H4A News Clips 6.26.15
H4A News Clips
June 26, 2015
All three networks reported on the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have all claimed that they would repeal ACA if elected to office. ABC and NBC reported that Univision has decided to take the Miss USA Pageant off the air after Donald Trump’s derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants. Trump claims Univision apologized to him yesterday morning, but Univision has called his comments insulting to immigrants. Trump has threatened to sue them for dropping the pageant from their lineup.
LAST NIGHT’S EVENING NEWS........................................................................ 1
TODAY’S KEY STORIES..................................................................................... 5
State Dept. Gets Libya Emails That Hillary Clinton Didn’t Hand Over // NYT // Michael Schmidt – June 25, 2015 5
State Department says 15 e-mails missing from pages Hillary Clinton provided // WaPo // Karen DeYoung – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
SOCIAL MEDIA................................................................................................. 8
Deidre Walsh (6/25/15, 10:29 am) - Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions says he plans to introduce a bill to repeal & replace Obamacare next week -- the first of MANY coming.............................................................................. 8
Generation Forward (6/25/15, 3:33 pm) - #TBT when @BernieSanders caved under pressure from the NRA and didn't support the Brady Bill http://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/whos-afraid-of-the-nra-vermonts-congressmen-thats-who/Content?oid=2435066 …..................................................................................................................................... 8
David Chalina (6/25/15, 5:01 pm) - CNN/WMUR/New Hampshire GOP primary poll #'s: Bush 16%, Trump 11%, Paul 9%, Walker 8%, Fiorina 6%, Rubio 6%, Carson 5%, Christie 5%.................................................................................... 9
Dan Merica (6/25/15, 4:10 pm) - Clinton campaign, via @Ann_OLeary, fundraising off how Bush, Huckabee and Rubio responded to the SCOTUS decision........................................................................................................................... 9
Phil Elliott (6/25/15, 2:19 pm) - Pro-Rubio super PAC up with first 60-second ad. Topic: a nuke deal with Iran. Includes cameo for PM Netanyahu: https://youtu.be/mqqZfDpFofg................................................................................. 9
HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE............................................................................. 9
Hillary Clinton’s ‘All Lives Matter’ Remark Stirs Backlash // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015......... 9
New Hampshire Poll Shows Bernie Sanders in Dead Heat With Hillary Clinton // NYT // Katharine Seelye – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................. 10
If Hillary wins, would she have to give up this former first lady perk? // WaPo // Al Kamen – June 25, 2015 11
State Department Says Hillary Clinton’s Email Disclosure Was Incomplete // WSJ // Byron Tau – June 25, 2015 12
Clinton Didn’t Turn Over All Work E-Mail to State Department // Bloomberg // Billy House – June 25, 2015 13
State Department says it can't locate 15 Hillary Clinton emails // Fox News – June 26, 2015....................... 14
State Dept.: 15 emails missing from Clinton cache // AP // Bradley Klapper & Matthew Lee – June 25, 2015 16
State Dept.: Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over all Libya emails // Politico // Rachel Bade – June 25, 2015.. 18
Why the Clinton-Bush rivalry is really a food fight // Politico // Kate Bennett – June 25, 2015................... 19
Billionaire GOP donor deletes ‘lesbian’ joke about Hillary Clinton // Politico // Annie Karni – June 25, 2015 21
State Department calls Clinton's email records incomplete // Reuters // Lesley Wroughton – June 25, 2015 22
Report: Clinton Libya emails surface // USA Today // Michael Winter – June 25, 2015............................... 23
The Gender Subplot // National Journal // Charlie Cook – June 26, 2015...................................................... 24
State Department: ‘Limited’ Number of Hillary Clinton Emails Are Missing // National Journal // Ben Geman – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................. 25
Hillary Clinton to Anti-Obamacare Republicans: 'Move On' // National Journal // Eric Garcia – June 25, 2015 27
Hillary Clinton won’t have to fight Obama’s battles on health care // MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald – June 25, 2015 28
Hillary Clinton’s big diss to Bill de Blasio // Page Six // Ian Mohr – June 25, 2015......................................... 29
Sid Blumenthal’s Israel Michegas // The Daily Beast // James Kirchick – June 26, 2015............................. 30
Google says Hillary Clinton will be the next president // CNET // Chris Matyszczyk – June 25, 2015........ 32
Fifteen Libya Emails Missing From Clinton Cache // Sky News US Team – June 26, 2015........................... 33
Clinton Lawyer, Soros Back Anti-Voter ID Lawsuits // Washington Free Beacon // Joe Schoffstall - June 26, 2015 35
Karma Chameleon in Chief // Washington Free Beacon // Matthew Continetti - June 26, 2015................ 36
Moroccan Government Lobbyists Ready for Hillary // Free Beacon // Lachlan Markay – June 25, 2015 39
How Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Signifies A New Era For Women’s Rights // Elite Daily // Aisha Moktadier – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................. 40
American schools are 'more segregated than they were in the 1960s,' says Hillary Clinton // Politifact // Linda Qiu – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................... 42
Benghazi panel says Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over all Libya emails, despite her claims // The Washington Times // Stephen Dinan - June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................... 48
Bill Maher: Hillary plays ‘hide-and seek’ while Putin allows tough marathon interviews // The Washington Times // Douglas Earnst – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................. 50
State Dept: Clinton did not turn over some emails // CNN // Elise Labott – June 25, 2015........................ 50
FNC’s ‘Special Report’: Schweizer’s Clinton Cash Scandals Cause Hillary to Drop in Polls // Breitbart News – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................. 52
Bernie Sanders closes on Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Democrats poll // The Guardian // Ben Jacobs – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................. 53
Hillary wraps up New York fundraising swing with private shopping trip to ultra-expensive Bergdorf Goodman one day after boasting about her plans to help 'poor people, people of color, and the elderly' // The Daily Mail – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 53
Hillary Clinton's lead over N.H. Democrats dwindling, poll finds // CNN // Jennifer Agiesta – June 25, 2015 55
In Hillary Clinton’s journey, a history of Jewish kinship // J Weekly // Ron Kampeas – June 25, 2015..... 57
Hillary Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, voters say, but is still the Dem frontrunner // Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................... 59
Hillary Clinton's Newest Consultant Was A Major Keystone Lobbyist // HuffPo // Sam Stein – June 25, 2015 60
Hillary Clinton Has Hired a Former Keystone Pipeline Lobbyist // The New Republic // Rebecca Leber – June 21, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................... 61
Hillary celebrates ruling: 'Yes!' // The Hill // David McCabe – June 25, 2015................................................ 63
Election 2016: 'Chelsea's Mom' Is Hillary Clinton's Fan Love Song // International Business Times // Ginger Gibson – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................. 63
Hillary Clinton Wears Epic '90s Outfit in TBT Pic Congratulating Supreme Court's Obamacare Decision // E! // Brett Malec – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................. 64
OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE................................................. 65
DECLARED.............................................................................................................................. 65
O’MALLEY............................................................................................................................ 65
Here’s what climate hawk Martin O’Malley would do as president // Grist // Ben Adler – June 25, 2015 65
SANDERS............................................................................................................................. 68
A pro-O’Malley super PAC goes after Sanders on guns // WaPo // John Wagner – June 25, 2015............ 68
Claire McCaskill, a major Clinton ally, unloads on Bernie Sanders // Politico // Daniel Strauss – June 25, 2015 69
Bernie Sanders Calls For 65% Top Estate Tax Rate // Forbes // Ashley Ebeling – June 25, 2015............... 70
For first time, O'Malley-linked group goes after Sanders // CNN // Dan Merica – June 25, 2015.............. 71
Pro-Martin O’Malley Super PAC Targets Bernie Sanders // TIME // Sam Frizell – June 25, 2015............. 73
MARTIN O’MALLEY AD HITS NOT HILLARY CLINTON — BUT BERNIE SANDERS? // First Look // Lee Fang – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................. 74
Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling // Bloomberg News // John McCormick – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................. 75
Bernie Sanders Responds to Claire McCaskill Attack: This Is a First // Bloomberg News // Arit John – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 78
Sanders: My Views Resonating With Women as Campaign Keeps Rising // Bloomberg News // Alexa Papadopoulos – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................. 80
This new anti–Bernie Sanders video shows Martin O'Malley is getting desperate // VOX // Andrew Prokap – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................................................................. 80
Bernie Sanders joins push for DC statehood // The Hill // Tim Devaney – June 25, 2015........................... 81
UNDECLARED........................................................................................................................ 82
WEBB................................................................................................................................... 82
Jim Webb Criticized for Comments on Confederate Flag // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015...... 82
Bernie Sanders Attacked For Not Being Liberal Enough // The Weekly Standard // Michael Warren – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 83
OTHER................................................................................................................................. 83
Terry McAuliffe's other job // Politico // Gabriel Debenedetti – June 26, 2015............................................ 83
Democratic civil war ends, for now, as House approves final trade measures // WaPo // Paul Kane – June 25, 2015 86
Democratic Field Champions Health Care as Human Right // Real Clear Politics // Andrew Desiderio – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 89
GOP................................................................................................................. 90
DECLARED............................................................................................................................... 91
BUSH..................................................................................................................................... 91
Jeb swipes at Obama over Iran deal // Politico // Adam Lerner – June 25, 2015.......................................... 91
Jeb Bush cast as 'villain' in GOP fight for recognition // CNN // Ashley Killough – June 25, 2015................ 91
Florida Voter Purge Fiasco May Complicate Jeb Bush's Appeal To Minorities // HuffPo // Scott Conroy – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 93
Jeb Bush, Donald Trump running first and second among 2016 GOP field: poll // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 99
Jeb Bush did not appoint a guardian for a rape victim's fetus, but he fought for one // Politifact // Joshua Gillin – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................................................... 100
Is the poverty rate worse now than it was in the 1970's? // Politifact // Joshua Gillin – June 25, 2015..... 102
Jeb Bush did say women should 'find a husband' to get off welfare -- in 1994 // Politifact // Joshua Gillin – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 103
Political group makes five points about Jeb Bush's record // Politifact // Josh Gillin – June 25, 2015..... 104
Jeb Bush Shakes Money Tree in Manhattan Two More Times // The Observer // Ken Kurson – June 25, 2015 107
For-Profit Charter Operator In Jeb Bush Video Has A Checkered Past // Buzzfeed // Molly Hensley-Clancy – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................................ 109
Pro-Jeb Bush Super PAC runs first online ad in New Hampshire, Iowa // Miami Herald // Patricia Mazzei – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 111
Jeb Bush Leads New Hampshire GOP Poll; Donald Trump in 2nd Place // Latinos Post - June 26, 2015. 111
RUBIO.................................................................................................................................. 112
In N.H., Marco Rubio Is Pressed on Trade and Immigration // NYT // Jeremy Peters – June 25, 2015. 112
Marco Rubio is playing to win The Sheldon Adelson Primary // WaPo // James Hohmann & Elise Viebeck – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................................. 113
Rubio plans early-state ad blitz // Politico // Alex Isenstadt – June 25, 2015................................................. 115
A Canadian idea Rubio likes // Politico // Danny Vinik – June 25, 2015.......................................................... 115
Marco Rubio discusses health care, veterans in NH visit // WMUR 9 // Jennifer Crompton – June 25, 2015 117
First on CNN: Rubio slams Obamacare ruling // CNN // Dana Bash – June 25, 2015................................... 118
Marco Rubio defends courting Koch Brothers in New Hampshire // CNN // Theodore Schleifer – June 25, 2015 119
Marco Rubio Campaign Buys 'Several Million' Dollars' Worth Of Airtime For Ads in Early Primary States // ABC News // Jonathan Karl – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................. 120
Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush vow to continue fighting Obamacare after Supreme Court ruling // Palm Beach Post // George Bennett – June 25, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 120
Marco Rubio gives Obama an ‘F’ on VA issues // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015 121
Rubio Gives Veterans Cool Grenade Stress Balls at New Hampshire Town Hall // Slate // Jeremy Stahl – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 122
Rubio: My luxury yacht 'is cleverly disguised as a fishing boat' // The Hill // Ben Kamisar – June 25, 2015 122
PAUL.................................................................................................................................... 123
Rand Paul slams Obamacare ruling, Warren says too late // The Boston Herald // Joe Dwinell, Zuri Berry, & Chris Cassidy – June 25, 2015............................................................................................................................................. 123
Rand Paul Said to Take on the IRS, Again // Bloomberg News // Richard Rubin – June 25, 2015........... 124
VAT Chance: Rand Paul, Ben Cardin Push to Change Tax Code // Bloomberg News // Richard Rubin – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 126
Rand Paul and AAPS Want to Bring You Liberty.... From Safe Healthcare // HuffPo // Dr. Jason Johnson – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 128
Rand Paul's Courtship With Evangelicals: Will It Be Enough to Win the GOP Primary // The Christian Post // Shane Vander Hart – June 25, 2015.................................................................................................................................... 129
Rand Paul: The Supreme Court ‘Missed An Opportunity Here’ // The Daily Caller // Al Weaver – June 25, 2015 133
CRUZ................................................................................................................................... 134
Ted Cruz Speaks to the Right, Shuns Party Leaders // WSJ // Janet Hook – June 25, 2015..................... 134
Ted Cruz Calls Supreme Court Justices 'Robed Houdinis' Over Obamacare Decision // The National Journal // Marina Koren – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................ 135
Ted Cruz on Obamacare Subsidies Decision: "Supreme Court's Judicial Activism Violating Their Oaths Of Office" // Real Clear Politics // Ian Schwartz – June 25, 2015....................................................................................................... 137
Ted Cruz, angered by Obamacare ruling, tells ‘rogue justices’ to resign and run for Congress // The Washington Times // Seth McLaughlin – June 25, 2015............................................................................................................................. 137
Ted Cruz is bashing John Roberts after years of praising him // Business Insider // Colin Campbell – June 25, 2015 138
GRAHAM............................................................................................................................ 139
Graham Blasts Hillary’s ‘Sleazy’ Associates, State Department Management // Free Beacon // Alana Goodman – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................................ 139
Lindsey Graham Criticizes Hillary Clinton on Equal Pay // Free Beacon // Joe Schoffstall – June 25, 2015 140
How Lindsey Graham Would Defeat the Islamic State // Free Beacon // Daniel Wiser – June 25, 2015 141
SANTORUM........................................................................................................................ 143
Santorum returns focus to culture wars in Iowa speech // The Des Moines Register // William Petroski - June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 143
Rick Santorum: “European Socialist” Obama Believes In Revolutionary Model That Led To Reign Of Terror // Buzzfeed // Christopher Massie – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................... 145
HUCKABEE........................................................................................................................ 146
Huckabee calls court’s health-care ruling an ‘act of judicial tyranny’ // WaPo // Philip Rucker – June 25, 2015 146
Mike Huckabee: 'Donor Class' Pushed Senate Republicans To Approve Obama's Fast-Track Trade Authority // HuffPo // Samantha-Jo Roth – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................... 147
Mike Huckabee: The Supreme Court just issued 'an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny' // Business Insider // Colin Campbell – June 25, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 147
Mike Huckabee: Get government out of veterans’ health care business // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................ 148
CARSON............................................................................................................................. 149
Ben Carson: The Supreme Court Overstepped on Obamacare // TIME // Dr. Ben Carson – June 25, 2015 149
Carson says GOP must offer ‘really appealing’ ObamaCare alternative; Congressman King reacts to ruling // Radio Iowa // O. Kay Henderson – June 25, 2015..................................................................................................................... 150
Ben Carson In 2014: Communists Have “Infiltrated Our Society” // Buzzfeed // Christopher Massie – June 25, 2015......................................................................................................................................................................................... 151
TRUMP................................................................................................................................ 152
Univision Severs Ties With Donald Trump and Beauty Pageants // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015 152
Are Donald Trump’s poll numbers too good to be true? // Politico // Daniel Strauss – June 25, 2015.... 153
Donald Trump Leads All But Bush in New Hampshire // TIME // Phillip Elliott – June 25, 2015.............. 155
Donald Trump says 'hypocrite' Neil Young asked him for money // FOX News – June 25, 2015.............. 156
UNDECLARED....................................................................................................................... 157
WALKER............................................................................................................................. 157
Scott Walker to announce 2016 intentions next month // CBS News // Stephanie Condon – June 25, 2015 157
Corruption Charges Against Walker Are Baseless, Supporters Say // The Daily Beast // Peter Fricke – June 25, 2015......................................................................................................................................................................................... 158
Scott Walker says Barack Obama told Coast Guard global warming is top threat to military and world // Politifact // Tom Kertscher – June 25, 2015......................................................................................................................................... 159
Scott Walker’s Jobs Program Didn’t Work // The Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 25, 2015........... 161
CHRISTIE........................................................................................................................... 165
Chris Christie to Announce Decision on 2016 Campaign // NYT // Nick Corasaniti – June 25, 2015......... 165
Chris Christie to announce 2016 bid as early as next week // Politico // Alex Isenstadt – June 25, 2015 165
JINDAL............................................................................................................................... 167
Bobby Jindal’s identity causes a Twitter storm in India // WaPo // Rama Lakshmi – June 25, 2015........ 167
Indians on social media mock Bobby Jindal candidacy // LA Times // Shashank Bengali – June 25, 2015 167
Bobby Jindal’s fateful choice // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 25, 2015..................................................... 169
Jindal’s Facebook showing matches his lagging poll numbers // McClatchy // David Lightman – June 25, 2015 170
Bobby Jindal presidential bid sparks Twitter mockery // BBC – June 25, 2015............................................ 172
KASICH................................................................................................................................ 173
John Kasich Appeals to Iowa as He Ponders White House Bid // NYT // Trip Gabriel – June 25, 2015.. 173
OTHER................................................................................................................................ 175
GOP insiders expect no harm from Confederate flag controversy // Politico // Kyle Cheney – June 26, 2015 179
Republicans Cite Health Care Ruling in Pushing Candidacies // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015 182
GOP lawmakers: Time to move on from Obamacare repeal // Politico // Manu Raju & Burgess Everett – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 183
The Supreme Court Just Did Republicans a Big Favor // The New Yorker // John Cassidy – June 25, 2015 186
Republicans to fight Obamacare through election campaign despite ruling // Reuters // Susan Cornwell – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 188
After Charleston shootings, poll highlights race dilemma for Republicans // Reuters // John Whitesides – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 190
GOP presidential hopefuls in Colorado for conservative summit - and a marijuana policy grade // The Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – June 25, 2015......................................................................................................................... 191
GOP lawmaker: Blumenthal Benghazi deposition should be released // The Hill // Martin Matishak – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 192
THE LID: Glass Half Full for GOP After Obamacare Decision // NBC News // Carrie Dann & Andrew Rafferty – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................................ 193
Supreme Court Lets GOP Candidates Off the Hook on Obamacare // The Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 193
GOP chairman: Only way to fix healthcare is to elect Republicans // The Hill // Ben Kamisar – June 25, 2015 195
GOP Field Renews "Repeal Obamacare" Battle Cry // Real Clear Politics // Caitlin Huey-Burns – June 25, 2015 196
Republican Presidential Candidates Blast Supreme Court Ruling // The Daily Caller // Alex Pappas – June 25, 2015 198
Conservatives Unleash Fury at One-Time Hero John Roberts // Bloomberg News // Sahil Kapur – June 25, 2015 199
Republicans Go On Obamacare Offensive: 'A Reckless Law' // The Weekly Standard // Daniel Halper – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 201
OTHER 2016 NEWS....................................................................................... 202
Obamacare ruling: Six takeaways for 2016 // Politico // Glenn Thrush & Kyle Cheney – June 25, 2015. 202
GOP, Democrats seek campaign cash from Obamacare ruling // USA Today // Fredreka Schouten – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................................................................ 205
Campaign swag and “Made in America” in the 2016 election // CBS News // Jenna Sakwa – June 25, 2015 206
TOP NEWS..................................................................................................... 207
DOMESTIC............................................................................................................................. 207
Obamacare Ruling May Have Just Killed State-Based Exchanges // NYT // Margot Sanger-Katz – June 25, 2015 207
Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling benefits way more people in red counties than blue // WaPo // Philip Bump – June 25, 2015......................................................................................................................................................................... 209
Supreme Court Rules That Disparate Impact Claims Are Allowed Under Fair Housing Act // Buzzfeed // Chris Geidner – June 25, 2015................................................................................................................................................................ 210
INTERNATIONAL.................................................................................................................. 211
Putin Breaks Silence With Call to Obama // NYT // Peter Baker – June 25, 2015......................................... 211
ISIS Attacks Two Towns in Northern Syria // NYT // Ben Hubbard – June 25, 2015.................................. 212
Palestinians press International Criminal Court to charge Israel // WaPo // William Booth – June 25, 2015 214
OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS................................................................... 216
A Bush vs. a Clinton? // WSJ // Daniel Henninger – June 25, 2015................................................................. 216
Hillary Clinton has to attack Bernie Sanders // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 25, 2015.......................... 218
It's Official -- Bernie Sanders Has Overtaken Hillary Clinton In the Hearts and Minds of Democrats // HuffPo // H.A. Goodman – June 25, 2015........................................................................................................................................ 220
State Dept. Gets Libya Emails That Hillary Clinton Didn’t Hand Over // NYT // Michael Schmidt – June 25, 2015
The State Department said on Thursday that 15 emails sent or received by Hillary Rodham Clinton were missing from records that she has turned over, raising new questions about whether she deleted work-related emails from the private account she used exclusively while in office.
The disclosure appeared to open the door for Republicans on Capitol Hill to get more deeply involved in the issue. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who is running for president, said he planned to send a series of questions to the State Department about the missing emails and about why it allowed her to use the personal account.
Republicans said that the State Department’s statement was likely to increase pressure on the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, to subpoena the server in Mrs. Clinton’s home that housed the account.
Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire on Monday. Sidney Blumenthal, a close confidant of Mrs. Clinton, turned over emails about Libya to a House committee.Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton’s Confidant, Turns Over Memos on LibyaJUNE 15, 2015
Mrs. Clinton has said that she gave the State Department about 50,000 pages of emails that she deemed to be related to her work as secretary of state and deleted roughly the same number. She said the messages she deleted were personal, relating to topics like yoga, family vacations and her mother’s funeral.
Her longtime confidant and adviser Sidney Blumenthal, responding two weeks ago to a subpoena from the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, gave it dozens of emails he had exchanged with Mrs. Clinton when she was in office. Mr. Blumenthal did not work at the State Department at the time, but he routinely provided her with intelligence memos about Libya, some with dubious information, which Mrs. Clinton circulated to her deputies.
State Department officials then crosschecked the emails from Mr. Blumenthal with the ones Mrs. Clinton had handed over and discovered that she had not provided nine of them and portions of six others.
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, who is running for president, said that she had given the State Department “over 55,000 pages of materials,” including “all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal.”
The chairman of the House committee, Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, said that many of the emails that Mrs. Clinton had not handed over showed that “she was soliciting and regularly corresponding with Sidney Blumenthal, who was passing unvetted intelligence information about Libya from a source with a financial interest in the country.”
“It just so happens these emails directly contradict her public statement that the messages from Blumenthal were unsolicited,” he said. Mr. Blumenthal identified the source of his information as Tyler Drumheller, a former high-ranking C.I.A. official, according to a person with knowledge of his testimony to the Benghazi panel. Mr. Drumheller was part of a group that sought to do business in Libya.
Supporters of Mrs. Clinton have argued that the committee’s mission has crept far beyond its original scope: to investigate the Benghazi attacks, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Republican committee members have said that they are within their right to look into her email use because the resolution that created the panel directed them to examine how the administration complied with previous inquiries into the attacks. Mrs. Clinton’s emails relating to the attacks were not handed over to any of the panels conducting those inquiries.
Other panels in Congress may consider investigating the matter. Mr. Graham, who oversees a Senate subcommittee with sway over the State Department’s budget, said that the department “seems to have a system that is not working very well” in regards to its production of documents to Congress.
“I’m going to ask them whether they think Mrs. Clinton has handed over everything she should and what they are going to do about it,” he said. “And if they give me runaround responses, we’ll drag them up on Capitol Hill and make them answer these questions in public.”
While the State Department acknowledged that it did not have several of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, it also told the Benghazi committee that it had not turned over other messages of hers. The department said that it had not done so because the contents of those messages fell outside the requests made by the committee.
“The State Department is working diligently to review and publish the 55,000 pages of emails we received from former Secretary Clinton,” it said in a statement.
That statement is unlikely to satisfy the committee, which believes it has been clear in its requests. Members of the panel have contended that the State Department has withheld documents to protect Mrs. Clinton and grind the investigation to a halt. State Department officials have said that one of the reasons it has taken so long to produce documents is that the department’s record-keeping system is cumbersome. They have also said that the committee has not been specific enough in its requests.
State Department says 15 e-mails missing from pages Hillary Clinton provided // WaPo // Karen DeYoung – June 25, 2015
The State Department said Thursday that it could not locate “all or part” of 15 e-mails provided last week to the House Select Committee on Benghazi by Sidney Blumenthal from his exchanges with then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who has raised repeated questions about whether Clinton covered up her activities related to the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, called the State Department disclosure “significant and troubling.”
It was the first indication that some 55,000 pages of e-mails from a private server Clinton used while in office were not a complete record of her work-related correspondence, and the latest turn in what has become a contentious political battle pitting committee Republicans against Clinton and committee Democrats, who have charged Gowdy with trying to undermine her presidential campaign.
When the existence of the private server was revealed, Clinton said she had discarded “personal” e-mails and gave the rest to the State Department. The department then culled about 300 e-mails related to Benghazi in response to a committee subpoena. Many were from Blumenthal, a former Clinton White House aide and a close friend, who forwarded what he said were inside intelligence reports from sources with access to the Libyan government between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which were publicly released last month, shed no new light on the Benghazi attack.
The committee then subpoenaed Blumenthal, who appeared for a closed-door deposition last week. He also supplied the committee with additional Libya-related e-mails that Gowdy said at the time might not have been among those culled by the State Department.
In response to a committee query, Gowdy said in a statement Thursday, “the State Department has informed the Select Committee that Secretary Clinton has failed to turn over all her Benghazi and Libya related records. This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton’s self-selected public record.
“This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee’s work,” he said, and “conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record.”
An official at State, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules imposed by the department, said there were “a limited number of instances — 15 — in which we could not locate all or part of the content of a document from [Blumenthal’s] production within the tens of thousands of e-mails she gave us. . . . The substance of those 15 e-mails is not relevant to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi.”
At the same time, the official said, some of the documents Clinton had already turned over “do not appear” in Blumenthal’s “production to the committee.”
Deidre Walsh (6/25/15, 10:29 am) - Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions says he plans to introduce a bill to repeal & replace Obamacare next week -- the first of MANY coming
Generation Forward (6/25/15, 3:33 pm) - #TBT when @BernieSanders caved under pressure from the NRA and didn't support the Brady Bill http://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/whos-afraid-of-the-nra-vermonts-congressmen-thats-who/Content?oid=2435066 …
David Chalina (6/25/15, 5:01 pm) - CNN/WMUR/New Hampshire GOP primary poll #'s: Bush 16%, Trump 11%, Paul 9%, Walker 8%, Fiorina 6%, Rubio 6%, Carson 5%, Christie 5%
Dan Merica (6/25/15, 4:10 pm) - Clinton campaign, via @Ann_OLeary, fundraising off how Bush, Huckabee and Rubio responded to the SCOTUS decision.
Phil Elliott (6/25/15, 2:19 pm) - Pro-Rubio super PAC up with first 60-second ad. Topic: a nuke deal with Iran. Includes cameo for PM Netanyahu: https://youtu.be/mqqZfDpFofg
HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE
Hillary Clinton’s ‘All Lives Matter’ Remark Stirs Backlash // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015
Hillary Rodham Clinton is facing backlash for saying that “all lives matter” in an African-American church in Missouri on Tuesday, offending some who feel that she is missing the point of the “black lives matter” mantra.
Mrs. Clinton’s remarks at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo. — only a few miles north of Ferguson, where a black teenager was shot by a white police officer last August — came during a broader discussion of civil rights in America.
She was talking about how a disproportionate number of young people of color are out of school and out of work and, explaining that everyone needs a “chance and a champion,” she recalled how her mother was abandoned as a teenager and went on to work as a maid.
“What kept you going?” Mrs. Clinton remembered asking her mother. “Her answer was very simple. Kindness along the way from someone who believed she mattered. All lives matter.”
The remark caused a stir on social media, with some African-Americans on Twitter suggesting that Mrs. Clinton had lost their votes.
The Rev. Renita Lamkin, who was in the audience at the event, told NPR that Mrs. Clinton’s comment did not go unnoticed.
“That blew a lot of support that she may have been able to engender here,” she said.
The phrase “black lives matter” has become a rallying cry in the last year for demonstrators amid a spate of episodes around the country, including the 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, where white police officers have been accused of using excessive force against black suspects.
Judith Butler, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, summed up the frustration with the use of “all lives matter” in The Times in January.
“When some people rejoin with ‘All Lives Matter’ they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue,” she wrote. “It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve.”
Mrs. Clinton has not been opposed to using the phrase in the past, declaring that “yes, black lives matter” at a gala in New York last year.
The controversy comes as Mrs. Clinton has sought to address racial issues in a more direct manner than she was able to in 2007, when she was running against someone who would go on to become the first black president.
Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who is black, defended Mrs. Clinton and said that her remarks on Tuesday should be taken in the context that she was discussing her mother.
New Hampshire Poll Shows Bernie Sanders in Dead Heat With Hillary Clinton // NYT // Katharine Seelye – June 25, 2015
The next time Hillary Rodham Clinton visits New Hampshire, she need not look over her shoulder to find Bernie Sanders; the Vermont Senator is running right alongside her in a statistical dead heat for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, according to a CNN/WMUR poll released on Thursday.
The poll shows Mrs. Clinton drawing 43 percent of likely Democratic primary voters compared to 35 percent for Mr. Sanders, but with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points, the race is a statistical tie.
While Mrs. Clinton has been enormously popular in New Hampshire, her favorable ratings have dropped almost 20 points since February, while Mr. Sanders’s have been climbing. And his negatives are lower than hers. So their net favorability ratings (favorable minus unfavorable) are now equal, at 55 percent.
In her favor, however, is that most voters appear to view Mrs. Clinton as by far the stronger leader, and as having the personal characteristics that are most presidential. She also trounces Mr. Sanders on her perceived ability to handle important issues, with more voters saying she is best able to handle the economy, terrorism, trade and health care.
Working against her is the hefty 28 percent who view her as the “least honest.”
Working to Mr. Sanders’s advantage: Most voters believe he “best represents Democrats like yourself” and “cares the most about people like you.” The one issue that voters said he was better able to handle than Mrs. Clinton was dealing with “big banks and corporations.”
The poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, interviewed 1,010 voters from June 18 to 24. The margin of sampling error for the entire poll was plus or minus three percentage points, but for the 360 likely Democratic primary voters who were interviewed, it was plus or minus five percentage points.
A Suffolk University poll last week also found Mr. Sanders making headway against Mrs. Clinton, trailing her by 10 percentage points, just outside that poll’s margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.
If Hillary wins, would she have to give up this former first lady perk? // WaPo // Al Kamen – June 25, 2015
There will doubtless be all manner of novel situations to deal with if Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.
One question will be whether The Kennedy Center will have its first male honorary chair on the center’s board of trustees. The six current honorary chairs are, by tradition, the current and former first ladies: Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan and Rosalynn Carter.
So would Bill Clinton, as First Gent, become a member of the board?
Center spokesman Michael Solomon, in response to our inquiry, e-mailed: “We have had a long tradition at the Kennedy Center of inviting each First Spouse to be an Honorary Chair of the Kennedy Center and we are honored by their participation. We do not expect to alter that tradition at any time in the future.”
But then would this mean another first? A husband and wife team on the board at the same time?
Eventually, but not immediately, one former Obama White House lawyer told us. It would seem Hillary Clinton would probably have to give up her chair at the center while she was president. It could be a conflict of interest and the general principle is that the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t take on side government tasks.
On the other hand, if Jeb! wins, then first lady Columba Bush would be asked to be an honorary chair, which would mean that, for the first time, three people from the same family would be honorary chairs.
It’s only an honorary thing with no real responsibility. But you’re guaranteed good seats.
State Department Says Hillary Clinton’s Email Disclosure Was Incomplete // WSJ // Byron Tau – June 25, 2015
The State Department said Thursday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over at least 15 emails that appear to be work-related from her personal server, contradicting her claims that all relevant emails were in the hands of the federal government.
The emails in question were uncovered as part of a subpoena from a congressional committee to Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton confidant and former White House aide in Bill Clinton’s administration.
At least 15 emails given by Mr. Blumenthal to the committee—which is investigating the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attack—don’t match any in the archive of more than 30,000 emails turned over by Mrs. Clinton to the State Department late last year, the department said.
Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the assault on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya.
A State Department official said there were “a limited number of instances”—15—“in which we could not locate all or part of the content of a document from his production within the tens of thousands of emails she gave us.”
“Those instances are described in a letter the department sent today to the Committee,” the official said.
The missing emails contradict Mrs. Clinton’s claims that all work-related emails from her personal server are in the hands of the government, as required by federal record-keeping laws.
Mrs. Clinton chose to use her personal email account for government business during her four years as secretary of state, an arrangement that was legal, though discouraged, during her tenure.
Emails Show Clinton Was Warned Over Security in Benghazi Ahead of Attack (May 22)
At a March news conference, Mrs. Clinton said her team had conducted a thorough search of her email server, turning over all work-related correspondence after the department requested it.
“I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related,” she said, adding that she deleted remaining personal emails from the server.
On Thursday, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said: “She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal.”
Referring to the emails Mr. Blumenthal provided to the committee, the spokesman said: “We do not recognize many of those materials and cannot speak to their origin.”
The State Department has made public more than 800 emails related to the 2012 Benghazi attack and plans to make others public in the coming months, as ordered by a federal judge.
Republicans on the Select Committee on Benghazi, which has been probing both the 2012 attacks, as well as Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement, said the missing emails raised questions about the thoroughness of her disclosures. Democrats have painted the committee’s work as tainted by partisanship, contending the panel has strayed far from its investigation into the attack.
“This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee’s work. This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the GOP-led panel.
“This Benghazi select committee has become the committee to investigate Hillary Clinton. Period,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the panel, said last week.
Clinton Didn’t Turn Over All Work E-Mail to State Department // Bloomberg // Billy House – June 25, 2015
Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over to the U.S. State Department all the work-related e-mail from her personal account relating to Libya and Benghazi, as she had previously said she had.
Nine e-mails and parts of six others couldn’t be found among documents Clinton provided in response to a request from the State Department, the agency said in a letter to the Select House Committee investigating the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi.
U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, chairman of the panel, said Clinton’s selection of e-mails to provide to the State Department resulted in an incomplete public record. Clinton, now the leading Democratic presidential candidate, exclusively used a private e-mail account while serving as secretary of state.
“The revelation ... is significant and troubling.”
U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy
“The revelation these messages were not originally produced to the State Department by Clinton is significant and troubling,” he said.
Clinton’s use of a private e-mail address and home server has become a focus of the House committee’s probe of the Obama administration’s handling of attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi and a nearby Central Intelligence Agency outpost that killed four Americans. It’s also become a distraction for Clinton as she campaigns for president.
Document Production
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, said “she has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department.”
In December, Clinton turned over about 30,000 e-mails to the department. About 850 pages that the State Department deemed Benghazi-related were turned over to the House committee in February.
The New York Times reported earlier that the State Department said Clinton hadn’t handed over several Libya-related e-mails.
The 15 missing or incomplete e-mails aren’t related to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, according to a statement from the State Department. The latest date on any of them is two weeks before the attacks, according to the statement.
All of the e-mails are exchanges between Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time Clinton confidant, and are work-related, according to the State Department. The existence of the e-mails came to light after Blumenthal, who was subpoenaed to appear before the House panel investigating Benghazi, turned over copies of communications with Clinton to the committee.
Libya Memos
Lawmakers complained about e-mails that they said either weren’t provided by Clinton to the State Department or by the department to the panel in response to its request.
Merrill said Clinton turned over “all e-mails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal.”
Blumenthal, though not employed at the State Department at the time, providing Clinton with memos about Libya.
Topics among the nine e-mails produced by Blumenthal that were missing entirely from those turned over by Clinton included the death of Muammar Qaddafi’s son, the suspicious death in Austria of a former Libyan prime minister and defector from Qaddafi’s regime, and dissatisfaction among Libyan rebels in 2011 with the amount of tactical and air support they were receiving against Qaddafi forces.
State Department says it can't locate 15 Hillary Clinton emails // Fox News – June 26, 2015
The State Department said Thursday that it cannot locate 15 work-related emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server released this week by the select committee probing the 2012 Benghazi attacks, a revelation that the head of the committee described as “significant and troubling.”
The emails consist of more in a series of intelligence reports passed to her by longtime political confidant Sidney Blumenthal, officials told The Associated Press.
At the least, the existence of the emails turned over by Blumenthal but not by Clinton directly contradicts Clinton's news conference in March in which she claimed that all work emails from her personal server were turned over to the State Department.
The revelation will also raise further questions about the presidential hopeful’s use of a personal email account and server when she served as secretary of state, as well as the decision to wipe the server.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, called the revelations “significant and troubling.”
“This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton’s self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server—especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third party arbiter,” Gowdy said.
When asked for comment by Fox News, a Clinton official said "not only did she turn over all emails that she had from Blumenthal, she actually turned over more than a dozen emails that were not included in what he handed over to the House committee. We do not have a record of other correspondence between her and Mr. Blumenthal beyond that which was turned over to the State Department.”
“In terms of the documents provided by Mr. Blumenthal to the House committee, we do not recognize many of those materials and cannot speak to their origin,” the official said.
Clinton's use of the non-governmental email while in office was not publicly disclosed until earlier this year, after the committee sought her correspondence related to the Benghazi attack. She says the single account for personal and professional purposes was a matter of convenience, and says all her work emails were included in the 55,000 pages of documents she later handed over to the State Department. Clinton claims that emails of a personal nature were destroyed.
The State Department informed the Select Benghazi Committee on Thursday that they are no longer certain that's the case, officials told The Associated Press.
The emails missing from the State Department's records include missives from Blumenthal in which he sends media accounts about the killing of one of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi's sons, various reports on internal politics among Libya's rebels and news of the assassination of a former Qaddafi minister in Vienna.
Gowdy told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly last week that Blumenthal was merely forwarding information from someone who may have had business interests in Libya.
Gowdy said that Blumenthal has never been to Libya, is not an expert on the country and therefore “has no idea” as to the validity of the information he was sending to Clinton.
“Not only was [Blumenthal] providing unvetted, uncorroborated, unsubstantiated intelligence to our top diplomat, he was just simply forwarding on intelligence that somebody by the name of Tyler Drumheller was sending him,” Gowdy said.
Clinton's responses to Blumenthal’s emails are brief. In one from March 2012, she passes on an adviser's skepticism regarding one of Blumenthal's reports about political intrigue in post-Qaddafi Libya, saying: "This strains credulity based on what I know. Any other info about it?"
And after a long August 2012 note from Blumenthal about Libya's new interim President Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, Clinton writes: "Another keeper -- thanks and please keep `em coming." Four days later, she responds to a follow-up reports about el-Magariaf, saying: "Fascinating. I had a very good call w him."
Gowdy said Thursday that the emails show Clinton "was soliciting and regularly corresponding with Sidney Blumenthal -- who was passing unvetted intelligence information about Libya from a source with a financial interest in the country. It just so happens these emails directly contradict her public statement that the messages from Blumenthal were unsolicited."
State Dept.: 15 emails missing from Clinton cache // AP // Bradley Klapper & Matthew Lee – June 25, 2015
The State Department cannot find in its records all or part of 15 work-related emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that were released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, officials said Thursday.
The emails all predate the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. diplomatic facility and include scant words written by Clinton herself, the officials said. They consist of more in a series of would-be intelligence reports passed to her by longtime political confidant Sidney Blumenthal, the officials said.
Nevertheless, the fact that the State Department says it can't find them among emails she provided surely will raise new questions about Clinton's use of a personal email account and server while secretary of state and whether she has provided the agency all of her work-related correspondence, as she claims.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, released a statement Thursday saying, "This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton's self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server — especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third-party arbiter."
When asked about the discrepancy, Nick Merrill, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said, "She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal."
Clinton is running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton's use of the non-governmental email while in office was not publicly disclosed until earlier this year, after the committee sought her correspondence related to the Benghazi attack. She says the single account for personal and professional purposes was a matter of convenience, and says all her work emails were included in the 55,000 pages of documents she later handed over to the State Department. Emails of a personal nature were destroyed, she says.
The State Department informed the Select Benghazi Committee on Thursday that they are no longer certain that's the case, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The officials said Julia Frifield, the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, confirmed that nine emails and parts of six others that the committee made public Monday couldn't be located in the department's records.
As for 46 other, previously unreleased Libya-related Blumenthal emails published by the committee, officials said all are in the department's records. They weren't handed over to congressional investigators because they had no relevance to events in Benghazi and did not correspond to the committee's request, the officials said. The officials added that they are willing to provide emails outside the committee's initial request, but warned that doing so would require more time.
The emails missing from the State Department's records include missives from Blumenthal in which he sends media accounts about the killing of one of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's sons, various reports on internal politics among Libya's rebels and news of the assassination of a former Gadhafi minister in Vienna. The last email was sent Aug. 28, 2012, two weeks before the Benghazi attack, and none focus particularly on the eastern Libyan city.
Clinton's responses are brief. In one from August 2011, she tells Blumenthal she will be in Paris the next day to meet rebel leaders and says she had "to resort to new iPad" because she didn't have electricity or Blackberry coverage after Hurricane Irene.
In another from March 2012, she passes on an adviser's skepticism regarding one of Blumenthal's reports about political intrigue in post-Gadhafi Libya, saying: "This strain credulity based on what I know. Any other info about it?"
And after a long August 2012 note from Blumenthal about Libya's new interim President Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, Clinton writes: "Another keeper — thanks and please keep 'em coming." Four days later, she responds to a follow-up reports about el-Magariaf, saying: "Fascinating. I had a very good call w him."
Clinton's critics are likely to focus less on the substance of the emails than on the fact that they weren't shared with the State Department.
Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, has pressed for an explanation of why Blumenthal gave the committee emails not previously shared by the State Department. The suggestion has been that either the department or Clinton was hiding something.
Gowdy said Thursday that the emails show Clinton "was soliciting and regularly corresponding with Sidney Blumenthal — who was passing unvetted intelligence information about Libya from a source with a financial interest in the country. It just so happens these emails directly contradict her public statement that the messages from Blumenthal were unsolicited."
Clinton aides say her submission to the department included all emails from Blumenthal and a dozen more exchanges that weren't in the records he provided the House committee. They said some from Blumenthal's record, which was provided as a Microsoft Word document, couldn't be confirmed as having been sent as emails.
State Department officials also questioned the provenance of some exchanges because they weren't formatted as emails.
State Dept.: Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over all Libya emails // Politico // Rachel Bade – June 25, 2015
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton withheld from the State Department several emails related to Libya, the State Department confirmed Thursday night — calling into question her insistence that she has handed over her complete public record.
The 2016 Democratic front-runner did not hand over 15 exchanges with longtime Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal on the security situation in the Middle Eastern nation. The existence of the new correspondence only came to light days ago after Republicans subpoenaed the former Clinton White House adviser’s records and he turned them over.
Clinton has said she cooperated with the House Benghazi Committee investigation by handing over all work-related communications, which she stored on her own personal server against official record-keeping rules.
“This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton’s self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server — especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third-party arbiter,” Benghazi panel Chairman Trey Gowdy said in a statement.
The South Carolina Republican said the implications go “far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee’s work.”
“This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record,” he continued.
Clinton has come under fire for circumventing government rules instead of using an official State Department email address, with critics accusing her of hiding behind a shroud of secrecy. Clinton, for her part, turned over more than 30,000 work emails to state as part of its document production to the Benghazi committee. The rest, she said, were personal in nature — about Chelsea’s wedding or yoga, she said.
