phillips said.

Both lawmakers are members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of moderate consensus-seekers on Capitol Hill who have notched success brokering compromises around COVID-19 relief and in shaping debate around a bipartisan infrastructure agreement.

Recommended Reading: Did The Republicans Free The Slaves

Democrats More Likely To Favor Compromise; Republicans Holding Firm To Beliefs

PRINCETON, NJ — Americans think it is generally more important for political leaders to compromise to get things done rather than sticking to their beliefs , but Republicans and Democrats hold differing views on the matter. Republicans tilt more toward saying leaders should stick to their beliefs , while Democrats more widely endorse compromise .

These results are based on a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Nov. 4-7, after the midterm elections. The elections resulted in divided control of Congress, with Republicans set to become the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives and Democrats holding on to a Senate majority.

Because this was the first time Gallup has asked the question about compromise versus holding firm in one’s beliefs, it is not clear whether the partisan differences in the poll are typical or whether they reflect Republicans’ and Democrats’ responses to the current political situation. Republicans were able to make big electoral gains in the midterm elections largely by opposing President Obama’s agenda of the last two years. On the other hand, the president will now need to work with Republicans in order to get things done after having the luxury of Democratic control of both houses of Congress during his first two years in office.

Implications

Survey Methods

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is Â±4 percentage points.

Senate Republicans Aren’t Interested In Compromise It May Be Time For Democrats To Use Plan B

No one would think of blaming Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinOvernight Energy & Environment Presented by the League of Conservation Voters Biden, Xi talk climate at UN forumElection reform in the states is not all doom and gloomManchin presses Interior nominee on leasing program reviewMORE for shrinking West Virginias population by 3.5 percent since 2010, one of only three states that lost people over the last decade. There are lots of economic and demographic dynamics that accounted for the drop.

But given that the Mountaineer State will lose a House seat and an electoral vote, one should question whether Manchin should be determining the fate of multiple bills in the U.S. Senate. For the record, I really dont mind that Sen. Manchin says he only wants to make sure that West Virginia has a seat at the table. What I do mind, and what every American concerned about our democracy should mind, is that he now apparently thinks he gets to decide what everyone at the table will eat.

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote that while the Senate was designed in a way to ensure that the majority didnt ride roughshod over the minority , those two Founding Fathers insisted that the majority must eventually always win; that minority rule was antithetical to a democracy. Common sense tells us that this is still the case in 2021, Trump Nation notwithstanding.

Yarmuth represents the 3rd District of Kentucky and is chairman of the Budget Committee.

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nrsranger · 3 years ago

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3.9

The Remains of the Alderaan System

NRS Theed

Main Bridge

1800 hrs

Captain Anatha Violet’s colorful Yogurtian features stood in contrast to the monochromatic colors regulation’s forced her to keep it in.

“Captain Violet, Mrs Phlaxes would like to see you, ma’am” Commander Valk said

“Commander Valk? Are there any artist on board?” Captain Violet asked

“Um, ma’am?” Valk required courses

“That wall, I don’t like the color, I want to put a mural there” Captain Violet elaborated

“That's against regulations ma’am” Valk pointed out.

“I know, it’s probably a bad idea, any way” Captain Violet finally said “Ok, send Mrs. Phlaxes”

Daline Phlaxes walked on the main bridge. Captain Violet turned around and nodded to the political correspondent.

“I am here to inform you that it is time for the First Meeting of the new Alliance, ma’am” Phlaxes said

“I will meet you in the transport hanger bay Mrs, Phlaxes” Captain Violet said

“Yes Ma’am” Phlaxes said turning back to the door which Irised open and Phlaxes made her way toward the transport hangar bay.

“Commander Valk, do you know what I just realized, new alliance, new regulations, find me an artist” Captain Violet said, walking to her ready room to change into her formal uniform.

“I would like to begin this meeting by thanking the Alderanian Refugees, for hosting his conference in the remains of the First Imperial Death Star that is now their home” Phlaxes said causing polite and diplomatic applause. “The New Republic Navy has called this meeting to answer the threat of the First Order, and the destruction of the New Republic,” Phlaxes pause for a moment looking around the conference table, the Hosnian Refugee representative sat staring at her face with her fist clenched, “We intend to keep fighting no matter the odd in a new Galactic Alliance!”

As she finished the Raxus Rep Tranch Hiltu spoke “And how do you suppose you do that! When the First Order's Starkiller base!”

“Representative Hiltu, StarKiller Base has been confirmed destroyed” Phlaxes

“Well that not what the First Order says” Hiltu shot back

“In addition to the Destruction of StarKiller Base, Supreme Leader Snoke is also dead, we must take this time to get organized, we can still fight back, and we can win!” Phlaxes

“And how do you know that” Hill Solde the Corellia Rep

“Because we already have!” Phlaxes said then motioned to Captain Violet “Captain”

Captain Violet stood up “Approximately eight hours ago, The NRS Ranger engaged a First Order Convoy enroute to attack the Fondor system”

“Even if they win AND survive one small victory over a supply convoy hardly proves that you can win” Hiltu said scoffing

“The First Order will win, by doing one thing and one thing alone, seprerat us, if they can separate us, and through the use of fear paralyze us, they will win,” Phlaxes said paused to stare at all the faces around the ring of tables she then continued “The Galaxy believes that no one will stand up to face the First Order, fear has a habit of doing that to people, but we most show that there are people willing to stand against these bullies”

“Ok, is there a long term plan to defeat them?” The Mon Calamari Governor Caltrab asked

“Yes, Governor the First Order is a military, they have little to no industrial capital, Admiral Thadmin’s plan is to fight to keep the industrial planets out of enemy hands until our own ship yards can tip the balance in our favor. Sure they might have more Star Destroyers than us, but we have the means of producing more cruisers while the First Order does not.” Captain Violet said as if she was briefing a room full of Admirals.

“Ok, what do you need from us?” Naboo Jr Governor Calli Gala asked

“Ships, and men to crew them” Phlaxes said as if listing the side effects to a new type of medicine

“You want us to sacrifice our own defence forcing for you to protect other forces?” Hiltu said crazily.

“We will protect you, if you are in jeopardy but we need the ships to do that with” Phlaxes said

“If you want us to pull ships off our front lines I doubt Corellia will join this alliance” Hiltu said

“Thats ok you we don’t need you to pull ships off your lines, but maybe a percentage of the ships you yards produce can head our way” Phlaxes

“I will have to check with my Governor before I sign on to anything, but it is looking doubtful that we will join you.” Hiltu said disappointed

“I have said all that I need to. Lets us all check in with our governments and we will return in one hour?” Phlaxes asked the nods and the sound of holo pads shutting down convinced Phlaxes that they all agreed.

“Come on let’s go” Phlaxes said to Captain Violet, who followed her outside the conference room to another room, that Alderaan set aside for them to use, four chairs were placed around a square table. On top of the table was a basket of fresh fruit and Alderainian honeycomb. After both women took a seat

Captain Violet picked a fruit and took a bite “You know these fruits are grown on the station. There is deck below us that is one lareg Velodrome, with each factor of the climate is controlled. It's very impressive if you ask me.”

“Captain, I hate to change the subject but, I was wondering if you could enlighten me on a subject?” Phlaxes asked

“Sure thing, what's it about?” Captain Violet said

“It’s about a pilot-” Phlaxes said

“Joker! Ah yes I heard about your little run in” Captain Violet said

“What’s his deal?” Phlaxes asked

“From what his file says his acutal name is Derci Alpine Jr, he comes from Cyrkon Hutt Space, his father was abusive both emotinaly and physicly, sometimes for his amusment other times to put Joker down and make him feel useless, Joker somehow kept a sence of humor and acording to him it was the only way for him to survive, for years and years it went on like that, until his Father Derci Alpine Sr, got fed up with Joker’s imperntrable humor defence so he sold him into slavery to the hutt cartell. His thin and lanky posture made him ideal for ship engineering, so the Hutts placed him on one of their slave ships, years later when he was about 19 the New Republic raided the slave ship he was on, and freed all the slaves, some went home others were resettled but Joker joined up and went to the New Republic Acadomy on Lothal, when his name popped up on our list of new pilots, I briefly consider assigning him to the Theed, but Captain Namin made negotiated and he got Joker and he gave me my X.O Yash Valk.” Captain Violet said

“Oh I didn’t know” Phlaxes said in shock regretting the horrible things she said to him.