Then, her team wiped her server clean, they say.
Barred from working at the State Department by the Obama administration, Blumenthal was being paid $10,000 a month by the philanthropic Clinton Foundation at the time. He was also advising friends working on a new business venture in Libya — and one of those business partners is said to have been the author of the intelligence memos Blumenthal passed along to Clinton.
Blumenthal told the committee the emails were unsolicited, but Republicans say a number of the emails Clinton did not turn over suggests they were, including responses where she encouraged her old friend to continue writing.
“These new messages in many instances were Clinton’s responses, which clearly show she was soliciting and regularly corresponding with Sidney Blumenthal — who was passing unvetted intelligence information about Libya from a source with a financial interest in the country,” the panel statement continues. “It just so happens these emails directly contradict her public statement that the messages from Blumenthal were unsolicited.”
Democrats on the panel, however, have challenged that assertion and questioned Gowdy’s definition of “unsolicited,” arguing that simply a response to an email does not constitute solicitation.
State, meanwhile, says it is working quickly to produce all the emails it does have.
“We have confirmed that the emails Secretary Clinton provided the Department include almost all of the material in Mr. Blumenthal’s production,” a state official said in a statement. “The State Department is working diligently to review and publish the 55,000 pages of emails we received from former Secretary Clinton, according to FOIA standards so they are available to the general public and the media. All of the materials that she provided will be reviewed as part of this effort.”
Why the Clinton-Bush rivalry is really a food fight // Politico // Kate Bennett – June 25, 2015
For Capricia Marshall, the accidental death of former White House chef Walter Scheib—whose body was found in New Mexico earlier this week—brought back memories of a master cook whose culinary passion was also, in an odd way, intensely political.
In fact, the mostly untold back story to Scheib’s amazing career at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is one of a Clinton-Bush family rivalry that played out in the kitchen as much on the campaign trail.
“I’ll never forget when Walter arrived for his interview, to cook for Hillary for the first time,” recalls Marshall, who as White House social secretary worked in tandem with Scheib to create countless menus, events and “special occasion” meals. “He had a vision, and it was amazingly in the same vein as hers. They went on and on about the great products in this country, the farms, the fisheries—they just gelled.”
Marshall says it was Mrs. Clinton who wanted the new chef to usher in her plan of how the first couple would entertain; Hillary wished to showcase the best of what America had to offer, the robust and diverse products from each state. “Walter and I worked very, very closely to achieve that goal,” says Marshall, who, at 32, was the youngest White House social secretary on record when she took on the post in 1997.
But things went very differently after George W. Bush was elected. The new president was partial to Velveeta sandwiches and more, er, traditional food, particularly the sort of parochial tastes one might find at a Texas roadstop. “I found myself thinking with profound nostalgia of Mrs. Clinton and her passion for inclusion, her interest in learning about and trying new foods, and her desire to show off her nation’s best to visitors foreign and domestic,” Scheib later wrote in his 2007 memoir, White House Chef.
Scheib was summarily replaced in late 2004 by Laura Bush. (After his death this week, Laura Bush released a statement saying, “Walter was an astounding talent.”)
According to Marshall, the Maryland-raised Scheib was constantly trying to come up with creative ideas during the Clinton years, even pushing Hillary Clinton into new concepts of culinary outreach. “One of my favorite Walter stories was when we had a big event coming up, the 50th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; it would be the quintessential American event, the eyes of the world would be on us, and we really had to think hard about what to serve,” Marshall said in a phone interview. For the event, Scheib suggested bison—not exactly a household meat, but one that was certainly American. “Hillary was like, ‘What!? Bison?’ It just sounded so unusual, for a minute I thought, uh-oh, this is a gamble he might not want to take.” But Scheib convinced the first lady with a tasting. “It was phenomenal, of course. We went with it.”
Schieb also gave cooking lessons to a high-school age, Chelsea Clinton. “Chelsea was interested in different types of food, and different types of cooking. He completely understood that this house wasn’t only a venue for official events, press conferences and briefings, but it was also a home.” Marshall remained close with Scheib after she departed the White House.
Marshall called upon the chef when she launched the Diplomatic Culinary Initiative and the American Chef Corps during her tenure as chief of protocol at the State Department from 2009 to 2013. As she says, “A huge part of that came from my discussions with Walter.”
Marshall was shocked to learn he died while hiking. “I loved it when he would bring us into the kitchen and say, “Try this! Try this!” It’s really such a sad thing to one day have a friend just not be here anymore.”
And for the Clintons, it meant the loss not only of a friend, but a political ally who managed to be simpatico with a stove. The family said in a statement: “Walter used his immense talents not only to represent the very best of American cuisine to visiting leaders, but to make a difference in people’s lives across the country.”
Billionaire GOP donor deletes ‘lesbian’ joke about Hillary Clinton // Politico // Annie Karni – June 25, 2015
Hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Loeb — one of the biggest and most feared investors on Wall Street and a vocal backer of same-sex marriage — posted a joke speculating about Hillary Clinton’s sexuality on his personal Facebook page.
“Dear Abby,” he posted May 9. “My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job 14 years ago, he hasn’t even look for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and shoot the bull with his buddies, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do? Signed Clueless.”
“Dear Clueless,” the post continues, “Grow up and dump him. Good grief woman! You don’t need him anymore! You’re running for President of the United States. Act like one.”
The anti-Clinton diatribe wasn’t Loeb’s own joke or words — it appeared to be a right-wing meme that has been circulating online since Clinton’s first run. The same faux “Dear Abby” column was also posted on the Facebook page of actor Kevin Sorbo, best known for his role as Hercules in the TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.”
The resurfacing of the old attack on the Clintons this cycle — on the page of a prominent billionaire — indicates how ugly attacks could get if Hillary Clinton gets into the uncharted territory of a general election.
Loeb, who bundled money for Barack Obama in 2008 before turning on him and backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012, has shown interest in a few of the GOP candidates this cycle.
Before Chris Christie became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal, Loeb had publicly touted the New Jersey governor’s leadership style and urged him to run for president. But he’s been silent on Christie since, and has yet to commit publicly to any 2016 candidate.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has been courting Loeb for his recently launched campaign. And last year, Bush headlined a benefit gala chaired by Loeb to raise money for Success Academy Charter Schools.
Loeb promptly deleted the Dear Abby post after POLITICO contacted his office about it.
“This widely circulated, old meme ended up on my Facebook page inadvertently and as soon as I was informed of it, I took it down,” Loeb said in a statement. “ As a longstanding public supporter of gay and women’s rights, it does not represent my views.”
The Clinton campaign declined to comment for this report.
State Department calls Clinton's email records incomplete // Reuters // Lesley Wroughton – June 25, 2015
Hillary Clinton did not hand over at least 15 emails from her time as secretary of state, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday, undercutting her claim that the 30,000 work emails she provided from her personal server were a complete record.
The department learned the email record was apparently incomplete after Sidney Blumenthal, an old friend and informal adviser to Clinton, provided several previously undisclosed emails to U.S. lawmakers investigating the deadly 2012 attack on diplomatic staff in Benghazi, Libya.
The 15 emails were either missing from the records Clinton provided or included only in partial form. The department said they were not relevant to the attacks on Benghazi although copies posted online showed that they discussed the turmoil in Libya more generally.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email on Thursday that the Democratic presidential candidate had given the department "all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal."
He said he could not explain the origins of the additional correspondence Blumenthal provided in response to the lawmakers' subpoena.
Clinton, the favorite to become her party's nominee for the 2016 presidential election, has weathered criticism that she side-stepped record-keeping and transparency rules by using only a private email account for her work. The private address was connected to a server in her home.
The arrangement was made public in March, more than two years after she stepped down as the top U.S. diplomat. Clinton said she used the private email account for the sake of convenience and broke no rules.
Recent polls show more than half of all voters say she is not trustworthy, in part because of her email habits, although this has not put a deep dent in her popularity among Democrats.
Trey Gowdy, the Republican congressman in charge of the select committee investigating the Benghazi attack, said Clinton's incomplete email record "raises serious questions".
"This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee's work," Gowdy said in a statement. "This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record."
In March, Clinton said in an impromptu news conference at the United Nations headquarters that she gave the State Department all emails she sent and received that "could possibly be work-related".
She said the 30,490 emails she handed over in December after the State Department asked for her records included all that referred to Libya or Benghazi, as well as all work-related correspondence from what her office described as "long-time friends".
She said that once those copies were made, all her emails, including another 30,000 or so that were deemed personal, were deleted from the server.
Clinton spokesman Merrill declined to respond when asked whether some emails might have been deleted at an earlier date, before the State Department made its request.
Report: Clinton Libya emails surface // USA Today // Michael Winter – June 25, 2015
The State Department has received 15 Libya-related emails that Hillary Clinton did not hand over from the personal computer server she used while secretary of state, officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The emails were between Clinton and her longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal. He surrendered them after being subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks by Islamists on two U.S. diplomatic compounds in Benghazi. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was among four Americans who died.
The panel released the emails this week.
All of the emails pre-date the attacks. Citing unnamed officials, AP describes them as "more in a series of would-be intelligence reports" sent by Blumenthal, with "scant words written by Clinton herself."
Clinton has said she turned over about 30,000 work-related emails from her time in office. An equal number she deleted were "private" or "personal" and pertained to her daughter Chelsea's wedding, her mother's funeral, family vacations and yoga.
Clinton said she used one account for work and personal business out of convenience.
"She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal," said Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton's presidential campaign.
The Gender Subplot // National Journal // Charlie Cook – June 26, 2015
One of the biggest questions in next year's presidential election will be what role gender will play in the voting and outcome, particularly if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wins the nomination. Over the past six presidential elections, Democrats have swept the female vote, by 8 points in 1992, by 16 points in 1996, by 11 points in 2000, by just 3 points in 2004, by 13 points in 2008, and by 11 points in 2012. Meanwhile, Republicans have carried the male vote four times: in 1996 (by 1 point), in 2000 and 2004 (both by 11 points), and in 2012 (by 7 points). Democrats came out ahead among men in 1992 (by 3 points) and 2008 (by 1 point). So while Republicans do have a problem with women voters, Democrats have one with men.
In looking at the women's vote, however, race is a major factor that cannot be ignored. Among white women, Democrats broke even in 1992 and won by 5 points in 1996—but Republicans have swept this group in the past four elections, by just 1 point in 2000, but by 11 points in 2004, 7 points in 2008, and 14 points in 2012. Democrats obviously hope that Clinton will be able to reverse this trend, but even if she can, by how much?
Given that Clinton is unlikely to be able to match President Obama's turnout and support levels among minority and young voters, how can she make up for that? If there is a sphere in which she could conceivably outperform Obama, it is likely to be among women—arguably those who do not also fall into either the "minority" or "young" categories, as Obama did especially well with both minority and young women.
In the new NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll conducted June 14 through 18, which surveyed 1,000 adults, the gender gap in attitudes toward Clinton is striking. When asked whether they had a "positive," "neutral," or "negative" view of Clinton, women gave her a net positive score of +18 points (52 percent positive, 34 percent negative), while men gave her a net negative score of -13 points (48 percent negative, 35 percent positive)—a 31-point spread. Among white women, Clinton had a net positive score of 1 point (44 percent positive, 43 percent negative), while among white men, she was at -22 points (53 percent negative, 31 percent positive), a 23-point gender gap.
The NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll, conducted by Democratic pollster Fred Yang and Republican pollster Bill McInturff, did find an interesting distinction between white women who are college-educated and those who are not. Clinton had a 13-point net positive rating among white women who have attended college (51 percent positive, 38 percent negative) but an 8-point net negative rating among white women who haven't (47 percent negative, 39 percent positive). Apparently consistent with this finding, Clinton also had a net positive rating of 15 points among suburban women (51 percent positive, 36 percent negative), although this cross-tab included suburban women of all races, ages, and levels of educational attainment. (Once you slice the data too finely, the margin of error goes through the roof unless you are combining multiple surveys.)
In Clinton's recent campaign-kickoff speech, she made a clear play for the women's vote, attempting to maximize her strength there while not exacerbating her considerable problem with men—a delicate balance. Should she win the nomination, it is unlikely that she will double down on her strength with (most) women by choosing a female running mate. It will be interesting to see, however, whether the eventual Republican presidential nominee—assuming that it is not former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the only woman running on the GOP side—opts to fill out the top of the ticket with someone like Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire or New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Hispanic woman who isn't in Congress and isn't of Washington.
Republicans are obviously acutely aware of their problem with women voters. Witness Sen. Cory Gardner's effort to blunt the Democrats' narrative about a Republican "war on women" by pushing to make more contraception methods available over the counter. The strategy worked exceedingly well for him, getting him out of the corner he was in for having once supported Colorado's controversial "personhood" amendment. Less certain is how aware Democrats are of their problem with men voters, specifically white men.
There are plenty of subplots in the unfolding presidential election, but the gender fight is among the most interesting of them—and one that will be critical to the outcome.
State Department: ‘Limited’ Number of Hillary Clinton Emails Are Missing // National Journal // Ben Geman – June 25, 2015
All or parts of 15 emails that Hillary Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal gave to a House committee cannot be located among the thousands of pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department, the agency said Thursday night.
The State Department downplayed the discrepancy, but it's likely to intensify GOP questions and criticism about Clinton's claim that she provided State with all the work-related emails kept on her private server late last year.
"We have confirmed that the emails Secretary Clinton provided the Department include almost all of the material in Mr. Blumenthal's production. There are, however, a limited number of instances—15—in which we could not locate all or part of the content of a document from his production within the tens of thousands of emails she gave us," a department official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said, "The substance of those 15 emails is not relevant to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, the GOP chairman of the committee, pounced on the revelation, stating that Clinton's unusual use of a private email account and server "has resulted in an incomplete public record."
"This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton's self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server—especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third party arbiter," Gowdy said in a statement Thursday.
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton's presidential campaign, defended the completeness of her disclosure. "She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal," Merrill said
Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton family ally who has consulted for pro-Hillary Clinton advocacy groups, sent her a suite of memos on Libyan intelligence issues in 2011 and 2012, when Clinton was secretary of State.
Blumenthal told the panel that the memos, which Clinton circulated to top aides, were written by a former high-level CIA officer.
The memos showed Blumenthal keeping Clinton abreast of his work to parry GOP attacks. In one case, an Oct. 1, 2012 email from Blumenthal to Clinton, with the subject line "H: Romney's last gambit. Got done and published. Sid.," passed along a piece in Salon about then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney's plans to go after President Obama over the Benghazi attack.
Another message passed along links to several Media Matters blog posts and noted, "Got all this done. Complete refutation on Libya smear. Philippe can circulate this links"—likely a reference to Clinton aide Philippe Reines.
According to State, the nine emails with Clinton that Blumenthal provided but State could not locate include a March 21, 2011 message with press clips about the death of one of Muammar el-Qaddafi's sons, a late August 2011 memo titled "Inside NTC latest," which is a reference to the National Transitional Council that countered the Libyan leader, and others.
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Portions of six others are missing, State said.While Blumenthal provided documents that State cannot locate, the department official also noted that there are "instances where the Department has produced portions of Secretary Clinton's correspondence with Mr. Blumenthal that did not appear in his production to the Committee."
In addition to the revelation about the Blumenthal emails State could not locate, Gowdy said State "also turned over a new set of Clinton emails that were responsive to previous committee requests regarding Libya and Benghazi, but for some reason were not previously given to the committee under subpoena."
Hillary Clinton to Anti-Obamacare Republicans: 'Move On' // National Journal // Eric Garcia – June 25, 2015
Hillary Clinton, while saying the Affordable Care Act isn't "perfect," is embracing the law at the outset of her presidential campaign, following Thursday's Supreme Court decision upholding a key piece of Obamacare.
The Supreme Court rejected the plaintiff's arguments in King v. Burwell, upholding subsidies in every state, regardless of whether its exchange was federally or state-run.
"I applaud the Supreme Court's decision to affirm what the authors of the Affordable Care Act clearly intended and wrote into law: that health insurance should be affordable and available in every state across the country," Clinton said in a statement.
Clinton also argued that it's time for Republicans, who have voted to repeal or dismantle the law more than 50 times, to "move on."
"Now that the Supreme Court has once again re-affirmed the ACA as the law of the land, it's time for the Republican attacks to end," Clinton said.
While acknowledging unspecified imperfections in the law, Clinton highlighted several of its more popular components, like health insurance companies no longer being able to discriminate against people for preexisting conditions.
Clinton also pointed to her own push for health care reform, which included an ill-fated attempt during her husband's administration, adding "I'm not going to stop now." Despite the Affordable Care Act still drawing divided public support, Clinton shows no signs of walking away.
Whether she wanted it or not, though, Clinton is going to be put on the defense regarding Obamacare during her presidential campaign. That was on clear display Thursday, with Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush choosing not to go after the Supreme Court (Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, was appointed by his brother), but to focus on Clinton and President Obama.
"This is the direct result of President Obama," Bush said in an email to supporters. "He deliberately forced ObamaCare on the American people in a partisan and toxic way."
Bush said Clinton would be "more of the same" when it came to health care, adding that there needed to be a conservative president who would "repeal and replace Obamacare with a conservative solution."
He also used the occasion to fundraise, saying the only way to prevent four more years of the same policies was "to make the most generous contribution you can afford right now to stop her."
Hillary Clinton won’t have to fight Obama’s battles on health care // MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald – June 25, 2015
If Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office on January 20, 2017, she’ll inherit a health care reform law that will be already seven years old and likely deeply entrenched, thanks in part to Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the subsidy system for state-based exchanges.
Health care has been one of the defining issues of Clinton’s long career in public life, capped by an ambitious but ultimately doomed effort to create a universal health care system under her husband’s administration in 1993. By securing the future of the Affordable Care Act, the court’s ruling could allow Clinton to complete one of the biggest unfinished goals of her career by building on the law that bears her one-time rival’s name.
“This morning, the Supreme Court sided with common sense and America’s families, and confirmed again that the Affordable Care Act is the law of land – and it’s here to stay,” Clinton said in an email to supporters. “The next president will either protect and expand health care for every American, or undo the progress we’ve made.”
Clinton has already telegraphed that she’d work hard to overhaul the mental health and addiction treatment systems, vowing to make the heroin and pharmaceutical epidemic “a big part” of her campaign. And she’ll likely be forced to confront a host of other health care issues, like rising health care costs.
Politically, the ruling preserves the status quo. While Republicans will keep talking about repealing Obamacare as long as it motivates their base, most probably know it’s now practically infeasible. And the GOP remains deeply divided on how to replace the law, making it unlikely the party will unite behind an alternative.
Clinton will likely not feel much pressure to endorse major changes to the law. While only eight percent of Americans think the Affordable Care Act is working well, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, most say the want the law preserved and improved rather than nixed. Among Democrats, whom Clinton will need to win over in the primary election and turnout in the general election, more than three-quarters think the law is working.
Obamacare didn’t sink Obama in 2012 and will likely be even less of an issue in 2016, when repealing it would mean actively taking away healthcare from millions of Americans.
In his remarks in the Rose Garden Thursday, Obama said it was time to switch from defense to offense on health care. After five years of relentless attacks, three elections, a mismanaged roll out, and two legal challenges that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the existence of the law is finally secure.
“The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” he said. “There will be parts of the law that will still need to be improved. And if we can stop refighting old political battles that keep us gridlocked, then we could actually make the law work even better for everybody.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that in its waning days, the Obama administration will focus on implementing the law to maximize its impact. That will include pushing more governors to expand Medicaid and create their own exchanges.
But improvements on top of the existing statute will likely have to wait until the next presidency.
When asked Obama, Clinton has often spoken of her potential presidency as finishing some of the big projects Obama started, noting that his administration had to prioritize saving the country from the Great Recession.
“I think the president has done an extraordinary job in dealing with a terrible set of issues he inherited,” Clinton said in a response to question from msnbc on the economy in New Hampshire last week. “There’s a lot more work still be done, but boy am I glad where we are now than where we were.”
During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, it was Clinton who pushed the other candidates to come up with comprehensive health reform plans. And hers included the controversial mandate for individuals to hold health care, which Barack Obama slammed then before ultimately making it a cornerstone of his own health law.
Now, she might finally have the chance to not only defend a national health law that strives for universal health access, but to expand it.
And thanks to the Supreme Court, she won’t have to fight Obama’s battles on Obamacare.
Hillary Clinton’s big diss to Bill de Blasio // Page Six // Ian Mohr – June 25, 2015
Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett brought down the house at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser at the Plaza Hotel on Wednesday night. But Democratic insiders were also buzzing over who wasn’t in the high-powered house — Bill de Blasio.
Spies told Page Six Bennett and Gaga played a “tour de force” one-hour set of solo numbers and duets at the $1,000 and $2,700-a-ticket affair.
“They worked really hard. It was stunning,” said a source. After singing, “Gaga talked about why she’s voting for Hillary and then said she’d ‘leave the honors to Tony’ to introduce Clinton,” who sat with Gaga’s mom and Bennett’s wife.
Clinton gave an “informal speech.” But witnesses said the biggest moment of the night was a symbolic kiss-off by Clinton to de Blasio when Public Advocate Letitia James — who’s first in line of succession to the mayor — was given the “most coveted speaking spot of the evening,” introducing the singers.
One source said, “It was profoundly significant to all the top donors and political activists. Everyone in the room got it — it was an elevation of [James] over de Blasio, at his expense.” The mayor has famously refused to endorse Hillary, although he managed her 2000 Senate campaign.
“It was telling,” said the source. “It was a major opportunity for James to present herself and a real breakthrough moment. It was a statement that city Democrats couldn’t care less what de Blasio’s saying. They’re not looking to de Blasio to tell them what to do.”
Guests included Tribeca Film’s Jane Rosenthal, Richard and Lisa Perry , Mort and Linda Janklow, Robert Zimmerman, Alan and Susan Patricof, and Charles Myers.
Another insider said: “There’s a tremendous amount of resentment in Hillary’s camp that de Blasio hasn’t endorsed her.” Some even theorized that de Blasio’s secretly hoping to run for president himself if Hillary’s campaign implodes.
But another insider laughed off the idea as “fantasy baseball on acid. He does want to be a national figure. But how does he mobilize the country if he can’t mobilize city Democrats?”
Sid Blumenthal’s Israel Michegas // The Daily Beast // James Kirchick – June 26, 2015
The notorious Clinton operative pushes pro-Israel Libyan in his emails to Hillary, but sells his son’s anti-Israel book in public.
It’s a shame that Hillary Clinton wasn’t able to convince the Obama White House to let Sidney Blumenthal serve under her at the State Department. Blumenthal, the liberal journalist-turned-Clinton family consigliere, earned himself quite the reputation during the bruising 2008 Democratic primary, when his main job seemed to be sending out mass emails chock full of links to lurid stories about Barack Obama culled from the very “vast right-wing conspiracy” that he had combatted his entire adult life.
According to Politico, for his efforts, Blumenthal earned the moniker “Sulfur-Breathing Spawn of Hell” from Obama campaign staffers. That Clinton ever thought she had a chance of putting Blumenthal on the State Department payroll says something about her chutzpah.
If only those embittered Obama staffers had let bygones be bygones and harnessed the acumen of the inveterate emailer, they might have been able to strike a major blow for Middle East peace.
Buried in the pages of once-confidential missives that Blumenthal sent to Clinton during her tenure at the State Department, since subpoenaed by a congressional committee investigating the 2011 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, was a claim that the then-interim President of Libya, Mohammed Yussef el-Magariaf, wanted to “seek a discreet relationship with Israel.” According to a “sensitive source,” Blumenthal wrote, “political realities in Libya at present will dictate that this relationship be handled in a low key manner, but the new President of Libya shares many common friends and associates with the leaders of Israel and intends to take advantage of this situation to improve the lot of the Libyan people.”
It’s entirely possible that this information was overly optimistic, if not entirely false. Forwarding the email onto an aide, Clinton expressed skepticism, prefacing her remark that the news was “encouraging” with “if true.” When Seymour Hersh, himself a man known for an overactive imagination, questions the validity of your information (as he did Blumenthal’s claims, made in another email to Clinton, that Hersh was preparing to interview an ousted Muammar Qadaffi hiding in Chad), it’s a discouraging sign.
But what’s most revealing about Blumenthal’s giddy hopes for a potential Libyan-Israeli rapprochement is how much it differs from other sentiments he had expressed about the Jewish state. For it wasn’t so long ago that Sidney Blumenthal was hawking the vitriolic anti-Israel book published by his son, Max, and attacking those who had criticized it.
In the course of a short career, the younger Blumenthal gradually exiled himself from respectable journalistic outlets, and so several years ago decided to reinvent himself as Israel’s most outspoken and extreme Jewish antagonist, at one point writing for a Beirut-based newspaper aligned with the Assad regime in Syria, before deciding that the blood-drenched regime in Damascus was no longer to his liking. His 2013 book Goliath is so venomous in its denunciations of Israel, and so strident in its defense of terrorism against it, that Eric Alterman, himself a harsh critic of Israel and a columnist for the far-left Nation magazine, concluded that it “could have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club (if it existed) without a single word change once it’s translated into Arabic.”
“[W]hat’s most revealing about Blumenthal’s giddy hopes for a potential Libyan-Israeli rapprochement is how much it differs from other sentiments he had expressed about the Jewish state.”
The book is replete with comparisons of Israeli Jews to Nazis, and calls for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East. The book’s last chapter, “Exodus,” a riff on Jewish biblical history and the Leon Uris tome of the same name, envisions the reverse Exodus of the Jews out of their homeland. Asked at a 2013 event about what he believes should happen to Israel’s Jews, Blumenthal fils responded, “There should be a choice placed to the settler-colonial population” (that is, the Jewish population): “Become indigenized…you have to be part of the Arab world.” Those who don’t? “The maintenance and engineering of a non-indigenous demographic majority is non-negotiable.” In other words, leave or suffer.
When Max’s book came under attack from Alterman, Sidney did what he does best: he launched what Buzzfeed described as “an online campaign” against the Nation columnist. According to Alterman, “I worried that by telling the truth about his son’s book, I would soon hear of nasty e-mails about me sent by Sid to our mutual friends and professional acquaintances. Call it ‘bizarre,’ if you will, but sadly, that’s just what happened.”
It’s one thing to love your son, and another entirely to endorse his controversial work (Sidney hosted a book party for Max) and attack those who criticize it. By doing so, Blumenthal the elder identified himself as a sponsor of his son’s calumnies.
Not that everyone hated Goliath. Frazier Glenn Cross, the 73-year-old white supremacist who murdered three people at Kansas Jewish Community Center and retirement home last year, was one of Blumenthal’s biggest devotees. “Jew journalist Max Blumenthal exposes and explains this attempt by a foreign government Israel, to buy the presidential election for the neo-con, war-mongering republican establishment,” Cross wrote on a Ron Paul fan site in 2012, referencing an interview Blumenthal gave on the Russian government-funded RT network. A survey of a white supremacist web forum run by Cross found over 300 references to Blumenthal and his work, with posters lauding his exposes of nefarious Jewish influence.
Last year, Max earned himself the distinction of being barred from the German Bundestag after he chased the leader of the country’s Left Party into a toilet, demanding to know why the parliamentarian had put the kibosh on a talk Blumenthal was scheduled to give at the invitation of two Left Party members. Scheduled to speak on the day after the anniversary of Kristallnacht, outraged party members initiated a petition criticizing their colleagues’ hosting Blumenthal, which they said amounted to “stoking obsessive hate and demonization of Israel with an anti-Semitic argument pattern and trivialization of the Holocaust.”
The Clintons value loyalty about all else, and it’s hard to imagine Sidney Blumenthal doing anything that would make Hillary consider him a liability. But Blumenthal’s freelance diplomacy raises an intriguing question: who is the real Sidney Blumenthal? The one promoting Israel’s interest in the broader Middle East by trumpeting a Libyan politician eager to make peace with the Jewish state? Or the one who promotes his son’s work portraying Israel as a uniformly ghastly, racist country and American Jews as its disloyal double agents?
Google says Hillary Clinton will be the next president // CNET // Chris Matyszczyk – June 25, 2015
Google, be blessed.
You have given me almost two more years of my life that I never thought I'd have. You have saved me from endless hours and days of purgatorial pain. You have offered me closure, even before the doomed affair had truly begun.
My apologies. I'm not wrecked on Retsina. I'm merely reading reports that Google's very fine search engine has already indicated that Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.
Of course, there's a touch of hyperbole here. But I suspect there might be one or two political partisans who will be experiencing intensely hyperbolic reactions when they hear of it.
You see, Google search has responded to the question: "Who will be the next president?" with a card that answered: Hillary Clinton.
I know, I know. You were still holding out for either Ted Nugent or the Hulk Hoganesque intellect of Donald Trump.
Instead, as the Next Web reported, two formulations of the same question both throw up results that suggest that in 2016, the revolution will be Clintonized.
Nerds will surely rush to explain that Google's search engine reacts to optimized results, and these two happened to be results that appear to be -- but aren't -- definitive answers. One, after all, is from renowned independently-minded performer Glen Beck.
There is no suggestion that Google's engineers are machinating to offer a coronation before the 18-month ululation.
I suspect, though, that a few conspiracy theorists will be ready to offer concerns about Google's alleged dark arts.
One imagines that a sizable proportion of Google's youthful staff might lean more to port than starboard. However, let me toss in one exalted conspiracy theory, merely for the amusement of those who cannot get enough of them .
Wouldn't it be delicious if this was a ploy by Bernie Sanders supporters to combat the notion that the Clinton nomination is a foregone conclusion?
Fifteen Libya Emails Missing From Clinton Cache // Sky News US Team – June 26, 2015
The US State Department has said it cannot find 15 emails from Hillary Clinton's private server that were released by a House of Representatives panel investigating the 2012 attack in Benghazi.
The emails, which all pre-date the 11 September attack on the US diplomatic compound, contain intelligence reports passed to Mrs Clinton by her long-time adviser Sidney Blumenthal, officials have said.
Several previously undisclosed emails were handed over to the State Department by Mr Blumenthal, which revealed it did not have a complete record from Mrs Clinton's time in office as Secretary of State.
File photo of Stevens, then U.S. ambassador to Libya, in meeting of delegation of African Union with Transitional Council, in Benghazi
US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in 2012
The 15 emails were either missing from the records she provided, or included only in partial form.
They include a media account about the killing of one of Moammar Gaddafi's sons, reports on internal politics among Libyan rebels and news of the assassination of a former Gaddafi minister in Vienna.
Play video "Hillary Clinton 'Sensitive' Emails"
Video: Hillary Clinton 'Sensitive' Emails
The last one was sent 28 August, 2012 - two weeks before the Benghazi attack.
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs Clinton, said the Democratic presidential candidate had given the department "all emails in her possession from Mr Blumenthal".
He said he could not explain where the origin of the additional correspondence Mr Blumenthal had provided in response to a subpoena.
Mrs Clinton - the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the 2016 presidential election - has faced strong criticism that she flouted record-keeping and transparency rules by using a private email account for her work.
The private address was connected to a server in her home.
Mrs Clinton has insisted she used the private account for convenience and has broken no rules. The account was revealed in March, more than two years after she stepped down as the top US diplomat.
Trey Gowdy, the Republican congressman who heads the select committee investigating the Benghazi attack, said the incomplete email record "raises serious questions".
He said: "This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee's work.
"This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record."
In March, Mrs Clinton said that she had given the State Department all the emails she sent and received that "could possibly be work-related".
She said the 30,490 emails she handed over in December included all those that referred to Libya or Benghazi, along side work-related correspondence from "long-time friends".
She said that after those emails were copies, all her correspondence - including another 30,000 that were deemed personal - were deleted from the server.
It comes after an Islamic-State militant thought to have been involved in the attack in Benghazi was reportedly killed in a drone strike in Iraq last week.
Four Americans, including US ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed during the attack on the US outpost in Benghazi on 11 September 2012.
Clinton Lawyer, Soros Back Anti-Voter ID Lawsuits // Washington Free Beacon // Joe Schoffstall - June 26, 2015
George Soros and Clinton lawyer Marc Elias engaging in multi-state effort to overturn ID laws.
Hillary Clinton’s top campaign lawyer is behind a multi-state push challenging voter identification laws implemented in recent years, efforts that are expected to reach numerous other states ahead of the 2016 elections.
Marc Elias, a top campaign lawyer for Hillary Clinton and a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm Perkins Coie, has filed lawsuits in three states thus far. The nationwide campaign is being fueled with money from the liberal billionaire George Soros.
Elias first began exploring the possible challenges back in January 2014. Soros then became involved, vowing to throw his weight behind the effort in collaboration with Elias.
“We hope to see these unfair laws, which often disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in our society, repealed,” Soros told the New York Times.
“It is disingenuous to suggest that these laws are meant to protect against voter fraud, which is nearly nonexistent,” Soros political adviser Michael Vachon added. “Clearly they are meant to give Republicans a political advantage on Election Day.”
Soros has pledged $5 million to propel the campaign. Elias did not return a request for comment concerning his dealings with Soros or the total number of lawsuits they plan on bringing forward. A request for comment from George Soros’s press office was also not returned by press time.
Democrats ramped up their efforts last month to challenge voter ID laws implemented by Republican legislatures and governors, claiming that the laws disenfranchise minority voters.
The first in the series of lawsuits was filed in Ohio on May 8. Three weeks later, on June 1, a second suit was filed in Wisconsin. On June 11, a third lawsuit was filed in Virginia. Further suits are expected to follow in other states.
Elias is working independently on behalf of his firm, Perkins Coie, though the Clinton camp supports the effort. Perkins Coie has pulled in more than $40 million from Democratic clients since 2000.
The suits came as Hillary Clinton made comments about voting in a number of public speeches.
During a speech in Houston on June 4 at historically black Texas Southern University, Hillary Clinton called for a universal, automatic voter registration for 18-year-olds along with early voting up to 20 days before an election.
“I call on Republicans at all levels of government with all manner of ambition to stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud and start explaining why they’re so scared of letting citizens have their say,” Clinton said during the speech.
True the Vote, a right-leaning vote-monitoring organization, sees the campaign as a political stunt to rile up apathetic voters who may not have the same excitement for Clinton as they did for Obama.
“Mrs. Clinton’s decision to shuffle voting reforms to the top of her policy platform has now been viewed as a purely political move to rally the potentially apathetic Obama coalition prior to 2016,” True the Vote said in a statement.
“The political calculus is simple: the potential benefits of victory outweigh the lasting efficacy of debates over real election reform. It is a very rare thing to see election experts on both the left and right agree that Clinton-sanctioned demagoguery and litigation are not based in objective facts and promising any success in the courts.”
While Soros and other Voter ID opponents say the laws disenfranchise minority voters, one state showed the opposite outcome: minority turnout in Georgia skyrocketed after the law went into effect.
According to a review conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, turnout among African Americans and Hispanics drastically increased from 2006 to 2010.
“Georgia first adopted a voter ID law in 2005 and won court approval to implement it in 2007. The law has now been in place for two major statewide general elections: 2008, when the presidential race was on the ballot, and 2010, when voters selected a new governor,” AJC writes. “Prior to the new law, voters had been able to present one of 17 forms of identification, including a utility bill.”
“Elections data reviewed by the AJC show that participation among black voters rose by 44 percent from 2006—before the law was implemented—to 2010. For Hispanics, the increase for the same period was 67 percent. Turnout among whites rose 12 percent.”
Karma Chameleon in Chief // Washington Free Beacon // Matthew Continetti - June 26, 2015
Hillary Clinton is a woman without conviction, a woman who doesn’t know. She was first lady of a southern state, she sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992—but is there any record of her voicing opposition to Wal-Mart’s labor practices, of her opposing the sale of the Confederate battle flag? Until recently, has there been any moment in the decades following her appointment to that board, in the many years in which she has been egregiously prominent in public life, when she led on, was prominently identified with, the issue of the flag or racial matters in general?
They say Obama’s audacious. What’s truly remarkable, though, is his potential successor’s blatant contempt for the politics of principle and conviction—her unique ability to adopt, quickly and seamlessly, the most expedient position at any moment, to flaunt her temporary stance with the righteousness and self-regard of a longtime committed activist.
Her husband campaigned in the ’90s as a tough-on-crime neoliberal who would lock up criminals, even put them to death, who challenged the racism of Sister Souljah, promised to “mend” affirmative action, worked hard to recover the Democratic position in white working class precincts. Hillary was his active partner. Nor did she denounce her husband’s policies when she ran for Senate in 2000 and 2006 and for president in 2008, when the chances of her nomination rested on her ability to win “beer track” white and Hispanic Democrats.
It is only today, when the Democratic Party of Barack Obama has veered left, written off the white working class, and been seized by a practically religious enthusiasm for cultural reformation and purgation, that Clinton has called for an “end to the era of mass incarceration,” said America has “to face hard truths about race and justice,” and launched a campaign, in the words of the New York Times, “focused more on mobilizing supporters in the Great Lakes states and in parts of the West and South than on persuading undecided voters.”
What we have, on issue after issue, is a presidential frontrunner uninterested in leadership, who holds an ambivalent attitude toward notions of political courage and intellectual independence, who is devoted exclusively and mechanically to the capture of high office. She has latched on to the president’s ad hoc and failing Iraq policies because her party’s base supports them; gone from opposing same-sex marriage as recently as a few years ago to marching at the vanguard of America’s latest Cultural Revolution and saying that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed”; pledged to “go further” than Barack Obama’s constitutionally dubious executive amnesty despite being silent when her husband signed tough immigration bills in the ’90s, and despite having voted for an amendment that helped kill a pro-immigration bill in 2007; waffled on a trade agreement that she backed while secretary of state; somehow avoided committing to an intelligible and consistent position on the Keystone Pipeline despite taking money from the anti-Keystone billionaire Tom Steyer. Is there any doubt that this supposed pro-Israel Democrat will back whatever nuclear agreement President Obama is able to reach with Iran, no matter how much he capitulates to the ayatollah’s demands?
Hillary Clinton’s approach to politics is cynical, uninspiring, robotic. She’s a chef who follows the recipe without exception, who’s too afraid of failure to challenge the authority of either her superiors or her customers. She’ll be a president suitable for the age of intelligent machines. Like a Terminator she is fixated on her mission—though the Terminator has more personality, greater charm. There’s an assumption behind all her latest moves, a programming code that determines the automaton’s behavior: that the country’s demographics and culture have changed to such an extent that a winning campaign needn’t do more than identify and mobilize core supporters by assuming the various poses most likely to drive them to the polls. There’s the chance the code could be garbage.
Clinton isn’t the first politician who’s inconsistent—far from it. What she and her husband have pioneered is a mode of inconsistency, an entire lifestyle of ideological flexibility the goal of which isn’t public-minded but wholly self-interested. “The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose,” Churchill wrote in “Consistency in Politics” (1932). But the dominating purpose Churchill had in mind was a public one: the common good. And the pursuit of the common good often requires the statesman to disagree with public opinion—to challenge his base, or indeed the majority.
Earlier this year Bill Clinton identified the dominant purpose behind his family’s inconsistency: “I gotta pay our bills.” Blessed with loquacity, smarts, and personal charisma, the man from Hope, Ark., used political office as a means to acquire fame and fortune. Unable to go into business, or perhaps uninterested, convinced that his good and the public good are synonymous, he derived riches from his political talent: lucrative friendships, generous supporters, speaking audiences ready to pay.
The maintenance of what Mickey Kaus calls the “Clinton mode of production” requires at least one member of the family to hold office, so that powerful and wealthy people might obtain a frisson of access and influence through financial gift-giving. What the Clintons understand is that the easiest way to hold office, and thereby keep up the mansions and private jets and villas and beach vacations, is to flatter and cater to the ever-changing morality and self-conception of the liberal ruling caste, to understand what troubles their guilty consciences, to put yourself forward as the representative of their fluctuating and malleable concerns.
Such an approach requires a canny operator able to obscure changes in policy behind a smooth veneer of likability and guile—and if we have learned anything so far in this campaign it is that Hillary Clinton is not such an operator. She is clumsy, stilted, tentative, suspicious, rehearsed, monotonous. She might satisfy, but does she inspire? Do any of the voters nodding their heads at her latest declaration of the conventional wisdom consider themselves “Hillary Clinton Democrats”? What does she stand for besides her own ambition?
It would take someone like Bill Clinton to overcome another obstacle: The differences between the primary electorate and the general one. The social issues on which the left is proclaiming victory may become insignificant next year when voters compare them to a moribund economy and a collapsing international order. The combination of an uninspiring and untrustworthy candidate and a political environment hostile to the incumbent party might overwhelm Hillary Clinton’s meager skills. Like Boy George, Hillary doesn’t quite know how to finesse the contradiction between her past and her present, between what she’s selling and what the general electorate might want. Voters are fickle, after all. They come and go.
Moroccan Government Lobbyists Ready for Hillary // Free Beacon // Lachlan Markay – June 25, 2015
Lobbyists representing an arm of the Moroccan government have donated thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and a super PAC supporting it, public records show.
The firm, Nurnberger & Associates, reported that its employees donated $1,500 to Clinton’s campaign last month in a Monday filing with the Department of Justice disclosing its work on behalf of the Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP).
The firm reported another $5,000 in contributions last year to Ready for Hillary, a now-defunct pro-Clinton super PAC. Ralph Nurnberger, the firm’s principal, served on the group’s national finance council.
The previously unreported donations suggest additional ties between Clinton and the Moroccan government, which has donated millions to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and received favorable treatment from the State Department while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary.
The MACP is a nonprofit owned by the Moroccan government. “Chief among the Center’s objectives is to assist the Kingdom of Morocco in its efforts to obtain American support to construct a stable, progressive, democratic, and economically dynamic region in North Africa,” according to its website.
To that end, it secured a lobbying contract with Nurnberger in 2009 by way of another firm, the Amani Group (since renamed GrayLoeffler). That firm’s founder and partner, the former Democratic congressman William Gray, co-chaired Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Nurnberger submitted a registration statement to the Justice Department, pursuant to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, just eight days after Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in 2009.
In the years that followed, it reported lobbying State Department officials on MACP’s behalf. In 2011, the firm met three times with Lorraine Hariton, a former Clinton campaign finance committee member tapped by the secretary as the department’s special representative for commercial and business affairs.
The last meeting took place on Oct. 18, 2011. Days later, State announced that Hariton would “lead a delegation of American entrepreneurs, early-stage investors, non-governmental organization representatives” on a trip to Morocco and two other North African nations.
Clinton and the Moroccan government have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship, as reported by Politico’s Ken Vogel last month. A state-owned mining company last month paid more than $1 million to host the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Marrakesh.
Vogel reported that the meeting faced criticism from the Sahrawi people of the Western Sahara, who accused the Clintons of buddying up with a regime that they say represses advocates for independence from Morocco.
“Hillary Clinton sold her soul when they accepted that money,” one former employee of the Moroccan mining company told Vogel.
The MACP has also faced criticism for what the critics describe as “smear tactics” designed to discredit political forces advocating Western Saharan independence.
“If you are looking only for the totally biased and slanted Moroccan royalist line on the Western Sahara, this group I guess works well enough,” wrote Charles Liebling,
chairman of the group United States Citizens for Western Sahara, in a 2012 blog post.
“If, however, accuracy, truthfulness, international law, and balanced analysis are concerns, I suggest you go elsewhere,” he said.
Neither MACP nor Nurnberger returned requests for comment.
How Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Signifies A New Era For Women’s Rights // Elite Daily // Aisha Moktadier – June 25, 2015
On September 5, 1995, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, where she declared, “It is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”
As Clinton moves forward in her presidential campaign, women’s rights and gender topics have remained at the forefront of her platform.
She has broken her campaign into four “fights,” one of which is tackling social issues affecting the strength of American families.
These issues include the wage gap between genders, paid leave and addressing human rights within the LGBT community.
In her 1995 speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women, Clinton stated, “We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family.”
This statement rings true even in today’s feminist movement, a word or concept that has seemingly constructed an air around itself as being “untouchable,” “dismissive” or “irritating.”
While there are many women’s rights issues occurring all over the globe, such as abuse, trafficking and being denied a right to education, there is still a good amount of women’s rights issues in our own nation that cry for attention as well.