A few minutes passed in silence as both Women sat and at the fruit in the basket. As the hour passed Phlaxes and Violet looked through their data pad sifting for information that could be useful in the conference. Captain Violet looked through the casualty report from the Rangers engagement and Phlaxes reviewed the data from the Conference in an attempt to hypothesis which planets will join them. When the hour was up a Alderianian honor guard knocked on their door, when he was informed he could enter, he informed the pair that all other parties have assembled in the conference room. Sighing Phlaxes stood up and followed the honor guard to the Conference room where she took her seat at the head of the table.

She picked up her data pad and asked “Has everyone made their decision?”

The Hosnian Representative Jiun Yasslern stood up and said “The Hosnian System will join the Galactic Alliance.'' Then he sat down.

In the same manner the person sitting next to jiun said “Lothal is with you we can offer you the use of our academy” Jr. Governor Jess Wren said

Sen Galbo Sandcha stood up and said “Ryloth has always been committed to the fight for freedom no matter the era, no matter the enemy, no matter the odds, so it is my honor to join this fight!”

The Wookie representative Gov Uyalr said via his protocol droid “While Kashyyk cannot risk, joining the Alliance, we will not stop out people and ships from join you.”

The Alderaanian Governor Meta Yarla said “Our people are still rebuilding, and cannot risk join the war, I am sorry but we will not join.”

Gov Caltrab of Mon Cala said “We are honored to join the fight, and if we die, we die in good company.”

Calli Gala the Naboo Jr, Governor said “The People of Naboo cannot give much but we can scrounge up a few fighters and pilots”

Representative Iuke Malo said “Fondor is grateful for the New Republic; however, we need a stronger show of force before we join, but we will demonstrate a show of good faith, our government has authorised the use of several old Cruisers.”

Trainer Untalln said sadly “I just received news that Kuat has been invaded, but Kuat is with you for as long we can”

Hill Soldethen said “Even though I advised against it, Corellia will join the Galactic Alliance.”

Trench Hiltu said “Raxus will not join the Galactic Alliance.”

“The Galactic Alliance will meet in three days, The coordinates will be transferred as soon as possible.” Phalxes said. “And thank you,”

0 notes

oldguardaudio · 3 years ago

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Fact-Checking 6 Claims at Senate Democrats’ Voting Law Hearing

Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / July 19, 2021

"Spurred on by the big lie, these same actors are now rolling back voting rights in a way that is unprecedented in size and scope since the Jim Crow era,” Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., testifies Monday during a Senate Rules Committee hearing on Georgia's new voting law in Atlanta. (Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Senate Democrats took their push to nullify state election laws on the road Monday, holding a “field hearing” in Atlanta to attack Georgia’s recent election reforms and promote their bill to eliminate voter ID and other requirements.

Only Democrat members of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee showed up to question witnesses, also all Democrats.

Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Republicans had the opportunity to call a witness to defend the Georgia law, but didn’t request one. A spokesperson for the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., didn’t respond Monday to The Daily Signal’s emails and phone inquiries on this point.

The hearing, held at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, included numerous assertions, some true, but others debunked in previous fact checks.

Here’s a look at six big claims from the hearing in Atlanta, which Democrats titled “Protecting the Vote.”

1. ‘Hurdles’ to Ballot Drop Boxes

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., isn’t a member of the Rules and Administration Committee, but was the first witness in his home state. Warnock, who took office in January, criticized Georgia’s election reform law for “reducing the number of drop boxes where voters can return those ballots.”