The United States of America is one of seven countries that have not ratified The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which is considered the international bill of rights for women.
According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), there about 293,000 victims of rape and sexual assault every year. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), over 10 million women and men are physically abused by an intimate partner, with highest percentage of victims being women between the ages of 18 to 24.
In terms of Clinton’s bold statement about respecting the choices a woman makes for herself, access to abortions for women in the United States is shrinking, due to increased restrictions.
Some of these restrictions include late-abortion bans, long waiting periods, clinic regulations and bans on insurance coverage.
Taking away a woman’s right to a legal abortion forces her to turn to more clandestine means, thus jeopardizing health and safety.
These are just a few examples of women’s rights issues within the boundaries of America.
Clinton’s platform for strengthening America’s families includes addressing the wage gap between men and women. A woman, on average, makes $0.78 to every dollar earned by a man. Black women make $0.64 to every dollar and Latinas make $0.56 to every dollar.
For many families, these few cents lost per dollar really add up, creating difficulty in being able to provide and save.
Even outside of the family, single working women should be able to take home the same amount a man has made, not less because of her anatomy.
Anatomy is not synonymous with skill or worth.
In order to deal with the wage gap, Clinton aims to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which, according to Congress, “amends the portion of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) known as the Equal Pay Act to revise remedies for, enforcement of, and exceptions to prohibitions against sex discrimination in the payment of wages.”
She also is proposing a raise in minimum wage and the introduction of paid leave so Americans will not have to sacrifice their income because of a newborn child, taking care of a sick family member or being sick themselves.
Human rights within the LGBT community is also being addressed by Clinton’s platform.
She aims to help give LGBT Americans and their families the rights to “live, learn, marry and work free from discrimination.”
In her famous 1995 speech in Beijing, she stated, “Women’s rights are human rights,” and has extended this assertion to include the LGBT community, in her recently-released video, featuring many married LGBT couples.
The video ends with a moving statement that “being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights. And human rights are gay rights.”
Clinton plans to combat discrimination against the LGBT community and has a record of being heavily involved in the international movement to end this discrimination around the globe.
She produced a daring and equally heroic statement in her 2011 address in Geneva, when it came to international human rights, saying, “It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave.”
It is no doubt there are many social issues at the forefront of the next presidential race, with women’s and gender issues being main topics.
When we search “feminism in the United States,” or “women’s rights in the United States,” we are met with links to historical movements such as those ranging from about 1848 to 1970.
However, the fight is long from being a part of history.
The movement toward gender equality in the United States and around the globe is a slow fight that will continue to take more time.
Hillary Clinton’s platform is indicative of the progress we have already achieved, and how much further we have to go.
American schools are 'more segregated than they were in the 1960s,' says Hillary Clinton // Politifact // Linda Qiu – June 25, 2015
Speaking at a black church near Ferguson, Mo., Hillary Clinton applauded efforts to remove Confederate flags before challenging America to own up to its racist past and confront "hard truths" about bigotry in the present.
The shooting in Charleston, S.C., was no isolated incident, but an extreme manifestation of institutionalized racism, she said.
"The truth is equality, opportunity, civil rights in America are still far from where they need to be," Clinton said on June 23. "Our schools are still segregated, in fact, more segregated than they were in the 1960s."
The Supreme Court declared segregation "inherently unequal" and unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Sixty years later, have we really regressed and resegregated?
It’s important to note that modern school segregation is not the same as the government-sanctioned social system that the Supreme Court struck down in 1954. Segregation today refers to the level of isolation of minority students, which can be measured in a variety of ways. Clinton's comment omits a lot of nuance.
Not quite Jim Crow
The Clinton campaign pointed us to a passage in a 2014 study by UCLA Graduate School of Education’s Civil Rights Project that tracked the amount of southern black students attending white schools in the South. By that yardstick, schools are slightly less integrated now than they were in 1968. That’s the year the Supreme Court mandated the enforcement of desegregation in Green vs. County School Board and diverse classrooms really started to become reality.
Clinton, however, bookended the 1960s as the point of comparison and her claim doesn’t hold true for the better part of the decade. Jim Crow laws were still in place until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and despite the Brown decision, most black students in the South still didn’t attend white schools,"the kind of schools that provided strong potential opportunities for diverse learning experiences," according to the study. In 1967, one in 100 black students went to a white school. In 1960, it was one in 1,000.
"It’s true that segregation for blacks is worse today than it was in 1968, but it’s certainly not worse than 1964 and before," said Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor of education and lead author of the study Clinton cited.
Even if we take 1968 to represent the 1960s, Clinton’s claim has issues if we look at different ways of measuring segregation. The UCLA report also considers how many black students are isolated in overwhelmingly black schools. Across the United States, fewer black students attend these schools now than they did in 1968 (four in 10 versus six in 10), signalling a decline in segregation.
A separate study by Charles Clotfelter, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke University, measured the potential for black and white students to interact. According to that data, segregation has been declining since the 1970s, albeit at a slower rate in the past decade.
Rainbows here, black and white there
Clinton’s blanket statement also leaves out regional and demographic nuances in the UCLA study.
According to that data, the South is now the least racially divided region in the United States when it comes to school segregation, and no state in Dixie is among the top five most segregated by any yardstick. For example, a third of black students are isolated in black schools in the South, compared to half of black students in the Northeast and 40 percent on average. How did the South surpass the rest of the nation in diversity? It’s a mixture of the judicial mandates in the 1960s and modern geography.
"The South is really the only place where we seriously enforced desegregation," said Orfield, the lead author of the UCLA study.
"Large school jurisdictions," added Clotfelter, the Duke professor. "That means that it's not possible to slice up into such small bits, like a metropolitan area where the districts dramatically differ."
In contrast, the densely populated cities of the Northeast and West are becoming more and more segregated. On the Pacific coast, Clinton’s claim is on the money: Latino students are now more isolated than black students and "more segregated than they’ve ever been," according to Orfield.
"Latinos have increased more than five times over in the number of students since the 1960s," he said. "Demographics is the largest factor (in their segregation) but there’s a lot of history as well. There was never was much of a desegregation effort for Latinos."
Two steps forward, one step back
Clinton does have a strong point that American schools have relapsed into monochrome. Classrooms were the most diverse from the 1970s through the early 1990s. At peak integration, four out of 10 black southern students attended a white school, while less than a third of all black students attended black schools.
"We’ve lost a lot of the progress we gained, no doubt about that," Clotfelter said.
Experts say the backslide was the consequence of a series of judicial decisions, beginning with Milliken vs. Bradley in 1974, a relatively unheard of but seminal case in the desegregation saga. Criticized by some as "one of the worst Supreme Court decisions" ever, Milliken dealt with Detroit’s plan to integrate students by busing them from the intercity to the suburbs. The court ruled that such a plan was unconstitutional, arguing that black students had the right to attend integrated schools within their own school district, but were not protected from de facto segregation.
"That decision … said the racial disparities across districts would remain outside the reach of policymakers," Clotfelter wrote in piece exploring the impact of Milliken. "The maximum amount of interracial contact one could strive for, then, would be limited by the two remaining factors: balkanization of jurisdictions and household choices about where to live."
Court-mandated desegregation was dealt its own deadly blow by three rulings from the Supreme Court between 1991 and 1995. According to the court, integration was only a temporary federal policy and after the historical imbalance was righted, school districts should reclaim local control and were released from desegregation orders.
Since then, school segregation has been intrinsically tied to the racial gaps in housing and income, leading to the re-emergence of the color line. Economic segregation, which disproportionately affects black and Latino students, is increasing, pointed out Orfield. He noted that in California, Asian and white students are 10 times more likely to go to a high-quality school than Latinos and therefore dramatically more likely to attend college.
"We’ve lost something very vital," he said. "Inequality is very related to the double segregation of low-income racial minorities and (their) isolation from the middle class, from the best teachers, the best curriculum. That has become very profound."
Our ruling
Hillary Clinton said, "In America today, our schools are more segregated than they were in the 1960s."
Overall, experts say and the data shows that the United States has taken two steps forward and one step back, but hasn’t quite reverted to pre-Civil Rights levels of segregation. Clinton would have been more accurate setting her time frame a little later. But she has a strong point that the country has fallen back from the high levels of diversity that existed from the 1970s to the early 1990s. On the whole, we rate her statement Mostly True.
Speaking at a black church near Ferguson, Mo., Hillary Clinton applauded efforts to remove Confederate flags before challenging America to own up to its racist past and confront "hard truths" about bigotry in the present.
The shooting in Charleston, S.C., was no isolated incident, but an extreme manifestation of institutionalized racism, she said.
"The truth is equality, opportunity, civil rights in America are still far from where they need to be," Clinton said on June 23. "Our schools are still segregated, in fact, more segregated than they were in the 1960s."
The Supreme Court declared segregation "inherently unequal" and unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Sixty years later, have we really regressed and resegregated?
It’s important to note that modern school segregation is not the same as the government-sanctioned social system that the Supreme Court struck down in 1954. Segregation today refers to the level of isolation of minority students, which can be measured in a variety of ways. Clinton's comment omits a lot of nuance.
Not quite Jim Crow
The Clinton campaign pointed us to a passage in a 2014 study by UCLA Graduate School of Education’s Civil Rights Project that tracked the amount of southern black students attending white schools in the South. By that yardstick, schools are slightly less integrated now than they were in 1968. That’s the year the Supreme Court mandated the enforcement of desegregation in Green vs. County School Board and diverse classrooms really started to become reality.
Clinton, however, bookended the 1960s as the point of comparison and her claim doesn’t hold true for the better part of the decade. Jim Crow laws were still in place until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and despite the Brown decision, most black students in the South still didn’t attend white schools,"the kind of schools that provided strong potential opportunities for diverse learning experiences," according to the study. In 1967, one in 100 black students went to a white school. In 1960, it was one in 1,000.
"It’s true that segregation for blacks is worse today than it was in 1968, but it’s certainly not worse than 1964 and before," said Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor of education and lead author of the study Clinton cited.
Even if we take 1968 to represent the 1960s, Clinton’s claim has issues if we look at different ways of measuring segregation. The UCLA report also considers how many black students are isolated in overwhelmingly black schools. Across the United States, fewer black students attend these schools now than they did in 1968 (four in 10 versus six in 10), signalling a decline in segregation.
A separate study by Charles Clotfelter, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke University, measured the potential for black and white students to interact. According to that data, segregation has been declining since the 1970s, albeit at a slower rate in the past decade.
Rainbows here, black and white there
Clinton’s blanket statement also leaves out regional and demographic nuances in the UCLA study.
According to that data, the South is now the least racially divided region in the United States when it comes to school segregation, and no state in Dixie is among the top five most segregated by any yardstick. For example, a third of black students are isolated in black schools in the South, compared to half of black students in the Northeast and 40 percent on average. How did the South surpass the rest of the nation in diversity? It’s a mixture of the judicial mandates in the 1960s and modern geography.
"The South is really the only place where we seriously enforced desegregation," said Orfield, the lead author of the UCLA study.
"Large school jurisdictions," added Clotfelter, the Duke professor. "That means that it's not possible to slice up into such small bits, like a metropolitan area where the districts dramatically differ."
In contrast, the densely populated cities of the Northeast and West are becoming more and more segregated. On the Pacific coast, Clinton’s claim is on the money: Latino students are now more isolated than black students and "more segregated than they’ve ever been," according to Orfield.
"Latinos have increased more than five times over in the number of students since the 1960s," he said. "Demographics is the largest factor (in their segregation) but there’s a lot of history as well. There was never was much of a desegregation effort for Latinos."
Two steps forward, one step back
Clinton does have a strong point that American schools have relapsed into monochrome. Classrooms were the most diverse from the 1970s through the early 1990s. At peak integration, four out of 10 black southern students attended a white school, while less than a third of all black students attended black schools.
"We’ve lost a lot of the progress we gained, no doubt about that," Clotfelter said.
Experts say the backslide was the consequence of a series of judicial decisions, beginning with Milliken vs. Bradley in 1974, a relatively unheard of but seminal case in the desegregation saga. Criticized by some as "one of the worst Supreme Court decisions" ever, Milliken dealt with Detroit’s plan to integrate students by busing them from the intercity to the suburbs. The court ruled that such a plan was unconstitutional, arguing that black students had the right to attend integrated schools within their own school district, but were not protected from de facto segregation.
"That decision … said the racial disparities across districts would remain outside the reach of policymakers," Clotfelter wrote in piece exploring the impact of Milliken. "The maximum amount of interracial contact one could strive for, then, would be limited by the two remaining factors: balkanization of jurisdictions and household choices about where to live."
Court-mandated desegregation was dealt its own deadly blow by three rulings from the Supreme Court between 1991 and 1995. According to the court, integration was only a temporary federal policy and after the historical imbalance was righted, school districts should reclaim local control and were released from desegregation orders.
Since then, school segregation has been intrinsically tied to the racial gaps in housing and income, leading to the re-emergence of the color line. Economic segregation, which disproportionately affects black and Latino students, is increasing, pointed out Orfield. He noted that in California, Asian and white students are 10 times more likely to go to a high-quality school than Latinos and therefore dramatically more likely to attend college.
"We’ve lost something very vital," he said. "Inequality is very related to the double segregation of low-income racial minorities and (their) isolation from the middle class, from the best teachers, the best curriculum. That has become very profound."
Our ruling
Hillary Clinton said, "In America today, our schools are more segregated than they were in the 1960s."
Overall, experts say and the data shows that the United States has taken two steps forward and one step back, but hasn’t quite reverted to pre-Civil Rights levels of segregation. Clinton would have been more accurate setting her time frame a little later. But she has a strong point that the country has fallen back from the high levels of diversity that existed from the 1970s to the early 1990s. On the whole, we rate her statement Mostly True.
Benghazi panel says Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over all Libya emails, despite her claims // The Washington Times // Stephen Dinan - June 25, 2015
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t turn over all of her work-related emails to the department despite her claims to have done so, the Benghazi investigative committee charged Thursday in a statement raising new questions about the Democratic presidential candidate’s email practices.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and the Benghazi panel chairman, said the State Department informed his panel that it did not have in its possession some emails related to Benghazi and Libya that Mrs. Clinton had exchanged with longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal, and which he turned over to the committee.
If true, it suggests that Mrs. Clinton either did not perform a full search, intentionally shielded some messages, or had some other hiccup when she claimed to have belatedly complied with federal law and turned back to the department some 30,000 messages from her time as secretary.
The Associated Press said there were 15 messages that the State Department said it couldn’t find in its own records that Mrs. Clinton provided.
“This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton’s self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server — especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third-party arbiter,” Mr. Gowdy said.
Mrs. Clinton set up her own email server at one of her homes, in New York, and used an account she issued herself, rather than an account on State Department servers, to conduct business during her four years in office.
She said the arrangement was done out of convenience.
Federal law requires that officials ensure their emails, which are considered potential government records, be stored on official servers for archival purposes. Mrs. Clinton did not comply with that requirement until nearly two years after she left office, and only after the Benghazi investigative panel discovered her unique email arrangement.
At a dramatic press conference and in follow-up communications from her attorney, she said she had gone through all of her messages and decided which of the more than 60,000 from that period were personal and which were related to government business.
She said she found 30,000 that she deemed official and turned them over to the State Department in paper form. She said another 32,000 were private and she expunged them, then wiped her server clean.
A court has ordered the department to make all of the official messages public, and the department had already turned over several hundred related to Benghazi and Libya more generally, so the committee could complete its probe into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2012, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
However, Mr. Gowdy said, the emails Mr. Blumenthal exchanged with Mrs. Clinton during her time in office were business-related but weren’t part of the set that the State Department sent.
He demanded that the department say whether it had withheld the emails, or whether Mrs. Clinton never turned them over in the first place.
The messages Mr. Blumenthal produced also contradict Mrs. Clinton’s claim that his advice was “unsolicited.”
“This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee’s work. This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record,” Mr. Gowdy said.
The messages in question don’t go to the heart of the Benghazi attack, Democrats said.
Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night, nor did a spokesman for Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi committee.
A Clinton campaign spokesman told The Associated Press that they believe she fulfilled her obligations.
“She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal,” spokesman Nick Merrill told the wire service.
They also questioned whether some of the messages Mr. Blumenthal turned over were really emails, saying they appeared to be formatted as other types of documents.
Bill Maher: Hillary plays ‘hide-and seek’ while Putin allows tough marathon interviews // The Washington Times // Douglas Earnst – June 25, 2015
Comedian Bill Maher used Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press schedule to mock former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “hide-and-seek” press strategy.
The HBO “Real Time” host said on his official website Wednesday that Mr. Putin recently gave a marathon interview with an Italian paper.
“Maybe it helps to be a sociopath, but the guy regularly does three-hour-plus press conferences in front of a hostile press — contrast that with Hillary Clinton’s game of hide-and seek,” Mr. Maher said.
The sentiment of the comedian’s blog post echoes The New York Times’ Amy Chozick, who announced a series in May that would address Mrs. Clinton’s avoidance of the press.
“Since she declared her candidacy on April 12, Hillary Rodham Clinton has answered just seven questions from reporters. This is the first installment of a regular First Draft feature in which The Times will publish questions we would have asked Mrs. Clinton had we had the opportunity,” the paper reported May 6.
Mr. Maher told Maureen Dowd for her May 30 op-ed “Hooray for Hillarywood?” that he will vote for Mrs. Clinton, but he will not donate $1 million to her campaign as he did for President Obama.
State Dept: Clinton did not turn over some emails // CNN // Elise Labott – June 25, 2015
The State Department has not been able to find emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private server in its archives, State Department officials said Thursday.
The officials said the State Department is missing all or part of 15 emails from longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. Blumenthal provided the Select Committee on Benghazi with the emails.
"She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal," said Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill on Thursday.
Officials said the exchanges with Blumenthal were not among the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton handed over to the State Department, even though Clinton insisted she gave her former agency all of her work-related correspondence from private account during her time at State.
"We have confirmed that the emails Secretary Clinton provided the department include almost all of the material in Mr. Blumenthal's production," one of the officials said. "There here are, however, a limited number of instances 15 in which we could not locate all or part of the content of a document from his production within the tens of thousands of emails she gave us."
But the official added, "The substance of those 15 emails is not relevant to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the committee, has petitioned Clinton and her former aides to reveal what they know about the attack at an American diplomatic compound that killed four Americans. Gowdy's recent attention has turned to any emails between Clinton and Blumenthal.
Gowdy's committee has located emails between the pair and has asked the State Department to turn over their copies of the correspondence, which it said it did Thursday in a letter to the committee.
"This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton's self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server -- especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third party arbiter," Gowdy said in a statement on Thursday. "This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee's work. This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record."
A Clinton aide says they do not recognize many of the materials Blumenthal turned over to the committee and cannot speak to their origin.
They do not, the aide said, have a record of other correspondence between her and Mr. Blumenthal beyond that which they turned over to the State Department.
The aide also said that Clinton turned over all emails from Blumenthal, including more than a dozen emails that were not included in what he handed over to the House committee.
The missing emails are likely to fuel Republican charges that Clinton is hiding emails from her private server. The committee believes almost half of Clinton's public record on the attacks can be uncovered by looking at her emails with Blumenthal.
Gowdy's committee released 179 pages of emails on Monday. The emails that Blumenthal produced in response to the committee's request numbered about 120 pages.
Clinton has said that the emails she received were "unsolicited," but the committee believes the new emails show that not to be the case.
Blumenthal met behind closed doors last week with the committee for nearly nine hours about amid revelations he sent Clinton more than two dozen memos that read like intelligence reports. The emails have drawn Republican scrutiny because Blumenthal sent them while advising businesses interests in Libya and working with the Clinton Foundation, although Blumenthal said his work for the Clinton Foundation had "nothing whatsoever to do with my emails to my friend."
Democrats complained that the committee has drifted from its mission of investigating the attacks in Benghazi and has become an inquest into Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
FNC’s ‘Special Report’: Schweizer’s Clinton Cash Scandals Cause Hillary to Drop in Polls // Breitbart News – June 25, 2015
On Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” on Wednesday, White House correspondent Ed Henry broke down a Fox News poll showing Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton sliding in the polls after a series of scandals were revealed in Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash.”
Henry pointed to the latest Fox News poll showing her underwater in terms honesty and trustyworthiness.
“Amid the drip, drip of revelations about her family’s foundation, Hillary Clinton’s image continues to take a hit,” Henry explained. “A new Fox poll found when asked if she’s honest and trustworthy — 45 percent say yes, 52 percent say so. Republican pollsters believe she’s missing a key ingredient that allowed former President Bill Clinton to survive one scandal after another.
Henry continued by going into detail about one controversy in particular involving the Russian government and its efforts to bolster its position in the international uranium market.
“Controversies like the sale of uranium to the Russian government during her time as secretary of state may not have helped,” he said. “In an interview with WMUR in New Hampshire, Clinton denied that a $500,000 speaking fee to her husband by a Kremlin bank and millions in contributions to the Clinton Foundation were tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin, getting a corner on the uranium market.”
“The former secretary telling WMUR quote, ‘I was not personally involved because that wasn’t something the secretary of state did,’” Henry said. “‘Clinton Cash’ author, Peter Schweizer scoffed declaring in an op-ed quote, ‘The transfer of 20 percent of U.S. uranium, the stuff used to build nuclear weapons to Vladimir Putin did not rise to the level of secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s time and attention?’”
Bernie Sanders closes on Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Democrats poll // The Guardian // Ben Jacobs – June 25, 2015
Bernie Sanders is catching up to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.
A CNN/WMUR poll released on Thursday had the independent Vermont senator just eight points behind the former secretary of state in the Granite State’s Democratic primary.
The poll has Sanders receiving the support of 35% of likely Democratic voters while Clinton is at 43%. Vice-president Joe Biden, who has not indicated that he will mount a presidential bid, is at 8% and the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley is at 2%.
The poll has Clinton with a far slimmer lead than she possessed at this time eight years ago. In June 2007 a CNN/WMUR poll gave Clinton a 36%-22% lead over Barack Obama in New Hampshire. Obama won the Democratic nomination.
Sanders has been drawing massive crowds on the campaign trail. Most recently, when he and Clinton appeared with two days of each other in Des Moines, Iowa, the Vermonter drew a significantly bigger crowd. This was despite the fact that Sanders has repeatedly held public events in Iowa while it was Clinton’s first public rally in the Hawkeye State since announcing her candidacy.
Clinton’s weakness in New Hampshire is a significant red flag for her campaign. New Hampshire has long been a stronghold for both Hillary and Bill Clinton. A strong performance in the state’s primary made Bill Clinton “the Comeback Kid” in 1992 and a surprise win in the 2008 primary kept Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign alive after her loss in Iowa.
Sanders is scheduled to hold six events across New Hampshire this weekend. In contrast, while several members of Congress are appearing on Clinton’s behalf in the Granite State.
Hillary wraps up New York fundraising swing with private shopping trip to ultra-expensive Bergdorf Goodman one day after boasting about her plans to help 'poor people, people of color, and the elderly' // The Daily Mail – June 25, 2015
Hillary Clinton's rhetoric may skew toward supporting the downtrodden, but her shopping tastes are strictly LIfestyles of the Rich and Famous.
The Democratic presidential front-runner was phoographed Wednesday morning in wind-swept New York City emerging from the ultra-high-end Bergdorf Goodman department store and getting into her armored black 'Scooby' van with chief of staff Huma Abedin and a contingent of Secret Service agents.
'Bergdorf's,' as New Yorkers with gobs of disposable income call it, is Manhattan's ground zero for expensive brands like Gucci, Valentino, Prada and Louboutin, whose signature red-soled shoes can go for $1,000 or more per pair.
Hillary is also known to get her roots touched up or her hair cut by renowned - and pricey - stylist John Barrett at his salon on the 9th floor at Bergdorf's. But with the wind whipping her hair around, it's hard to say if she stopped by for a $600, yes, $600 cut and blow dry.
The landmark store is also renowned for its personal-shopper service, which pairs the wealthy with valet service to help choose, try and tailor outfits.
Clinton spoke Tuesday at a black church a stone's throw from race-riot-scarred Ferguson, Missouri, boasting of her pledge to combat 'systematic efforts to disempower and disenfranchise young people, poor people, people of color, and the elderly.'
She then jetted to New York City on a private plane waiting at the St. Louis airport.
Bergdorf Goodman shoppers who are in the know don't come and go through the main entrance on posh Fifth Avenue, but via a less public door around the corner on West 58th Street.
That's where Clinton and her entourage emerged on Wednesday.
Bergdorf's privileged customers who work with personal shoppers also typically don't walk out with armloads of bags, but can opt for delivery service after garments are tailored for a perfect fit.
The former secretary of state was in Manhattan for a one-night-only fundraiser at the legendary Plaza Hotel, where Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett were both on the program.
An invitation to the event described it as an 'intimate performance in support of Hillary for America.'
The fundraiser, where the minimum buy-in was $1,000 – or $2,700 for a VIP seat – is part of a mad scramble to collect as much campaign case as possible before the end of the month, when the fundraising quarter ends and prying eyes can see Federal Election Commission reports showing how successful she's been.
Guests on Wednesday night could sign up as 'event hosts' if they brought a total of $50,000 in campaign contributions. That magic number opened the door to a private receptioin with Clinton and an after-party with Bennett and Gaga.
Clinton visited Bergdorf's last year in February, fueling speculation that a trip to stock up on pantsuits was a sign that she planned to run for the White House.
The store, which is known for guarding its high-end clientele's secrets, did not respond to a request for comment.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill also did not respond.
Hillary will be in Northern Virginia on Friday to speak at an annual Democratic Party dinner commemorating Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, whose history as prominent slave-owners has come under fire this week.
Hillary Clinton's lead over N.H. Democrats dwindling, poll finds // CNN // Jennifer Agiesta – June 25, 2015
Hillary Clinton's sizable lead among Democrats in New Hampshire has been trimmed to single digits as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders makes a strong push in a state that narrowly broke Clinton's way in 2008 to keep her campaign alive.
According to a new CNN/WMUR New Hampshire Primary poll, Clinton holds an 8-point edge over Sanders, with 43% behind Clinton and 35% backing Sanders. Vice President Joe Biden clocks in at 8%, with 2% or less supporting Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee.
The poll marks a significant tightening of the contest since the May Granite State Poll, which included Elizabeth Warren on its list of candidates. In that poll, Clinton stood at 51%, with Warren at 20% and Sanders at 13%.
Several shifts in the poll seem to explain much of Sanders' gain. Looking at the demographic breakdown in primary preferences, men, younger voters and liberals appear to have moved broadly toward Sanders in the last month. Among men, 52% backed Clinton in the May survey, that fell to 32% in the new poll, while 47% now support Sanders. Likewise, among liberals, a 51% to 16% Clinton advantage is now a 48% to 41% Sanders edge. And among voters under age 50, Clinton has fallen from majority support to a near even split in the new poll, 37% back Clinton while 39% favor Sanders.
And likely Democratic primary voters are now more apt to see Sanders as the candidate who "best represents the values of Democrats like yourself." Sanders trounces Clinton, with 41% of Democratic primary voters saying Sanders does, to 30% who chose Clinton. In the May poll, 38% said Clinton was tops on this question, with 22% choosing Warren and just 13% picking Sanders.
Sanders has also gained dramatically in favorability ratings among Democrats since May. In the new poll, 66% say they have a favorable view of the Vermont senator, while just 11% hold an unfavorable view. In May, 45% had a favorable view and 11% held an unfavorable one.
And the Vermont Senator also holds a big edge over Clinton as the most empathetic candidate in the field; 45% say he's the one who cares the most about people like you, compared with 24% who pick Clinton on that score.
Clinton's advantages are apparent in voters' preferences on the issues, however. She is more trusted to handle two of the top domestic issues in the race: The economy (37%, compared with 28% who prefer Sanders' approach) and health care (43% Clinton to 27% Sanders).
And the former secretary of state's advantages are larger on matters of foreign affairs. She holds a wide lead as the more trusted candidate to handle both international trade policy (55% say they trust Clinton compared with Sanders' 14%; Biden is at 11% on that one) and terrorism (45% Clinton to 12% Biden and 11% Sanders).
But when it comes to dealing with "big banks and corporations," things are much tighter: 36% trust Sanders compared to 31% who favor Clinton.
More see Clinton as presidential than Sanders, with 38% saying she has the personal characteristics and qualities a president should have, compared with 27% who think Sanders is best representative of those qualities. Further, 56% of Democratic voters say she is the strongest leader in the field. On that question, just 13% say Sanders has the edge.
Still, 28% describe Clinton as the "least honest" candidate in the field. No other candidate is named by more than 5% of likely Democratic primary voters.
Clinton's favorability ratings remain strong and have generally held steady: 74% have a positive impression, 19% a negative one, about the same as in May.
O'Malley makes a small gain here, with his favorable rating climbing from 10% in May to 16% now. The former Maryland governor remains largely unknown, however, with 72% unable to offer an opinion.
One interesting contrast between the two parties in New Hampshire: while 75% of Republicans say they're still trying to make up their minds about who to support, that figure stands at 54% among Democrats, suggesting Democratic support is solidifying more quickly than Republican support.
The CNN/WMUR New Hampshire Primary Poll was conducted by telephone by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center from June 18-24 among 1,010 adult residents of New Hampshire. Of those, 360 said they plan to vote in the Democratic presidential primary. Results among likely Democratic primary voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points.
In Hillary Clinton’s journey, a history of Jewish kinship // J Weekly // Ron Kampeas – June 25, 2015
From the man who married her grandmother to the man who married her daughter, from working a room full of bar mitzvah guests on behalf of her husband’s political career to headlining major pro-Israel events during her own, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s journey has been suffused with Jewish connections.
That’s been a natural consequence of her East Coast education, her trajectory in the party favored by a substantial majority of Jewish Americans, and her embrace of the Jewish narrative of triumphing over adversity and bigotry, longtime friends of the 2016 presidential candidate say.
Sara Ehrman, whose friendship with the Democratic front-runner dates back more than four decades, noted that the Clintons, upon arriving in Arkansas in the mid-1970s, quickly established ties with leaders of the state’s tiny Jewish community.
“They were a smart, educated young couple … who had come down to this wonderful little city,” said Ehrman, now 96, referring to Little Rock. “The Jews gravitated to them. Among her best and most fervent supporters were Jews.”
The Clintons would attend seders at the homes of Jewish friends during their Little Rock years, and in 1988 Bill Clinton as governor co-officiated with Rabbi Zeke Palnick of Arkansas’ capital city at the Jewish wedding of Richard and Sheila Bronfman.
The Clintons are “both very spiritual and they tend to like to experience different cultures around them,” said Sheila Bronfman, who traveled the country to campaign for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and for Hillary Clinton in 2008.
In her first autobiography, “Living History,” Hillary Clinton recalls being 10 years old and noticing numbers tattooed on the arm of an acquaintance of her father’s. Hugh Rodham explained that Nazis had tattooed Jews, whom they murdered en masse.
“I knew that my grandmother Della’s [second] husband, Max Rosenberg, was Jewish, and I was horrified that someone like him could have been murdered just because of his religion,” Clinton wrote in 2003.
By the time Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, the youthful governor and his wife had become favorites among Jewish Democrats. Ehrman described a presidential campaign headquarters buzzing with Jewish activists. “The Jews loved the Clintons so much, they were coming from around the country,” she said. “If they couldn’t come, they would send food. The whole staff would end up in the Jewish room because there were bagels from New York, Danish pastries, Goldenberg’s peanut chews.” (The “Jewish room” she describes refers to the area where Jewish activists would congregate.)
The Jewish sensibility permeated the Clinton White House, where the first couple inaugurated what is now an annual Hanukkah party in 1993, in part because of the abundance of Jewish staffers: there was communications chief Ann Lewis; senior adviser Rahm Emanuel; Jack Lew, special assistant to President Clinton who would go on to become Treasury secretary under President Barack Obama; and Ron Klain, now Obama’s Ebola czar.
Hillary Clinton’s eight years in the Senate representing New York strengthened the couple’s ties to national Jewish groups. Her pro-Israel advocacy included exposing incitement in Palestinian media and helping to win full membership for Magen David Adom in the International Committee of the Red Cross. She blamed the Palestinians, and not the Israelis, for the collapse of the 2000 Camp David peace talks and the subsequent second intifada.
After winning the Senate seat in 2000, Clinton repeatedly secured the Tuesday-morning slot at national conferences for AIPAC and the Jewish Federations of North America, among others — a slot reserved for the most respected pro-Israel figure in Congress. Clinton chose the annual AIPAC conference in 2008 to concede the primaries to Obama.
For her 2016 bid, Clinton has lined up pro-Israel funding powerhouses who helped fuel her 2008 bid, including entertainment mogul Haim Saban, and has added some of Obama’s most prominent Jewish bundlers, notably movie executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. Lewis, the former White House communications chief, leads her Jewish outreach.
There were other alliances, less noticeable back in the 1990s, that would be personally consequential.
The 1992 election swept 51 Jewish lawmakers into Congress, the largest class ever. Among them was Rep. Marjorie Margolies, the Democrat from Pennsylvania who served a single term before being ousted in the Republican takeover of the House in ’94. Her opponents raised the issue of Margolies’ tie-breaking vote in 1993 passing Bill Clinton’s unpopular tax bill.
The Clintons, known for their loyalty to those who fall on their sword for them, campaigned for Margolies in her unsuccessful 2014 congressional bid. Margolies’ son, Marc Mezvinsky, met the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, when they were children at a political retreat, and fell in love when they met again at Stanford University. Co-officiating at their wedding was Rabbi James Ponet, the head rabbi at Yale.
After meetying up again with Hillary Clinton at a recent memorial for philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, Ponet said Clinton spoke with sensitivity about Bronfman’s efforts to make Swiss banks accountable for Holocaust-era Jewish assets. “There’s a sense of foundational connection to the Jewish people,” he said of her, “and a sense of the responsibility to the Jewish people in the world.”
Hillary Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, voters say, but is still the Dem frontrunner // Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015
A majority of voters say former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not honest and trustworthy and that her claim to be a fighter for the middle class is just a campaign slogan, but she is still retaining a tight lock on the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination contest and leads all but one of her Republican rivals.
Fifty-two percent of voters said Mrs. Clinton is not honest and trustworthy while 45 percent said she is, a new Fox News poll said.
Forty-four percent said Mrs. Clinton really would be a fighter for the middle class if elected president, while 51 percent said it was just a campaign slogan.
Still, she was the choice of 61 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the poll, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont at 15 percent and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 11 percent.
She also led a number of potential Republican rivals in head-to-head match-ups, though she was tied with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 43 percent and she led Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida by 1 point, 45 percent to 44 percent.
She led businessman Donald Trump by 17 points, 51 percent to 34 percent, and held 6-point leads against Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas (48 percent to 42 percent), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (47 percent to 41 percent) and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (45 percent to 39 percent).
She also led retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson by 5 points, 46 percent to 41 percent, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky by 4 points, 46 percent to 42 percent.
Some Republicans have been working to strike a generational contrast with Mrs. Clinton, with Mr. Rubio calling her a “leader from yesterday” in his April announcement speech.
But seven in 10 voters said they would see a Clinton presidency more as her first term, compared to 21 percent who said they would see it more as bringing back her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for another term.
Fifty-four percent also said they would see her presidency more as a fresh start for her, compared to 38 percent who said they would see it more as a continuation of the policies of President Obama.
The survey of 1,005 registered voters was taken June 21-23 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points for the Democratic subgroup.
Hillary Clinton's Newest Consultant Was A Major Keystone Lobbyist // HuffPo // Sam Stein – June 25, 2015
The newest hire for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is a longtime strategist who played a key role in her 2008 primary defeat while working for then-Sen. Barack Obama.
He’s also a Washington lobbyist who lobbied the State Department -- led, at the time, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- on behalf of the company seeking to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
Clinton's new consultant, Jeff Berman, has followed, in many respects, a well-worn path for those in Washington D.C. He spent a large chunk of his career in the public sector before a stint on K Street, and now he's back again. When Clinton hired Berman for his current role, it was seen as something of a coup, because he's known as a master of the mechanics of the primary process. Buzzfeed, which broke the news of Berman's hiring on Wednesday, described him as “a bit of a living legend in the small world that can speak fluently" about the strategic minutiae involved in winning an election.
Certainly anyone who was paying attention during the 2008 election knows what a better grasp the Obama campaign had on the process than the Clinton camp -- which was due in large part to Berman’s expertise.
But his hiring doesn’t come baggage-free. After Berman left the Obama campaign, he joined the firm Bryan Cave, where he lobbied on behalf of several big-name clients. The most controversial of those clients was TransCanada, the multibillion-dollar company seeking a permit to complete the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport Alberta's oil sands to refineries in Texas.
According to public records, Berman lobbied for TransCanada from the second quarter of 2009 through the second quarter of 2011. Several other officials from Bryan Cave joined him on the account. For that work, the firm was paid $980,000.
According to the filings, Berman and others lobbied to help obtain “approval for Keystone Pipeline path through Missouri tracts” and later to “monitor climate change legislation and [push for a] presidential permit process for TransCanada Keystone Pipeline.” (Other lobbying objectives were listed, but they largely mirrored these two).
Berman lobbied the House, the Senate and multiple federal agencies. In the second and fourth quarters of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, the State Department was among the agencies that he lobbied. Clinton was running the department at the time.
Now, well into the seventh year of the Obama administration, Keystone remains in political limbo. The administration has not yet issued a decision, though agency comments on the pipeline were due in February.
Environmentalists have deep concerns about the pipeline because it would carry a type of oil that produces higher greenhouse emissions than conventional crude oil, and because of the threat of spills in America's heartland. TransCanada has said it intends to move the oil one way or another, and that it’s safer to do it through a pipeline than, say, by rail. The official State Department assessment basically makes the same argument -- that the oil will be burned with or without KXL.
There is also concern about Clinton’s position on the matter. Because the pipeline would cross an international border, the State Department is charged with deciding whether it would be in the national interest to grant a permit to the project. While secretary of state in 2010, Clinton said the department was "inclined" to sign off on the pipeline. On the campaign trail, however, Clinton has declined to comment on Keystone one way or the other. And since then, there have been accusations that she's been the object of influence peddling. Two Canadian banks "tightly connected" to promoting the pipeline have paid her $1.6 million for just eight speeches.
A Clinton campaign aide told The Huffington Post that Berman's job will be to work on strategy, helping to count delegates as the team charts out the primary, and that he will not be playing a policy adviser role.
Hillary Clinton Has Hired a Former Keystone Pipeline Lobbyist // The New Republic // Rebecca Leber – June 21, 2015
Hillary Clinton has hired a former lobbyist for the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, further upsetting environmentalists who have long been wary of her commitment to fighting climate change.
BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith reported on Wednesday that the Clinton campaign has hired Jeffrey Berman as a campaign consultant. Berman, who began working for the campaign earlier this month, once lobbied on behalf of TransCanada, the company that hopes to build a pipeline carrying tar sands oil from Canada to the southern coast of the U.S.
R.L. Miller of Climate Hawks Vote said Berman's hiring "is a disappointment—especially as Martin O'Malley is taking flight based on the best climate plan I've seen from a candidate, and Bernie Sanders continues to soar."
"For us it’s a signal that she continues to be willing to work with oil and gas interests and take money from folks who are commited to have a pathway to fossil fuels," said Ben Schreiber, Friends of the Earth's climate and energy program director.
In 2008, political operatives described Berman as an “unsung hero” of Obama’s upset win over Clinton, due to a strategy that won Obama more delegates in key primaries when Clinton was still ahead in the popular vote. After Obama’s win, Berman joined the lobbying firm Bryan Cave LLC, which retained TransCanada as a client until 2013.
Federal disclosures show that TransCanada paid Bryan Cave $120,000 to lobby the State Department—to “monitor climate change legislation and presidential permit process for TransCanada Keystone Pipeline,” per the disclosure form—while Clinton was secretary. Berman is listed as the lobbyist on this issue.
In 2010, Clinton said she was "inclined" to approve a permit for the pipeline. She's refused to take a position ever since. “I have steadily made clear that I'm not going to express an opinion” she said in January, which also happened to be the same week the Senate considered a bill to fast-track the six-year-long delay to a permit. Clinton’s extended network has other connections to TransCanada, like her 2008 national deputy campaign manager Paul Elliot, now an in-house lobbyist for TransCanada. And the Wall Street Journal reported in February that between Clinton's tenure at the State Department and campaign for president, the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars in donations from ExxonMobil and nearly half a million dollars from Canada's Foreign Affairs, Trade and Management agency, which supports the pipeline.
Even though Clinton has made early promises to take an aggressive stand on climate change, ennvironmental groups remain wary. Friends of the Earth has requested public records from the State Department on Bryan Cave's lobbying during Clinton's tenure. Still, the bulk of the environmental campaign community is reluctant to criticize the likely Democratic nominee outright. It's unclear whether these donations and distant connections ever represented a conflict of interest for Clinton, and Democratic donor and climate activist Tom Steyer continues to hold fundraisers for Clinton regardless of the criticism.
Clinton's opponents still sense an opportunity to outdo the frontrunner on climate change. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley received positive reviews from Steyer and other activists last week for proposing that the U.S. adopt 100 percent clean energy by 2050. And Vermont's Bernie Sanders already is a favorite among green activists for championing climate legislation in the Senate.
What does Clinton need to do to convince environmentalists she's on their side? Her critics argue she needs to come out with an aggressive and detailed plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the next 35 years.
"Hiring as a high-ranking campaign official someone who spent years on TransCanada's payroll lobbying for Keystone is a big step in precisely the wrong direction," a spokesperson for 350 Action said. "We need bold ideas and leadership from our candidates—like a plan to decarbonize the United States by 2050, not a campaign that says nice things about renewable energy while letting Big Oil's lobbyists and cronies drive the bus."
"The best thing Clinton could do for her campaign to bolster her climate credentials," said Climate Hawks Vote's Miller, "is an honest and lengthy interview on the subject of Keystone XL, in which she describes all the steps taken at the State Department that appeared to nudge it forward while maintaining a semblance of neutrality, and the reason she's now deciding to say no to one of the dirtiest and notorious projects of the decade."
Hillary celebrates ruling: 'Yes!' // The Hill // David McCabe – June 25, 2015
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday celebrated the Supreme Court's decision to uphold subsidies crucial to ObamaCare.
She followed up the tweet with a message imploring her followers to add "your name if you agree: Affordable health care is a basic human right," accompanied by a link to her campaign website. The tweet included a photo of her hugging President Obama in the White House Situation Room after the law passed Congress in 2010.
The court decided in a 6-3 ruling Thursday to uphold the subsidies to 6.4 million people across roughly 34 states. Many on the left feared the the challenge, if it were successful, could take down the president's signature healthcare law.
The ruling is likely to roil the Republican side of the presidential election as well, as conservative candidates look to stake out their opposition to the healthcare law.
Clinton later released a statement urging Republicans to end their attacks on the law.
"Now that the Supreme Court has once again re-affirmed the ACA as the law of the land, it’s time for the Republican attacks to end," Clinton said in a statement. "It’s time to move on."
Election 2016: 'Chelsea's Mom' Is Hillary Clinton's Fan Love Song // International Business Times // Ginger Gibson – June 25, 2015
The 2016 election has its first fan song. Hillary Clinton is the recipient of a love song, of sorts, from the New York City-based group Well-Strung. It's a reworking of the 2003 hit “Stacy’s Mom.”
In the original Fountains of Wayne song, the singers lusted after their classmate's mother. The Well-Strung version instead sings a song of praise for “Chelsea’s Mom” -- a reference to Clinton’s daughter -- and features the members dancing around a life-size cutout of of the candidate. Well-Strung is an all-male string quartet that covers pop music and includes vocals.
The group's manager, Mark Cortale, explained Well-Strung is always trying to stay contemporary. "Since this election is so important and relevant, Well-Strung wanted to put their own spin on a classic pop song to show their support of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race," he told International Business Times. "The guys recorded this song as an unabashed love letter to Hillary, with no expectations or agenda. That said, they would certainly love the opportunity to perform for her."
The video features images of Clinton tossing her hair and smiling at the camera. “Chelsea’s mom has got it going on, she’s all we want and we’ve waited for so long, from sea to shining sea, she’ll fight for liberty,” the lyrics say. "She's sexy and she's strong, I'm going to vote for Chelsea's mom. Chelsea’s mom has got it going on.”
One verse even jabs at Republicans. “Why should we put up with zealots like Ted Cruz,” the group sings. “Anyone but Clinton will give us the blues. We get a lot of drama from the GOP. And sure we loved Obama, but your mom’s the one for me.”
It seems the campaign had nothing to do with making the video. The group does display a considerable amount of stickers feature the H logo designed by the campaign and several “Vote for Hillary” signs.
Having fans pen a song that can go viral is one of those unplanned occurrences that a campaign can only hope for. In 2012, Republican Rick Santorum became the beneficiary of a viral fan song called “Game On.” His campaign then showered attention on the two young Oklahoma women who recorded it. In 2008, Barack Obama was the beneficiary when a young woman known as “Obama Girl” released a song called “Crush on Obama” that went viral.
Hillary Clinton Wears Epic '90s Outfit in TBT Pic Congratulating Supreme Court's Obamacare Decision // E! // Brett Malec – June 25, 2015
Hillary Clinton is trading in her signature pantsuit style in her last throwback Thursday pic!
The 67-year-old presidential hopeful took to Instagram today to congratulate the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Obamacare with an epic flashback photo of from the ‘90s.
"I had cared about this issue for a long time, well before Bill and I got into politics, and I believed that access to quality affordable health care was a right American citizens should be guaranteed."–Hillary on her decades-long fight for affordable health care in America #tbt," the pic is captioned. The snapshot shows Hillary meeting with a young boy who appears to be in physical therapy for issues walking. Hillary cheers him on as the boy flashes a smile.
In addition to her do-gooder work when it comes to healthcare, we couldn't help but notice Hillary's epic ‘90s dress. It's outfits like these that make TBT pics so funny and nostalgic.
Earlier this month, the politico shared a moving video clip that looks back at her early years in politics in honor of flashback Friday.
"What is a fighter? To me a fighter is someone who won't give up," a voice said as photos of younger Clinton flash across the screen. The politico is shown at work and meeting with different people throughout her impressive career.
OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE
Here’s what climate hawk Martin O’Malley would do as president // Grist // Ben Adler – June 25, 2015
Say what you will about Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor and current Democratic presidential candidate, but the man is a wonk. He may lack for narrative, but he will give you plenty of commonsense solutions. And he has a demonstrated commitment to combatting climate change.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that despite his lagging far behind Hillary Clinton and even lefty Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the polls, he is the first candidate to produce anything resembling a detailed climate policy. It’s only a work in progress, and it isn’t even available yet on the campaign website. But O’Malley’s team shared with Grist a white paper outlining some significant climate change policy proposals. Collectively, they would go further than President Obama has — or than Hillary Clinton has called for thus far.
O’Malley’s plans go on for two full pages. The first lists things he would do through executive authority. Here are some of the highlights, in the white paper’s own words:
Direct the Environmental Protection Agency to take aggressive action to limit greenhouse gases, expanding rules to other large sources of emissions beyond power plants.
Direct the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for methane leaks from current oil and gas production.
Reject projects like Keystone XL that exacerbate climate change and extend our reliance on fossil fuels.
Deny new permits for drilling in Alaska, Antarctica, and off our coasts.
Increase royalties and emissions fees for fossil fuel companies currently drilling on federal lands.
And here are some of the most important policies that O’Malley says he would fight for in Congress:
Set a national, cross-sector Renewable Electricity Standard so our nation is powered by 100% clean energy by 2050.
Fight for federal legislation for a cap on carbon emissions from all sources, with proceeds from permits returned to lower-and middle-class families and invested in job transition assistance and the Clean Energy Corps.
Set a national goal of doubling our energy productivity within 15 years.
End all subsidies for fossil fuels, while extending production and investment tax credits for renewable energy for the long term.
Some of these goals overlap with Obama’s and Clinton’s. Obama’s EPA has already proposed carbon emissions regulations for power plants, and it can’t propose opening new avenues until those rules are in place, which won’t happen until after Obama leaves office. But it’s worth noting that O’Malley explicitly promises to expand carbon regulation to other major sources. O’Malley is presumably referring to other stationary sources of greenhouse gases such as industrial and agricultural activity, which respectively account for 21 and 9 percent of U.S. emissions. EPA has already raised fuel efficiency standards, and therefore reduced emissions, for mobile sources such as cars and trucks. Transportation is responsible for 27 percent of U.S. emissions and electricity generation represents 31 percent. In other words, there is potentially as much to be gained from going after industry and agriculture as power plants.
When Clinton addressed the League of Conservation Voters last year, she said, regarding the Clean Power Rule, “The unprecedented action that President Obama has taken must be protected at all cost.” That’s hugely important, because congressional Republicans are certain to keep attacking it. But promising to also tackle other major sources is even better.
On methane leaks, a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions thanks to the fracking boom, O’Malley promises to go considerably farther than Obama. In January, the Obama administration laid out a plan to reduce methane leakage, but climate hawks were underwhelmed. As I explained at the time, the Obama administration intends only to regulate new and modified wells, even though existing wells will continue to operate and leak. According to an Environmental Defense Fund study, wells in operation since 2011 will account for up to 90 percent of methane emissions from oil and gas in 2018. O’Malley’s promise to regulate methane leaks from current wells would address that.
Another key difference between O’Malley and Obama is that O’Malley doesn’t subscribe to Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy. While Obama tries to boost domestic production of oil and gas along with renewables, O’Malley is focused solely on the latter. So O’Malley promises to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama hasn’t taken a stance on yet, and to block other proposals to invest in fossil fuel infrastructure. O’Malley also would reject proposals to drill off American coasts, whereas Obama plans to open areas of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans to oil and gas leasing.
On all of these issues, it’s impossible to know where exactly Hillary Clinton stands in relation to Obama and O’Malley. As Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton could not publicly contradict Obama’s policies. Like Obama, she hasn’t taken a stance on Keystone. As a senator, Clinton supported offshore drilling, and as secretary of state she promoted fracking abroad.
One point of agreement among the Democrats that is long overdue: O’Malley and Clinton both say they would charge more for fossil fuel leases on federal land, something the Obama administration is finally just beginning to work on.
O’Malley’s plans to call for various actions from Congress are less important, since he is unlikely to get them passed. Republican control of the House of Representatives is unlikely to change before 2023 because of partisan gerrymandering.
But a lot can change in politics in just a few years. In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain proposed cap-and-trade legislation. A year later he wouldn’t support the exact same sort of bill. Maybe Republicans will come around to saving the planet.
If they do, O’Malley’s proposals would look a lot like Obama’s: setting a carbon cap and selling permits and investing in renewables and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. O’Malley would set even more ambitious goals than Obama. The president came into office aiming for 10 percent renewable sources of electricity by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. Right now, we’re at 13 percent. O’Malley wants 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050, and doubling our energy productivity by 2030. (Energy productivity measures the dollars of economic output produced from a given amount of energy consumption. It overlaps significantly with energy efficiency, but is a different way of measuring progress.)
In the months ahead, according to his campaign, O’Malley will emphasize the importance of climate change and release further, more detailed proposals.
Last Thursday, when Pope Francis issued his encyclical calling for action to address climate change, O’Malley, a Catholic, published an op-ed in USA Today proposing to eliminate fossil fuel energy by 2050. A few paragraphs in particular stand out:
Clean energy represents the biggest business and job creation opportunity we’ve seen in a hundred years. And reliance on local, renewable energy sources means a more secure nation and a more stable world.
Given the grave threat that climate change poses to human life on our planet, we have not only a business imperative but a moral obligation to future generations to act immediately and aggressively.
This is why protecting the United States from the devastating impact of climate change — while capitalizing on the job creation opportunity of clean energy — is at the center of my campaign for president.
Like Sanders, who is a prominent climate hawk, O’Malley is promising to treat climate change — an issue that is often marginalized even by pro-environment candidates — as the hugely important challenge that it is. And O’Malley, like Sanders, is unafraid to set himself apart from Obama and the centrist, corporatist wing of his party that embraces fossil fuel development. “We cannot meet the climate challenge with an all-of-the-above energy strategy, or by drilling off our coasts, or by building pipelines that bring oil from tar sands in Canada,” O’Malley writes in USA Today. “Instead, we must be intentional and committed to one over-arching goal as a people: a full, complete transition to renewable energy — and an end to our reliance on fossil fuels.” Environmental leaders such as NextGen Climate founder Tom Steyer and Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune praised O’Malley’s op-ed for its boldness.
When Sanders issues climate change policy proposals, they will surely be strong — although it remains to be seen whether he will match O’Malley in committing to clamping down on fossil fuel production. But the really big question looming over the Democratic primary is whether Clinton will offer ambitious new proposals like O’Malley’s — or just more of the same half-measures as Obama.
A pro-O’Malley super PAC goes after Sanders on guns // WaPo // John Wagner – June 25, 2015
A super PAC supporting Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley is attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for his record on guns in new Web ads targeting Iowa voters.
The ads by the Generation Forward PAC assert that "Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns" and highlight several votes the senator has taken over the years, including one in 1993 against the landmark Brady Bill, which mandated federal background checks on firearms purchasers.
Sanders, who has emerged as the chief Democratic challenger to Hillary Rodham Clinton, represents a state where hunting is a way of life and anyone can carry a concealed weapon without a permit. His record on gun control is mixed and also includes a 2005 vote to shield manufacturers from lawsuits brought by victims of gun violence.
Though O'Malley is barred by law from coordinating with the super PAC, the 15-second ads suggest that his supporters think he can make some headway against Sanders on the issue in the wake of last week's church massacre in Charleston, S.C. A separate ad purchased by the PAC highlights O'Malley's record as governor of Maryland, including a 2013 law that banned 45 types of assault rifles and required new fingerprinting requirements for handgun purchases.
In recent days, as he's been asked about his record on guns, Sanders has pointed out that he has a D- grade from the National Rifle Association and has supported a ban on assault weapons and background checks in the past.
At a news conference on another issue on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Sanders declined to directly address the ad, but said that "if you look at my record, you will find that we do have a strong record" on guns.
In an interview, Jeff Weaver, Sanders's campaign manager, said: "If Martin O'Malley wants to engage in negative campaigning before he introduces himself to the country, that's up to him."
Weaver said that Sanders is open to a discussion about guns, but he said "that discussion has to entail how we bridge the gap between rural and urban areas. Guns mean different things to different parts of the country."
Ron Boehmer, a spokesman for the pro-O'Malley PAC, said the size of the ad buy is in the "five digits" and would be disclosed later Thursday.
A pair of new polls released by Bloomberg Politics shows Sanders as the strongest challenger to Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two nominating states. In Iowa, Clinton draws the support of 50 percent of likely caucus-goers, while Sanders draws 24 percent. O'Malley is at 2 percent. In New Hampshire, Clinton attracts the support of 56 percent of likely primary voters, compared to 24 percent for Sanders and 2 percent for O'Malley.
Claire McCaskill, a major Clinton ally, unloads on Bernie Sanders // Politico // Daniel Strauss – June 25, 2015
Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) unloaded on her Senate colleague Bernie Sanders on Thursday, saying the Vermont independent is far too liberal to make it to the White House.
“I think that the media is giving Bernie a pass right now,” McCaskill said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist. I think everybody wants a fight and I think they are not really giving the same scrutiny to Bernie Sanders that they’re giving to, certainly, Hillary Clinton and the other candidates.”
McCaskill endorsed Clinton’s 2016 bid almost exactly two years ago, in June 2013, making her one of the former secretary of state’s earliest major Democratic backers. In the 2008 cycle, she endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama over Clinton.
But this time, she’s all in for Hillary.
“So she’s going to win this, and as soon as I think they begin treating [Sanders] like a serious candidate instead of, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so great we’ve got a fight in the Democratic Party’, I think it’ll be very clear,” McCaskill said.
“Any other candidate that had the numbers that Hillary Clinton had right now would be talked about as absolutely untouchable,” she said. “I think Bernie is too liberal to gather enough votes in this country to become president, and I think Hillary Clinton is going to become a fantastic president.”
same day that a pair of new polls showed Sanders gaining momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire. Both those polls, from Bloomberg Politics, found Clinton with a substantial lead.
Meanwhile, the super PAC aligned with former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, another candidate running in the Democratic primary, released an ad Thursday, attacking Sanders on gun control.
“Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns,” the voice-over said.
Sanders said McCaskill’s comments were a first for him.
“This is the first time I’ve had a colleague attack me,” Sanders said in an interview with New Hampshire’s WADR radio station later on Thursday. “You’ll have to ask Senator McCaskill why.”
Bernie Sanders Calls For 65% Top Estate Tax Rate // Forbes // Ashley Ebeling – June 25, 2015
U.S. Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called today for lowering the amount individuals can shield from the federal estate tax, and hiking estate tax rates across the board, as he introduced the Responsible Estate Tax Act. “This is a piece of legislation that addresses what I consider to be the most significant moral issue of our time,” he said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., citing growing economic inequality.
“Inequality is a crisis that threatens our country,” echoed Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who is sponsoring a companion bill in the House of Representatives.
Sen. Sanders’ supporters listening in on Periscope tweeted: “We are the 99%.” “Got to get this guy elected!” A few skeptics chimed in too: “Well, it’s their money..why can’t they keep it?” “I understand the Walmart family, but if I die with $2 million, am I taxed twice?”
The guy worth $2 million doesn’t have to worry. The Sanders bill, a rewrite of a bill he introduced in 2010—the year the estate tax lapsed under the Bush tax cuts — would exempt the first $3.5 million on an individual’s estate from estate tax. (A married couple could shelter $7 million.) That’s a huge drop from current law, a “permanent” $5 million exemption, indexed for inflation, brokered effective Jan. 1, 2011. For 2015, the individual exemption is $5.43 million ($10.86 million for a married couple). Still just 3 out of every 1,000 people who die would be subject to estate tax under the Sanders bill, compared to 2 out of 1,000 now. The higher the exemption, the more people don’t pay estate tax.
For those who owe estate taxes, the tax rate is a flat 40% under current law. Under Sen. Sanders’ legislation, the tax rate would be 45% for estates valued between $3.5 million and $10 million. The rate on estates worth more than $10 million and below $50 million would be 50%, and the rate on estates worth more than $50 million would be 55%. An additional surtax of another 10%–for a 65% rate—would be assessed on billionaires.
The legislation also would close estate tax loopholes used by the rich, ending tax breaks for dynasty trusts, GRATs, and “sharply” limiting the annual exclusion from the gift tax—now set at $14,000 (you can now give $14,000 to as many individuals as you want each year without worrying about federal estate or gift tax)–down to $10,000, further limited if given in trust.
Estate tax foes beat Sen. Sanders with a bill to repeal the estate tax earlier this year. In April, the House of Representatives voted to kill the federal estate tax 240-179, with 7 Democrats joining. Anti-death tax advocates say it sets the stage for possible repeal in 2017. The repeal bill, H.R. 1105, was introduced by Kevin Brady (R-TX). Sen. John Thune (R-SD) sponsored a companion bill, S. 860.
Meanwhile Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) became the first declared Presidential candidate of the 2016 election season to sign the Family Business Coalition’s Death Tax Repeal Pledge: “I Hereby Pledge to Support Repeal of the Federal Estate Tax.”
Note, there are still 19 states plus the District of Columbia that impose their own state versions of death taxes (estate and/or inheritance taxes). Vermont is one; it has an exemption of $2.75 million per person and has a top 16% tax rate.
“So few have so much, so many have so little; there’s disenchantment,” Sen. Sanders said. “People want change.”
For first time, O'Malley-linked group goes after Sanders // CNN // Dan Merica – June 25, 2015
A pro-Martin O'Malley super PAC knocked Bernie Sanders over guns in a short video posted on Thursday, the first time a group associated with the former Maryland governor attacked his foremost progressive opponent in the bid to emerge as Hillary Clinton's main competition.
The ad by Generation Forward PAC, titled "Time for a Debate," may be tacit acknowledgment by the O'Malley camp that the former Maryland governor's poll numbers are stagnating while the senator's are rising.
After noting that Sanders voted against the Brady Bill and voted to give gun manufacturers protections against lawsuits, the ad bluntly says, "Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns."
At a press conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, Sanders declined to directly address the ad, stating instead that "if you look at my record, you will find that we do have a strong record" on guns.
The latest chapter in the gun control debate was sparked after a white man walked into a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week and killed nine African-Americans in a racially-motivated attack.
In the eyes of gun control activists, Sanders has a mixed and moderate background on the issue, something that contrasts with his more liberal persona. For much of his career, Sanders has followed the lead of his Vermont constituents -- who mostly back gun rights for hunters -- by keeping a generally states' rights view of gun laws.
But Sanders has voted to tighten gun laws in the past. He approved the 1994 assault weapons ban, and after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, Sanders backed Obama's failed push for more background checks and another assault weapons ban.
Last week, Sanders took a cautious approach when CNN questioned him about his position on gun laws, stating that he thinks "we need to have a conversation about" laws, but that rural and urban America need to understand how each other feel before laws move forward.
After a follow-up question, Sanders shied away from the debate. "I will talk about guns at some length, but not right now," he said, a comment that contrasted with his usual blunt, brash and proudly liberal persona.
Unlike Sanders, O'Malley has consistently backed tighter gun control laws. His team regularly claims that he passed the "most comprehensive gun control law in the country" in 2013, a law that banned new assault weapons, lowered magazine capacity, required fingerprints for firearm purchase and increased regulations on gun dealers.
After the shooting in Charleston, O'Malley told his supporters via email that he was "pissed" about the nation's unwillingness to pass gun control.
Recent polling has shown O'Malley is falling behind while Sanders is surging. Both declared their presidential bids earlier this year, running to be the liberal alternative to Clinton, the race's frontrunner.
A Fox News poll out Wednesday found that O'Malley gets 1% of national Democratic support, compared to Sanders who enjoyed 15%. Clinton is way out in front, however, with 61% support.
O'Malley is equally behind in early states, according to a Bloomberg Politics poll. The former Maryland governor has 2% support, according to the poll, in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Sanders has 24% in both early voting states.
Pro-Martin O’Malley Super PAC Targets Bernie Sanders // TIME // Sam Frizell – June 25, 2015
A super PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley released a video Thursday attacking liberal rival Bernie Sanders’ gun control record, marking the first critical advertisement of the 2016 primary for the Democratic nomination.
In the 15-second ad released on YouTube Thursday morning, the pro-O’Malley super PAC Generation Forward points to Sanders’ 1993 vote against the Brady Bill, which required background checks for gun purchases and his later vote to protect gun manufacturers from victim lawsuits.
The ad also points out that the National Rifle Association paid for ads attacking a Sanders opponent in a 1990 congressional race.
“Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns,” intones a voice in the ad.
It’s a small, yet significant move in the Democratic primary race. Until now, none of the candidates or their proxies have put forward ads attacking their Democratic competitors’ records. O’Malley has implicitly criticized Clinton, but generally refrained from direct attacks.
After the ad was posted on YouTube, Sanders tweeted a response from his personal account.
A spokesperson for O’Malley’s campaign said the former governor was not aware of the ad before it was released and that he doesn’t currently fundraise for Generation Forward.
O’Malley’s super PAC is a scrappy operation without the fundraising firepower of the pro-Hillary Clinton Priorities USA or Jeb Bush’s Right to Rise operations. The governor’s long shot chance in winning the primary and his anti-Wall Street rhetoric don’t help attract donors, and many donors that do contribute to his nascent campaign will do so directly, not to outside groups.
Damian O’Doherty, who runs Generation Forward, recognizes as much.
“We have to do the things that the Ewoks taught us in Return of the Jedi,” said O’Doherty, referring to the furry, technologically backward animal species that helps defeat the powerful Galactic Empire in the third Star Wars movie. “If I think I’m running some slick TV effort—no way.”
Instead, O’Doherty says the strategy is to run a ground-based grassroots operation in the early states and targeting voters through digital efforts. Generation Forward is hiring staff and has already rented out office space in Des Moines. “It’s knocking on doors,” he said. “It’s old-time and online.”
Part of the strategy involves testing ad models on voters in Iowa to test messaging, and finding areas in which O’Malley differs from Clinton and Sanders.
“We’re going to constantly encourage debate, and that’s what this ad is intended to do,” said O’Doherty about his group’s ad criticizing Sanders’ gun positions.
Sanders—a staunchly left progressive who supports single-payer healthcare and sweeping tax reforms—has a moderate record on gun rights. While he supports basic gun control including an assault weapons ban and background checks, he has expressed skepticism about the effects of gun control.
“Obviously, we need strong sensible gun control, and I will support it,” Sanders said in an interview with NPR. “But some people think it’s going to solve all of our problems, and it’s not.”
O’Malley, by contrast, enacted as Maryland governor some of the toughest gun laws in the country, banning high-capacity magazines and assault rifles and tightening background checks.
MARTIN O’MALLEY AD HITS NOT HILLARY CLINTON — BUT BERNIE SANDERS? // First Look // Lee Fang – June 25, 2015
Let’s say you’re running underdog Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley’s Super PAC. What’s the first order of business?
Could it be: Convincing voters he has a shot? Trying to chip away at the Hillary Clinton colossus?
Well, in the mixed-up world of presidential politics, where it’s sometimes not entirely clear whether candidates are running for president or jockeying for the vice presidential nod, O’Malley’s Super PAC on Thursday released an ad slamming not Hillary Clinton — but fellow underdog Bernie Sanders.
The ad, released by O’Malley’s Super PAC, Generation Forward, is one of the first ads released on behalf of O’Malley’s campaign. It labels Sanders “no progressive when it comes to guns.” The commercial flashes headlines from online news articles calling Sanders a “gun nut.” In a message about the anti-Sanders ad, the pro-O’Malley PAC explained on Facebook, “You can’t claim to soak the fat boys and exempt the profiteers in the gun industry.”
As the Boston Globe recently reported, Sanders “has amassed a mixed record” on gun issues, voting against the landmark Brady gun control bill but voting in support of a ban on assault weapons in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting. As the Globe noted, activists have found that Sanders has shown little interest in gun-related legislation.
Watch the commercial here.
The O’Malley attack on Bernie appeared online only shortly after Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a close ally of the Hillary Clinton campaign, appeared on MSNBC this morning to bash Sanders. “I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist,” McCaskill said on MSNBC.
The Generation Forward Super PAC is led by two O’Malley supporters, Damian O’Doherty and Ron Boehmer. Federal Communications Commission records reveal that Generation Forward contracts with Fortune Media, a Democratic ad-buying firm that has previously worked on behalf of Emily’s List.
During the 2008 presidential election, O’Malley co-chaired the business-friendly Democratic Leadership Council, authoring an opinion column with Harold Ford to persuade his party not to drift too far to the left. He also served as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.
Though he kicked off his campaign with a pledge to take on Wall Street, the Maryland politician rarely embraced economic populism during his time as mayor of Baltimore or as governor.
The ad today left observers perplexed about what O’Malley is really trying to accomplish.
Josh Kraushaar, politics editor at National Journal, noted that the new ad today shows that O’Malley is “hitting Bernie Sanders more than Hillary Clinton.”
Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling // Bloomberg News // John McCormick – June 25, 2015
Bernie Sanders is gaining on Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, with an appeal as an issue-oriented protest vehicle potentially capable of slowing any coronation of the popular front-runner.
In simultaneous surveys, the U.S. senator from Vermont received nearly a quarter of support from likely Democratic caucus and primary voters in the states that host the first presidential nomination balloting early next year, cutting sharply into Clinton's still-huge lead.
The polls suggest substantive and symbolic support for the socialist, as well as a craving among some Democrats for a Clinton rival to rise.
“I want to try to get him along as far as I can,” said Democratic poll participant John Murphy, 74, a retired railroad worker in West Des Moines, Iowa. “He’s going to bring up some issues that she may not want to talk about.”
The surveys were commissioned to test sources of strength for Sanders, who has seen audiences at his campaign events swell in recent weeks. The polls were conducted June 19-22 by West Des Moines-based Selzer & Co. in Iowa and Washington-area Purple Strategies in New Hampshire, the latter done in cooperation with Saint Anselm College. The margin of error on the full samples—401 in Iowa, 400 in New Hampshire—is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
In Iowa, Clinton leads Sanders 50 percent to 24 percent, and in New Hampshire, 56 percent to 24 percent. That's a six- to eight-point increase in his support since thosestates were polled by Bloomberg Politics and partners in May.
With nearly identical support in Iowa and New Hampshire, the polls suggest Sanders' rise isn’t just because he enjoys New England neighbor-state status. In both states, he gets higher marks than Clinton on authenticity and willingness to take on Wall Street and financial elites.
Along the campaign trail, Sanders appears to be changing some minds: His unfavorable rating in Iowa is just 4 percent, down 8 percentage points since May. At the same time, 57 percent now view him positively, up 10 points from the last poll.
“You can make the case that a certain amount of Bernie Sanders’s support is a protest vote, but there’s more to it than that,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. “People like him. They like what he stands for. They like showing up at his events and hearing him say things they believe in.”
Clinton’s support has dropped by 7 points in Iowa and 6 points in New Hampshire. Among likely Democratic voters, she's viewed favorably by 88 percent in Iowa and 86 percent in New Hampshire. That's up two points since May in Iowa and unchanged in New Hampshire, and comparable to the popularity of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Yet Sanders' team points to mounting evidence that the white-haired, sometimes seemingly grumpy senator could offer voters an appealing alternative to Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, senator, and first lady viewed as the overwhelming Democratic nomination front-runner.
“It's tremendous progress that he is making with voters in the first two states,” Tad Devine, Sanders' chief political strategist, said of the poll findings. “It's something we felt on the ground.”
While Sanders is indeed enjoying something of a mini-surge in the two states, the polls show he's almost certain to hit a ceiling eventually, said Purple Strategies' Doug Usher.
“Clinton remains enormously well-known and well-liked in New Hampshire, a state she won before,” Usher said. “She benefits from a gender gap in a primary that will be disproportionately female, and even Sanders’ voters admit Clinton is likely the nominee. As long as Democrats like both candidates simultaneously, Sanders will have an uphill climb.”
The New Hampshire survey shows the race not as close there as a poll released last week by Suffolk University, which had Clinton at 41 percent and Sanders at 31 percent. Unlike the Bloomberg Politics/Saint Anselm poll, the Suffolk survey didn’t start with a database of registered voters, instead relying more on the self-reported likelihood of voting in the primary. It also included Vice President Joe Biden, while this one didn’t.
Clinton swamps Sanders on who can beat the Republican nominee in the general election, foreign-policy experience, and knowing how to get things done in Washington. The two find roughly equal support among likely Democratic voters on who will fight for average people and who will care for people like themselves. Depending on the state, Sanders has a 7- to 18-point edge on taking on Wall Street and a 12- to 17-point advantage on authenticity.
“His priorities are right and he’s not going to just crumble under the status quo,” said Anne Welch, 59, a caregiver who lives in Penacook, New Hampshire. “He won’t compromise.”
Welch, who once lived in Vermont and met Sanders, said she supported Clinton in 2008. “I kind of feel like I’m betraying my gender,” she said.
Clinton's team has worked to dampen expectations, noting that it's rare for a Democratic candidate who isn't an incumbent president to win more than 50 percent in Iowa's caucuses. The goal is to try to avoid having her seen as a wounded front-runner should she fail to dominate the first contest. In 2008, she finished third in Iowa and her aura of inevitability was badly damaged by an insurgent Barack Obama.
That sense of inevitability is strong again in Iowa and New Hampshire, with four-fifths of likely Democratic voters in both states saying they think Clinton is destined to be the nominee. Even among supporters of Sanders, 69 percent of those in Iowa say she'll be the party's eventual nominee. Clinton’s own Iowa supporters are even more confident, with 93 percent saying she'll be the standard-bearer. Her campaign declined to comment on these polls.
Among independents likely to participate in the Iowa caucuses—about a fifth of the probable electorate—Sanders leads Clinton, 35 percent to 29 percent. In May, she led with that group by 19 points. (The margin of error is higher in subgroups like these.)
Women in Iowa are much more likely to back Clinton than men are, 59 percent to 39 percent. Among women, she leads Sanders 59 percent to 19 percent, while it’s much narrower advantage among men, 39 percent to 30 percent.
While some Democrats and independents are welcoming Sanders to the race with their support, it doesn't mean they're rejecting Clinton.
Almost nine in 10 who are supporting Sanders in New Hampshire, and 83 percent in Iowa, say they're backing him because of what he stands for. Just 13 percent in Iowa and 9 percent in New Hampshire say their decision is because they don't want Clinton to get the nomination, or because they want to send her a message.
Matthew Cook, 27, who just completed a physics degree and lives in Waterloo, Iowa, said Sanders has been “a really consistent politician, which is hard to find.” He plans to vote for Sanders if for no reason other than to push Clinton on the issues he cares most about, including gay marriage, climate change, and fair trade.
“She needs to come out and firmly state where her opinions are,” he said. “There can’t be any ambiguity.”
Bernie Sanders Responds to Claire McCaskill Attack: This Is a First // Bloomberg News // Arit John – June 25, 2015
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Thursday responded to criticism from his Senate colleague, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, that he is too liberal to credibly challenge Hillary Clinton.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that a colleague has attacked me,” said Sanders, a Vermont socialist who joined the presidential race about two months ago, in an interview with Bloomberg Politics' Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. “You'll have to ask Senator McCaskill why.”
McCaskill, who supported President Obama during the 2008 election, was quick to back Clinton this cycle, and said on MSNBC's Morning Joe Thursday that Sanders “is too liberal to gather enough votes in this country to become president.” Her comments came on the heels of Bloomberg Politics polling in Iowa and New Hampshire that showed Sanders gaining ground on Clinton, though the former secretary of state still holds a formidable lead.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that a colleague has attacked me.”
Senator Bernie Sanders
“Do I believe, in opposition to Senator McCaskill, that we need trade policies that are fair to the American worker, and not just benefit CEOs and large corporations?” Sanders said. “I plead guilty.”
Sanders said he “absolutely” believes in a single-payer health care system and opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
McCaskill said the media has given Sanders a pass, especially when it comes to pointing out his political leanings.
“I find it surprising that she says that the media doesn't refer to me as a socialist,” Sanders said. “There's no article that I've seen that doesn't refer to me as a democratic socialist. I am.”
Sanders often laments negative advertising and character attacks in modern politics. A super-PAC supporting another Democratic presidential candidate, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, unveiled Web advertising in Iowa on Thursday going after Sanders on gun issues. The candidate tweeted Thursday afternoon:
Sanders In 1985: Sandinista Leader “Impressive,” Castro “Totally Transformed” Cuba // Buzzfeed // Megan Apper – June 25, 2015
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the socialist from Vermont who is now challenging Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination, praised the Castro regime and Nicaragua’s Sandinista government upon returning from a trip to South America in 1985.
In an interview that aired on Channel 17/Town Meeting Television, Sanders called Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, “an impressive guy,” and said that while Fidel Castro wasn’t “perfect,” Americans shouldn’t forget that “just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people, doesn’t mean that people in their own nations feel the same way.”
According to his book, Outsider in the House, Sanders traveled to Nicaragua on the invitation of the Sandinista government, to witness the celebration of the “Seventh Anniversary of the Revolution.” By his own account, he was the “highest ranking American official present” at the event.
Upon his return, Sanders said that he was “impressed” with the “intelligence and sincerity” of Sandinista leaders, arguing that they were not the “political hacks” some had portrayed them to be.
“You do not fight, and lose your family, and get tortured, to go to jail for years to be a hack,” said Sanders, adding that the Sandinistas had “very deep convictions.”
Sanders also said he was “impressed” by Father d’Escoto — at the time, Nicaragua’s Minister of Foreign Affairs — who he described as “very gentle” and a “loving man.”
Acknowledging that his favorable assessment of the Sandinistas could lead to his being “attacked by every editorial writer in the free press for being a ‘dumb dupe,’” Sanders countered that such a reaction was due in part to the fact that the Reagan White House had “trained and well paid people who are professional manipulators of the media,” and who possessed a “sophistication” that Ortega and the Sandinistas lacked.
The Sandinistas, Sanders explained, had to “improve their ability to communicate with the average American.”
Sanders also commented on Fidel Castro, pointing to the lack of resistance to Castro as proof that Americans would be “very, very mistaken” to expect a popular uprising against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
“In 1959 […] everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world and all of the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro,” said Sanders. “They forgot that he educated their kids, gave their kids healthcare, totally transformed the society.”
“So they expected this tremendous uprising in Cuba,” Sanders continued, but “it never came. And if they are expecting a tremendous uprising in Nicaragua, they are very, very, very mistaken.”
Sanders insisted that he did not mean to suggest “that Fidel Castro and Cuba are perfect; they certainly are not.”
But “just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people,” he argued, “doesn’t mean that people in their own nations feel the same way.”
in the coming days, the former secretary of state is not scheduled to appear.
Sanders: My Views Resonating With Women as Campaign Keeps Rising // Bloomberg News // Alexa Papadopoulos – June 25, 2015
“I think people who think we have reached our ceiling are making a mistake,” Sen. Bernie Sanders says in interview to air on Bloomberg Television’s “With All Due Respect.”
Sanders says his proposals aimed at women, working families will boost his bid, increasing competitiveness with Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton
“We are about to unveil a childcare proposal for universal Pre-K, which I think will make working families all around the country extremely excited”
Sanders, an independent from Vt. seeking the Democratic nomination, says plan includes paid vacation time, paid sick live.
Sanders says views on taxes, boosting public infrastructure spending, raising minimum wage, equal pay for women, making public college tuition free also will resonate with voters
Says wants to be a part of a “political revolution” to make changes in Washington with millions of American at his side.
This new anti–Bernie Sanders video shows Martin O'Malley is getting desperate // VOX // Andrew Prokap – June 25, 2015
Hillary Clinton remains in a dominant position in the Democratic presidential primary, but it's looking increasingly like Bernie Sanders is emerging as her main challenger — which means that Martin O'Malley isn't. Indeed, the former Maryland governor is barely topping 1 percent of the vote in national and early state polls.
As a result, the people behind the main pro-O'Malley Super PAC , Generation Forward, seem to be getting restless — so they've released a new web video attacking Sanders's record on guns, along with one praising O'Malley's.
But just hours later, Sanders gave what looked like an indirect response to the new video, on Twitter:
It's a rather remarkable testament to Sanders's success so far that what may be the first explicit attack video of the Democratic contest targets him — it makes it even clearer that Sanders has emerged as the clear second-place contender (though he's still well behind Hillary Clinton).
It is accurate that Sanders is pretty far from being a staunch liberal on the gun issue — likely reflecting the views of his rural Vermont constituents. However, in 2013, Sanders voted for the Democrats' post-Newtown gun control bill, which didn't become law, but would have expanded background checks and restored the assault weapons ban. He said then that there was "a growing consensus" that "we have got to do as much as we can to end the cold-blooded mass murders of innocent people."
Overall, though, the bigger problem for O'Malley is that activists on the left are excited about Sanders's candidacy in a way they just aren't about his own. And it doesn't seem likely that attack ads will solve that problem for him.
Bernie Sanders joins push for DC statehood // The Hill // Tim Devaney – June 25, 2015
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and a group of more than a dozen senators are calling for Washington, D.C., to become the 51st state in the nation.
In their proposal, the federal government would still maintain control over portions of the nation’s capital that surround the White House, Congress, Supreme Court and National Mall.
The rest of the nation’s capital would be renamed New Columbia and given full representation in Congress under the legislation introduced by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).
Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.), one of 16 co-sponsors of the New Columbia Admission Act, said it is "morally wrong" to block District residents from federal representation.
“Washington D.C. is currently home to more people than the state of Vermont, yet its residents lack voting representation in Congress," Sanders told The Hill in a statement. "I think it is morally wrong for American citizens who pay federal taxes, fight in our wars, and live in our country to be denied the basic right to full congressional representation.”
The sentiment was echoed by Carper.
“The District of Columbia is not just a collection of government offices, monuments and museums,” Carper said in a statement. "It is home to more than 600,000 people who build lives, families, and careers here. These Americans serve in our military, die defending our country, serve on our juries, and pay federal taxes. Yet, despite their civic contributions, they are not afforded a vote in either chamber of Congress."
Jim Webb Criticized for Comments on Confederate Flag // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015
Former Senator Jim Webb, the Democrat from Virginia, has struggled to generate much excitement over his potential presidential campaign, but on Wednesday he managed to attract some attention with some curious comments about the Confederate battle flag.
In a statement on Facebook, Mr. Webb said that any discussion of the flag needed to be tempered with respect for the “complicated history of the Civil War.”
He went on to explain that while the flag had been used as a symbol of racism in recent decades, that was not always the case.
“We should also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, including slave holders in the Union Army from states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, and that many nonslave holders fought for the South,” Mr. Webb wrote.
The Confederate flag has been denounced by Democrats and Republicans alike in the last week since the killing of nine churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. Mr. Webb’s sentiment was rebutted by even his most loyal backers on Wednesday.
“As one of your most enthusiastic supporters, I have to disagree with you on this issue,” David Dickerson wrote in a comment on Mr. Webb’s post. “As a fellow Southerner, I prefer to take Robert E. Lee’s path and disassociate from that flag and what it stands for.”
Others, such as Jordan Genso, expressed disappointment.
“I don’t need to agree with you on every issue in order to support you, but this should be low-hanging fruit for you to be on the right side of,” Mr. Genso wrote. “And there’s no reason not to state that the Confederate battle flag represents a quasi-nation whose short existence was spent trying to fight for an immoral cause.”
Mr. Webb has a history of defending the confederacy. In a 1990 speech at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington, Va., he said, “I am not here to apologize for why they fought, although modern historians might contemplate that there truly were different perceptions in the North and South about those reasons, and that most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery.”
In 2008, Politico reported that Mr. Webb’s book “Born Fighting” seemed to sympathize with the Confederate cause, potentially giving pause to then Senator Barack Obama as he was vetting potential running mates. In Mr. Webb’s book, Born Fighting, he wrote about acquiring a Confederate headstone through the Veterans Administration for a great-great-grandfather.
A Vietnam War veteran who has been considered a potential presidential candidate over the years, Mr. Webb announced last year that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee. This year, he said the Democratic Party could do a better job appealing to white working-class voters.
On Wednesday, Mr. Webb recalled that the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery was meant to recognize the character of soldiers who fought on both sides of the Civil War.
“This is a time for us to come together,” he said, “and to recognize once more that our complex multicultural society is founded on the principle of mutual respect.”
Bernie Sanders Attacked For Not Being Liberal Enough // The Weekly Standard // Michael Warren – June 25, 2015
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is being attacked in a new ad for not being liberal enough on guns.
"Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns," says a voiceover in the 15-second spot, which criticizes the socialist senator's votes against two gun-control bills. The ad also notes the National Rifle Association's support for Sanders. Watch the video below:
The sponsor of the ad is Generation Forward, a super PAC supporting former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley. O'Malley is challenging Sanders for the Democratic nomination for president.
Sanders has been closing the gap with the leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, in polls of voters in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. O'Malley, meanwhile, has been stuck in the single digits in most polls.
Terry McAuliffe's other job // Politico // Gabriel Debenedetti – June 26, 2015
The Virginia governor doesn’t have any official responsibilities for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But he’s carving out a significant behind-the-scenes role.
Terry McAuliffe tells political associates that he’s focused on his day job as Virginia governor, so he won’t have any formal responsibilities in his friend Hillary’s campaign.
But the Clinton loyalist, fundraiser and 2008 campaign chairman is already shaping a significant role for himself — and it will be front and center Friday evening when he introduces Hillary Clinton at the Virginia Democrats’ fundraising event in Fairfax.
It’s the most public sign yet that McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and a consummate political animal, just can’t keep his fingers away from the flame. Despite the daily demands of running the state he was elected to lead in 2013, he’s emerging as Hillary’s informal liaison to governors and the party’s biggest donors, while also keeping a finger on the pulse of the camp’s central operations in Brooklyn.
It’s a different vantage point than he’s accustomed to. As Clinton pursues the White House for a second time, McAuliffe is in the cosseted confines of Virginia’s governor’s mansion, obliged to watch the action unfold from Richmond, far from the New York and Washington nerve centers where he operated in 2008.
McAuliffe insists to friends that the best thing he can do for the Clinton campaign is build Virginia’s state Democratic infrastructure ahead of its 2015 state senate elections, thereby strengthening Democrats’ position in a state that Barack Obama won twice. But, according to people close to him and the Clinton fundraising operation, he’s also likely to start calling donors on behalf of the pro-Clinton super PAC and has taken on the role of reaching out to other Democratic governors to lock down their political cooperation.
“He’s going to be all-in, it’s just a question of how public-facing it’s going to be,” explained one Clinton ’08 alum who worked closely with McAuliffe.
As the 2008 Clinton campaign’s top official, McAuliffe played a highly visible role that frequently involved putting a positive spin on an operation that had no shortage of internal troubles. His allies in both Richmond and Brooklyn — more than half a dozen of his former staffers, including campaign manager Robby Mook, now work for Clinton — are relieved that he won’t cut such a high-profile this time, and has no plan to show up on Sunday shows every week. They recognize that McAuliffe is a less-than-ideal spokesman for Clinton at the moment, in part because he can’t afford the perception that his attention is wandering from his responsibilities as governor but also because his ebullient money-chasing and insider credentials could prove problematic for her.
In public, McAuliffe is all-Virginia-all-the-time — including when he represented the pro-Clinton perspective at April’s South Carolina Democratic Party convention and on Meet The Press that month — but he remains in close contact with the now-Brooklyn-based Mook, who manages Clinton’s operation.
The posture is the result of a long consideration of McAuliffe’s role before the campaign began as he weighed how to maximize his political usefulness. He is a close friend of both Clintons — he guaranteed the mortgage on their first post-White House home and chaired presidential campaigns for both of them.
The conclusion was that Hillary would need strong and well-oiled Democratic machinery in Virginia come November 2016, and that it made little sense to divert his attention from Richmond with state senate races and a redistricting battle looming — especially with swirling rumors in Virginia that McAuliffe has said he’d like to be Treasury secretary in a Clinton administration after leaving his current office.
“He’s focused on his day job. He’s focused on governing,” said Mo Elleithee, a veteran of national and Virginia Democratic politics who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign and who now directs Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. “He’s made it pretty clear that he’s a supporter of hers, but that he’s focused on his day job.”
McAuliffe’s gubernatorial office didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
The governor’s attempt to build a more durable political infrastructure in Virginia — where Democrats in 2015 have a coordinated campaign committee for the first time ever in a year without a statewide election — is a response to longstanding worries of both Bill and Hillary Clinton that crucial swing states have weak Democratic infrastructures.
Before deciding to run again, Hillary asked about the state of Democratic leadership in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania and since she’s been a candidate Mook has been on a swing-state tour: he met with operatives in Cleveland earlier this month, and he is due to raise money in Florida next week.
In Virginia, where state parties are known for being exceptionally dependent on sitting governors, a tight alliance with Richmond has proven useful to presidential candidates, including both George W. Bush, who was friendly with Jim Gilmore in 2000, and Obama, who was close with Tim Kaine in 2008.
“It’s a huge difference having an incumbent governor, because your state party organization is stronger, it’s better funded,” explained former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a close Clinton ally. “It makes a huge difference.”
McAuliffe has also looked beyond his own borders and reached out to Democratic governors in pivotal states to discuss how to utilize their own political infrastructures — among them, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. Hillary Clinton has told campaign donors and fundraisers that she is closely monitoring state-level leadership in a handful of toss-up states, according to two of them.
McAuliffe is also likely to jump back into the world of presidential fundraising before long. Alums of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s three presidential campaigns recall McAuliffe making hundreds of donor calls when he was formally employed by them — and in some cases, jumping on multiple flights to reach as many as five cities in a single day to rake in campaign cash. While no one expects the governor to reprise this role in 2016, he will likely hand his own donor list to the Clinton camp and be called in to woo a handful of billionaires, according to multiple people briefed on the campaign and PAC fundraising strategies.