Klobuchar jumped in later to say, “If you’re looking for evil, you can find it pretty easily” in the Georgia law.

“Drop-off boxes cannot stay open beyond the time of the early voting,” Klobuchar said, adding, “Some of these voters were working day and night, several jobs, then they can’t go to a drop-off box.”

The fact is that ballot drop boxes weren’t used in Georgia nor in most other states before the 2020 election, which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Georgia election officials provided drop boxes to collect voters’ ballots based on Gov. Brian Kemp’s emergency order to address voting concerns during the pandemic.

But for Senate Bill 202, passed by Georgia lawmakers, officials wouldn’t have to provide drop boxes in future elections. That said, fewer drop boxes will be available as those elections presumably take place without a pandemic.

Also, the new law restricts voting by drop box to hours when early in-person voting is available.

Each county in Georgia must provide at least one drop box under the law. But boxes will have to be located near early-voting sites and be accessible for dropping off absentee ballots when those polling locations are open.

2. ‘Big Lie’

Democrat senators and witnesses argued that the law in Georgia and other election reforms across the United States were prompted by former President Donald Trump’s claim that his election loss in November to President Joe Biden was fraudulent.

“We saw record-breaking voter turnout in our last elections—participation that should have been celebrated—get attacked by craven politicians, and, spurred on by the big lie, these same actors are now rolling back voting rights in a way that is unprecedented in size and scope since the Jim Crow era,” Warnock said.

Biden beat Trump by about 12,000 votes out of 4.9 million cast, according to official final results, to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.

Georgia state Rep. Bill Mitchell, a Democrat and president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, called the November election a major success.

“I define its success not by our candidates’ winning their elections, but by the fact that when you have as many people vote as we did in the 2020 election cycle, with as few problems, with all challenges being dismissed—you have to consider that to be successful,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell later said “The Heritage Foundation and others” were pushing election reform legislation.

The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.

“When you have the highest levels of voter participation, combined with the lowest levels of challenges, why would you want to change that?” Mitchell said.

However, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week reported that digital ballot images show that Fulton County election officials scanned about 200 ballots two times in the November election. Skeptics of the election results argue that apparent double counting is evidence of a need for a closer examination of ballots in Georgia.

The newspaper noted that the discovery was unlikely to change the election results in Georgia. But some conservative commentators, such as Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, expressed concern about the finding.

The duplication of at least 200 ballots is evidence of problems with tallying votes in Georgia, but far from proof that the state’s election results were affected in Biden’s favor.

3. ‘Adequate Polling Locations’

One of the more compelling witnesses was neither a lawmaker nor an activist, but a voter named Jose Segarra. The Air Force veteran told his story of waiting in line for hours.

“I, along with thousands of Georgians, had to wait for hours in order to cast my vote in the 2020 general election,” he said.

“Our government needs to ensure that we have adequate systems and processes in place to allow every eligible voter to cast their ballot without such undue burdens,” Segarra said without specifying federal or state government, adding:

To do this, we need to have an adequate number of polling locations and these locations to be properly resourced and open for as expansive a period as possible. Voters should have the opportunity to vote on Saturdays and Sundays. Lots of people work on Saturdays, so Sundays need to be an option. It would also make it much easier for some people to vote if Election Day were a federal holiday.

Georgia’s new election law does provide “additional voting equipment or poll workers to precincts containing more than 2,000 electors.”

The law added early voting on two Saturdays and one Sunday that previously were not available to Georgians, stating:

Requiring two Saturday voting days and two optional Sunday voting days will dramatically increase the total voting hours for voters across the state of Georgia, and all electors in Georgia will have access to multiple opportunities to vote in person on the weekend for the first time.

Under the new law, counties in Georgia have flexibility to open early voting for as long as from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum.

Previously, some rural counties didn’t provide for early voting for eight hours on a workday, The Washington Post reported.

Thus, the law actually expanded hours for early voting.