“My guess is they’ll give Terry 20-to-25 calls for Priorities, to the big hitters he has a relationship with,” explained Rendell. “He’ll be asked, like I’ve been asked, to help out with $2,700 or $5,400 campaigns. But you can’t expect a sitting governor to sit around making too many phone calls.”
Still, a handful of Clinton fundraisers told POLITICO they doubted McAuliffe could restrain himself from jumping into the campaign money game wholeheartedly when he finds the time.
“He was just a machine [in 2008],” said a former Hillary aide. “To the extent that this job enables him time-wise to do it, he’ll do whatever he can. There’s no doubt he’ll be super-duper intensely invested in this. … I have no doubt he’s going to be raising a shit-ton of money for them.”
“On the fundraising side, you’ll see the [expletive] crazy machine he was,” the former aide said.
The topic of his affection for the Clintons — and their affection for him — is never far from any Macker discussion, even if he is concentrating on this fall’s Virginia’s state senate races.
“He occupies his own territory. He is a Clinton. He’s like Chelsea,” said a close family ally. “He doesn’t need a title or a place in the campaign.”
Rendell explains Hillary Clinton’s Friday visit to Virginia this way.
“They are extremely loyal people who are loyal to people who are loyal to them. I’m not sure Hillary gets much out of the [Virginia fundraiser] except maybe a little help for next fall,” he said. “She’s doing this as a favor to Terry.”
Democratic civil war ends, for now, as House approves final trade measures // WaPo // Paul Kane – June 25, 2015
The sweeping bipartisan House vote Thursday to approve the final pieces of President Obama’s trade agenda ended, for now, a feud that left Democratic leaders shaken and fearful of long-term damage should the dispute reignite.
The divide pitted Democrats who supported Obama’s trade policies against those backed by labor unions and liberal activists whose tactics included politically threatening the president’s allies. But the debate also exposed a key difference between the Democratic presidential front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her rivals, particularly Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who repeatedly criticized the former secretary of state’s reluctance to take a strong position on a trade deal that she once predicted would be the “gold standard” for such pacts.
The family fight began two months ago when Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), considered a rising star among liberal activists, fired salvos at each other. It continued this week as members of the Congressional Black Caucus questioned Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s tone ahead of Thursday’s key vote on the measure, which passed on a 286-to-138 roll call that masked the tension in the Democratic caucus.
Party leaders are now just happy to try to regroup and find another issue to focus on.
“Oh, relieved. You know, we hate to see our ranks split, particularly on a very emotional issue, where our own people are split and so are those who support us,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democratic leader, who rebuffed pleas from Obama for support. “So the quicker we can move to something where we’re back together again, the better.”
Beyond those deep concerns in the trade fight was the fear that the party still has not pivoted toward an economic agenda that appeals to middle-class voters after last fall’s rout in the midterm elections.
“Our party needs a better agenda than trying to kill trade deals. Even if we had succeeded, it’s no substitute for an agenda,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a liberal who opposed the trade legislation. “Let’s oppose fast track, but let’s not pretend that’s an agenda.”
Some Democrats stressed that on a wide array of economic issues, including the minimum wage as well as a revamped tax code in which the wealthy pay more, there is unity. Even so, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee who helped negotiate the trade package, said the past two months laid bare the chasm over Obama’s push to win a 12-nation trade deal across the Pacific Ocean.
“The trade issue is, for many Democrats, the most difficult economic issue,” Wyden said.
The matter is likely to return to Congress later this year or early next year, if Obama is able to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the pending trade deal that represents about 40 percent of the global economy. The legislation approved this week sets the framework for how Congress would handle TPP, giving timelines for the House and the Senate and requiring simple up-or-down votes without amendments.
“It’s not over. It’s not over,” said Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.), who led the Democratic rebellion that temporarily froze Obama’s agenda. “So we fight on.”
After five years of watching Republicans wage their internecine battles with tea party activists, Democrats said they devolved into their own version of that dispute this spring. Liberals and labor unions allege that trade deals have disproportionately benefited corporations at the expense of domestic workers, while Obama said it was a progressive trade deal that would allow the United States to set the rules for commerce in a pivotal part of the world.
The pitched battle included personal attacks that were reminiscent of Republican fights, right down to outside groups threatening primary challenges to Democrats if they didn’t oppose Obama.
“What we watched on this effort was an arrogance. We were shut out. Quite frankly, disrespectful, of members and their input,” DeLauro said of Obama and his advisers. At a news conference DeLauro arranged outside the Capitol in early June, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) said Obama shared “the same values but not the same lifestyle” as House Democrats because he lived “in a cloister” where only chief executives got to visit.
In early May, Obama and Warren set the tone. He repeatedly singled out the senator’s critique of the trade bills, at one point calling her “a politician like everybody else.” She returned fire by accusing him of trying to “grease the skids” on a “secret” trade deal that benefited only corporations.
After a few unsteady moments in May, the Senate finally secured 62 votes — 48 Republicans and 14 Democrats — and sent the bill to the House, where Pelosi (D-Calif.) was visibly uncomfortable in trying to navigate the fight between Obama and some of her closest friends in the House.
Two weeks ago, after Obama made a plea for their support in the Capitol, a raucous group of House Democrats led cheers to take down that day’s vote by opposing funding for a worker program that they otherwise support. Pelosi joined the revolt at the last minute, as the trade initiative stalled because both portions needed to win a majority in separate votes for the entire package to advance.
In the ensuing days, Clinton was dragged into the debate while campaigning in Iowa. She sounded as though she was supporting Pelosi, but on the actual vote at hand, she declined to take a position, and Sanders pounced.
How did Clinton comport herself? “Not well,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a fierce opponent of trade. Kaptur attended a Monday meeting of northern Ohio party activists. “I was never asked about her once,” she said of Clinton. “You know who people asked me about? Bernie Sanders.”
By last week, Obama was working closely with Republican leaders to pass the bills separately.
The final act was Thursday’s House vote on the revamped package that included the worker training funds and the popular African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which promotes African trade.
At a Wednesday morning meeting of House Democrats, Pelosi’s position again was unclear to lawmakers, according to five Democrats in attendance. At one point, she suggested that members might vote yes because AGOA was critical to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
Reps. Charles B. Rangel and Gregory W. Meeks, both New York Democrats and senior CBC members, challenged Pelosi, telling her that it was an issue that all Democrats should support.
“It was sounding as though we should only pass [the worker program] because it was connected to AGOA and out of deference to the CBC,” Meeks said.
After the meeting, Pelosi said she would support the plan, ending any suspense over the final votes of the two-month war among Democrats on trade.
At her weekly news conference, she acknowledged that it would be good to focus on some other issues but warned that once Obama brings the Pacific trade deal to Congress, the fight will resume.
“We welcome that opportunity with lowered heat to go forward with it,” she said, “but with increased intensity and scrutiny and bright light shining on what is in this TPP.”
Democratic Field Champions Health Care as Human Right // Real Clear Politics // Andrew Desiderio – June 25, 2015
Democratic presidential candidates praised Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling preserving a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, which they say vindicates President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. The White House hopefuls also made clear a political goal if elected president in 2016 – providing universal coverage – and how they would sell it to Americans – by portraying it as a human right.
In King v. Burwell, the second major legal challenge to the law, the justices ruled 6-3 to authorize tax subsidies intended to help low-income and middle-class Americans afford health insurance, regardless of whether their coverage is obtained through a state exchange or a federal one. Conservative justices John Roberts – who wrote the majority opinion – and Anthony Kennedy joined with the liberals on the bench in upholding the subsidies.
“Yes!” Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton tweeted after the ruling was handed down. “SCOTUS affirms what we know is true in our hearts & under the law: Health insurance should be affordable & available to all.”
Clinton’s reaction was emblematic of a larger political goal for Democrats: to expand health care coverage to every American. In anticipation of another monumental Supreme Court ruling expected soon on gay marriage, Clinton’s campaign released a video in which she describes same-sex marriage as a human right. Clinton and her fellow Democrats sounded a familiar tune Thursday, arguing that health care also qualifies as a human right.
While acknowledging the law is not perfect, the former secretary of state and architect of the failed “HillaryCare” initiative during her husband’s presidency attacked congressional Republicans for their efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act. She repeated commonly cited accolades for the law, including the ability to stay on one’s parents’ insurance plans until age 26, and the guarantee that coverage can’t be denied to those with pre-existing conditions.
“Republicans should stop trying to tear down the law and start working across party lines to build on these successes,” Clinton said in a statement.
Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who lags far behind Clinton in national polls, reacted with a similar message promoting universal health care. “Now that this ideological attempt to stop #ACA failed, we must redouble our efforts to bring health care to every person in this nation,” he tweeted.
“With the national goal of universal coverage now affirmed, we must reduce costs by improving wellness,” O’Malley continued in a statement. “Innovations for better coordinated care, personalized medicine, and the alignment of profit incentives to promote wellness make all of this possible.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist, said the court acted within its power to guarantee health care subsidies to Americans regardless of where they live. “It would have been an outrage to throw 6.4 million people off health insurance,” he said in a statement.
Sanders called health care a “right of citizenship,” adding that his overall goal is to establish a “Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.”
Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor who has largely been running a single-issue campaign based on the Iraq War, lauded the court’s ruling and touted his state’s ACA rollout as “one of the nation’s best.”
Chafee, a former Republican, did not call for universal coverage or depict health care as a human right, instead saying, “More insurance means more healthy Americans.”
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden after the ruling was handed down, a relieved but unsurprised President Obama echoed Clinton, O’Malley, and Sanders, proclaiming, “The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.”
If a Democrat is elected to succeed Obama, it might simply be a foundation for more reforms.
Jeb swipes at Obama over Iran deal // Politico // Adam Lerner – June 25, 2015
Jeb Bush renewed his attack on President Barack Obama’s negotiations with Iran Thursday, citing a recent letter from five former White House advisers cautioning against the emerging deal.
“Even former top Obama officials think emerging deal will ‘not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability’,” the former Florida governor tweeted Thursday, including a link to a New York Times article about the letter.
On Wednesday, 18 foreign policy experts published a letter on the website of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy saying “most of us would have preferred a stronger agreement,” since the emerging deal “will not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability.”
The letter outlined five additions to the agreement that would be necessary “to maximize [the deal’s] potential,” including additional inspection powers, slowed sanctions relief and harsher limits on advanced centrifuges.
Also included were recommendations for further measures the U.S. can take in the region to bolster the security of our allies and prevent Iranian hegemony.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus, former Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), former Obama adviser Dennis Ross, and former State Department arms proliferation expert Robert Einhorn, in addition to a number of Bush administration alums, all signed the letter. Gary Samore, a former top adviser to Obama on nuclear issues, was also a signatory.
The deadline for a final agreement is set for June 30, though an outline of the emerging agreement was released by the State Department at the beginning of April. The deadline could also slip.
Jeb Bush cast as 'villain' in GOP fight for recognition // CNN // Ashley Killough – June 25, 2015
Bobby Jindal took some veiled swipes at his Republican presidential rivals Wednesday night, but in a rare move for an announcement speech, the Louisiana governor singled out one opponent by name: Jeb Bush.
"You've heard Jeb Bush say we need to be willing to lose the primary in order to win the general election. We're going to help him do that," he said, referring to a statement Bush made last year.
"Let me translate that political speak into plain English," Jindal continued. "What Jeb Bush is saying is that we need to hide our conservative ideas, but the truth is if we go down that road again, we will lose again."
Jindal's jab adds to the list of punches thrown at Bush from Republican candidates in recent weeks, a trend that's growing in intensity and frequency as the GOP field becomes more crowded.
As someone who's consistently stayed in the top tier of national polls, Bush is a natural target for lower-tier candidates in need of more publicity and name recognition, Republican strategists say. For Jindal, the strategy worked and generated a lot of headlines.
"When you're a candidate out the gate and not that many people know you and you're trying to craft a narrative of your campaign, you need a hero -- which is the candidate -- and a villain, which in this case was Bush," said Republican strategist Ford O'Connell.
Bush hasn't always been a villain for Jindal, though. In Jindal's first term nearly eight years ago, the governor started a monthly speaker series for his Cabinet secretaries and staff and invited Bush to be the first guest speaker, The Associated Press reported.
But the two have been on a collision course ever since Jindal became one of the most vocal governors against Common Core, despite first supporting it, while Bush has been a strong advocate of the standards.
Others have also piled onto the former Florida governor recently. Like Jindal, Donald Trump named Bush in his kickoff last week, attacking the former governor repeatedly, as well as other candidates by name. He later regretted being hard on Bush, only to attack him again a few days later.
A pro-Rand Paul super PAC released a web video earlier this week of a faux-infomercial selling "Bailout Bush" dolls, a satire on Bush expressing support for the 2009 financial services bailout and on his ties to Wall Street. (Bush in 2012 said the the bailout "right thing to do" in the short term but did not approve of what he called "massive" regulations that ensued.)
Matt Mackowiak, another GOP strategist, argued that attacking someone who's considered to be the overall frontrunner is a well-worn strategy, and he expects to see Bush continue to take more hits in the coming months as the contest becomes more competitive.
"Any shot you take, you always swing up, you never swing down," Mackowiak said.
Along with boosting a candidate's own publicity, attacking someone like Bush also lends credibility to those who want to be perceived as anti-establishment insurgents willing to buck the party line.
"If you want to be an outsider or be an underdog, the Bushes are as establishment as you can get," Mackowiak argued.
Other candidates have long been delivering more subtle blows. Ohio Gov. John Kasich essentially argued earlier this month that he may run for president because Bush is underperforming. "Frankly, I thought that Jeb was going to just suck all the air out of the room and it just hasn't happened," he said, though stressed that he was just being "honest" and wasn't trying to attack Bush.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker regularly notes that he didn't come from "fame or fortune," while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio earlier this month blasted "outdated leaders," a reference that was designed to draw a contrast with older, more established candidates like Hillary Clinton or Bush.
In his announcement speech, Bush seemed to acknowledge concerns that he's often viewed as a frontrunner simply because of his connections and tried to set the scene for a competitive primary season.
"Not a one of us deserves the job by right of resume, party, seniority, family, or family narrative," he said. "It's nobody's turn. It's everybody's test, and it's wide open -- exactly as a contest for president should be."
Allie Brandenburger, a spokeswoman for Bush, said people around the country are now getting to know the governor and his record, arguing that "the more they know, the more they want to see his leadership in the White House."
Bush has largely resisted responding to the attacks directly, trying to maintain his stated goal of being a "joyful" candidate instead. But he also knows he has to prove to voters that he has enough fire in the belly.
"You got to pop 'em," he said last month in New Hampshire, slamming his fist into his hand. He was responding to a question from a voter who asked Bush to explain how he'll defend himself in the brutal process of a presidential campaign. "You got to push back, and then get back to the message that matters."
Florida Voter Purge Fiasco May Complicate Jeb Bush's Appeal To Minorities // HuffPo // Scott Conroy – June 25, 2015
Something was noticeably different about the crowd packed inside a gymnasium at Miami Dade College’s Kendall campus last week to welcome Jeb Bush into the ranks of the announced 2016 Republican presidential candidates.
In a vivid departure from the nearly all-white audiences that typically turn out to greet GOP White House contenders, Bush’s racially and ethnically diverse supporters mirrored the demographics of this multicultural city.
The scene was meant to emphasize a core Bush strength, if not send a message to fellow Republicans, that an inclusive and aspirational brand of politics offers the GOP an opportunity to re-engage with minority voters, including African-Americans, who long ago abandoned the party of Lincoln en masse.
Even some Democratic operatives acknowledge privately that Bush -- a fluent Spanish speaker with a Mexican-born wife -- has a biography and demeanor that could chip away at the coalition that twice propelled Barack Obama to the White House.
Bush’s critics in Florida, however, scoff.
As the 2016 campaign heats up, an episode from his tenure as Florida governor reveals why Bush's image as a “uniter, not a divider,” as his older brother used to put it, may not stand up. The state's deeply flawed purge of felons from its voting rolls in advance of the 2000 presidential election remains a scar that still has not healed for many in the state.
“I’ll never the forget people that came up to me and said, ‘You let them steal our votes,’” Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), who became state's first African-American elected to Congress since Reconstruction when she won her seat in 1992, told The Huffington Post. “So many people were just wiped off the rolls -- people who’d been voting for years and years. You had the obligation to prove that you weren’t a felon.”
The felon purge wrongfully denied thousands of legitimate voters the ability to participate in a presidential election pitting Republican George W. Bush against Democrat Al Gore. Ultimately, a few hundred Florida ballots would determine the presidency, and with it, the nation’s path for the next eight years and, really, well beyond.
Though it received little notice outside of Florida in the election’s immediate aftermath, as hanging chads and butterfly ballots took center stage during the recount, the purge remains for many the most egregious example of voter disenfranchisement that took place during the 2000 presidential election, which was ultimately decided by a Supreme Court ruling.
“The purge was right out of one of these playbooks in how you diminish minority turnout -- there was absolutely no justification for it,” said Dan Gelber, a former Democratic state legislator and a longtime Bush nemesis. “It was almost a purposeful crashing of a car. They knew it was irresponsible and about something incredibly important, and they went forward knowing that the only mistakes were going to benefit them.”
Florida has banned convicted felons from participating in elections since 1868. But it wasn’t until 1998 -- the year before Bush took office -- that state legislators passed a law intended to clean up the voter rolls after a Miami mayoral election was overturned amid widespread cases of absentee ballot fraud.
The secretary of state’s office subsequently awarded Database Technologies Inc., or DBT, a $4 million contract to carry out the effort to ensure that felons, deceased voters, and non-residents would be blocked from participating in the 2000 election.
It would not be an easy task.
Since Florida did not track its voters by Social Security number, the company was instructed to engage in a subjective process that attempted to match felon names and dates of birth with voter records, allowing for “ near matches” that were close, but not exact.
After Jeb Bush took office in 1999, this process continued. In the months leading up to the 2000 presidential election, local election supervisors began receiving lists from state officials of people DBT had identified as convicted felons and thus needed to be eliminated from the voting rolls.
It became immediately clear that the effort was generating a slew of false positives. Voters in good standing, who happened to share names with convicted felons, but had never been in trouble with the law, were being taken off the voting rolls.
But election officials in Tallahassee -- led by Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who would later gain infamy over her controversial handling of the election recount -- declined to make the process more transparent and uniform.
Charges that the purge was politically motivated grew louder when it was revealed that the man responsible for determining the parameters for voter removal was Emmett “Bucky” Mitchell IV -- a Division of Election attorney who went on to become general counsel for the Florida Republican Party.
In early 1999, DBT product manager Marlene Thorogood warned Mitchell of false positives generated by the guidelines that he had set. But in an email Mitchell sent in March of that year, he instructed Thorogood not to concern herself with wrongly eliminating non-felons from the voter rolls. It was better to purge too many people than too few, in Mitchell’s estimation.
"Obviously, we want to capture more names that possibly aren't matches and let the [county elections] supervisors make a final determination rather than exclude certain matches altogether," Mitchell wrote.
This decree from Tallahassee having been made clear, county-level election officials began receiving lists of voters they were told to remove from their rolls in the months leading up to an Election Day that would prove to be among the most memorable in American history. The local officials’ responses to this instruction varied. Some tossed out the lists altogether. Others used their discretion to try to correct them. Some used the lists with full knowledge that they were defective.
Many county officials decided to mail certified letters notifying people on the lists that the Department of Law Enforcement had identified them as felons and that they would need to provide evidence to challenge that conclusion or face permanent removal from the voter rolls. In short, voters who had been swept up in the net had to prove their innocence.
Some Floridians who learned that they had been wrongfully removed from the voting rolls attempted to bring the matter directly to the governor.
In a message sent on Aug. 28, 2000, to jeb@myflorida.com -- one of the governor's official email addresses -- a man named Gene Gay noted that he had recently received a letter indicating that he had lost his right to vote.
“I have search all weekend for a site to access that type of records with no success,” Gay wrote. “Where do U go online to get that sort of information without paying these scalpers prices … This is a lot of stuff, for a person whom knows, he has NOT been convicted of any felony. This is very important to me please respond asap.”
In another email to an official gubernatorial account (flagov@myflorida.com), sent on the Wednesday before Election Day, a man named John Browne expressed intense frustration to Bush in a 760-word note about a brother, who Browne said had stolen his identity repeatedly over the previous decade. This traumatic experience, Browne explained, had led to an erroneous determination from Martin County that he was a convicted felon.
Browne wrote:
“I have spent an enormous amount of time dealing with the local county Sheriff’s offices, the State Attorney’s Office, the Social Security Administration, private attorneys and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Not one person to date has told me what I can do to protect myself or how to file charges against this person or anyone else using my personal information ... Mr. Bush, I have a family to provide for and I have worked very hard to get to where I am today. This continued abuse of my records is seriously impacting on my ability to continue a normal and productive life. I also think the fact that I am being denied the right to vote is a violation of my civil rights. I would hope that you take this situation very seriously and offer some measure of relief.”
It's unclear whether Bush read either email. As governor, he primarily used the email address Jeb@Jeb.org, but also had access to several other state email accounts, including the two in question. A campaign aide told The Huffington Post that these accounts were primarily used by the governor’s Office of Citizen Services and that Bush himself did not see most of the incoming messages sent there, unless they were forwarded to his Jeb.org account.
(Coincidentally, on the same day that Gene Gay sent his email to Bush, likely 2016 rival Scott Walker -- then a Wisconsin state legislator -- sent Bush a request via jeb@myflorida.com for information on a new Florida law that prohibited possession of vehicle airbags that lacked identification stickers.)
Estimates vary on just how many non-felons in Florida were wrongly denied the right to vote on Election Day, but the total was at least 1,100, according to a 2001 Palm Beach Post analysis, and may have been much higher.
Following the election recount, in which he officially recused himself, Jeb Bush sought to distance himself from the botched purge, arguing that as governor, he was not charged with administering the election.
A post-election investigation by the U.S. Commission On Civil Rights, however, in which Bush was subpoenaed, was dubious about this reasoning, noting that the actions Bush took immediately after the 2000 election demonstrated that he did, in fact, have the ability to act on voting-related matters.
“Florida’s governor insisted that he had no specific role in election operations and pointed to his secretary of state as the responsible official,” the commission wrote in its report. “After the election, however, the governor exercised leadership and responsibility in electoral matters in the commendable action of appointing a task force to make recommendations to fix the problems that occurred."
The report found a “strong basis” for determining that violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act had occurred during the election in Florida. While it did not find that “the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters,” the report singled out Bush and Harris, saying their “overall lack of leadership in protecting voting rights was largely responsible for the broad array of problems in Florida during the 2000 election.”
“The state’s highest officials responsible for ensuring efficiency, uniformity, and fairness in the election failed to fulfill their responsibilities and were subsequently unwilling to take responsibility,” the report said.
African-Americans were nearly 10 times more likely than white voters to have their ballots discounted in Florida, the report found, and it singled out for criticism the felon voter purge’s “sloppy and irresponsible” implementation.
“The governor, the secretary of state, or the director of the Division of Elections should have provided clear instructions to their subordinates on list maintenance strategies that would protect eligible voters from being erroneously purged from the voter registration rolls,” the report said.
Aides to Jeb Bush at the time criticized the report by the Commission On Civil Rights, controlled by a Democratic majority, as “biased” and “sloppy” in its own right -- charges that did nothing to quell widespread outrage, particularly among African-Americans, in Florida.
But any lingering bad feelings about Bush were not apparent at his presidential campaign announcement last week, when R.B. Holmes, Jr. -- an African-American minister from Tallahassee -- delivered impassioned praise of the former governor in introducing him on stage.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Holmes noted that he appreciated Bush’s efforts to appoint more African-Americans to judgeships in Florida when he was governor.
“Jeb Bush is a very compassionate person,” Holmes said. “I respect his core values. I respect that he married a minority, and he did that back in the day. Think of how unpopular that was for a Bush of his status to go to Mexico and find a bride.”
Holmes is far from the only African-American in Florida who retains positive feelings toward Bush.
After famously saying during his failed 1994 gubernatorial run that he would do “probably nothing” to help blacks, Bush changed his tone dramatically when it came to engaging in matters of race and identity during his 1998 campaign. That year, he ended up earning the support of 61 percent of Hispanics and 14 percent of African-Americans -- impressive numbers for a Republican.
Even though he didn’t do as well with either group during his successful 2002 re-election bid, Bush’s reputation as a bridge-builder who actively concerned himself with lifting up minority communities -- boosted, in part, by his high-profile push for expanded educational opportunities -- remains a central tenet of his political identity.
Mac Stipanovich, a Florida Republican lobbyist who advised Harris throughout the 2000 recount, was blunt in arguing that Bush had not erred in failing to provide any oversight of the botched felon purge.
“Any time you attempt to pare the voting rolls in Florida, regardless of what the reason is, you are anti-democratic with a small-D and probably racist,” Stipanovich said by way of discounting those accusations.
But criticism of how Bush and members of his administration handled the purge became even louder four years later, when he and other Florida officials failed to correct the problems that arose during the previous presidential election year and, in fact, may have made it worse.
The 2004 iteration of the felon voter purge -- this time carried out by the Department of Elections itself -- ended with a whimper when a peculiar (some would say "fishy") anomaly was discovered the summer before Bush’s brother stood for re-election.
That year’s list of 48,000 felons who were to be purged from the voting rolls contained more than 22,000 African-Americans' names, but just 61 Hispanics. (In Florida, Hispanic communities tend to be more Republican-leaning than they are nationally.)
Bush administration officials denied there was any partisan motivation in the discrepancy, calling it “unintentional.” But as Democrats scoffed and public pressure mounted, Florida officials ended up scrapping the list entirely.
Some 15 years later, Jeb Bush, now running his own presidential campaign, has treated the Florida voting purge as a foreign object -- an episode that had little if nothing to do with him.
Asked during a press conference during a campaign swing through Iowa last week whether he believes that African-Americans were disproportionately affected by those efforts, he waffled a bit before rephrasing the question in his own manner.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think there was any -- no, if you’re going to say, ‘Did the Florida Department of Law Enforcement target African-Americans?’ No.”
Meanwhile, Florida remains one of just three states where all convicted felons automatically lose their voting rights and must petition the governor and a clemency board in an arduous process in order to try to get them restored.
In 2007, Gov. Charlie Crist, then a Republican, initiated a change in the clemency policy, which made it so that most convicted felons in Florida would automatically have their voting rights restored after the state ensured that they had paid restitution to victims.
Those new guidelines were then rolled back by Gov. Rick Scott (R) shortly after he took office in 2011.
According to a 2012 study by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group advocating for judicial sentencing reform, Florida continues to have the highest rate of African-American disenfranchisement in the country with 23 percent of the adult African-American population in the state barred from voting.
“I think that the purge system brought a real apartheid type of politics that was going on in Florida,” said former Democratic state Rep. Tony Hill. “Look at the people who were purged -- they were African-American. They just discounted our votes without any recourse.”
Jeb Bush, Donald Trump running first and second among 2016 GOP field: poll // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015
A new poll shows former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sitting atop the 2016 GOP presidential field, with businessman and reality television show host Donald Trump jumping to second place in the wake of his recent campaign kick-off.
Mr. Bush was the choice of 15 percent of likely Republican primary voters in the Fox News poll, followed by Mr. Trump at 11 percent and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent.
Mr. Bush had been at 12 percent in a Fox poll released in early June, and Mr. Trump had been at 4 percent. The survey was taken June 21-23 — soon after both men officially announced their candidacies.
Still, nearly two-thirds of GOP primary voters said they think of Mr. Trump, the host of NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice,” as a side show, compared to 29 percent who said they consider him a serious candidate. Among all registered voters, 77 percent said they think he’s a side show and 18 percent said they think he’s a serious candidate.
He took to social media Wednesday evening to tout the results, tweeting: “Just out, the new nationwide @FoxNews poll has me alone in 2nd place, closely behind Jeb Bush-but Bush will NEVER Make America Great Again!”
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker were at 9 percent apiece, with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida at 8 percent and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 6 percent.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was at 4 percent and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania were at 3 percent apiece.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry were at 2 percent apiece. Mr. Jindal announced his candidacy Wednesday.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former New York Gov. George Pataki were at 1 percent apiece.
Of the names included, Mr. Walker, Mr. Christie, and Mr. Kasich have yet to officially announce 2016 bids.
Mr. Bush was also the top second choice, at 11 percent, followed by Mr. Rubio and Mr. Huckabee at 10 percent apiece.
The survey of 1,005 registered voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points for the subgroup of Republican primary voters.
Jeb Bush did not appoint a guardian for a rape victim's fetus, but he fought for one // Politifact // Joshua Gillin – June 25, 2015
A political group has highlighted a controversial fight over fetal rights that former Gov. Jeb Bush mounted years ago, but it went too far in its description of what the current presidential candidate did.
Ultraviolet, a women’s rights group, posted an image on Facebook on June 15, 2015, with the title "5 things you should know about Jeb Bush." The first item read, "Appointed a guardian for the fetus of a rape survivor."
We checked into all five of the claims listed on the image and found this one was not accurate. (Read our story on the rest here.)
In May 2003, a severely mentally handicapped woman identified only as J.D.S. had been raped in a group home at 22 and was six months pregnant. J.D.S., who was abandoned at birth and raised in foster care, suffered from severe mental retardation, cerebral palsy and autism, with the mental capacity of a 4- or 5-year-old.
But Bush actually didn’t appoint a guardian, because he didn’t have that power. What he did was order state lawyers to ask the Orange County Circuit Court in Orlando to appoint a representative for the fetus.
Though Bush opposes abortion, he said the court case was not about that. "This is a question of protecting an innocent life," Bush told the Miami Herald. "And it will be the policy of our government in the case of a woman who is incapacitated or cannot make decisions for her child, that there should be a guardian."
The Florida Department of Children and Families had already asked the court to appoint a guardian once the baby was born. No parties involved had suggested aborting the fetus.
But Judge Lawrence Kirkwood did not consider the guardian request, saying he had to follow state statute. Appointing a guardian for the fetus would be "a clear error," he wrote.
"A trial judge must follow the law as written," Kirkwood said. "Many had expected this court to blaze new territory and write new law for the facts beyond the Florida statute."
The issue moved forward, even after a healthy girl known as Baby S was born in August 2003. Kirkwood appointed her a guardian at birth. In January 2004, a three-judge panel in a Daytona appeals court ruled against Bush in a 2-1 decision.
Kirkwood had adhered to a 1989 state Supreme Court ruling that said appointing a representative for an unborn fetus would be "clearly improper." A fetus was not a person under state law, and was therefore without the same rights as a person. Judge Emerson Thompson noted in the majority opinion that fetal rights were not mentioned anywhere in state statutes about guardianship.
Bush continued to hold his position after the appeal ruling in Daytona.
"I do think that a child that could be brought to term, as this child was, in the case where a mother has little or no capabilities in representing the child's interest, a legal guardian should be appointed," he said.
Our ruling
Ultraviolet said Bush "appointed a guardian for the fetus of a rape survivor."
Bush asked a judge in 2003 to name someone to act in the interests of the fetus of a mentally disabled woman raped in a group home. But the judge did not, because state law does not give a fetus the same protections as a person. An appeals court upheld the judge’s compliance with a 1989 Florida Supreme Court ruling.
To be clear, Bush did not appoint anyone as a representative for the fetus, but he did want one. We rate the statement Mostly False.
Is the poverty rate worse now than it was in the 1970's? // Politifact // Joshua Gillin – June 25, 2015
As the 2016 presidential hopefuls travel the country, they are undoubtedly on a mission to play up their strengths and, for the Republicans, say why they are a better choice than Democrats, who have held the White House for the last two terms.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (R) was recently in North Carolina talking to reporters at the state GOP headquarters. While discussing the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore man who died after being arrested, Bush pointed out that the national conversation needs to focus on poverty and what can be done to eliminate it. Bush said this about poverty in the United States:
"There are more poor people today as a percentage of our population than the 1970s."
Our partners at PolitiFact Florida took a look at Bush's claim to see if he had his facts correct. PolitiFact reporter Joshua Gillin says that Bush's claim rates MOSTLY TRUE on the Truth-O-Meter. Gillin said that Bush's wording of his statement is key to the claim.
"We went back and looked at the statistics for the Federal Poverty Level," said Gillin. "In 2013, the last year we have full numbers, the poverty rate was about 14.5 percent of the population, while the rate in the 1970's topped out around 12.5 percent, and remember, we're talking about these percentages as a percentage of the population, which is the language that former Gov. Bush used in his statement."
Gillin notes that another calculation closes that gap between now and then. "If you include government-assisted programs in the mix, the number for the Supplemental Poverty Measure from the 1970's actually creeps up a bit, and that difference between then and now disappears," said Gillin. "However, that's not generally the percentage that is used, and social scientists and experts we talked to said that they usually stick with the straight Federal Poverty Level when comparing different years."
Gillin said that because Bush used the phrase "percentage of our population," his claim is pretty accurate, leading to a MOSTLY TRUE rating from PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter.
Jeb Bush did say women should 'find a husband' to get off welfare -- in 1994 // Politifact // Joshua Gillin – June 25, 2015
A women’s rights group took presidential candidate Jeb Bush to task in a social media post, dredging up a 21-year-old quote that makes him sound behind the times.
In a June 15, 2015, Facebook post, political group Ultraviolet listed "5 things you should know about Jeb Bush." The fourth item: "Said low-income women should ‘get their life together and find a husband.' "
We looked at all five items in a separate story (which you can read here) and found a few inaccuracies.
In this case, Bush did say it -- way back in 1994, during his failed first run for governor.
During that campaign, Bush pushed for two-year limits on receiving benefits from a federal welfare program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which ended in 1996.
"If people are mentally and physically able to work, they should be able to do so within a two-year period," he said. "They should be able to get their life together and find a husband, find a job, find other alternatives in terms of private charity or a combination of all three. That is the first step, to redefine the role of government. It will be hard. There will be lots of screaming and hollering."
Bush’s GOP primary opponents seized on this widely reported quote -- particularly former Florida Attorney General James Smith, who used part of the quote in an attack ad. Bush called the ad unfair, and said Smith took "a fragment of a quote from me on welfare reform totally out of context in an attempt to portray me as a sexist who is insensitive to women."
The Orlando Sentinel quoted Bush as saying marriage "is one of many options, and if people are honest about the welfare system we have today, how you get on welfare is not having a husband in the house."
CNN reported that Bush added, "Let's be honest here. Men are not on welfare, that's the point. That's the point -- men are not on AFDC."
A state official noted that a small percentage of men did get benefits from the program, as did some families with both men and women as heads of the household. Bush lost the 1994 gubernatorial election in a close race with Democratic incumbent Lawton Chiles.
Bush’s past statements about shaming single mothers have been in the news quite a bit during this campaign after media outlets began highlighting comments from his 1995 book Profiles in Character.
"One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame," Bush wrote.
"Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out-of-wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful."
The same Ultraviolet Facebook image also referenced the so-called "Scarlet Letter" law that passed while Bush was in office. That 2001 bill included a provision that required unwed mothers who didn’t know who fathered their child to publish weekly notices describing dates, places and partners with which the women had had sex prior to putting the child up for adoption. Bush let it pass without his signature, but it was ruled unconstitutional two years later and repealed.
Bush told an attendee at an Iowa event on June 17, 2015, his real goal had been to focus on the responsibility those absent men bore.
"I'm not in favor of shaming women. What I'm in favor of is shaming men who abandon their children," Bush said. "Women who bring up children by themselves do it heroically, they do it against all odds. Men who don't feel responsible for being part of their child's life create real strains on that family."
Our ruling
Ultraviolet claimed Bush "said low-income women should ‘get their life together and find a husband.’ "
He did say that, back in 1994 during his first gubernatorial run, when the quote also was used against him by opponents. He was talking about putting a limit on a particular welfare program and doubled down on the concept that women would not be on welfare if they were married.
The meme omits context and that the comments are more than 20 years old. But Bush did say that. So we rate the statement Mostly True.
Political group makes five points about Jeb Bush's record // Politifact // Josh Gillin – June 25, 2015
A Facebook meme from a political group made so many simultaneous assertions about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, we couldn’t put them all on the Truth-O-Meter.
That doesn’t mean we can’t still examine the quintet of claims, however.
Ultraviolet, which describes itself as a community "mobilized to fight sexism and expand women’s rights," posted an image labeled "5 things you should know about Jeb Bush" to its Facebook page on June 15, 2015. A few days later, the group added a link to information backing up its claims.
PolitiFact Florida wanted to review this information for ourselves. We found that some were largely factual, but at least two had significant inaccuracies. (One was wrong on Facebook, but has been corrected on the group’s website.)
Let’s take Ultraviolet’s talking points one by one:
1. Appointed a guardian for the fetus of a rape survivor: In May 2003, Bush ordered state lawyers to ask the Orange County Circuit Court in Orlando to appoint a representative for the fetus of a mentally handicapped woman in state care. The 22-year-old woman, who was severely developmentally disabled, had been raped while living in a group home and was six months pregnant.
Bush did not actually appoint a guardian, but wanted a judge in the case to consider it. No party in the case had suggested aborting the fetus. We rated this statement Mostly False in a separate Truth-O-Meter fact-check.
The judge did not consider the issue, but left the woman in state care. The Florida Department of Children and Families had already asked the court to appoint a guardian once the baby was born, which happened in August 2003.
The request sparked controversy about whether a fetus deserved representation in the womb, something the state Supreme Court ruled "clearly improper" in 1989. The issue went before an appeals court. In January 2004, the three-judge panel ruled against Bush in a 2-1 decision, finding that a fetus was not a person under Florida law and appointing a guardian would be improper.
2. Signed into law a bill requiring single moms to publish their sexual history: First of all, we will note that at some point after June 15, Ultraviolet changed the wording of this statement on its website, restating that Bush said he "refused to veto a bill" that required this. That is more accurate, but the original is still circulating on Facebook with the original wording, and it is partly wrong.
This item refers to a bill often known as the "Scarlet Letter" law, which started as a 2001 reworking of Florida’s adoption regulations. The Legislature that year passed a bill that required single mothers who didn’t know who was the father of their child publish a newspaper notice prior to putting the child up for adoption.
The notice had to run once a week for a month, and had to list a detailed description of all the possible fathers, plus dates and cities where a sexual encounter resulting in conception may have taken place. This was originally designed to alert the child’s potential father the child was up for adoption, but amounted to forcing the mother to publish her sexual history in her hometown newspaper multiple times.
The bill passed the House and Senate by a wide margin. Bush objected to several parts of the bill in a letter to Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- the bill’s own sponsor, Sen. Skip Campbell, D-Tamarac, lamented the final bill -- but instead of using his veto power to kill the legislation, Bush let the bill pass without signing it.
He said he had expected legislators to fix the notice requirement’s wording (Campbell had told him as much, he said). But a court did that for him in 2003 when it ruled the law unconstitutional for being an invasion of privacy. Bush signed the law’s repeal that year.
3. Hired a staffer who publicly called women "sluts": On Feb. 9, 2015, Bush’s Right To Rise PAC announced they had hired Hipster.com co-founder Ethan Czahor as its new chief technology officer. But the Internet found dozens of years-old tweets from his Twitter account disparaging women and homosexuals. Offending tweets were being deleted from the account, but not before Buzzfeed shared them, including several that did refer to women as "sluts." Czahor resigned on Feb. 10.
4. Said low-income women should "get their life together and find a husband": Ultraviolet attributed this quote to a 2003 Washington Post profile of Bush, but CNN put the comment in context earlier this month.
During his first gubernatorial run in 1994, Bush pushed for limits on a federal welfare program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which ended in 1996.
"If people are mentally and physically able to work, they should be able to do so within a two-year period," he said. "They should be able to get their life together and find a husband, find a job, find other alternatives in terms of private charity or a combination of all three."
Bush defended those comments by saying that same year, saying, "How you get on welfare is by not having a husband in the house -- let's be honest here. Men are not on welfare, that's the point. That's the point -- men are not on AFDC."
A state official had refuted that, by the way, noting that a small percentage of men did get get benefits from the program, as did some families with both men and women as heads of the household. We rated Ultraviolet’s statement Mostly True in a separate fact-check.
5. Used taxpayer money to promote anti-abortion groups: The group pointed to a Salon story that highlighted Bush signed into law a 1999 bill allowing the state to be the first in the country to sell "Choose Life" specialty license plates. These plates allowed Floridians to pay a fee to help fund so-called crisis pregnancy centers. Bush’s Democratic predecessor Lawton Chiles had vetoed the plates a year earlier.
The centers provide pregnant women with services but do not mention abortion as an option, steering clients to paths to put their unwanted children up for adoption. The centers, usually run by religious organizations, have been criticized by abortion rights groups for giving out false information about reproductive health care and abortions.
In 2005, Bush proposed spending millions on a pregnancy counseling hotline that steered women to these crisis pregnancy centers, which were opposed to abortion. After a $4 million launch, the hotline continued to get $2 million budgeted per year for these services for the rest of Bush’s tenure.
Jeb Bush Shakes Money Tree in Manhattan Two More Times // The Observer // Ken Kurson – June 25, 2015
Jeb Bush has been Hoovering up campaign cash in the Northeast, surprising some with the strength of his appeal in what should be considered Chris Christie’s neighborhood. Yesterday the money train continued, making two New York City stops.
The first was a breakfast at the Sheraton, hosted by a who’s who of Republican money bigs. Event co-chairs included Mel Immergut, the super lawyer who is the former Chairman of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy; Bob Foresman, who was Jeb’s partner at Barclay’s and is now CEO of the firm’s Russia operation; hedge fund manager John Paulson, who CDS’ed his way to a $4 billion profit betting that the housing market would crash in 2007; and John Catsimatides, the supermarket and oil well mogul who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination for mayor of New York City in 2013.
Also notable were the strong showing of New Jersey co-chairs and attendees, worth mentioning given the long Christie shadow. Woody Johnson, the Jets owner who is one of the national chairs of Jeb’s campaign and Joe Kyrillos, the close friend of Gov. Christie who surprised many by supporting Mr. Bush were among the co-chairs. Gail Gordon, a prominent NJ GOP fundraiser who had been on Christie’s finance committee, also attended, as did Ira Perlmuter of Triple Five, the private equity fund that owns the Mall of America and other colossuses.
In addition to the Jersey strength, Mr. Bush flexed real muscle among prominent Jewish donors, including George Klein, the developer and former president of the Republican Jewish Coalition and Jay Lefkowitz, the brainy Kirkland and Ellis lawyer who also had the easy-peasy job of being President Bush’s Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea.
There were even some two-fers—Jews from New Jersey. South Jersey lawyer Hersh Kozlov was there, as was former Cliff Sobel, who squawked like crazy when the Observer identified him as Bush supporter in an earlier story. He’s apparently still hoping to thread the needle; he’d clearly like to back the brother of the man who made him ambassador to The Netherlands and then to Brazil without angering his home-state governor too egregiously. To that end, Mr. Sobel declined to appear on the invitation itself—his son Scott Sobel was listed—but the Observer has confirmed that Cliff did indeed attend.
After the well-publicized Sheraton event with dozens of co-chairs, Mr. Bush headed to an equally impressive although quieter—and thus far unreported—event. Mr. Bush’s cousin, George Herbert Walker IV, is the chairman and CEO of Neuberger Berman, the largest private, investment management firm. Mr. Walker hosted Jeb for lunch yesterday, again flexing the kind of reach that has made Mr. Bush the clear finance frontrunner among the large GOP field, if not necessarily the political frontrunner.
According to Ms. Gordon and others to whom the Observer spoke, the Sheraton was packed. “I was a co-chair, which means the buy-in was $27,000 by the end of the month,” explained Ms. Gordon, referring to the requirement to find 10 “max out donations” of $2700 each. “It was a vigorous, well-attended event and the enthusiasm was so strong we’re parlaying it into two more events.” Ms. Gordon is referring to a pair of July 23 fundraisers in New Jersey itself, the very existence of which is a shock, given the totality with which Mr. Christie shut down Jersey support for all contenders in 2012 until he decided to endorse Mitt Romney and brought all 21 county chairmen with him.