4. ‘Mass Challenges’

Warnock announced new legislation he is co-sponsoring with fellow Senate Democrats Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Jon Ossoff of Georgia. Ossoff, like Warnock, took office in January after defeating a Republican incumbent in a special election.

The legislation, called the Preventing Election Subversion Act, seeks to prevent the overturning of elections based on mass challenges or by legislators controlling the makeup of a state board of elections.

The proposal is tied directly to provisions that Warnock said are in SB 202, the basis of Georgia’s new law.

Warnock said Georgia’s law would let “a single person make unlimited, mass challenges to the ability of other Georgians to vote, clearing the way for baseless accusations.”

The language of the law does make it more difficult for government officials to outright dismiss a complaint about election procedures and ballots. Specifically, it says:

Any elector [voter] of a county or municipality may challenge the qualifications of any person applying to register to vote in the county or municipality and may challenge the qualifications of any elector of the county or municipality whose name appears on the list of electors. Such challenges shall be in writing and shall specify distinctly the grounds of the challenge.

There shall not be a limit on the number of persons whose qualifications such elector may challenge. Upon such challenge being filed with the [local] board of registrars, the registrars shall set a hearing on such challenge within ten business days after serving notice of the challenge.

As another justification for his legislation, Warnock argued that Georgia’s new law “allows partisan officials in the state Legislature to control our state board of elections and take over local election administrators, and it allows them to engage in these takeovers even as the votes are still being cast.”

The Associated Press reported in March that under the new law, the Legislature does indeed have an increased role in the State Election Board, but it can’t overturn elections at a whim, as Warnock seemed to suggest.

Georgia’s elected secretary of state has a diminished role in elections under the new law. This is the basis for Democrats’ claim that partisan politics could play a role.

“The secretary of state will no longer chair the State Election Board, becoming instead a non-voting ex-officio member,” Georgia Public Broadcasting explained in a report. “The new chair would be nonpartisan but appointed by a majority of the state House and Senate. The chair would not be allowed to have been a candidate, participate in a political party organization or campaign or [have] made campaign contributions for two years prior to being appointed.”

5. ‘Rushed Through’

Georgia state Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Dunwoody, said the Republican-sponsored law lacked adequate input from Democrats in the state Legislature.

“Election bills were rushed through without public input and voted out along party lines,” Harrell said. “Questions addressed to bill authors by minority members were frequently answered dishonestly and disrespectfully. … In the nine years, I have served in the [Georgia] General Assembly, I have never seen such blatant disregard for the legislative process as I did with the passage of SB 202.”

Previous media reporting shows the legislation moved quickly through the Legislature to Kemp’s desk. Questioning this speed has been a consistent line among critics, including the U.S. Justice Department.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who is leading the federal lawsuit against Georgia’s voting law, has said the bill was “a rushed process that departed from normal practice and procedure.”

“The version of the bill that passed the state Senate … was three pages long,” Clarke said in June during a press conference announcing the litigation. “Days later, the bill ballooned into over 90 pages in the House. The House held less than two hours of floor debate on the newly inflated SB 202 before Gov. Kemp signed it into law the same day.”

6. Water Bottles, Ballot Harvesting

Warnock also complained that Georgia’s election law is “making it harder for community organizations to assist voters, whether from requesting a ballot to just handing out a bottle of water.”

The law prohibits campaign workers from distributing food, drink, or anything else of value to waiting voters, and from setting up a table within 150 feet of the building or 25 feet of a voter.

However, the law specifically allows official poll workers, as opposed to campaign workers, to provide water to voters.

As for the “community organizations” Warnock cited, the law prohibits ballot harvesting, a controversial practice in which political operatives obtain large numbers of ballots from election officials and then deliver the ballots to those officials once they’ve been voted.

The practice has been used to achieve fraud in several elections, among them a North Carolina congressional race later overturned in court and a Texas mayor’s race that led to multiple indictments.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected] and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

We’re still months away from the first nominating contest in Iowa, but I’m still regularly checking in with early-state Democratic Party activists to see what the party’s most engaged members think about the pre-primary race so far. In this installment, more activists are saying they have chosen a candidate to support, and some are now considering candidates who were previously flying under the radar. We’re also getting a better sense of some of the divisions within the party by asking activists who they won’t support.