The July fundraising twilight-doubleheader begins in Monmouth County, where Mr. Kyrillos and Larry Bathgate, a power lawyer who served as the Republican National Committee’s finance chairman, are establishing a large committee. According to an email obtained by the Observer, anyone “joining us as an Event Co-Chair with a pledge to raise $10,000″ can be listed on the invitation. According to one source close to the event, expectations are high—”1-2 million is not out of the question—for the event, which will take place at the tony Navesink Country Club, right in the heart of popular State Senator Kyrillos’ district.
Larry Wieseneck, a former partner of Jeb Bush at Barclay's, is co-hosting one of two New Jersey fundraisers for Jeb on July 23. Here he's pictured with his wife Gayle in a promo for the posh Newark Academy in Livingston, where Chris Christie is expected to announce his own run for the presidency on Tuesday.
Larry Wieseneck, a former partner of Jeb Bush at Barclay’s, is co-hosting one of two New Jersey fundraisers for Jeb on July 23. Here he’s pictured with his wife Gayle in a promo for the posh Newark Academy in Livingston, where Chris Christie is expected to announce his own run for the presidency on Tuesday.
Determining which New Jersey Republicans would break ranks with the powerful home state governor has become a parlor game in the Garden State. The Observer was the first to report many of the GOP names supporting Jeb listed in this February story, and also detailed surprising support for Scott Walker. On Monday, the Star-Ledger revealed that Marco Rubio would be coming to Colts Neck in August for a fundraiser at the home of Juan and Marta Gutierrez, Cuban exiles who supported President Bush. The Observer is now the first to reveal that the second event on July 23rd will be hosted by Bill Cohen and Larry Wieseneck in Mr. Cohen’s Short Hills home.
While it’s long been known that Mr. Bathgate, Ms. Gordon, Mr. Kozlov and Mr. Kyrillos would be supporting Jeb Bush, the names Cohen and Wieseneck are new to Jersey politicos, a further sign of Jeb’s ability not just to win over experienced fundraisers but to cultivate new ones. Both men were colleagues of Jeb’s at Barclays, where Mr. Cohen is the vice chairman of investment banking and Mr. Wieseneck, who lives in West Orange, used to be the head of structuring. A search of public records (which are imperfect, especially with a relatively common name like Cohen) revealed no federal donations from Short Hills and Larry Wieseneck, who lives in West Orange, was also not previously on any political radar; he gave to no federal candidates in 2014, though he did reliably contribute a couple hundred bucks a month to Barclay’s PAC and gave $3500 to Romney and $1000 to Scott Brown in 2012.
With Chris Christie expected to announce his candidacy on Tuesday, there is every chance that the brawler-in-chief will re-exert the discipline that saw him leading a state party that spoke with one voice in 2012. But so far Jeb Bush has proven—and Marco Rubio and Scott Walker are adding their voices—that New York and New Jersey are wide open for political business.
For-Profit Charter Operator In Jeb Bush Video Has A Checkered Past // Buzzfeed // Molly Hensley-Clancy – June 25, 2015
In Jeb Bush’s first set of campaign videos, including one released yesterday, there is no place more prominently featured than the classroom. Oft-repeated reels of footage show Bush, known as Florida’s “education governor,” speaking to rooms full of hand-waving elementary students, leaning over a girl’s shoulder as she works on the computer, and sitting down for a discussion with smiling boys in ties.
Many of those students wear the uniforms of Mater Academy of International Studies; others are students at Somerset Academy South Miami, where Jeb Bush’s campaign was seen filming earlier this month, according to Politico. Almost all of the classrooms have something in common: they are at schools operated by Academica, the state’s largest for-profit charter school management company.
Academica, which has almost 100 schools in Florida and well over $150 million in annual revenue, has a checkered past. Along with an ongoing federal probe into its real estate dealings, past investigations have looked at allegedly corrupt connections with lawmakers. Last year, controversy erupted over its opening of an unaccredited college funded by one of its charter schools.
Of his time as governor of Florida, Bush told Fox News in the wake of his presidential campaign announcement that “what I’m most proud of is reforming our education system.”
As suggested by Bush’s latest ads, Academica and its high-performing charter schools, which consistently receive high grades from the state, are perhaps the best examples of that legacy at work. The company owes much of its growth in Florida to Bush’s policies during his governorship. Bush spurred charter schools to flourish in the state, including those operated by for-profit companies, which found a way to circumvent a 1996 law that forbids the practice. To get around the law, companies set up nonprofit boards to run the schools, which then contract out virtually all of the work to for-profit operators. Bush has been a supporter of for-profit operators. In emails, he suggested that his successor, Rick Scott, sell the massive state-run Florida Virtual School to a for-profit operator, where it could make “more [money]in the private sector.”
As governor, Bush visited Academica schools several times, his emails show, including a trip to a campus of a Mater Academy school in 2006. His son, Jeb Bush Jr., was elected to serve as the chair of the nonprofit board another Academica school group, Somerset Academy, though he later withdrew his name.
A spokeswoman for Bush said the former governor “is a longtime advocate for providing more choices for parents and students … Thanks in part to the strongest choice programs in the nation, Florida is one of the only states closing the achievement gap in America today.”
A Miami Herald investigation in 2011 found Academica was embroiled in a complex and controversial real estate scheme. Its founder and president, Fernando Zulueta, owns a wide swath of real estate companies — firms that also lease tax-exempt space to many of Academica’s schools, acting as their landlords. Academica schools pay tens of thousands of dollars in rent, sometimes over 20% of their revenue, well above the area average, to Zulueta-connected real estate holdings, the Herald found, deals that are meted out by nonprofit governing boards with close ties to Academica.
In 2003, for example, Mater Academy, whose logos dot the polo shirts of students in Bush’s campaign ad, signed a $5.8 million construction contract to a company whose contractor also served on the school’s board. And Mater Academy High leased its land from a company owned in part by Zulueta’s brother, the Herald reported.
Similar real estate setups have landed other charter companies in serious federal trouble. One other major operator, Imagine Schools, was ordered to pay $1 million in January for a “self-dealing” real estate scheme.
Mater Academy was the focus of a federal investigation last year, the Herald reported. Academica’s founder and his family, a preliminary report found, had ties that constituted “a potential conflict of interest” to the companies that Mater Academy leased its space from, and to an architect that designed their buildings.
A new controversy arose last year, when the company opened Doral Academy, a junior college within one of its schools in suburban Miami. The school is funded with taxpayer dollars intended for the state’s K-12 system. The school is entirely unaccredited, meaning its credits do not transfer to any other schools, which prompted skepticism from officials and outside observers. The college is helmed by Anitere Flores, a state senator and former education adviser to Bush.
Flores has also been involved in education-related legislative efforts in Florida — and was the sponsor of a bill to create virtual charter schools in the state, The Herald reported; when it passed, Academica applied to open 19 such schools.
Other Florida legislators with close ties to Academica, and to Bush, have also been behind legislation that works in favor of the company. State representative Erik Fresen, who is married to an Academica executive who also happens to be the CEO’s sister, relaxed zoning restrictions that stood in the way of Academica’s expansion.
Working with the company can be lucrative. Miami-Dade prosecutors investigated another former representative, Ralph Arza, after he backed a slew of pro-charter bills while serving as a consultant on the payroll of Academica. He was paid $230,000 for his services, via a company set up in his wife’s name. He was later cleared. The Tampa Bay Times said Arza, a Republican, “worked with Bush on many of his education initiatives.”
The Jeb Bush campaign and Academica did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pro-Jeb Bush Super PAC runs first online ad in New Hampshire, Iowa // Miami Herald // Patricia Mazzei – June 25, 2015
Right to Rise, the deep-pocketed Super PAC former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush raised money for before formally declaring his 2016 Republican presidential candidacy, has its first online ad on the New Hampshire and Iowa airwaves.
The 30-second spot is also targeting voters in Iowa, according to NH1. It features a montage of clips from his campaign announcement last week at Miami Dade College.
Jeb Bush Leads New Hampshire GOP Poll; Donald Trump in 2nd Place // Latinos Post - June 26, 2015
The race for the GOP nomination has drastically changed in recent weeks. While former Florida Governor Jed Bush is still at the top of the ladder, businessman Donald Trump has leapfrogged into second place.
According to Fox News, Bush tops the GOP contenders with 15 percent of the Republican primary voters. Trump, however, now has around 11 percent of the primary voters which is more than double of what he had when he first declared that he would run for president.
However, Trump does have bad news coming his way as only about 29 percent of the Republican primary voters take him seriously. While a whopping 64 percent think he is a side show and does not belong in politics at all. Among all voters, almost 80 percent think that Trump is a side show.
Both candidates have just recently started their campaigns for candidacy, Bush on June 15 and Trump on June 16. So these numbers could be inflated as it is normal to see poll numbers to be larger at first. According to Politico.com, 37 percent of New Hampshire voters had a favorable view on Trump, while 49 percent had a negative view on the businessman. Astonishingly there was a 6 percent of voters who did not even know who Trump was.
Meanwhile, Jed Bush mainly tested favorably with 58 percent of the voters having a favorable view on the former Florida senator while only 28 percent viewed him negatively.
Other GOP contenders include: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (9 percent), Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (8 percent) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (6 percent), Texas Sen. Ted Cruz receives 4 percent, and businesswoman Carly Fiorina and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum get 3 percent apiece.
On the other side, former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton remains the top contender for the Democratic party's candidate for president in 2016. Clinton currently holds 61 percent of the Democratic primary voters, her closest rival is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who hold about 15 percent.
The biggest reason for such support for Clinton has been shown to be that 44 percent of all voters think that Clinton would fight hard for the middle class, although 51 percent think that is just a campaign slogan.
The polls also show that Clinton and Trump share similar traits. Unfortunately, they are not all that positive traits as 54 percent of voters think Trump is dishonest while 51 percent think the same for Clinton. This could be stemming from Trump's business deals during the late 1980's and early 90's and from Clinton's recent email debacle.
In N.H., Marco Rubio Is Pressed on Trade and Immigration // NYT // Jeremy Peters – June 25, 2015
Senator Marco Rubio defended his conservative credentials on two issues that are roiling the right – immigration and trade – as he returned to the campaign trail on Thursday.
The Florida Republican, who had taken a breather from campaigning as he crisscrossed the country on a fund-raising tour, had not taken questions from the public since casting a decisive vote on Tuesday that allowed President Obama’s trade bill to advance in the Senate.
Some conservatives, who objected to giving Mr. Obama enhanced negotiating powers to complete a major Pacific trade accord and derided the legislation as “Obamatrade,” blamed Mr. Rubio for providing a crucial 60th vote that assured the legislation could move forward. Others accused Mr. Rubio of not even reading the bill.
In a town-hall-style meeting here on Thursday, Mr. Rubio was asked to explain himself.
“There’s been some controversy on whether or not you actually read the bill,” one woman pressed him. “Why did you vote for it?”
“First of all,” he said, “I did read the bill. Second of all, it’s not Obamatrade. It’s called free trade.” To further underscore his point, he invoked a conservative hero: “We voted on fast-track authority, which Ronald Reagan was for.”
Whether Mr. Rubio was convincing or not was unclear. The crowd of about 200, which applauded politely on and off during the hour-long event, was not particularly enthusiastic.
He was also asked to clarify his position on overhauling immigration, an issue that still dogs him with many on the right, two years after he dropped his support for a comprehensive Senate bill that would have provided undocumented immigrants with the opportunity to become citizens.
Mr. Rubio was unequivocal. He said he no longer supported one sweeping, omnibus bill, adding, “Anyone who insists on doing it all at once is basically out of touch with reality.”
Instead, Congress must first pass a law that provides for greater border security, then prove that illegal immigration is under control. Otherwise, he said, “the votes aren’t there — the public won’t support it.”
Many in the crowd did not seem too familiar with Mr. Rubio, 44, who announced his campaign for president in April and quickly shot to the top of many polls. Several of the questioners seemed interested in testing his conservatism.
Mr. Rubio spoke less than two hours after the Supreme Court upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows for the federal health care exchange to provide coverage in states that have not set up their own exchanges. The decision, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., an appointee of President George W. Bush, angered many conservatives.
One man in the crowd asked, “What are you going to do differently from the past two Republican presidents, who gave us Souter and Roberts?” (David Souter, a former justice appointed by the first President Bush, often voted with the court’s liberal wing.)
Mr. Rubio responded that he would appoint “people that will actually interpret and apply the Constitution, not expand and redefine it.” He added that his understanding of the Constitution was fixed. “The Constitution is not a living and breathing document,” he said, noting that the next president could appoint as many as three Supreme Court judges.
Marco Rubio is playing to win The Sheldon Adelson Primary // WaPo // James Hohmann & Elise Viebeck – June 25, 2015
Marco Rubio is playing to win The Sheldon Adelson Primary. The Florida senator, who has relentlessly sought the billionaire casino mogul’s backing for 2016, co-sponsored a bill yesterday afternoon to ban online gaming. It is not only Adelson’s top legislative priority, it could significantly boost his company’s bottom line. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another presidential hopeful who has assiduously courted Adelson over their shared hawkishness on foreign policy, is the lead Republican author on the legislation for a second year in a row.
An intense courtship: This is just the latest in an aggressive string of moves by Rubio to win over one of the GOP’s biggest donors. The two men dined together at Charlie Palmer steak house, adjacent to the Capitol, in March. That was one of at least half a dozen private meetings, which we know about, since the Florida senator took office. Politico reported in April that Rubio calls Adelson every fortnight to provide detailed updated about the campaign. Meanwhile, the newspaper Adelson owns in Israel has trumpeted Rubio on its front page so much so that Israelis joke about it.
Electability matters to Adelson: After spending at least $92 million on the 2012 elections, a good chunk of it for Newt Gingrich, GOP insiders say that Adelson wants to get behind someone who can actually win. That was reportedly a factor in his souring on Ted Cruz. He likes Graham (hosting a fundraiser for him earlier this year and donating to his reelection campaign last year), but he’s seemingly more attracted to Rubio’s story as the son of Cuban immigrants. He’s reportedly told friends that Rubio is the future of the Republican Party. Adelson has telegraphed that he will hold off until at least September to get behind anyone, and he could also invest in multiple contenders. This posture will encourage others to keep kissing his ring.
Marco again risks upsetting conservatives, but Adelson’s money would more than make up for any blowback: Rubio’s move puts him at odds with movement conservatives (i.e. federalists) who believe that, under the Constitution, states should have the right to decide for themselves whether to legalize online gaming, and that the federal government should not be in the business of boosting one business interest (brick-and-mortar casinos) over another, more innovative one. (This would be akin to Rubio siding with the traditional taxi industry against Uber, the opposite of the approach he’s taken.) The senator, for his part, has previously said online gaming hurts people already struggling economically, messaging that sounds like it is meant to resonate with social conservatives.
House Republicans quietly tucked language into an appropriations bill to protect dark money. The House Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill last week that included little-noticed provisions to hobble executive branch efforts that would mandate more campaign finance disclosures by federal contractors. The restrictions are in a 157-page financial services funding bill. The spending bill would also prohibit the IRS from moving ahead with a rule defining political activity for nonprofits and prohibit the SEC from creating a rule requiring public companies to disclose their political spending.
It is not clear when or if there will be a floor vote on the spending measure but campaign finance reform advocates said they hope an executive order will be in place before the legislation is considered by the full House and Senate, which like other appropriations bills, may not occur until late this year. White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined Wednesday evening to discuss plans for future executive orders, but he criticized the House committee action while confirming ongoing White House concern over “dark money” contributions to politically active non-profit organizations.
Appropriations bills have carried language protecting contractors against executive branch disclosure requirements since 2011, when a draft of an Obama executive order on the topic leaked publicly. The Brennan Center at NYU tallies hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions collected by committee members from firms doing business with the federal government. Read more trenchant analysis from Tom Hamburger here.
Rubio plans early-state ad blitz // Politico // Alex Isenstadt – June 25, 2015
Marco Rubio is the first 2016 presidential candidate to book significant TV advertising time in early presidential voting states, reserving at least $4.3 million in airtime so far.
On Thursday afternoon, Rubio’s campaign began the process of placing buys on TV stations in media markets in the four states slated to vote next February: Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
The ad flights are set to begin on Nov. 24 in Iowa, and stretch on until late February in South Carolina and Nevada, according to media tracking information.
Ted Cruz was the first candidate on the airwaves this year, but the Texas senator only purchased a small amount of airtime over a limited period.
Reserving the time at a relatively early point in the campaign will ultimately save money for the campaign, his aides believe, since it enables Rubio to acquire ad time at lower rates than competitors who book later. The Florida senator is amassing a sizable war chest but is still likely to trail former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in fundraising, putting a premium on running a cost-efficient campaign.
A Rubio aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said the purchase was only initial and would be expanded later on.
Rubio’s TV campaign will be overseen by Todd Harris, a longtime political aide who has experience in Iowa politics. In 2014, he advised Iowa Republican Joni Ernst on her successful Senate bid. In that campaign, Ernst similarly purchased TV advertising time at an early juncture in the political season.
A Canadian idea Rubio likes // Politico // Danny Vinik – June 25, 2015
A lot of politicians say they hate regulations, but how do you actually start cutting them down?
Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is pushing an idea called a “regulatory budget,” a novel approach that would put a dollar cap on the cumulative economic costs that agencies can impose through regulations. It’s in his presidential platform, and in the last Congress he introduced a bill that garnered 12 cosponsors, all Republicans.
The regulatory budget is a sweeping solution to what many Americans worry is an overbearing regulatory regime. The idea dates back to Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who first proposed it in 1978, and had drifted out of sight until Rubio revived it.
Now it has an unlikely base of support that Rubio may or may not be excited about: the Canadian government.
On Tuesday, the Senate Budget Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee pulled together a group of experts to examine the idea of a regulatory budget, and the star witness was basically Canada. Two years ago, Stephen Harper’s conservative government implemented a so-called “One for One” policy, requiring Canadian regulators to remove at least one regulation for each new regulation it imposes. In addition, the administrative costs of the new regulation must be offset by the administrative costs of the removed ones. This spring, the House of Commons passed the policy into law.
The Canadians are claiming success: Tony Clement, a senior member of Harper’s cabinet who first introduced the bill in January 2014, told the legislators it was saving business’s money. “We saw hard evidence that the rule was reducing the administrative burden on businesses,” he said in his opening statement. “As of May 20 of this year, in fact, the rule has saved $32 million in administrative burden.”
The “One for One” law is a slight variation on the idea of a true regulatory budget. Under a more complete scheme like the one Rubio proposed, agencies have a certain “budget” of administrative costs to “spend” on regulations. Once an agency has used up its budget, it can only implement a new regulation by eliminating old regulations with equal costs. The idea is to force agencies to prioritize which regulations they value most.
There’s a good reason why Canada didn’t opt for a traditional regulatory budget: Implementing it would have been nearly impossible. Susan Dudley, the former director of both the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under former President George W. Bush, testified at the hearing that calculating the total costs of all existing regulations would be nearly impossible. “And the resulting numbers are probably not very reliable,” she said.
The “One of One” policy is not without appeal. It effectively forces government agencies to review past regulations and eliminate ones that are duplicative or unnecessary. Too often, agencies are hesitant to do that themselves.
But the regulatory budget has a shortcoming: it disregards the benefits of regulation altogether, focusing only on costs. A federal agency, for instance, could have to decide between which of two regulations to impose, both of which have net positive benefits for the country. The “budget” ignores that side of the ledger.
The challenge of reckoning gains is already vexing analysts within the government. Many government agencies already require a cost-benefit analysis before new regulations can take effect, and performing those analyses turns out to be exceedingly difficult, since it’s impossible to perfectly account for all the costs and benefits from a regulation – or even know when those costs and benefits might come to pass. Regulations can have steep immediate costs, like power plant rules to reduce carbon emissions, and then a long, hard-to-measure benefit, like cleaner air and less damage due to climate change.
“One of the things that we don’t look at is any kind of a timeline between the upfront costs for the business and the long-term benefits for society,” Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, told me.
“What we run into is the same problem as a 50 percent off department sale,” he said. “There’s no way to spend the 50 percent that you save. That’s how most of these benefits are. They’re savings that can’t actually be credited to any particular account. Consequently, they can be pretty nebulous.”
It’s a fair point. And it suggests that the correct response to sketchy cost-benefit analysis isn’t to implement a “regulatory budget” – it’s to get better at cost-benefit analysis. And in the case of Enzi’s point, you can also figure out ways to offset the costs of regulations with a policy to help businesses hit hard in the short term.
Regulators will never perfect cost-benefit analysis, of course. As Dudley emphasized to lawmakers, there are simply too many unknowns to make accurate estimates. In addition, those estimates inherently involve value judgments, on which Democrats and Republicans will often disagree. Better cost-benefit analysis could help rulemakers with a lot of their problems, but it’s highly unlikely to solve that one.
Marco Rubio discusses health care, veterans in NH visit // WMUR 9 // Jennifer Crompton – June 25, 2015
Florida senator and Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio sharply criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold key provisions of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and said the high court's decisions on health care and gay marriage should not mark the final word on either issue.
The court ruled 6-3 in favor of a key piece of the health law that allows millions of Americans to receive tax subsidies, regardless of where they live, to help pay for insurance premiums. Rubio said he disagrees with the judges while campaigning Thursday in New Hampshire, home of the first presidential primary contest.
"What we have now are activist judges," Rubio said. "(We have), it appears, as many as six people on the Supreme Court who think it's their job to try to fix Obamacare."
He said he'll continue to push for a "consumer-centric" approach that allows people to buy health insurance from companies in any state.
The court also will issue a ruling on whether states can ban same-sex marriage and whether states in which it is currently illegal must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Rubio said he thinks state legislatures and voters, not the courts, should decide whether to legalize gay marriage.
He pointed to his home state, where voters chose at the ballot box in 2008 to constitutionally define marriage as between a man and a woman.
"Courts should not be allowed to overturn that," he said. "Other states may reach a different conclusion, and they have a right to do that even if I disagree with them."
Rubio's campaign swing through New Hampshire featured two town hall-style events and a speech at an event focused on ending the Export-Import Bank. Most of his remarks centered on familiar themes, including his background as the son of Cuban immigrants and an emphasis on the need for a more muscular foreign policy.
Rubio, a first-term senator, is among about a dozen Republicans seeking the party's presidential nomination.
First on CNN: Rubio slams Obamacare ruling // CNN // Dana Bash – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio slammed the Supreme Court's decision on Thursday to uphold Obamacare subsidies.
The Supreme Court held that the law authorized federal tax credits for eligible Americans living not only in states with their own exchanges but in the 34 states with federal exchanges, a major win for the Obama administration.
"I disagree with the court's ruling and believe they have once again erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama and Congress in forcing Obamacare on the American people," Rubio told CNN.
"Despite the court's decision, Obamacare is still a bad law that is having a negative impact on our country and on millions of Americans," Rubio continued. "I remain committed to repealing this bad law and replacing it with my consumer-centered plan that puts patients and families back in control of their health care decisions. We need Consumer Care, not Obamacare."
Thursday's 6-3 ruling is the second time in three years that the court has ruled to uphold Obamacare, Obama's signature domestic achievement.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for himself, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the four liberal justices. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. "If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter."
In a dissent, Scalia said "we should start calling this law SCOTUScare," referring to the two times the Court has saved the law.
The ruling staved off a major political showdown and what would have been a mad scramble in some states to set up their own healthcare exchanges to keep millions from losing healthcare coverage.
Challengers to the law argued that the federal government should not be allowed to continue doling out subsidies to individuals living in states without their own healthcare exchanges and a ruling in their favor would have cut off subsidies to 6.4 million Americans, absent a congressional fix or state action.
Marco Rubio defends courting Koch Brothers in New Hampshire // CNN // Theodore Schleifer – June 25, 2015
Marco Rubio courted New Hampshire voters allied with two powerful organizations at the center of the Koch Brothers' sprawling political network during campaign events on Thursday.
Charles and David Koch, whose donor network has become the most powerful outside player in Republican politics, have pledged to direct about $900 million to help Republicans in 2016. And while the brothers themselves have said they are unlikely to make a single endorsement in the Republican field, many of their donors are. And Rubio, the 44-year-old senator from Florida, has had both public and private auditions in front of their well-heeled crowds.
Rubio spoke before the Concerned Veterans for America, a Koch-funded group aimed at reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Americans for Prosperity, the brothers' flagship organization with an aggressive ground game and paid media operations in key states. As political nonprofit groups, neither is required to disclose their donors.
Rubio, defending his events on Thursday, insisted that big donors wouldn't rule in a Rubio White House.
"People buy into my agenda, I don't buy into theirs," Rubio told reporters in Exeter after appearing at the Concerned Veterans for America event. "My stands are not influenced by my contributors, I hope my stands influences my contributors."
Rubio is expected to be one of the Republican field's top fundraisers, though all are expected to trail Jeb Bush.
As Rubio barnstormed the Granite State, a political nonprofit group set up to support him -- the Conservative Solutions Project -- unveiled a first-week $1 million advertising campaign highlighting Rubio's leadership on Iran.
"Tell your senators to join Marco Rubio. Vote against Obama's deal and stop Iran from getting the bomb," the advertisement said.
Later in the day, Rubio spoke to the New Hampshire chapter of Americans for Prosperity about the Export-Import bank, which the Koch groups fiercely oppose. The bank, which uses federal money to incentivize U.S. companies to manufacture products in the U.S., is up for a re-authorization vote before Congress at the end of the month.
But outside of the Koch events, voters seemed to have a different view of the groups' sway. At a town hall in Salem, a voter asked what he would do to stop corrupting influence of money in politics.
"When I run for office, I tell people what I stand for," Rubio said. "And when you hear what I stand for, if you want to support me and donate to our campaign -- assuming you're not a really, really bad person or something like that -- we accept that."
Marco Rubio Campaign Buys 'Several Million' Dollars' Worth Of Airtime For Ads in Early Primary States // ABC News // Jonathan Karl – June 25, 2015
Get ready for it. The 2016 ad wars are coming soon to a television near you.
ABC News has learned Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign has pre-booked “several million” dollars worth of air time for advertisements in early primary and caucus states, becoming the first major ad buy of the 2016 presidential cycle.
A Rubio source tells ABC News the campaign has reserved air time in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — all critical early states in the Republican nominating contest.
The ads won’t start running for some time, but Rubio, Florida's Republican senator, has locked in the time at lower rates by buying now.
Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush vow to continue fighting Obamacare after Supreme Court ruling // Palm Beach Post // George Bennett – June 25, 2015
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush, both Republican candidates for president, said they’ll continue to fight the Affordable Care Act after today’s Supreme Court decision upholding federal subsidies in states that don’t set up health insurance exchanges.
“I remain committed to repealing this bad law and replacing it with my consumer-centered plan that puts patients and families back in control of their health care decisions,” Rubio said soon after the court’s 6-3 decision was released.
Similarly, Bush said, “this decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare.”
Here are their full statements:
Rubio: “I disagree with the Court’s ruling and believe they have once again erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama and Congress in forcing Obamacare on the American people.
“Despite the Court’s decision, Obamacare is still a bad law that is having a negative impact on our country and on millions of Americans. I remain committed to repealing this bad law and replacing it with my consumer-centered plan that puts patients and families back in control of their health care decisions. We need Consumer Care, not Obamacare.”
Bush: “I am disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling in the King v. Burwell case. But this decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare.
“This fatally-flawed law imposes job-killing mandates, causes spending in Washington to skyrocket by $1.7 trillion, raises taxes by $1 trillion and drives up health care costs. Instead of fixing our health care system, it made the problems worse.
“As President of the United States, I would make fixing our broken health care system one of my top priorities. I will work with Congress to repeal and replace this flawed law with conservative reforms that empower consumers with more choices and control over their health care decisions.
“Here is what I believe: We need to put patients in charge of their own decisions and health care reform should actually lower costs. Entrepreneurs should be freed to lower costs and improve access to care – just like American ingenuity does in other sectors of the economy.
“Americans deserve leadership that can actually fix our broken health care system, and they are certainly not getting it now from Washington, DC.”
Marco Rubio gives Obama an ‘F’ on VA issues // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida on Thursday gave President Obama a failing grade on issues related to the embattled Department of Veterans Affairs.
“It’s an F — I mean, because the system’s gotten worse, not better,” Mr. Rubio said at a Concerned Veterans for America town hall in New Hampshire, drawing applause. “We’ve replaced the secretary, we’ve had press conferences … and you’ve poured more money into it, and the results — the wait times have gotten longer in some places.”
Mr. Rubio, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said he thinks when it comes to such issues, “it’s either an ‘A’ or an ‘F.’ “
“It can’t be a ‘C’ or a ‘D’ — I mean, it’s either an ‘A’ or an ‘F,’ ” he said.
Mr. Rubio said it’s not a “funding issue” or a “want to” issue, “it is the fact that the model itself may no longer work in a 21st century that is dramatically different from what the world looked like 80 to a 100 years ago in terms of access to private providers and centers of excellence that want to take care of veterans and are open for business that can see you right away and produce a result that’s good or better.”
“Again, the key is it is up to the veteran to choose,” he said. “They may be very happy at the VA that they have, they may be very pleased with the services they’re being offered and that should be available to them as well. But putting the veteran in charge - [you] don’t do that, you’re going to continue to have a failing grade no matter who the president is.”
Rubio Gives Veterans Cool Grenade Stress Balls at New Hampshire Town Hall // Slate // Jeremy Stahl – June 25, 2015
Concerned Veterans for America hosted a Marco Rubio town hall in New Hampshire on Thursday morning, and the door giveaways at the event were pretty cool:
The “Veterans and Military Town Hall” in Exeter was Rubio’s first campaign stop on a day of events throughout New Hampshire that will presumably include less interesting giveaways.
Distributing stress balls to veterans is apparently not unusual for Veterans Affairs facilities and veterans support groups. The green foam grenade “stress balls” have also been used as marketing tools for for-profit college recruiters.
The Concerned Veterans for America grenade stress balls have also apparently been a popular item for them in the past. This online help guide for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder encourages soldiers experiencing flashbacks to play with a stress ball. It seems unlikely that we’ll see much cooler presidential campaign schwag this cycle, although “Rand on a Stick” seems pretty fun.
Rubio: My luxury yacht 'is cleverly disguised as a fishing boat' // The Hill // Ben Kamisar – June 25, 2015
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) needled recent reports about his “luxury speedboat,” joking Thursday that the vessel lacked the amenities of a lavish yacht, such as a bathroom.
“Well the thing about the boat is, too, it is a luxury speedboat, but it is cleverly disguised as a fishing boat,” the presidential candidate said during an event in New Hampshire hosted by the CEO of the Concerned Veterans for America, according to CNN.
“But the best answer I got is someone who emailed me or texted me and said, ‘Any boat where you have to go to the bathroom off the side of the boat is not a luxury speedboat.’”
A New York Times story from earlier this month detailed the “financial struggles” of the Florida Republican, which included an $80,000 “luxury speedboat,” the liquidation of a $68,000 retirement account despite heavy penalties and taxes, taking a loss on a house in Tallahassee and a “strikingly low savings rate.”
The campaign later sent Politico the make and model of the craft, which is a family fishing boat that lacks the trappings of luxury.
The story came on the heels of another Times report that highlighted traffic tickets incurred by Rubio in his wife, leading conservatives and Rubio’s campaign to call foul.
“The attack from The Times is just the latest in their continued hits against Marco and his family,” Alex Conant, Rubio’s communications director, told reporters at the time.
“First The New York Times attacked Marco over traffic tickets, and now they think he doesn’t have enough money. Of course if he was worth millions, The Times would then attack him for being too rich, like they did to Mitt Romney.”
Rand Paul slams Obamacare ruling, Warren says too late // The Boston Herald // Joe Dwinell, Zuri Berry, & Chris Cassidy – June 25, 2015
As the president was declaring Obamacare “is here to stay” and Elizabeth Warren knocked the GOP for fighting it, Rand Paul said it’s still broken and must be fixed.
The Kentucky U.S. Senator and ophthalmologist slammed the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision today backing health care subsidies — both federal and state subsidies — giving President Obama a big win for his landmark 2010 statute.
“This was our best chance to try to get rid of either Obamacare or some of the worst parts of Obamacare,” Paul said today on Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show.
“If you don’t care about choosing your doctor and don’t care about choosing your insurance company ... if you don’t believe in personal choice ... or competition. No. Health care is not any less expensive,” he said when asked if he agrees with the president that Obamacare is working. “If you pay for your health care, your premiums are still pretty high.”
But it didn’t take long for Democrats to fire back at the GOP.
“The GOP can keep trying to deny millions access to health care, but our experience in MA shows health reform works — & now it’s here to stay,” Warren said in a Tweet.
“SCOTUS affirmed what we’ve known all along: the ACA was passed to provide all Americans access to more affordable, comprehensive insurance,” she added in another tweet.
Paul spoke as the president and Vice President Joe Biden addressed the court decision outside the White House.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, stumping in New Hampshire today, took aim at the justices.
"It appears there's at least six people on the Supreme Court who think it's their job to fix Obamacare," he said. "We need Supreme Court justices ... that apply the law, not redefine the law in the way they want."
House Speaker John Boehner said Republicans will “continue our efforts to repeal the law and replace it with patient-centered solutions that meet the needs of seniors, small business owners, and middle-class families.”
At the court, Chief Justice John Roberts again voted with his liberal colleagues in support of the law. Roberts also was the key vote to uphold it in 2012. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a dissenter in 2012, was part of the majority on Thursday.
“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts declared in the majority opinion.
Limiting the subsidies only to individuals in states with their own exchanges could well push insurance markets in the other states “into a death spiral,” Roberts wrote.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent he summarized from the bench, strongly disagreed. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” he said, using an acronym for the Supreme Court and suggesting his colleagues’ ownership by virtue of their twice stepping in to save the law from what he considered worthy challenges.
Rand Paul Said to Take on the IRS, Again // Bloomberg News // Richard Rubin – June 25, 2015
Last week, Rand Paul said he wanted to blow up the tax code. Next week, he could be suing the tax man.
The Kentucky senator is expected to be one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, challenging the government's rules on how Americans abroad are taxed and what foreign banks have to disclose about U.S. citizens who are their customers. Being on the wrong side of the IRS is, of course, a great place for a Republican presidential contender to be.
The focus of the lawsuit is the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act—FATCA to the initiated—which has made it much harder for Americans to have foreign bank accounts hidden from the IRS. It's also been a logistical nightmare for the millions of Americans who live outside the country and are still required to file U.S. taxes. The law has also prompted some foreign banks to refuse U.S. customers rather than deal with the hassles.
“The president can only rely upon his authority and he has no authority in the Constitution for this.”
The Washington Times first reported Paul's involvement in the suit on Thursday. Solomon Yue, vice chairman of Republicans Overseas, and James Bopp, the lead lawyer on the suit, both said Paul will be one of the plaintiffs, which will be filed in federal court in southern Ohio. Sergio Gor, a Paul spokesman, wouldn't confirm the Kentucky senator's involvement.
Paul's portion of the suit will question the administration's ability to negotiate agreements with other countries for sharing tax data without going through the formal treaty process that requires Senate approval. To implement FATCA, the Treasury Department has signed cross-border agreements that are easier for governments and banks to use than the strict rules in the law itself.
“The president can only rely upon his authority and he has no authority in the Constitution for this,” Bopp said in an interview on Thursday.
Labeling those intergovernmental agreements as treaties would let Paul block them—something he's not shy about doing. He's already halting a deal with Switzerland that was signed in 2009, and Treasury Department officials have complained that other countries have become less willing to negotiate tax treaties with the U.S. because they have little confidence that the Senate will ever ratify them.
Bopp, a longtime conservative activist, said the other plaintiffs are Americans who live abroad and they'll be challenging other portions of FATCA and related bank-disclosure requirements. It could be a tough case. Courts—remember the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling in 2012—are typically very deferential to the government's authority to tax. Bopp said the problem is the requirement to disclose confidential information without a warrant.
“We don't think this has to do with taxes,” Bopp said. “This has to do with disclosing private, personal information. The existence of a bank account in a foreign country has nothing to do with what taxes are imposed.”
VAT Chance: Rand Paul, Ben Cardin Push to Change Tax Code // Bloomberg News // Richard Rubin – June 25, 2015
Ben Cardin and Rand Paul don't have much in common.
The Maryland Democrat is a reliable vote for President Barack Obama's agenda. The Kentucky Republican, who is seeking his party's 2016 presidential nomination, is anything but.
Yet both have come to the same conclusion on tax policy: The answer, they say, is a VAT.
“We don't want people to confuse this with a European-style VAT.”
Yes, a value-added tax, the money machine that fuels governments in Europe and gets proponents booted out of office around the world. The U.S. is the only major industrialized nation without a VAT, and that's exactly the way most lawmakers like it.
Campaign pledge
Paul made the VAT a centerpiece of the tax plan his presidential campaign released last week. That makes him the latest convert to a cause Cardin has been pushing for years.
Back in 2010, Cardin was on the losing side of an 85-13 Senate vote that declared the VAT "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income.'' Just four of the other 12 who voted with Cardin are still in office, though that had more to do with age than the VAT.
The VAT starts with a very broad base—consumption—and imposes taxes at each stage of production. Each business pays based on what it sells minus what it buys, and the burden gets baked into wages and prices. Those features mean VATs can raise a ton of money—and they impose a heavier burden on the poor, who consume a greater share of their income than the rich do.
Cardin has been persistent, proposing the most thoroughly thought-out VAT plan and advocating it despite little chance of success. Paul is a new convert.
Cardin says he welcomes the new addition to the VAT chat—even though he knows they won't agree at all on the details.
"You talk to conservative Republicans and as long as your tape's not on, they'll say yes," Cardin said in an interview this week. "They will. I mean, I've talked to them. And if you talk to progressive Democrats, they'll say yes."
Cardin's plan and Paul's campaign proposal are going nowhere fast. A member of the Senate minority plus one of a gaggle of presidential candidates don't quite add up to the clout to transform the tax system.
VAT? What VAT?
In a sign of the idea's political toxicity, neither uses the VAT label. Cardin goes with "progressive consumption tax." Paul prefers "business-activity tax."
So at this point, there's no need for a deep dive on border adjustability and the credit-invoice system. But there's an important lesson here about the appeal of the VAT as a simple, efficient way to raise revenue.
"If you take a look, any objective—and I mean objective—analysis of our tax code on competitiveness, you will come to the conclusion that the only way you can reform our tax code is to bring in consumption tax revenues at the national level and reduce the income tax revenues at the national level," Cardin said.
Cardin and Paul were each well aware of a leading argument against a VAT—its regressive nature—and their plans propose remedies. However, the way each senator uses the VAT shows just how far apart the parties are on taxes.
For Paul, the 14.5 percent VAT is a way to cut other taxes.
He would eliminate the corporate income tax, the payroll tax, the estate tax, the gift tax and all tariffs. The result would cut $3 trillion over 10 years from federal revenues, according to the Tax Foundation, and Paul's plan to balance the budget would only work if his tax plan sparks economic growth and he can persuade Congress to cut spending drastically.
The payroll tax repeal and rules that would prevent families of four making $50,000 from paying any income taxes are Paul's attempts to address regressivity. He wants to cut the top individual tax rate to 14.5 percent, so high-income households would pay a lot less, too.
To borrow a phrase from the health-care debate, Paul's plan is to repeal and replace.
"We don't want people to confuse this with a European-style VAT," said Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, who helped design Paul's plan. "It's not an add-on. It's a complete and entire replacement."
Cardin's approach
Cardin takes the opposite approach. He starts from the reality that the the U.S. is a low-tax country with relatively high marginal tax rates. His working theory is that we just have too few taxes. If you spread the burden across multiple tax bases, you can keep rates lower and reduce the economic distortions that each tax causes.
So Cardin uses the revenue from his 10 percent VAT to reduce—but not eliminate—other taxes. The corporate income tax rate would hit 17 percent, down from 35. The top income tax rate would be 28 percent, down from 39.6.
To deal with the money machine fears, Cardin includes what he calls a circuit-breaker—automatic rebates if VAT revenues exceed 10 percent of the economy.
To address regressivity, Cardin takes Paul's $50,000 figure and doubles it, so no married couple making under $100,000 would pay income taxes. Plus, he would offer rebates based on family size.
So Cardin and Paul are close. On everything except the details.
Don't tear up your 1040s just yet.
Rand Paul and AAPS Want to Bring You Liberty.... From Safe Healthcare // HuffPo // Dr. Jason Johnson – June 25, 2015
Rand Paul has been a lot of things over the last 5 years: a Senator, a Tea Party scion, and now a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.
But throughout all of these things Paul, has always fallen back to his years as an Opthamologist and highlighting the training the dedication, even the volunteer service he's done have all been a part of his political message making. But what if Paul wanted to bring his same level of libertarian politics to doctors? What if his same brand of no government, no-oversight-free-market-politics made its way into your day to day healthcare needs? Apparently, Paul has been privately pushing for that all along under the guise of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
The name sounds innocuous enough. But the AAPS has a radical political agenda that would likely gut even the most basic protections Americans hold dear in the realm of healthcare. The group has published numerous troubling articles drawing a connection between vaccinations and autism, abortions and breast cancer, and even connecting the rise in American leprosy cases to illegal immigration. While these are all fringe beliefs based on nothing more than junk science, they actually don't constitute the most dangerous policy goals of the organization. Recently, they've set their sights on medical certification boards.
For those who may be unclear on the role of medical certification boards, these are the organizations that set the standards for certification that all doctors have to be a specialist in that area of medicine. When a doctor says they're Board Certified, it's because they've gone through this process.
"The medical recertification industry is a monopoly whose net keeps widening" and "opponents of MOC [Maintenance of Certification] urge physicians to 'stand up to the tyranny' of the American Board of Medical Specialties and the MOC requirements of the specialty boards. 'I call it 'civil disobedience' and regard myself as part of an incipient mass-noncompliance movement," says Dr. Weiss, who has decided not to recertify.
AAPS has decided that the idea of doctors having to periodically retrain and update their skills in the medical profession is a horrible imposition of government authority and, thus, must be stopped. They argue that unlike cops, or teachers or even truck drivers, doctors should somehow be exempt from maintaining their skill set. The consequences of this change in legislation would be disastrous -- and not just for patients, but for doctors themselves.
The vast majority of Americans don't see a medical provider every year, and when they do, it is likely for emergencies, because their children are sick, or they visit their local pharmacist. If doctors are left to their own whim to determine when and how they update and certify their skills, changes in medication, surgery procedures and patient care will likely be missed or just outright ignored. Not because doctors are lazy or unprofessional, but because re-certification takes time, money and study.
Most doctors feel equipped to handle whatever comes into their offices. However, certification doesn't just affect patients, it protects doctors as well. Proof of certification and updated medical knowledge inoculates doctors against lawsuits and challenges about their competence. If an urologist is sued for malpractice two weeks after being re-certified they have a much stronger defense than if the last time they proved their ability was medical school in the 90's.
Senator Rand Paul was a part of the AAPS until 2010 when he was elected to the Senate, like most politicians he chose to quietly separate himself from organizations that might harm his future political goals (like the Palin's and the Alaska Independence Party). But it doesn't mean he still doesn't share these beliefs and, in fact, given Paul's recent statements about autism and vaccination there is every reason to believe that he is still an ideological member of the AAPS even if he's no longer officially carrying water for them.
Rand Paul may be many things -- a crusader, a protector of privacy and a conservative, but one thing he certainly isn't is informed on the value of and importance of oversight in American healthcare. Medical review boards are a necessity for a safe and transparent healthcare system in the United States. The AAPS and organizations like it, are attempting to scuttle the ways in which the consumer is protected in favor of empowering doctors who, regardless of intentions, are still capable to of making life threatening mistakes. Libertarian politics may work great if you're running for president, but it doesn't take an eye doctor to see it won't work well for the healthcare needs of Americans.