As part of my ongoing book research, I’ve been in touch with roughly 60 Democratic activists in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and Washington, D.C.,1 asking them about their preferences for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. About 35 people from the respondent pool participated in each wave of interviews. I’m interested in learning about whether these activists are committed to a candidate or whom they’re considering if they still haven’t made up their mind.

This time around, I also asked respondents who they didn’t want as the nominee. After all, when a party is deciding between candidates, it needs to decide not only who is broadly liked, but also who is considered unacceptable by many factions within the party. I’m trying to get a sense of which candidates look like traditional party nominees (broadly, if not enthusiastically, accepted by most wings of the party) and which look like factional candidates (the enthusiastic choice of some segments of the party but highly problematic for others).

At this stage, most of the activists I spoke to are considering at least a few candidates, but I did see a modest increase in the number committed to just one candidate: the total who’d made up their mind jumped from nine in February to 11 in April. (Since each wave of interviews has gotten responses from a different subset of respondents, it’s important to keep in mind that some of these shifts may reflect changes in the respondent pool rather than changes in opinion.) Among the group of activists who’ve decided on one candidate, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was tied for the lead, with four activists backing him, essentially unchanged from the previous round of interviews.2 New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who now shares the lead, went from one declared supporter in February to four in April. And still-undeclared candidate former Vice President Joe Biden actually lost at least one supporter.3 A woman who had been backing Biden told me that her concerns over his unwanted touching of women caused her to re-evaluate her decision. While she said that she is still considering Biden, she is now considering other candidates too.

I also asked the 23 interviewees who were not committed to a single candidate to tell me which candidates they’re considering supporting.4 In the table below, I combined the number of respondents considering each candidate with the number committed to each candidate to show their total support.

California Sen. Kamala Harris continues to lead the pack even though no one in this group of activists has committed to her yet.

Which candidates early-state activists are considering

Share of respondents who said they were considering a candidate or had already committed to support a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary

activists considering supporting Candidate Dec. 2018 Feb. 2019 April Harris 61%

–

54%

–

53%

–

Booker 45

–

Warren 24

–

Buttigieg —

–

Klobuchar 34

–

Gillibrand 21

–

Sanders 29

–

Biden 39

–

McAuliffe 5

–

Castro —

–

O’Rourke 34

–

Hickenlooper 21

–

Bennet —

–

—

–

Inslee —

–

—

–

Gabbard —

–

Yang —

–

—

–

Delaney 16

–

Source: Seth Masket, “Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020”

And while the top tier of candidates looks similar to how it looked in February, there’s a notable new addition — South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He has nearly doubled his support among the activists I interviewed — 17 percent of respondents (six people) were thinking about him two months ago, but now 29 percent (10 people) have him on their list of candidates they’re considering. This is evidence that the national boomlet for the mayor may be more than a media phenomenon — at least some influential activists who come in close contact with the candidates themselves are taking him seriously.

The activists I’ve been speaking to seem to have different candidate preferences than Democratic voters more broadly, at least according to recent polling results. The activists, for example, rank Biden and Sanders as middle-tier candidates, with only around a quarter of those I interviewed considering them, whereas wider polls have those candidates leading the field. Conversely, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is not getting overwhelming support in recent polls, is among the top three candidate choices among the activists I’ve interviewed. These differences show how these party activists — a small, self-selected group, but one that is influential in determining who makes it to these nominating contests — diverge in their preferences from primary voters as a whole. We won’t know for some time whether activists’ power over the election process is enough to sway voters toward activists’ preferred candidates.