Rand Paul's Courtship With Evangelicals: Will It Be Enough to Win the GOP Primary // The Christian Post // Shane Vander Hart – June 25, 2015
In 2012 57 percent of Iowa's Republican caucus-goers identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. Needless to say a candidate who wants to do well in the upcoming Iowa Caucuses in February will have to court evangelicals. It's simple math.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has a greater ability to reach evangelicals than his father former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) did in 2012, and he is reaching out.
In March at a small prayer breakfast with pastors in Washington, DC Paul said that America needs a spiritual revival.
"The First Amendment says keep government out of religion. It doesn't say keep religion out of government," Paul told the group of 50 pastors. "We're the most disconnected city on the planet from the people so don't have a lot of faith in what's going on up here."
"We need a revival in the country. We need another Great Awakening with tent revivals of thousands of people saying reform or see what's going to happen if we don't reform," he added.
At the same meeting he told the pastors that our nation's financial woes stem from the country's spiritual brokenness. "It's a spiritual problem as much as it is any other problem. All the other problems kind of stem from a brokenness that is out there," Paul stated.
Paul has also said that government can't fix the moral crisis our country is facing during that same meeting. "Don't always look to Washington to solve anything," Paul said. "In fact, the moral crisis we have in our country, there is a role for us trying to figure out things like marriage, there's also a moral crisis that allows people to think that there would be some sort of other marriage. And so, really there's a role outside and inside government but the exhortation to sort of change people's thoughts has to come through the countryside, from outside of Washington."
In response to the Charleston shooting Paul told the audience assembled for the Faith & Freedom Coalition event in Washington, DC said there is a sickness in the country that can't be solved by more laws.
"What kind of person goes into church and shoots nine people? There's a sickness in our country. There's something terribly wrong. But it isn't going to be fixed by your government. It's people straying away, it's people not understanding where salvation comes from. I think if we understand that, we'll have better expectations of what to expect from government," Paul asserted.
Yet he has to do a balancing act between evangelical's social conservatism on one hand, and libertarians on the other. His campaign's focus has been to discuss privacy and personal liberty matters where there could be some overlap between the groups, as well as, with younger voters.
The issue of marriage, especially in light of the Supreme Court's decision to be released at any time could strain that coalition. Libertarians, by and large, do not want government interference in marriage. Paul is on the record saying that he would prefer it be left to the states, and that he doesn't want to register his marriage with the government.
Evangelical social conservatives on the other hand see the Supreme Court's decision should they rule in favor of same-sex marriage as expected as federal interference with state laws and constitutional amendments, and yet another example of a runaway judiciary. They're looking for answers and Paul has been silent.
Paul has spoken out on the topic of religious liberty however. Last week at the Faith & Freedom Coalition, but he didn't just talk about what was going on domestically. "There is a war on Christianity, not just from liberal elites here at home, but worldwide. And your government, or more correctly, you, the taxpayer, are funding it," Paul said. "You are being taxed to send money to countries that are not only intolerant of Christians but openly hostile. Christians are imprisoned and threatened with death for their beliefs."
Recently, however, Paul was criticized for his initial silence on the controversy over Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act which the Indiana Legislature and Governor Mike Pence later gutted after pressure from the corporate world.
He later defended the law in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. "I think what's amazing to me is that it's (RFRA) necessary. This was the debate when our founding started. Our Founding Fathers didn't even want a Bill of Rights. They thought it would be so understood that you had the right to express your religious liberty that no one would ever question it, and some thought that if you listed a bill of rights that some would believe that is all of your rights. I think our Founders would be aghast that anyone would think that they could tell you to do something, to perform a ceremony or be part of a ceremony, that's against your religious beliefs. That being said, though, I think the law ought to be neutral, and I don't think we ought to treat people unfairly," he stated.
"I don't think you can have coercion in a free society very well. I mean, they–seem to be antagonistic. So, I would think that we ought to try freedom in most of these things. And then, also, people ought to understand that people's opinions change through persuasion…so, if people want to convince people that other forms of marriage are fine, they need to do it through persuasion," Paul added.
Some evangelicals have expressed concerns about his commitment to Israel and his non-interventionist foreign policy as it relates to fighting terrorism. Paul recently changed course on Israel visiting the country for the 1st time in 2013. He recently submitted the Stand with Israel Act that would have defunded the Palestinian Authority. While Paul has criticized military action in Iraq and Afghanistan he also advocated for the United States to declare war on ISIS.
Also there are questions why Paul has avoided certain venues. He skipped Congressman Steve King's Freedom Summit in January that had over 1000 grassroots activists present. He did speak at the Iowa Faith & Freedom event in April, but is skipping The FAMiLY Leadership Summit for the second year in a row. His campaign told Caffeinated Thoughts that there was a scheduling conflict on July 18, but did not elaborate on what he is opting to do on that Saturday.
His absence from what promises to be the largest gathering of evangelicals in the state, especially in light of the Iowa Straw Poll's cancellation, is mind-boggling to some political observers.
"In my opinion this ends any remote chances he still had to make any inroads to the evangelical vote in Iowa, which is going to be about two-thirds of the electorate next February. Apparently his plan is to see if 7-10% wins next year. I don't understand that strategy," nationally syndicated talk show host Steve Deace said on his Facebook page.
Not all disagree with his approach. Mark Doland, who is minister at Park Avenue Church of Christ in Oskaloosa, IA, has been a vocal supporter of Paul's and recently said that if Paul won 10 to 15% of the evangelical vote Paul would be doing well, especially in light of his efforts to expand the Republican base among younger voters and minorities.
In an op/ed published on Monday by The Des Moines Register Doland also said that he used to buy into all of the cliches and that if a candidate expressed support for life and marriage he could be won over easily. Not anymore, Doland states he's looking for more substance.
He was impressed with Paul's call to reform the criminal justice system.
"Rand Paul is committed to reforming our broken criminal justice system. We are feeling the shock waves through our culture because it wasn't addressed sooner. I strongly believe that the punishment should fit the crime.
When I was 13 years old I met my biological father for the first time. I developed a relationship and bonded with him. It was something I had dreamed about. Two years later, my father was arrested for conspiracy charges on drug trafficking. As a young man in an impressionable stage, it caused a crisis in my life. My dream was annihilated.
My father was sentenced to 13 years in prison. While I do not dispute that my father committed a crime and should have been incarcerated, I don't believe that the penalty for his crime was appropriate. My little brother has followed that path and I believe that it has been directly related to the fatherlessness he experienced as a teenager.
Upon completion of his sentence I am happy to report that my father has reformed and is now a Christian. Rand Paul understands the unintended consequences of this type of justice system and is committed to reforming it."
Doland also said he also appreciated how Paul has gone on the offense with the life issue.
The courtship continues, albeit, it is not a traditional one Iowa evangelicals are used to seeing from candidates. Paul has the ability to draw some evangelicals provided he can maintain the delicate balance he has with the libertarians in the party.
Rand Paul: The Supreme Court ‘Missed An Opportunity Here’ // The Daily Caller // Al Weaver – June 25, 2015
Soon after the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare subsidies Thursday morning, Sen. Rand Paul said that the Supreme Court “missed an opportunity here” to change the law.
The 2016 candidate also lamented to CNN’s Wolf Biltzer that the decision takes “leverage” away from the GOP’s efforts to repeal or fix the law in any way.
RAND PAUL: As a physician, the Supreme Court missed an opportunity here. Obamacare is making all insurance more expensive. I think we made a mistake. If they would have ruled and adhered to the literal nature of the law, maybe Congress would have had a chance to take up Obamacare again and try to make it less bad or fix the parts of it that are causing so many problems in our society. I really think Obamacare is making all insurance more expensive and taking away choice. So I am disappointed that we’ve missed an opportunity here.
WOLF BLITZER: But for all practical purposes, senator, at least for now, any changes, significant changes, in Obamacare, changes you as a physician, as a Republican, as a senator, as a presidential candidate would like — those changes are going away at least for now until — if there is a Republican president that could change, but at least for now you’re resigned to the fact Obamacare stays as is.
PAUL: I would still like to reform it and change it and give patients back more choices on whether they can choose which doctor or which insurance plan, legalize competition and legalize inexpensive insurance again, but it makes it hard because we don’t have the leverage. If we had the leverage where the president had to revisit this because part of it had been struck down, then we would have the leverage to force the president to revisit it. We have majorities and so we can bring it up and we can pass legislation, but getting the president to actually do something about it and actually have the leverage to get him to perhaps sign something that would change Obamacare, I think we’ve lost that leverage.
BLITZER: But just to wrap this up, senator, even if you do — the Republican majorities in the House and Senate pass legislation, the president presumably will veto that legislation and you don’t have two-thirds majorities to override a presidential veto, right?
PAUL: I agree, and that’s why, without this court case, I think we’ve lost the leverage to actually have the president negotiate with us.
Ted Cruz Speaks to the Right, Shuns Party Leaders // WSJ // Janet Hook – June 25, 2015
At a time when many other Republicans are trying to expand their party’s appeal, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is aggressively building his 2016 presidential campaign with a different approach: Making an undiluted pitch to his party’s most conservative, anti-establishment wing.
Just within the last week, Mr. Cruz abruptly dropped his support for a trade bill bitterly opposed by many conservatives; launched fresh attacks on his own party’s establishment leaders; and declined to take sides in the South Carolina Confederate flag debate even after other GOP candidates joined the call for it to be taken down from the Statehouse grounds.
No one ever expected Mr. Cruz to tack to the center in his bid for the 2016 GOP nomination. But as he looks for solid footing in the crowded field, he is doubling down on positions that fire up his base on the right and sometimes rankle other Republicans.
That is just fine by him. In a speech at the Heritage Foundation Wednesday, he took it as a badge of honor that he has fought as much with his own party leaders as with Democrats, attacking the bipartisan “Washington cartel” of lobbyists, lawmakers and powerbrokers.
“You can say a lot of things about me but ‘beloved by my colleagues in Washington’ is not one of them,” he said.
He infuriated many Republicans this week when he flipped positions on trade legislation that he, as a vocal advocate for free trade, had supported in the past.
His earlier vote for the trade bill — “fast track” legislation to expedite international trade agreements — had put him at odds with many tea-party activists, talk-radio hosts and other conservatives who said it gave too much power to President Barack Obama.
Some critics saw his reversal this week as an act of political opportunism to make amends with conservative supporters. He called it a response to changing circumstances: He believed that party leaders, in rounding up votes for the trade bill, cut a deal to keep alive the Export Import Bank, a bete noire for conservatives. That charge was denied by GOP leaders.
In the debate over the Confederate flag in South Carolina after the Charleston church massacre, Mr. Cruz was almost alone among the major presidential candidates in not endorsing South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley‘s call for taking the flag down from the state Capitol grounds.
Like many Republican presidential candidates, Mr. Cruz initially reacted to the controversy cautiously, deferring to people in the state to decide. Over the weekend, he said he understood “both sides” of the debate but “I think that’s a question for South Carolina.”
After Ms. Haley and a bipartisan group of state leaders Monday called for legislation to remove the flag, other major GOP candidates — including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Rand Paul — chimed in to endorse that decision.
But Mr. Cruz has still not picked a side. To join in the take-it-down chorus, he would have to cross some of his most important political supporters in South Carolina. Two of his three campaign co-chairs are state legislators who are leading opponents of removing the flag — state Sen. Lee Bright and state Rep. Bill Chumley.
Campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said Mr. Cruz believed that with the issue still before the state legislature, it remained one for the state to decide for itself. “South Carolina doesn’t need outsiders chiming in and dictating their outcome,” he said.
That puts Mr. Cruz in a familiar place: At odds with Republican Party leaders.
One of the prominent “outsiders” chiming in on the debate is Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who has been trying to expand the GOP’s support among minority voters in the wake of its 2012 presidential loss.
Mr. Priebus appeared on the stage with Ms. Haley as she called for the flag’s removal, and released a statement in support: “While some say it represents different things to different people, there is no denying that it also represents serious divisions that must be mended in our society.”
Ted Cruz Calls Supreme Court Justices 'Robed Houdinis' Over Obamacare Decision // The National Journal // Marina Koren – June 25, 2015
President Obama's signature health care law saw a big victory on Thursday. And the lawmaker who shut down the government over it is outraged.
Ted Cruz gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, a few hours after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the Affordable Care Act's subsidies nationwide. The senator from Texas, who is also running for president, called the decision "judicial activism, plain and simple."
"Today, these robed Houdinis have transmogrified a federal exchange into an exchange, quote, 'established by the State,' " he said. "This is lawless. As Justice [Antonin] Scalia rightfully put it, without objection, words no longer have meaning."
Cruz was referring to the challenge in King v. Burwell of a provision of the Affordable Care Act that calls for health care subsidies to come from "an exchange established by the State." Opponents of the law said that this language meant that subsidies cannot be made available to people who live in states that rely on the federal government to run their exchanges (there are 34 of them). Roberts wrote that this reading was too narrow, and said that section of the law could refer to both individual state exchanges and government-run exchanges.
Scalia wrote a blistering dissent, saying that "words no longer have meaning" if the majority considers the word "state" to also mean "federal government." Like Cruz, Scalia accused his fellow justices of siding with the president for reasons outside of the Constitution.
"Politics intervened," Cruz said. "For nakedly political reasons, the Supreme Court willfully ignored the words that Congress wrote and instead read into the law their preferred policy outcome. These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans. Unelected judges have once again become legislators, and bad ones at that."
Nearly two years ago, just before the launch of Healthcare.gov, Cruz convinced party leaders to tie funding legislation to a bill that would defund Obamacare. The resulting legislative fight led to the first government shutdown in 17 years. Cruz solidified his role as one of the most vocally anti-Obamacare Republicans on the Hill, and is now vying for the White House as the most anti-Obamacare presidential candidate. On Thursday, Cruz looked ahead to 2016, saying the election "will be a national referendum on repealing Obamacare."
"I remain fully committed to repealing every single word of Obamacare," Cruz said. "And mark my words, following the election in 2016, the referendum that we will have in 2017, this chamber will return and we will repeal every word of Obamacare."
For the GOP, Thursday's decision is bittersweet. The ruling saves congressional Republicans and Republican governors from having to scramble for a plan to immediately protect the 6 million people who would have lost their coverage had the Court ruled the other way. But the long-term GOP plan to gut Obamacare depended on a judicial win, one that Republicans thought would force the president to cave on some parts of his law, like the individual mandate, which the Court upheld in 2012.
Now, some Republicans are eyeing a legislative maneuver known as budget reconciliation, which would allow the Senate to skip the 60-vote threshold required to complete action on a bill, keeping the minority party—in this case, Democrats—from blocking it. House Speaker John Boehner would not say Thursday whether leaders will use reconciliation. But even if lawmakers set the process in motion, they face a steep uphill climb, with Obama's veto waiting for them at the top.
While the next legislative steps in the battle against Obamacare remain unclear, Republicans running for president know what to do: promise the fight isn't over. "I think you're going to see virtually every candidate from Jeb Bush all the way to John Kasich calling for repeal and replacement, absolutely," predicted GOP Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona after the ruling came down.
That includes Cruz, who has the advantage of bringing his campaign to the Senate floor.
Ted Cruz on Obamacare Subsidies Decision: "Supreme Court's Judicial Activism Violating Their Oaths Of Office" // Real Clear Politics // Ian Schwartz – June 25, 2015
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): You, the teenage immigrant washing dishes are paying illegal taxes right now today, because of President Obama's deception, because of the IRS's lawlessness and because of the Supreme Court's judicial activism violating their oaths of office.
I remain fully committed to repealing every single word of Obamacare. And mark my words, following the election in 2016, the referendum that we will have, in 2017 this chamber will return and we will repeal every word of Obamacare. We'll bring back economic growth. We'll bring back opportunity. And then we'll pass commonsense health care reform that makes health insurance personal and portable and affordable, that keeps government from getting between us and our doctors.
We will recognize that this horrible experiment has failed. And when millions of Americans lose their jobs, are forced into part-time work, lose their health care, lose their doctors, when millions of Americans see their premiums skyrocket, it's incumbent on members of this body, it's incumbent on the federal government to fix the wreckage they caused, to fix the wreckage that the Supreme Court has now embraced lawlessly.
Ted Cruz, angered by Obamacare ruling, tells ‘rogue justices’ to resign and run for Congress // The Washington Times // Seth McLaughlin – June 25, 2015
Sen. Ted Cruz delivered a full-throated critique Thursday of the Supreme Court, saying that it is clear that the “rogue justices” that ruled in favor of Obamacare subsidies are “lawless” political foot soldiers that have joined forces with the Obama administration.
Speaking on the Senate floor, the Texas Republican and 2016 GOP presidential candidate said that if the “justices want to become legislators, I invite them to resign and run for office.”
The remarks came shortly after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Obama administration is lawfully doling out Obamacare’s subsidies in dozens of states despite contested language in the law that sparked a legal battle with major political and economic ramifications.
“The Supreme Court willfully ignored the words that Congress wrote, and instead read into the law their preferred policy outcome,” Mr. Cruz said. “These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans.”
He continued, “Those justices are not behaving as umpires calling balls and strikes. They have joined a team, and it is a team that is hurting Americans across this country.”
Mr. Cruz said the 2016 election will be a referendum on Obamacare, which he said is hurting millions of Americans.
Ted Cruz is bashing John Roberts after years of praising him // Business Insider // Colin Campbell – June 25, 2015
Presidential candidate and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) apparently used to have a very different opinion about Chief Justice John Roberts than he expressed on Thursday.
According to a 2005 Sun-Sentinel report, Cruz once praised Roberts as "one of the best constitutional minds in the country."
Cruz reportedly made that comment while explaining why, as a domestic policy adviser for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, he brought Roberts to Florida to assist with his team's legal battle over the controversial post-election recount.
And as the Texas Tribune reported three years ago, when Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court in 2005, Cruz "was an outspoken advocate for his confirmation, calling him 'brilliant' and a 'lawyer's lawyer.'"
"As an individual, John Roberts is undoubtedly a principled conservative, as is the president who appointed him," Cruz wrote at the time in the National Review. "But, as a jurist, Judge Roberts's approach will be that of his entire career: carefully, faithfully applying the Constitution and legal precedent."
Cruz, now running a fiercely conservative campaign for president, seemed to have a much different take on Roberts on Thursday when the Supreme Court issued its second major ruling protecting the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare
In a passionate statement, Cruz tore into the court's "robed Houdinis" who "transmogrified" the law to defend President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. Roberts wrote both of the rulings Cruz criticized.
"Today's decision in King v. Burwell is judicial activism, plain and simple. For the second time in just a few years, a handful of unelected judges has rewritten the text of Obamacare in order to impose this failed law on millions of Americans," the senator said.
Cruz's lengthy statement argued that the Supreme Court justices clearly screwed up and that they would have ruled against the Affordable Care Act if politics had not intervened. Cruz once clerked for then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist and, as Texas' solicitor general, argued a number of cases before the Supreme Court.
"For nakedly political reasons, the Supreme Court willfully ignored the words that Congress wrote, and instead read into the law their preferred policy outcome. These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans," he continued. "Unelected judges have once again become legislators, and bad ones at that. They are lawless, and they hide their prevarication in legalese. Our government was designed to be one of laws, not of men, and this transparent distortion is disgraceful."
Cruz's campaign did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider on Thursday asking about the 2005 Sun-Sentinel report and whether his opinion of Roberts has changed.
If his opinion about Roberts has indeed shifted, Cruz wouldn't be the only one. Roberts was nominated for his position by Bush, a Republican, and many conservatives criticized him for siding with the court's liberal wing in the Obamacare ruling.
Similarly, as a senator, President Obama criticized and voted against Roberts' confirmation in 2005. Obama likely has a very different opinion of the chief justice today.
Graham Blasts Hillary’s ‘Sleazy’ Associates, State Department Management // Free Beacon // Alana Goodman – June 25, 2015
South Carolina senator and presidential candidate Lindsey Graham slammed Hillary Clinton’s management of the State Department on Wednesday, saying that other Americans could be sent to jail for running organizations in a similar fashion.
“I don’t know how in the world she can avoid being held accountable for the way she ran the State Department,” said Graham, during a meeting with Washington Free Beacon reporters on Wednesday morning. “The sleazy nature of these relationships, and her AWOL when it came to taking care of the people under her charge—being AWOL regarding Benghazi.”
Graham said he had concerns about Clinton’s continued relationship with long-time confidante Sidney Blumenthal, who passed on faulty intelligence from his private intelligence network to the Secretary of State.
“I have zero respect for the man,” said Graham, noting that Blumenthal was accused of spreading false rumors to discredit Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s. “There’s a reason the State Department wouldn’t hire him. For her to continue to associate with this guy says a lot about her.”
Graham said he also found it troubling that Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills was simultaneously serving on the board of New York University’s UAE-funded Abu Dhabi campus, earning $198,000 as NYU’s general counsel and working for Clinton at the State Department. The Free Beacon first reported on Mills’ overlapping positions on Wednesday.
“What kind of vetting system do you have over there?” said Graham. “Somebody had to sign off on this. Either [Clinton’s] okay with this, or completely in the dark.”
The Republican candidate also blasted Clinton for her use of a private email server, saying that if she had been in the Bush administration there would be much more serious consequences.
“If Dick Cheney had done any of this. If Dick Cheney had set up a server in his house,” said Graham. “If Dick Cheney’s lawyers had gone through the process and said ‘No, we cleansed the thing, trust us, we did it right,’ there’d be all hell to pay.”
The senator said Clinton’s handling of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was the biggest black mark on her State Department record.
He criticized the former secretary of state for failing to address security concerns at the Benghazi compound in the months leading up to the attack, despite requests from staff and the late Ambassador Chris Stevens.
“What do you have to do as an ambassador in her State Department to get help? Do you have to take an ad out in the Washington Post?” said Graham. “They did everything they could do to request additional help, and every request, for the most part, was denied.”
“I think she’s carrying more bags than anybody should be able to carry for President of the United States,” he added.
In addition to Clinton, Graham said he also thought fellow Republican senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul would have significant baggage on national security issues going into the race.
He said Paul’s recent filibuster to protest NSA surveillance hurt his standing with senate colleagues, and described it as an “unseemly” fundraising ploy.
“The worst thing that can happen to you in the Senate is people think you don’t know what you’re doing,” said Graham. “Rand, I think, exhibited a detachment from the reality that exists in terms of the [national security] threats.”
“People thought he did it for political reasons,” Graham added. “He’s out there on the floor doing a filibuster and raising money. And I think that was unseemly. I think he tremendously hurt himself in terms of being seen as a colleague who is serious and knowledgeable.”
Lindsey Graham Criticizes Hillary Clinton on Equal Pay // Free Beacon // Joe Schoffstall – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) criticized Hillary Clinton’s support for equal pay laws as little more than a handout to the trial lawyer lobby.
Despite having a history of paying the female staffers in her Senate office far less than their male counterparts, Clinton has claimed to be in favor of laws that would mandate equal pay between the sexes.
Graham said in an interview Wednesday that her stated proposal would never work and is purely politics. He also questioned how many people would want the federal government to set salaries throughout the nation.
“Equal pay is about creating lawsuit opportunities, it’s not about equality. It’s about creating more opportunities for a company to be sued—it is a talking point. It is a concept and it is a shallow concept. It is designed to make people aggrieved with no solution at hand other than more lawsuits,” Graham said.
The senator questioned whether such efforts are the proper role of the federal government.
“Is it the government’s job to set salaries for people in this country? I would say the construct she’s proposing would never work; it’s all politics,” Graham said. “How many Americans want the federal government to inventory salaries throughout the country. There are already laws on the books where you could sue somebody if you are being paid less because of your gender.”
Clinton is “toying” with people by giving them hope when there is none, Graham said.
“The worst thing about this is you’re creating—you’re giving people hope—when there is none, you’re toying with people. Those who feel like, ‘I should be paid more,’ well the federal government is not going to come in there and give you more money but there is a process for you to sue if you feel you’re being aggrieved as an individual. Her solution is just to increase more lawsuits. When she talks about equal play and you flush it out, she’s toying with people.”
The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that Clinton’s current equal pay rhetoric doesn’t quite match up to the history of what she paid employees while in the Senate.
While Clinton was a senator, she paid females in her office just 72 cents for each dollar paid to men.
“During those years, the median annual salary for a woman working in Clinton’s office was $15,708.38 less than the median salary for a man,” the Free Beacon found in its analysis of data compiled from official Senate expenditure reports.
How Lindsey Graham Would Defeat the Islamic State // Free Beacon // Daniel Wiser – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) laid out a detailed plan for defeating the Islamic State terrorist group in an interview Wednesday with the Washington Free Beacon, offering a frank assessment of the necessity for more U.S. troops and a two-front strategy for Iraq and Syria.
Concerns continue to be raised about the current U.S. strategy for defeating the Islamic State (IS), which now reportedly controls more than half of Syria and seized the Iraqi city of Ramadi last month. Despite U.S. airstrikes and the presence of about 3,500 troops to train and advise Iraqi forces, the Obama administration’s plan to “degrade and destroy” IS does not appear to have slowed the group’s momentum.
Graham, one of the leading GOP voices on foreign policy and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said “Gen. Obama and [Vice President Joe] Biden have been very lousy generals” in the fight against IS. He added that the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 only emboldened neighboring Iran, which has expanded its influence in Iraq by backing Shiite militias.
“Nothing you see today was unpredictable,” he said. “It was the natural, logical consequence of a poor decision by the president.”
Graham said he agrees with retired Gen. Jack Keane, one of the architects of the surge strategy in the Iraq War, on the need to deploy about 10,000 U.S. troops to Iraq. This would include aviation battalions and special operations forces that could call in airstrikes and better assist Iraqi forces on the front lines. The raid last month by U.S. commandos that killed a senior IS official in Syria should be replicated, he said.
“If I were president we’d be doing that every night in Syria and Iraq,” he said. “They would never get a minute’s sleep.”
More U.S. advisers on the ground would also expedite the training of Iraqi forces and Sunni Muslim tribal fighters from the western Anbar province, who remain distrustful of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and its ties to Iran, he said.
Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, articulated a similar strategy in congressional testimony on Wednesday. About 20,000 U.S. troops would be required to help call in airstrikes, embed with Iraqi units to improve their effectiveness, conduct raids on IS leaders, and obtain better intelligence, Kagan said.
In a February poll conducted by CNN, 57 percent of Americans said they did not approve of Obama’s efforts to defeat IS. However, a slim majority of respondents said they still opposed sending ground troops back to the Middle East.
As president, Graham said he would tell Americans, “if we don’t deal with the threats over there, they’re coming here.”
“I’ve never seen so many terrorist organizations with so many safe havens, so much money, so many men, equipment, and material to hit the homeland as I do today,” he said.
IS has also demonstrated an ability to expand its so-called caliphate and global influence, making inroads in Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen, and inspiring attacks in Paris and Texas.
“This is not a regional conflict,” he said. “This is a worldwide struggle of good versus evil, religious Nazis against the rest of us.”
Turning to Syria, he said the chaotic civil war there “makes Iraq look like a cakewalk.” The Pentagon is attempting to train and equip more moderate Syrian rebels to battle IS, but fewer than 200 fighters have begun the program so far due to vetting issues and the difficulty of exiting the country’s war zone. Graham said the train-and-equip plan would “have to be 150 years old before this thing has any chance of working,” noting that IS could have as many as 40,000 fighters in Syria, its original base of operations.
“There are more foreign fighters coming into [IS] ranks than we’re training Free Syrian rebels,” he said.
The U.S.-trained rebels also do not have explicit approval to target Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a situation that Graham said has undermined regional support for the effort and must change. He said he would assemble a regional force composed of troops from Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to topple Assad and eradicate IS and other terrorist groups in Syria. Yet he added that “big Arab armies haven’t really fought much,” meaning that more U.S. commandos will be required to give them a logistical edge and act as forward air controllers to improve the accuracy of airstrikes.
Once IS has been decimated from Iraq and Syria, U.S. allies must hold the territory and begin a process of reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites, he said. A political settlement could begin to heal a post-Assad Syria, while neutralizing the influence of Iran in Iraq would create more stability in that country and the region. Graham added that he “would walk away” from the current nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran and ramp up pressure on Tehran with additional sanctions.
Americans must be prepared for the long-term challenge in the region of rooting out IS and rolling back Iran’s influence, he said, dismissing quick solutions such as the partition of Iraq and Syria.
“This mess has got many tentacles to it,” he said. “As you pull up the caliphate by its roots, you’ve got to explain to the American people—this is going to be a long struggle to hold this ground, rebuild Syria and Iraq.”
Santorum returns focus to culture wars in Iowa speech // The Des Moines Register // William Petroski - June 25, 2015
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, who has struggled for recognition in a crowded Republican presidential field, focused heavily on his role as a culture warrior here Thursday night and received enthusiastic support.
Santorum carried 11 states — including the Iowa caucuses — with a low-budget, grassroots campaign in 2012 that appealed strongly to Christian conservatives. He began the 2016 election cycle talking about helping blue-collar workers, but he spent much of his campaign speech here making clear his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion and the need to bolster two-parent American families.
Santorum said he was disappointed with Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that favored the implementation of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. He added he is now concerned the high court will soon follow with a decision endorsing same-sex marriage.
But if the court sides in support of gay marriage, Santorum made it clear he won't consider the battle over. He warned such a court decision could have profound effects on the nation's churches and religious schools and hospitals, resulting in their loss of tax-exempt status if they don't comply.
"You will find out what candidates are made out of," Santorum said. "The key is, 'Are they willing to fight?' "
He told a packed crowd of Iowa and Nebraska residents — including some Catholic priests, religious sisters and seminarians — that Americans who value their faith are battling "a religion of the secular left."
"It is based on power and sheer will. It will be tough to stand against it, but we must," said Santorum, who was repeatedly interrupted with applause and received a standing ovation afterward.
Santorum touted his credentials as a former Senate member who was willing to fight abortion even when his Republican colleagues were reluctant to broach the subject. He said he has been debating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for a long time, noting that he wrote 2005 book "It Takes a Family" in response to the former First Lady's 1996 book, "It Takes a Village."
He accused President Barack Obama of dividing Americans racially and on being more interested in "class warfare" than helping people rise in society. But he added that Republicans need a presidential candidate who sounds more like a neighbor to American voters than their boss.
He suggested that as president, he could use the White House as a bully pulpit in support of two-parent American families who favor work and education, saying it would help young people succeed economically, regardless of the color of their skin.
State Rep. Walt Rogers, R-Cedar Falls, Santorum's Iowa campaign chairman, said Thursday night the former senator is close to having a full state campaign staff and should make a strong effort in the 2016 Iowa caucuses. Most Iowa Republicans "are still kicking the tires" on prospective presidential candidates, he said, adding he believes "solid conservatives will line up with Rick Santorum."
AT THE EVENT
SETTING: Belle Terre, a vineyard and reception hall, in rolling green fields outside Glenwood in southwest Iowa.
CROWD: About 250 people who packed the facility.
REACTION: He received enthusiastic applause throughout his speech and a standing ovation when he finished.
WHAT'S NEXT: This was the first day of a two-day campaign trip to Iowa, but Santorum's plans earlier on Thursday to visit Atlantic, Elk Horn and Kimballton were canceled because weather interfered with his flight plans. Santorum concludes his Iowa visit with a faith and freedom roundtable discussion at 9:30 a.m. Friday at St. Anne's Catholic Parish in Logan.
Rick Santorum: “European Socialist” Obama Believes In Revolutionary Model That Led To Reign Of Terror // Buzzfeed // Christopher Massie – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said in May 2014 that calling President Barack Obama a “European Socialist” means he “believes in the model of the French Revolution,” which “led to the Reign of Terror.”
The former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania offered a comparative history of the American and French revolutions while being interviewed by radio host Hugh Hewitt at an event sponsored by the Reagan Foundation.
Where the American Revolution was “about ‘paternity’: God-given rights,” Santorum said, the French Revolution was predicated on “‘fraternity’: brotherhood, people giving rights.” This, Santorum further argued, helps explain why the latter insurrection “led to the Reign of Terror” and why contemporary Europe is “a dying culture.”
“And it was explicitly a secular revolution,” he said. “Anti-clerical, secular revolution that said that the government is in charge. It led to the Reign of Terror, the execution, the guillotine, Bonaparte. And now Europe, which is a descendant of the French Revolution, is a godless, secular continent, as the European Union is. And it’s a dying culture.”
Santorum contrasted this outcome with that of the American Revolution, which, he said, “spawned this hopeful, optimistic country because we believe in the dignity of every human life and the human potential. And society was ordered to maximize that. And America flourished and changed the world.”
Santorum was discussing how, today, there is “a group of people in America who believe that that moment has passed” and that “in fact Europe has the better ideas,” when he transitioned into his critique of Obama.
“You say, ‘Well, Barack Obama’s a European socialist,’” Santorum said. “Understand what that means. He believes in the model of the French Revolution, he believes in a secular, government-run society. Freedom is top-down, not bottom-up.”
Huckabee calls court’s health-care ruling an ‘act of judicial tyranny’ // WaPo // Philip Rucker – June 25, 2015
Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and current Republican presidential candidate, called the Supreme Court's decision Thursday to protect the Affordable Care Act "an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny."
"Our Founding Fathers didn't create a 'do-over' provision in our Constitution that allows unelected Supreme Court justices the power to circumvent Congress and rewrite bad laws," Huckabee said in a statement provided to The Washington Post.
"The Supreme Court cannot legislate from the bench, ignore the Constitution, and pass a multi-trillion dollar 'fix' to ObamaCare simply because Congress misread what the states would actually do," his statement continued. "The architects and authors of ObamaCare were intentional in the way they wrote the law. The courts have no constitutional authority to rescue Congress from creating bad law. The solution is for Congress to admit they screwed up, repeal the 'nightmare of Obamacare,' and let states road-test real health care reforms."
Huckabee, who is campaigning throughout rural south-central Iowa all day Thursday, pulled over at a gas station to review the court's King v. Burwell ruling.
Huckabee said in his statement that the Affordable Care Act has been a "Washington disaster" that's resulted in families "getting punched in the gut with outrageous insurance premiums and infuriating hospital bills."
"As President, I will protect Medicare, repeal ObamaCare, and pass real reform that will actually lower costs, while focusing on cures and prevention rather than intervention," Huckabee said. "The status quo is unfair, unaffordable, unsustainable and completely un-American."
Mike Huckabee: 'Donor Class' Pushed Senate Republicans To Approve Obama's Fast-Track Trade Authority // HuffPo // Samantha-Jo Roth – June 25, 2015
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Thursday criticized Senate Republicans for voting to approve fast-track trade authority for President Barack Obama, blaming the influence of the "donor class."
“I expect better of the people that we send" to Congress, Huckabee, a 2016 presidential candidate, said during a campaign stop in Corydon, Iowa. "I understand the donor class has pushed them and pushed them to vote for this bill.”
The Senate on Wednesday cleared a bill to give Obama fast-track approval of international trade deals. Fast-track authority would allow the president to submit trade agreements to Congress for an accelerated vote without amendments.
"74 percent of Republicans in America thought it was a bad idea, and most of the Republicans that voted for it, admitted they haven’t read that bill either,” Huckabee told Iowans at a pizzeria.
Huckabee, who traveled to 37 states last year to campaign for Senate Republicans, said it’s time to take a stand against power, money and influence.
“We went out and helped Republicans win in the last election cycle, we sent them to Congress to curtail the executive overreach of this president on issues like immigration and Obamacare,” Huckabee said. “What did our Republicans do this week -- they gave this president more power.”
Huckabee said if he's elected president, he wouldn't seek fast-track authority, pointing out recent trade agreements that have led to the loss of U.S. jobs.
“We have allowed our trade partners to manipulate their currency to dump products into our market place,” he said. “The result is some of your friends, neighbors and family members who have lost jobs in this country, have lost it because we didn’t enforce the trade bills we have, yet we are going to enter into a new one.”
Four Republican Presidential candidates serving in the U.S. Senate participated in the fast-track vote. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) voted against giving the president fast-track authority, while Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) approved it.
Mike Huckabee: The Supreme Court just issued 'an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny' // Business Insider // Colin Campbell – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee slammed the Supreme Court on Thursday after it delivered a huge victory for the White House by saving a crucial component of Obamacare in a 6-to-3 vote.
In a fierce statement, Huckabee said the decision was "an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny."
The US' highest court ruled that President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law could provide subsidies to millions of people who were insured through federal exchanges. The dissenting justices argued that the language of the Affordable Care Act indicated that only people insured through state-based exchanges should be eligible for the subsidies.
Huckabee clearly agreed with the dissent.
"Our Founding Fathers didn't create a 'do-over' provision in our Constitution that allows unelected, Supreme Court justices the power to circumvent Congress and rewrite bad laws," his statement continued. "The Supreme Court cannot legislate from the bench, ignore the Constitution, and pass a multitrillion-dollar 'fix' to Obamacare simply because Congress misread what the states would actually do."
He added: "The architects and authors of Obamacare were intentional in the way they wrote the law. The courts have no constitutional authority to rescue Congress from creating bad law."
Huckabee has long been critical of what he describes as the Supreme Court's overreaching its legal authority. When discussing the court potentially ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, for example, he has argued "the court cannot change what God has created."
Mike Huckabee: Get government out of veterans’ health care business // The Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 25, 2015
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wants the U.S. to get out of the business of veterans’ health and medical care.
The Veterans Health Administration, the part of the embattled Department of Veterans Affairs handling medical care, should be “put out of its misery and most importantly, put it out of the government’s” reach, Mr. Huckabee said Wednesday at a stop in Osceola, Iowa, the Des Moines Register reported.
Veterans should instead be given a health care card that provides them with medical services at whatever facility or provider they go to, said Mr. Huckabee, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate and winner of the 2008 caucuses in Iowa.
“You say ‘that might be expensive.’ It might be,” he said. “If we have to take down every monument in Washington, D.C., cut them up in pieces and sell them as souvenirs to pay for it, so be it.”
Ben Carson: The Supreme Court Overstepped on Obamacare // TIME // Dr. Ben Carson – June 25, 2015
The Supreme Court decided Thursday to uphold the Affordable Care Act. I, like millions of Americans, am alarmed with the court’s new power to fill in the blanks and connect the dots on the laws Congress enacts. It seems that a new Justice John Roberts era of “never mind what the law says, we know what it means” has begun. But as a brain surgeon, I was taught not to waste critical time. So I will not.
The Affordable Care Act was the product of an inept process from the start. Twisted legislative maneuvering compounded by a running clock gave us this mess. No Republican voted for this nightmare. Some Democrats didn’t bother to even read it, prompting then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to famously warn, “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”
What’s in it is the problem, and the implementation has been just as shameful. More than $2 billion was spent on a website that didn’t work, and networks of community organizers combed neighborhoods to sign up people, many of whom thought they had been offered something for free. Now we have hospital emergency rooms filled with new policyholders who were never told that up to $5,000 of the first costs are on them.
In the third quarter of 2008, when President George W. Bush was leaving office, 14.4% of the adult population of this country was uninsured. Today, with the full implementation of Obamacare, that number has dropped to 11.9%. To accomplish these results, many of us have been forced to find new doctors, and many Americans are paying considerably more.
A drop in the uninsured adult population of 2.5% is rather paltry when you measure it against the more than $2 billion spent to implement the program and the 10-year Congressional Budget Office estimation of more $1 trillion more. Doing the math will only lead to heartburn, and as a doctor, I don’t recommend it.
Instead of wasting our time and energy resenting the power grab of the court, the GOP presidential candidates should all agree to re-double our efforts to rid our country of this poorly drafted, ineptly implemented, massively costly and shamefully enacted piece of government intervention into our lives.
I spent my life as a caregiver to young children. The number of fights I have had with insurance companies is only surpassed by the amount of money I paid in malpractice premiums. I am no defender of the “good ole days.”
I believe we need to replace Obamacare with a system that empowers consumers with knowledge and choice to drive down costs. The more power we put in the hands of consumers, the lower the costs will fall. If consumers were picking up the costs for $20 bandages at the Emergency Room, how long would it be before the prices were the same as the bandages at Walgreens. If a patient knew he or she could get the same test at CVS for 90% less than it cost at the hospital, then CVS would need bigger parking lots. More government is always a poor excuse for a solution. Consumer empowerment with health saving accounts coupled with catastrophic coverage is the way to drive costs down.
The GOP nominees this cycle must have a plan to repeal and replace, the determination to articulate that plan, and the fortitude and willingness to work with Congress to actually cause change.
Carson says GOP must offer ‘really appealing’ ObamaCare alternative; Congressman King reacts to ruling // Radio Iowa // O. Kay Henderson – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said this morning he’s “deeply disappointed” in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that “ObamaCare” subsidies are legal. But Carson is urging ObamaCare opponents not to “waste time and energy mourning” the decision, but instead “redouble” the effort to get congress to repeal the law.
“We have to come out with something that is really appealing,” Carson told reporters in Sioux Center. “…That’s going to require some legislative changes, which means we’ve got to get brave people in there in leadership positions.”
Carson said it’s important to “get rid of things” in ObamaCare that are “killing the economy” and that means ending the “employer mandate” which requires businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to provide health insurance or pay a fine.
“It used to be as your company was growing, you were really happy. You got 40 and then you got 50 and then you got 100 employees. That doesn’t happen anymore. Now you get to 40 and you start backing off,” Carson said. “That antithetical to growth in our society.”
Carson made his comments after speaking to a big crowd this morning at the Fruited Plain Cafe in Sioux Center.
Iowa Congressman Steve King, a leading critic of ObamaCare, issued a video statement late this morning on the ruling.
“This is a frustrating day when you’re in the business of writing laws and watching the Supreme Court amend them at their will,” King said, “by using their own judgment on what public policy should be in the United States.”
King said when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, the court has decided to “make it up” as it goes along.
“And they have ruled, essentially, that the law doesn’t mean what it says,” King said.
This decision on “ObamaCare” was the first of two big rulings expected from the court before it recesses for the summer.
“I’m really concerned about what can happen with the decision on marriage,” King said. “They’ll likely conclude that the Constitution doesn’t mean what it says either.”
Senator Chuck Grassley, the senior member of Iowa’s congressional delegation, issued a written statement late this morning. Grassley said he respect the court, but Grassley said ObamaCare “remains a terrible law” and he is “committed to repealing and replacing it with effective reforms driven by the marketplace, not the heavy hand of government.”
Congressman Dave Loebsack, the only Democrat in Iowa’s congressional delegation, called today’s decision “a big relief for the thousands of Iowa families who would have faced large, unforeseen, out of pocket increases in their health care costs.” Loebsakc said in his written statement that it’s time to “move forward and work to strengthen this law, not continue to try and dismantle it.”
Congressman David Young of Van Meter, one of Iowa’s two rookie Republicans in the U.S. House, issued a statement this afternoon saying there are “real problems with the Affordable Care Act” and it “needs to be repealed and replaced with a common sense patient-centered solution.”
Senator Joni Ernst was the first member of Iowa’s congressional delegation to react today. Read her statement here, along with analysis from a University of Iowa law professor. Freshman Congressman Rod Blum, a Republican from Dubuque, has not released a statement on today’s ruling.
Two other GOP presidential candidates are campaigning in the state today. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee called the ruling “an act of judicial tyranny” and he says congress should “admit they screwed up” and repeal the law. Rick Santorum will be in Glenwood this evening. The former Pennsylvania senator calls the ruling a “reminder” that in order to get rid of ObamaCare, the nation must elect a “conservative president.”
Ben Carson In 2014: Communists Have “Infiltrated Our Society” // Buzzfeed // Christopher Massie – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said in an interview last year that Communists are “in our society” and are “organized” in their effort to “bring America down.”
The retired neurosurgeon was talking to Baltimore News Radio’s Bryan Nehman in May of 2014 about social divisions in the US, when he started explaining his understanding of “neo-Marxist” literature and how it reflected contemporary American society.
He recommended that people read Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals to “put a lot of stuff that you’re seeing going on into perspective,” noting that the book was “dedicated to Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.”
“This is what we’re up against,” he said.