As I mentioned earlier, I also asked respondents one new question in April’s survey: Which candidates did they not want to see become the nominee?5 Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her many controversial stances, like her defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and her past social conservatism on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is at the top of the list. But Sanders was a close second, with half of respondents saying they do not want to see him become the nominee. Remember, Sanders also has one of the largest numbers of committed supporters, so his candidacy looks to be pretty factional within the party, suggesting that his potential for growth may be limited.

But although a few candidates drew strong opposition, many supporters of the top-tier candidates were comfortable with the possibility of other top-tier candidates getting the nomination. About one-fifth of people who were at least considering Booker, for example, would have a problem with Warren or Sen. Amy Klobuchar as the nominee. Sanders, however, is deeply unpopular among supporters of just about all the other top-tier candidates — about half to three-quarters of activists who supported one of the eight candidates who were ranked the highest in the first table would not want to see Sanders win the nomination. Biden, too, is unpopular among supporters of Booker, Warren and Sanders, again garnering around 50 percent opposition. Most Sanders supporters, meanwhile, were opposed to Klobuchar, Biden and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Again, it’s good to not get ahead of ourselves — we’re still more than nine months away from any actual voting in this contest. My June survey will come out shortly before the first primary debates and should provide a sense of how these activists and others like them have helped shape the field prior to its most visible event yet.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Seth Masket

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Who Is Ahead In The Polls Republicans Or Democrats

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/who-is-ahead-in-the-polls-republicans-or-democrats/

Who Is Ahead In The Polls Republicans Or Democrats

Why Were The Polls Off Pollsters Have Some Early Theories

Why is Democrats’ advantage ahead of the midterms shrinking?

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A couple watches the election results at a Republican watch party at Huron Valley Guns in New Hudson, Mich. People watching the results come in saw President Trump outperforming his position in preelection polls.hide caption

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At some point on election night 2020, as CNN’s “KEY RACE ALERTS” rolled in and the map turned red and blue, things started to feel eerily like election night 2016.

Specifically, it was that déjà vu feeling of “Huh, maybe the polls were off.” It was a feeling that grew as states such as Iowa and Ohio swung even harder for President Trump than polls seemed to indicate, key counties were tighter than expected and Republicans picked up one toss-up House seat after another.

Yes, Joe Biden ended up winning, as forecasters predicted. But polls overestimated his support in multiple swing states not to mention the fact that Democrats both lost House seats and didn’t win the Senate outright, despite being favored to do the opposite.

It will likely be months until pollsters can study this year’s misses thoroughly . However, for now, pollsters have some educated guesses about what may have thrown polls off.

Forty Percent Of Young Americans Expect Their Lives To Be Better As A Result Of The Biden Administration; Many More Feel A Part Of Bidens America Than Trumps

By a margin of 2:1, young Americans expect their lives to become better under the Biden administration, rather than worse ; 25% tell us that they dont expect much of a difference. We found significant differences based on race and ethnicity.

Whites: 30% better, 28% worse

Blacks: 54% better, 4% worse

Hispanics: 51% better, 10% worse

Forty-six percent of young Americans agreed that they feel included in Bidens America, 24% disagreed . With the exception of young people living in rural America, at least a plurality indicated they felt included. This stands in contrast to Trumps America. Forty-eight percent reported that they did not feel included in Trumps America, while 27% indicated that they felt included . The only major subgroup where a plurality or more felt included in Trumps America were rural Americans.;

39% of Whites feel included in Bidens America, 32% do not ; 35% of Whites feel included in Trumps America, 41% do not .

61% of Blacks feel included in Bidens America, 13% do not ; 16% of Blacks feel included in Trumps America, 60% do not .

51% of Hispanics feel included in Bidens America, 12% do not ; 17% of Hispanics feel included in Trumps America, 55% do not .

Do Californians Want To Remove Gavin Newsom From Office

An updating average of 2021 California gubernatorial recall election polls, accounting for each poll’s quality, recency and sample size

A chart showing the polling averages since July 14 for whether to keep California Gov. Gavin Newsom in office or remove him, with dots representing each poll. Keep is polling at an average of 56.2 percent, and Remove is polling at an average of 41.6 percent.

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