“Go back and read what the neo-Marxists said about America and about our incredible strength and how it would be necessary to bring America down to do two essential things,” the retired neurosurgeon said. “We have to destroy the American family—basically change the concept of what the family is. And the other thing they said is you’ve got to kick to the curb their Judeo-Christian beliefs because it provides way too much strength. The only thing that’s amazing is how quickly that’s occurring. There’s a book called the Naked Communist by Cleon Skousen, the same guy who wrote the Five Thousand Year Leap, published in 1958. I encourage people to go and read that book.”
The host asked Carson, “Who are the communists that are doing that? I mean, the Soviet Union is no longer there.” Carson responded that, “They’re in our society,” but that people should read about it themselves because he didn’t want to “feed into what people say is paranoia.”
“They’re in our society,” he said. “They infiltrated our society. And rather than, you know, feed into what people say is paranoia, I tell people, ‘Go read this stuff yourselves.’”
“They are extremely well organized,” he argued. “And when you start reading these things that were written 50 and 60 years ago you will recognize them immediately as things that are going on today. Vladimir Lenin, it was kind of funny, the way he put it, ‘There are a lot of people, they will not recognize what we’re doing. They’ll play right into our hands.’ And he calls them ‘useful idiots.’”
Univision Severs Ties With Donald Trump and Beauty Pageants // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015
Donald J. Trump’s business empire was dealt its first casualty Thursday as a result of his decision to run for president.
Univision said that it was ending its relationship with the Trump Organization, that it will not air the Miss USA pageant on its network next month, and that it is severing ties with the Miss Universe Organization. Mr. Trump is a part owner of the Miss Universe Organization, the umbrella group for both the United States and world beauty pageants.
Univision said the decision was because of Mr. Trump’s recent remarks about Mexican immigrants. During his presidential announcement last week, Mr. Trump proposed building a wall along the border to keep criminals and “rapists” from sneaking into the United States.
“At Univision, we see firsthand the work ethic, love for family, strong religious values and the important role Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans have had and will continue to have in building the future of our country,” the company said in a statement.
Mr. Trump said in a statement that Univision was breaking a contract because of pressure from the Mexican government. He also vowed not to be silenced on the subject, arguing that the United States was being damaged by costly trade deals with Mexico and an influx of illegal immigrants who are taking American jobs.
“I have great respect for Mexico and love the Mexican people, but my loyalty is to the United States and making our country great again,” Mr. Trump said.
In a subsequent interview with Politico, Mr. Trump suggested that former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida would have apologized for angering the Mexican government with such blunt remarks.
“Anyone else would be subservient to that,” Mr. Trump said. “Bush would say, I’m sorry, keep ripping us off.”
The jab at Mr. Bush comes as a poll this week showed Mr. Trump trailing him by a small margin in New Hampshire, the first primary state.
Are Donald Trump’s poll numbers too good to be true? // Politico // Daniel Strauss – June 25, 2015
Real estate tycoon Donald Trump has been gleefully calling attention to a Suffolk University poll showing him in second place among the large 2016 Republican primary field, and whispers of a Trump surge are making the rounds.
It might be wise to take a deep breath.
The poll, released Tuesday, showed former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in the lead in New Hampshire, with 14 percent, followed by Trump with 11 percent. The Trump victory dance, or tweet, quickly followed: “The highly respected Suffolk University poll just announced that I am alone in 2nd place in New Hampshire, with Jeb Bust (Bush) in first.”
It’s true that Trump did indeed take second place in that poll. But it’s also true that nationally Trump’s polling has been on the decline, and that his favorability numbers aren’t hot in New Hampshire. The poll also comes far in advance of the New Hampshire GOP primary, to be held early in 2016.
Pollsters and GOP consultants in the state chalked up Trump’s bump to a mixture of his recent candidacy announcement and the high name recognition that comes from his notoriously flamboyant personality, not to mention his reality-show fame.
“Everybody should calm down,” Andy Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center, said. “What you’re seeing is real in the sense that people who are paying any attention to this in the last week or so have seen Donald Trump on TV. That doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for him.”
Right now, the early polls don’t reflect how many hands have been shaken by a candidate or how much money has been spent on advertising or how many staffers are on the ground there.
“When you’re asking people about who they’re going to vote for in the New Hampshire primary, what you’re asking is, ‘All right, it’s months from the primary now: Who have you seen in the newspaper lately?’ And that would be Donald Trump,” Smith added.
A deeper look at the Suffolk poll results also cast doubt that this really is some kind of Trump surge. On favorability, the poll found Trump underwater among New Hampshire Republican primary voters, with 37 percent saying they had a favorable view of him, while 49 percent have an unfavorable view. A much smaller 13 percent said they were undecided on him, and just 6 percent said they hadn’t heard of him.
By comparison, the Suffolk poll found that 58 percent said they had a favorable view of Bush, while 26 percent said they held an unfavorable view of him. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who came in third in the poll, also had better favorability numbers than Trump — 53 percent said they had a favorable view of him, while 16 percent said they had an unfavorable view.
“I think there’s more bad news for him than good news,” New Hampshire Republican operative Tom Rath said, pointing to Trump’s favorability numbers. “I’m not saying the poll is invalid or that it’s faulty as a poll. The timing of it is dubious in that it’s right at the moment of the maximum publicity announcement and that there was a lot of media coverage of it, and so there’s probably a lot of oomph.”
The favorability number might actually show Trump’s ceiling, Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said. In May, the RealClearPolitics average of national polls on the GOP field put Trump at 4.5 percent. But as of late June, Trump is at 3.2 percent.
“At the end of the day, it’s quite possible that Donald Trump will get 11 percent in New Hampshire, but that might be his cap,” Murray said.
The other big tell, former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Fergus Cullen said, is that there’s no visible grass-roots movement for Trump in the state.
“Do I think it’s a substantive measure of his real support? No way. But do I think it recognizes that he has some name recognition that other candidates don’t have?” Cullen said of the poll. “What I have observed of coverage of those events is that they seem to be made-for-TV events where there’s no authentic interactions with the candidate and voters.”
Cullen stressed that this isn’t a matter of the Suffolk poll’s accuracy, just name recognition.
“If the Suffolk poll had included David Ortiz too, Ortiz might have been first or second,” Cullen said.
Donald Trump Leads All But Bush in New Hampshire // TIME // Phillip Elliott – June 25, 2015
Apparently, Donald Trump for President is a thing in New Hampshire.
A second public poll released this week shows the real estate mogul-turned-reality show star ahead of all other Republican presidential hopefuls except former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Earlier this week, when a Suffolk University poll showed Trump in the No. 2 spot in New Hampshire, some dismissed it as a fluke. Then on Thursday, a CNN and New Hampshire’s WMUR-TV showed the same. It is part of a one-two win for Trump this week, yet it also comes as Trump’s former business partners are moving away from the tough-talking bully and his incendiary comments about China, Mexico and immigrants.
While Trump is nipping at Bush’s heels, the polling also shows potential problems, including that few voters believe he has a chance at the White House. Trump is a recent addition to the race and none of his rivals have yet to treat him like a viable candidate. A trove of negative research is at the ready for his foes, Republicans and Democrats alike, to use against him. His record in business is certain to be a liability, much the way former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney spent most of his 2012 campaign on the defense against charges his work in private equity hurt workers and communities.
And as Trump’s advisers were touting the new polls, they were also going to battle with Univision, Trump’s broadcast partner for the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants. Trump’s lawyers said they were preparing to sue Univision for breaking its $13.5 million contract with the Miss Universe Organization, which Trump co-owns.
When Trump began his White House bid on Wednesday with a rambling speech, he said Mexicans coming to the U.S. were rapists and criminal. (“Some, I assume, are good people,” he added as an aside, as though that fixed everything.) Trump also said he would build a great, great wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. He later blamed the media for distorting his words.
Univision, a Spanish-language channel popular with Latinos, said it would not be broadcasting the Miss USA pageant on July 12. No matter, Trump said with typical bravado. He was still a star.
Voters in New Hampshire, at least for the moment, seem to share that view of the brash and blunt New Yorker. Jobs and the economy remain the top focus for New Hampshire Republicans, and Trump leads when voters asked who they best trust to address that subject. He also leads all others when voters were asked which candidate is least likely to act like a politician and who could handle international trade policy. He spent much of his kick-off speech railing against China, a key U.S. trading partner.
He also leads in another field: the candidate the most New Hampshire voters say they most definitely would not vote for. A full 23% of those surveyed said Trump is a non-starter. Trump is in negative territory when voters were asked their general opinion of him: 48% of New Hampshire voters see him unfavorably, while 38% look at him favorably.
At the same time, only 7% of those surveyed see Trump as having the best chance among Republicans to win the general election in November 2016. The clear frontrunner on that question is Bush: 37% see him as the best shot for the GOP to return to the White House for the first time since another Bush moved out. Jeb Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, ended his Presidency on Jan. 20, 2009.
The CNN/ WMUR New Hampshire Primary Poll was conducted between June 18 and June 24. The poll, considered one of the most reliable in New Hampshire, interviewed 402 like Republican primary voters and carries a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. That could mean the number of New Hampshire voters who say they wouldn’t support Trump could be as high as 28%.
Donald Trump says 'hypocrite' Neil Young asked him for money // FOX News – June 25, 2015
Donald Trump is saying Neil Young is a hypocrite for complaining about his presidential campaign’s use of Young’s song “Rockin’ in the Free World,” while at the same time hitting The Donald up for cash.
Trump tweeted Wednesday that Young recently came to his office seeking funds for his high-end audio player Pono.
Trump even provided a photo to prove it.
“A picture of me with this candidate was also circulated in conjunction with this announcement [for president] but It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service,” he explained.
Young blasted the Republican candidate following his announcement, claiming Trump didn't have permission to use his tune.
"Donald Trump was not authorized to use 'Rockin' In The Free World' in his presidential candidacy announcement," Young's team said in a statement. "Neil Young, a Canadian citizen, is a supporter of Bernie Sanders for President of the United States of America."
However, when FOX411 reached Trump's campaign manager for comment, he sang a very different tune.
“Through a licensing agreement with ASCAP, Mr. Trump’s campaign paid for and obtained the legal right to use Neil Young’s recording of ‘Rockin' In The Free World,'" Trump's Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski told us. "Nevertheless, there are plenty of other songs to choose from. Despite Neil’s differing political views, Mr. Trump likes him very much.”
It's not the first time -- or even the first time this year -- a candidate has been chastised by a musician for use of a tune. When Marco Rubio played the electronic hit "Something New" at a rally, the duo behind the song spoke out almost immediately, declaring Rubio hadn't obtained permission to use the song and they "don't want to be affiliated with a particular party during the upcoming presidential race."
Plus, there can be a big cost associated with using a hit song to promote a campaign.
John McCain said in 2008, though he was a huge ABBA fan, he gave up on using one of their tunes at his campaign events.
"It's more difficult to play 'Let's Take A Chance On Me' than I thought," McCain said at the time, according to Reuters. "It gets expensive in a big hurry, and if you're not careful, you can alienate some Swedes."
Scott Walker to announce 2016 intentions next month // CBS News // Stephanie Condon – June 25, 2015
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will make his presidential intentions known the week of July 13, he said on Fox News Thursday night.
In a crowded field of more than a dozen Republican candidates, Walker's standing in the 2016 polls is relatively decent, so far. In a recent Fox pollof likely Republican voters, Walker tied for fourth place. A recent NBC/ Wall Street Journal pollput him in second place.
The two-term governor has gained a reputation as a staunch conservative after successfully taking on unions in his state and pushing an often polarizing conservative agenda. Walker told Fox's Greta Van Susteren that he would bring that same moxie to Washington, should he decide to run.
Thursday's Supreme Court decision upholding a key portion of Obamacare makes the 2016 race all the more important, he said, promising to replace the health care law with conservative reforms.
"We don't just need to to talk about it, we need someone who can fight and win," he said.
Corruption Charges Against Walker Are Baseless, Supporters Say // The Daily Beast // Peter Fricke – June 25, 2015
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is being accused of mismanagement and corruption related to an economic development agency he helped create, but defenders say the charges are bogus.
Shortly after taking office in 2011, Walker spearheaded the creation of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) to replace the state’s Department of Commerce. The WEDC provides incentives for businesses to relocate to or expand operations in Wisconsin, and Walker has made the semi-public agency a centerpiece of his efforts to create 250,000 new jobs.
Since then, however, only about 147,000 jobs have been created, and reports from the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) have revealed insufficient oversight of certain notable deals, according to The Daily Beast.
A May 2013 LAB report, for example, found that WEDC had disbursed $124.4 million without conducting formal staff reviews between 2011 and 2013. Although staff reviews were not required at the time, it apparently prevented the agency from noticing problems with the applications of some business that later proved unable to live up to the promises they had made when requesting the aid.
Defenders of Walker and the WEDC counter that such criticisms are a stretch, considering they are based on findings from more than two years ago, and say the agency has made massive improvements in response to past failings.
Laurel Patrick, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office, told The Daily Beast WEDC’s loan delinquency rate had fallen from 2.7 percent to just 0.2 percent during the intervening years, and the agency now requires staff reviews for every award it hands out.
“The improvements did not go unnoticed,” Patrick said. “In April 2014, WEDC received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada, the highest form of recognition in governmental financial reporting.”
She also asserted that, “All companies that receive awards from WEDC are contractually required to meet certain objectives, which typically include job creation, job retention and/or capital investment.” When those targets are not met, she added, the state can impose penalties such as clawbacks or denial of tax credit claims.
Not everyone is appeased by that explanation, however, particularly after the Wisconsin State Journal reported on a $500,000 loan awarded to Building Committee Inc. (BCI), a construction company whose owner had donated $10,000 to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. The company eventually filed for bankruptcy, defaulting on the loan without having created any jobs.
Describing the BCI deal as “Walker’s pet project,” the liberal news outlet PoliticsUSA says the incident is indicative of the “corruption and cronyism” of Walker’s administration.
The article claims that as chairman of the WEDC at the time, Walker had sole oversight of the $124 million awarded by the agency without staff review between 2011 and 2013, and used that discretion to “[hand] out … Wisconsin taxpayers’ money to his corporate donors.”
Walker’s supporters dismiss the corruption charge as absurd, pointing out that campaign contributions do not disqualify a company from receiving state benefits and denying that politics has any influence on the decision to award subsidies to a particular company.
“Political contributions are in no way tied to awards provided by the WEDC,” Patrick told TheDCNF. “Decisions related to investments or awards are contractually required to meet certain objectives and are made according to metrics approved by WEDC’s bipartisan Board of Directors.”
Any attempt to impute otherwise, she added, “is clearly political gamesmanship by legislative Democrats and others more interested in playing politics than on helping improve economic development in Wisconsin.”
Patrick also explained that, “WEDC initially approved the BCI project because it was expected to result in the creation of 155 new jobs and nearly $4 million in capital investment,” and said the agency took immediate action once it became aware of BCI’s perilous financial condition, imposing a 12 percent penalty interest rate and initiating legal action against the company.
Scott Walker says Barack Obama told Coast Guard global warming is top threat to military and world // Politifact // Tom Kertscher – June 25, 2015
As he pursues a bid for the White House in 2016, Gov. Scott Walker has made it a point to call for more action against "radical Islamic terrorism."
He did so again while speaking June 20, 2015, in Washington, D.C., at a conference of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a group led by conservative political strategist Ralph Reed.
Toward the end of his remarks, Walker turned to national security -- or what he prefers to call "safety." He criticized President Barack Obama and Obama’s former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for president. And then he made a claim about Obama, national security and global warming.
"You know, I think about how mixed up this Obama-Clinton doctrine is when it comes to foreign policy," Walker said. "We've got a president who, earlier this year -- at the graduation ceremony for the Coast Guard Academy -- stood up and actually told the graduates that the number one threat to the military and the world today is global warming.
"Well, I've got a message for you, Mr. President: The number one threat to the military, the number one threat to America, the number one threat to the world, is radical Islamic terrorism and it's about time we do something about it."
Extended applause followed. But Walker made a far-reaching claim.
Did Obama tell graduates from a branch of the military that global warming is the number one threat to the military and the world?
What was said
Walker’s claim pertains to the commencement speech the president gave May 20, 2015, at the academy, which is located in New London, Conn.
The official text shows Obama devoted the bulk of his speech to climate change (he used that term, not global warming), describing it as a serious threat to America’s national security and to global security.
He did not go so far as to call it the top threat to the military or the world.
Here’s a key portion of what Obama said:
And this brings me to the challenge I want to focus on today -- one where our Coast Guardsmen are already on the front lines, and that, perhaps more than any other, will shape your entire careers -- and that’s the urgent need to combat and adapt to climate change. As a nation, we face many challenges, including the grave threat of terrorism. And as Americans, we will always do everything in our power to protect our country. Yet even as we meet threats like terrorism, we cannot, and we must not, ignore a peril that can affect generations ….
Here at the Academy, climate change -- understanding the science and the consequences -- is part of the curriculum, and rightly so, because it will affect everything that you do in your careers ….As America’s Maritime Guardian, you’ve pledged to remain always ready -- Semper Paratus -- ready for all threats. And climate change is one of those most severe threats.
And this is not just a problem for countries on the coasts, or for certain regions of the world. Climate change will impact every country on the planet. No nation is immune. So I’m here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act -- and we need to act now.
So, Walker suggests Obama puts climate change ahead of terrorism as a threat, but in his speech, the president notes that the U.S. needs to confront both.
We also checked five news accounts of the speech -- from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, TIME and Fox News. They all emphasized that Obama described climate change as a threat or serious threat to national security.
Other speeches
Prior to the Coast Guard speech, Obama -- in a general context -- suggested climate change is the world’s number one threat.
For instance, in his State of the Union speech in January 2015, Obama said: "No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." And in April 2015, a few days before Earth Day, he said: "Today, there's no greater threat to our planet than climate change."
So, after having identified climate change as perhaps the world’s greatest threat overall, Obama did devote a speech, given to members of the military, to the threat climate change poses to national and global security. But he didn’t go as far as Walker claims.
Our rating
Walker said Obama told the Coast Guard Academy "that the number one threat to the military and the world today is global warming."
Obama on various occasions, and in a general context, has said there is no greater threat to the world than climate change. But in the speech Walker cited, the president told Coast Guard graduates that climate change was a serious threat, not the number one threat to the military or the world.
For a statement that contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we give Walker a Mostly False.
Scott Walker’s Jobs Program Didn’t Work // The Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 25, 2015
Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s conservative governor, is reputed to be one of the most divisive politicians in America. But in one complicated situation, he’s brought people together: Wisconsinites of every political stripe agree that his cumbersomely named Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, or WEDC, is a big mess.
Here’s the thing, though: WEDC has a complex history, and its short saga is a helpful example of the challenges governors face when looking to distill their records for non-wonky national audiences.
First, some quick background. In 2011, newly elected Governor Walker replaced the Wisconsin Department of Commerce with a public-private partnership called (you guessed it!) the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, or WEDC. Walker had won the gubernatorial race a few months prior by campaigning on a promise to create 250,000 jobs in the state over the course of his first term. WEDC (commonly pronounced “weed-ick”) was supposed to help the state reach that goal and to trim some of the bureaucratic fat that existed in the commerce department.
But Wisconsin only got about 147,000 of those 250,000 promised jobs. And WEDC had serious growing pains, to say the least. A May 2013 audit from the Legislative Audit Bureau had troublesome findings, including that between 2011 and 2013, WEDC gave out $124.4 million in awards without formal staff reviews.
WEDC didn’t mandate staff reviews at the time, and the awards were all approved by the agency’s bipartisan board. Still, some of those awards went to companies that didn’t exactly handle them responsibly. For example, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that Building Committee Inc. got a $500,000 loan after falsely saying it hadn’t been sued for five years. It later defaulted on that loan and dissolved. And, as it turned out, the company’s owner had given $10,000 to Walker’s first gubernatorial campaign.
These charges of corporate welfare-mongering could be particularly politically troublesome for Walker, given that the Koch Brothers have made opposition to cronyism a key requirement for any candidates they consider supporting.
“According to WEDC, the 27 awards were tied to the creation of 6,165 jobs, but so far only 2,106 have materialized,” the State Journal said. “Many of the awards are tax credits contingent on certain job-creation goals being met.” (The biggest beneficiary of those awards was none other than Walker’s beloved Kohl’s Department Stores, which got a $62.5 million tax credit.)
Critics argue that WEDC over-promised and under-delivered, and they emphasize that some of the companies that benefited from those awards (like Building Committee Inc.) are, as the Chicago Tribune reported, affiliated with or owned by Walker donors.
So Democrats are crying foul. State Representataive Pete Barca, who is a member of WEDC’s board, called on the Department of Justice to investigate the agency because “they have the ability to probe more deeply into whether or not criminal activity went on.” (The DOJ’s press office told The Daily Beast that they don’t confirm or deny the existence of investigations.)
Democratic State Senator Dave Hansen went even further, calling for the agency—which he said is an “unmitigated disaster”—to be shut down. And on June 24, Barca and his fellow Democratic member of the board, State Senator Julie Lassa, said WEDC’s secretary and CEO Reed Hall should resign.
Walker’s defenders, meanwhile, say that WEDC’s critics don’t have much to go on. Dale Knapp, of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, said he didn’t think it was unusual that so many companies affiliated with Walker donors benefited from WEDC awards.
“These kind of companies often give to both parties, but they tend to support whoever’s in power,” he told the Beast. “The Republicans are completely in power right now, so it’s not surprising that you would see those kinds of numbers.”
Meanwhile, Mark Maley, WEDC’s public information manager, said that campaign contributions don’t impact award disbursement.
“Regarding the recipients of WEDC awards, there is no way to make this any clearer: Political affiliation and campaign contributions absolutely play no role in determining which companies receive awards from WEDC,” he told the Beast.
And it’s important to remember that the biggest problems Democrats highlight happened between 2011 and 2013. Laurel Patrick, a spokeswoman for the governor, noted that WEDC responded to bad report cards by making dozens of policy changes, including replacing outdated software, hiring a vice president of credit and risk, and implementing employee ethics policies (among a host of other changes). Maley said that since the implementation of these changes, WEDC has given out more than 760 awards, all of which were first reviewed by staff.
And Walker’s team argues that these changes paid off. Patrick noted via email that WEDC’s loan delinquency rate dropped dramatically between 2013 and 2014, from 2.7 percent to 0.2 percent.
“The improvements did not go unnoticed,” Patrick continued. “In April 2014, WEDC received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada, the highest form of recognition in governmental financial reporting.”
But another audit last month unearthed yet more room for improvement. In response, Walker called for WEDC to stop loaning cash to businesses, and instead to bankroll tax incentives with those funds. And Patrick emailed that additional changes are on the way.
But, regardless of what reforms are made, WEDC also has its fair share of conservative critics who object to the agency’s very existence. “[I] suspect Gov. Walker is starting to realize just how big a liability WEDC could be on the presidential campaign trail and is attempting to tie up loose ends ahead of his announcement this summer,” wrote Collin Roth of Right Wisconsin, a conservative website, in response to Walker’s latest round of changes to the agency.
“[P]hilosophically, if we believe in free markets and limited government, how important is a state agency that essentially tries to create jobs?” he added.
And Brett Healy, the president of the right-leaning MacIver Institute (which typically defends Walker’s policy moves), shared Roth’s opposition to government entities giving monetary incentives to individual businesses.
“The simple truth is that government should not play a role in direct economic development,” he told the Beast. “Corporate welfare is still welfare.”
“Any time the government gets involved in this type of corporate welfare—picking winners and losers—all kinds of problems seem to crop up,” he continued. “Government should instead get out of the way and let the free market function the way it is intended.”
These charges of corporate welfare-mongering could be particularly politically troublesome for Walker, given that the Koch Brothers have made opposition to cronyism a key requirement for any candidates they consider supporting.
So Walker hasn’t gotten much cover from conservatives on the WEDC question. And, naturally, his progressive foes have been even more pointed in their criticism.
“The bottom line is that Scott Walker said when he came into office, this is my blueprint for making good on my promise to create 250,000 jobs,” said Scot Ross, who helms the progressive group One Wisconsin Now. “And there were a lot of voices out there at the time—mostly on the Democratic or liberal side—saying, this is going to be transparent, and it’s just going to be a slush fund for Walker’s donors. Not only has been that, but it hasn’t created jobs either.”
“It’s an ATM machine if you’re a Walker donor,” he added.
Walker and his team have stood firmly behind WEDC. This month, the governor traveled to Canada with WEDC officials to pitch industry leaders on doing more business with Wisconsin. Maley, the agency’s spokesman, provided The Daily Beast with a list of its current initiatives, including a $300,000 grant for veteran-owned tech startups; $200,000 each to the African-American, Hmong, Native American, and Hispanic Chambers of Commerce; and community grants of up to $1 million to revitalize abandoned industrial sites. And, most importantly, Walker’s team argues that WEDC is a major improvement over the state’s now-defunct Department of Commerce.
But WEDC still might be the trickiest thing for Walker to explain on the campaign trail. Walker discusses “big, bold reforms” whenever he talks with Republican primary voters, but incremental changes—like the kind that WEDC has brought about—are tougher to sell and easier to get in trouble over, especially when your ideological allies object to them.
Chris Christie to Announce Decision on 2016 Campaign // NYT // Nick Corasaniti – June 25, 2015
Gov. Chris Christie will announce Tuesday in Livingston, N.J., whether he will run for president in 2016, a source close to his campaign confirmed.
Mr. Christie has been traveling the country under the banner of his political organization, Leadership Matters for America, delivering policy heavy speeches on entitlement reform and education, along with holding town hall meetings as part of a “Tell It Like It Is” tour.
Mr. Christie will make his announcement at Livingston High School, his alma mater.
A spokesman for the New Jersey governor declined to comment.
Once considered a Republican front-runner, Mr. Christie has since seen his national standing decline, as he has struggled to overcome the George Washington Bridge scandal and low approval ratings in his home state.
The news of his announcement was first reported by WNYC.
Chris Christie to announce 2016 bid as early as next week // Politico // Alex Isenstadt – June 25, 2015
Chris Christie is in the final stages of preparing his 2016 presidential bid, with a formal announcement possible as soon as next week, according to several sources familiar with the discussions.
The New Jersey governor’s planning has intensified in recent days. On Monday, his campaign-in-waiting announced that he’d hired two additional staffers in New Hampshire, a state seen as critical to his White House hopes. Earlier this month, Maria Comella, a longtime Christie aide, departed the governor’s official office to take a senior position at his political action committee.
A Christie spokeswoman, Samantha Smith, declined to comment. The governor’s aides have previously said that he isn’t likely to launch his presidential campaign until the New Jersey legislature finalizes the state budget — expected to be around the end of June.
The announcement will mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous political career. After defeating a Democratic incumbent in 2009, Christie established himself as the GOP’s foremost rising star — a swaggering, tell-it-like-it-is pol who seemed to be the antidote for a party that was struggling to win over voters in blue states. In the years since, however, Christie’s national prospects have been damaged — especially by the revelations that his top aides concocted a plan to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge in an act of political retribution against a local mayor who refused to endorse the governor’s 2013 reelection bid.
Christie’s once-stratospheric poll numbers — both nationally and in his home state — have since plummeted. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released on Tuesday showed Christie with just a 30 percent approval rating in New Jersey, while a Suffolk University poll showed him winning the support of only 5 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire.
But Christie’s aides insist there’s room for him in the 2016 field. With former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush struggling to distance himself from the rest of the pack, they say, the lane for an establishment candidate remains open. Aides to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is also contemplating a run, have put forward a similar argument for his potential candidacy.
The hope, Christie’s team says, is that his authentic political brand will shine through, both on the debate stage — Republicans are preparing to hold their first primary debate in August — and in New Hampshire. The state has a history of breaking for moderate, independent-minded Republican candidates, and Christie has been a frequent visitor there. Those familiar with his early planning for a 2016 bid say he’s prepared to make it the cornerstone of his electoral strategy.
In anticipation of his announcement, Christie has been hopscotching the country in recent weeks, attending Republican cattle calls in Oklahoma City, Utah and Washington, D.C., where he delivered fiery speeches castigating a Republican rival, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, over national security.
“If you want to know how little [senators] know, watch what Rand Paul’s done the last two weeks,” Christie told Republican donors at a conference in Deer Valley, Utah, hosted by Mitt Romney, referring to Paul’s opposition to the PATRIOT Act. “Because, I will tell you, he’s made America weaker and more vulnerable, and he’s done it for his own personal and political gain, and he’s done it to raise money.”
Christie has also delivered speeches in early primary states in which he’s detailed his policy proposals on issues like entitlements, taxes and electronic surveillance.
In addition to building a campaign apparatus, Christie has also hired for a super PAC, America Leads, that will be supporting his candidacy. The group recently announced that it had brought on Gene Ulm, a veteran Republican pollster, and Mike Leavitt, a mail consultant.
While Christie won’t be nearly as heavily funded as Bush — whose super PAC is believed to have brought in around $100 million so far — the New Jersey governor has a team of donors that includes Home Depot CEO Ken Langone and hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller. Both are expected to write big checks. (“I am going to work my ass off to make sure that Chris Christie never needs money,” Langone told POLITICO in January.)
Earlier this month, Christie dropped another hint that he was nearing a run. While campaigning in New Hampshire, the governor said that his family — one of the last major hurdles to his entering the race — was on board.
“This is about me now,” he said.
Bobby Jindal’s identity causes a Twitter storm in India // WaPo // Rama Lakshmi – June 25, 2015
A day after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced that he will run for U.S. president in 2016, the way he chooses to identify himself has become the subject of a trending hashtag in India.
It's called #bobbyjindalissowhite.
Jindal’s meteoric rise in the Republican Party as a conservative of color has won him many supporters in the United States. But here in India, Jindal is seen “as a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots.”
“I’m sick and tired of people dividing Americans,” Jindal said on Wednesday. “And I am done with all this talk about hyphenated Americans. We are not Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, rich Americans or poor Americans. We are all Americans.”
His remarks fueled a firestorm of jokes on Twitter that he is trying to pass as white despite his Indian roots. Here's just a sample:
Indians on social media mock Bobby Jindal candidacy // LA Times // Shashank Bengali – June 25, 2015
As a rising power, India is obsessed with its image in the world, so the announcement of the first U.S. presidential candidate with Indian roots figured to create a stir.
It probably wasn’t the kind Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wanted.
Indians on Thursday roundly mocked Jindal’s campaign kickoff announcement, particularly for the 44-year-old Republican’s line that he was “tanned, rested and ready” to run. It was widely seen as an attempt to play down his skin color to appeal to conservative voters, and fit with what Jindal’s critics say is a longstanding effort to disassociate himself from his Indian heritage.
The Twitter hashtag #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite trended in India for several hours.
Some of India’s leading newspapers ran front-page mentions of Jindal’s announcement, although the coverage was less than effusive. Lalit K. Jha, longtime Washington correspondent for the Press Trust of India, wrote in a news report that Jindal’s announcement “has failed to generate much enthusiasm among the Indian-Americans because of his recent statements in which he sought to distance himself from being an Indian-American.”
Jindal was born in Louisiana in 1971 to Indian immigrants from the northern state of Punjab. As a child he changed his birth name, Piyush, to Bobby after the character from “The Brady Bunch.” Raised by devout Hindus, he converted to Catholicism as a teenager and says his faith inspires his conservative principles, including a staunch opposition to same-sex marriage.
Jindal invoked his parents at the start of his kickoff speech Wednesday but used the word India only once: in his oft-repeated accusation that Democrats were dividing the country along ethnic, gender and class lines.“We are not Indian Americans, Irish Americans, African Americans, rich Americans or poor Americans,” he said. “We are all Americans.”
Jindal enters the Republican presidential race near the bottom of the pack and has failed to inspire much support from U.S. voters of Indian origin, most of whom lean Democratic.
“Bobby has never supported a single Indian issue, he refused to join the India Caucus when he was a congressman [on] Capitol Hill and is conspicuously absent from any event with a visiting Indian leader,” Shashi Tharoor, an Indian politician and author, wrote in a recent book, “India Shastra.”
“It is as if he wants to forget he is Indian, and would like voters to forget it too.”
Jindal is an object of fascination for a rising Indian middle class that assiduously tracks their country’s stature in the world. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi led scores of countries in marking the first International Day of Yoga last weekend, many Indians beamed with pride.
But they are less charitable when it comes to Indians abroad who are seen to betray their heritage. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, has received less than favorable press coverage for the perception that he has targeted Wall Street executives with South Asian roots, such as Sri Lankan-born hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, for prosecution of financial crimes.
Young Indians flooded social media sites with sarcastic comments when Jindal unveiled his official governor’s portrait earlier this year because his skin looked shockingly white. A photo his office tweeted this week of his family playing Monopoly inspired mockery because his young children had their shoes on inside the house, a cultural no-no here.
Mihir Sharma, a columnist for the Business Standard newspaper, accused Indian Americans of a “tendency to turn viciously on those they see as less Indian.” But even he balanced his words with a critique of the candidate.
“Typical: smug Indians trying to shame Bobby Jindal for his choices on identity, and not his awful politics,” Sharma tweeted.
Bobby Jindal’s fateful choice // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 25, 2015
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, barely registering in the polls, announced his presidential run on Wednesday. The once wonky conservative is now clinging to the Duck Dynasty star Willie Robertson in hopes of convincing the right-wing base he is one of them. It seems there is not a far-right position or slogan he does not embrace. How times change.
The Post reports:
Just eight years ago, Jindal’s future looked far brighter than it does now.
The former Rhodes Scholar and McKinsey consultant was elected governor at age 36, the first Indian American ever to govern a state. “The question is not whether he’ll be president,” Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said in 2008, “but when he’ll be president.”
Jindal seemed to offer a new vision of what a Republican could be: an Ivy League-educated son of immigrants, who had a relentless focus on making government run faster, smarter and cleaner.
“We’ve laughed at our politicians and the ones that have gone to jail and made the funny jokes,” Jindal said in 2007, after he was elected governor on the second try. “But it’s not funny anymore.”
But, as Jindal pondered higher office, he seemed to fall into a strange and vicious negative-feedback loop.
Like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Jindal felt the pull of the far right and became determined not to be passed by any more conservative contender. The problems for Jindal now are two-fold. First, his state has budget issues — he slashed taxes and now has a severe revenue shortfall — and his own popularity is in the low 30’s. Second, by going far right all he did was enter a crowded field of equally right-wing promoters. He thereby lost whatever advantages he would have had running as a conservative, reforming governor. He’s going to have to share the part of the base that thrills to extreme anti-gay marriage rhetoric, wallows in anti-Washington invective and falls prey to anti-immigration reform hysteria with a long list of contenders including Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump and Rick Santorum. His dilemma is now the same as that of each of these players: How does he distinguish himself and get more than a few percentage points?
Imagine if instead, Jindal had not, for example, flip-flopped on Common Core or tried to slash the state budget or turned up the volume on his opposition to gay marriage. Imagine if he had run as the ideal reformer — a congressman, a policy wonk, and a governor — but more conservative than Bush or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, brandishing healthcare expertise and a compelling immigrant story. He might then be competing not with small fry candidates but with more serious contenders like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Former Texas governor Rick Perry — a friend of Jindal, who endorsed Perry in 2012 — seems to have figured out that one can be a conservative governor, but also reasonable and appealing to a wider audience. (Then again Perry has his remarkable record in Texas, while Jindal is floundering back home.)
The one candidate watching with delight as Trump, Jindal, Cruz, Carson, Huckabee and Santorum scrounge for votes is Jeb Bush. Each new entry grabs at least temporarily some support from the previous entrants and from Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) It’s Bush’s ideal scenario — he claims the centrists and everyone else scrambles for the fringe. More mainstream candidates like Walker and Rubio have to fight for oxygen while rivals like Kasich or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (in 11th place in the last Fox News national poll) may not get into the top 10 for the first debate in August. It is not Bush, but Walker and Rubio who would love to get Trump, Jindal, Cruz, et. al, out of the race so they can consolidate support.
Jindal suffers from awkward over-eagerness as he tries to out-conservative the conservatives, reminding me of Mitt Romney in 2008 — the moderate Massachusetts governor reborn as a social conservative, anti-immigration reform firebrand. The danger for Jindal, as it was for Romney, is that a lack of authenticity, now compounds his challenge.
The lesson here for the candidates trying to keep pace with Bush (i.e. Rubio and Walker) is to stay out of the scrum of candidates in single digits. Instead they need to compete as not-Bush alternatives with an eye to the wider GOP primary electorate. If they try endearing themselves to the same audience Jindal and Trump seek on issues like gay marriage, the Confederate flag, trade, tax policy or other issues they will find themselves dragged down into the “also running” category. If they are constantly looking over their shoulder, afraid to dismay talk radio hosts, they will take themselves out of contention as consensus candidates. Unfortunately for Jindal, he already made that choice and as a result is unlikely to do well.
Jindal’s Facebook showing matches his lagging poll numbers // McClatchy // David Lightman – June 25, 2015
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s showing on Facebook was about the same as his showing in most polls. Unspectacular.
In the 24 hour period between 12:01 a.m. ET June 24 and 12:01 a.m. ET today 25, 316,000 people generated 542,000 interactions, which include likes, posts, comments and shares. Jindal announced his candidacy first in a tweet Wednesday afternoon and later at a Louisiana rally.
The conservative governor, who’s making a big pitch for the evangelical vote, didn’t come close to what businessman Donald Trump sparked earlier this month. Trump’s announcement generated 3.4 million “unique people” and 6.4 million interactions. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also generated numbers in the millions.
Here are some other Republican announcement showings:
Jeb Bush
493,000 unique people
849,000 interactions
Rick Perry
422,000 unique people
763,000 interactions
Lindsey Graham
84,000 unique people
142,000 interactions
George Pataki
59,000 unique people
81,000 interactions
Rick Santorum
169,000 unique people
266,000 interactions
Mike Huckabee
458,000 unique people
814,000 interactions
Carly Fiorina
304,000 unique people
515,000 interactions
Ben Carson
847,000 unique people
1.5 million interactions
Marco Rubio
695,000 unique people
1.3 million interactions
Rand Paul
865,000 unique people
1.9 million interactions
Bobby Jindal presidential bid sparks Twitter mockery // BBC – June 25, 2015
Mr Jindal launched his campaign with a call for a uniform US identity, saying he disliked Americans being identified by origin, ethnicity or wealth.
The hashtag #BobbyJindalisSoWhite began trending on Twitter after the launch.
The tweets poked fun at Mr Jindal's speech and alleged attempts to distance himself from his Indian heritage.
"We are not Indian-Americans, African-Americans, Irish-Americans, rich Americans, or poor Americans. We are all Americans," he told supporters.
Also a subject of ridicule was the fact that Mr Jindal railed against allowing "people to immigrate to this country so that they can use our freedoms to undermine our freedoms".
He added it was incumbent on migrants entering the United States to be "ready and willing to embrace our values, learn English, and roll up your sleeves and get to work".
The presidential hopeful had begun his speech with the words: "Forty-four years ago, a young couple who had never been on an airplane before left their home on the other side of the world to come to a place called America."
Indians online were not amused by his remarks.
The original hashtag #bobbyjindalissowhite was started by Indian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu, with a series of tweets. Following the success of the tag he said it was the most "satisfying thing" he had ever done.
Others chimed in, like Aasif Mandvi from the Daily Show.
The hashtag was also picked up in India, where it was among the country's top trends for much of the day.
Gopinath Gopalam, a healthcare professional from Baton Rouge, travelled to New Orleans to watch Bobby Jindal make his presidential announcement on Wednesday. Although Gopalam hails from India, he says the governor's Indian ancestry is of little importance to him. What matters, he says, is what his success says about the US.
"It's an open economy, open community," he says. "Anybody can come here and have the skill and ability they can rise to the top."
The focus on Mr Jindal's ethnicity in recent media coverage has angered many conservatives. In particular, they point to a Washington Post article that featured a quote from a Louisiana University professor who said "there's not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal".
"For years, liberals have attacked Governor Jindal for not being brown or Indian enough for their liking," Mr Jindal's office said in a statement. "Governor Jindal is proud of his heritage. He believes we need to stop fixating on race and hyphenated Americans."
Mr Jindal, who was born Piyush, told CBS news that he changed his name to Bobby after a character in US sitcom The Brady Bunch.
He also converted to Catholicism from Hinduism while he was at school.
A report in the Washington Post said many Indian-Americans who were among his first supporters are now disillusioned with what they see as efforts by Mr Jindal to distance himself from his roots.
"So what if he's Republican? So what if he's Christian? I don't care about those things, But you can't forget about your heritage. You can't forget about your roots," one of his first donors Suresh C. Gupta was quoted as saying.
John Kasich Appeals to Iowa as He Ponders White House Bid // NYT // Trip Gabriel – June 25, 2015
“Does anybody remember me?’’ John Kasich asked Iowans on his first visit to the state since an inglorious presidential bid in 1999, when he barely made an impression before dropping out.
Throughout Wednesday, as he hopscotched through events, Mr. Kasich, the two-term Ohio governor, sought to disarm skeptics of his late-to-the-party exploration of a second White House run.
“I was giant television star. Do you remember that?’’ he asked a roomful of under-40 professionals from the Bull Moose Club. There were many blank looks. “I was only at Fox News for 10 years,’’ he said, breaking into a grin.
In an interview with The Des Moines Register that ran Wednesday morning, Mr. Kasich even tutored Iowans on how to say his name. “It rhymes with basic,” he said.
But with blunt talk about his policy departures from conservative orthodoxy, Mr. Kasich appeared to make new friends in Iowa.
“I was taken aback by how straight a shooter he was,’’ said Tyler De Hahn, chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, who heard him at the Bull Moose luncheon. “He’s kind of like a Christie lite.’’
A moment earlier, Mr. Kasich had been pushed about why Ohio was not a right-to-work state. “Because we don’t have a reason to be one,’’ he said.
Like all candidates who come to Iowa, Mr. Kasich, 63, recounted well-rehearsed chapters of his biography and trumpeted his successes:
* Working with President Clinton while a member of the House to craft “the first balanced budget since man walked on the moon.’’
* His decade in the private sector. “I just loved it,’’ he said, skipping over the role his employer, Lehman Brothers, played in contributing to the financial crisis.
* His election as Ohio governor “at exactly the right time,” in 2010, when “things couldn’t have been much worse.’’
“I took a lot of the lessons I had learned in Washington to Ohio,’’ Mr. Kasic said, a line no other Republican candidate is likely to utter this cycle.
Mr. Kasich, who said he was still weighing whether to enter the race, is barely registering in Iowa polls. His formidable hurdles in the state include a lack of time visiting it, and a list of center-right policies he has supported that conservative caucusgoers are likely to reject, from expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to voting for an assault weapons ban while in Congress.
“The hurdle he’d have to get over is the strong religious right,’’ said James Gilson, a retired stockbroker who heard Mr. Kasich address the Greater Des Moines Partnership, a business and civic group.
But balancing out those negatives is the potential appeal of the straight-shooting, even gnarly, Kasich persona. Despite the state’s reputation for Iowa Nice, its voters welcome a candidate who can cut through the political catchphrases.
“He tells it like it is, and I think that’s going to be huge,” said Mike McInerney, the Bull Moose president. “Iowans really respect that.’’
GOP nightmare: Big Labor courts George Soros, Tom Steyer // Politico // Kenneth P. Vogel and Brian Mahoney – June 26, 2016
Big labor, which once relied almost exclusively on member dues to fund its political activity, is now hoping to raise huge checks for its 2016 efforts from billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer, according to confidential documents.
The documents, obtained by POLITICO from a source outside the labor movement, show labor leaders have invested considerable time and union cash to secure preferential treatment from the preeminent club of major liberal funders, the Democracy Alliance, or DA. They also offer a rare glimpse into labor’s efforts to identify rich donors who could pump money into union-linked non-profits that can legally accept unlimited donations and do not have to disclose their contributors.
One briefing document shows that a leading labor non-profit called Working America — which works to organize non-union workers to seek higher pay and better working conditions, and to elect sympathetic candidates — is focusing on donors it considers “true progressives (who) care about labor.” It offers detailed profiles with information seemingly intended to cultivate wealthy donors. Ian Simmons, the silent funding partner of the small-dollar juggernaut ActBlue, is described as “an up and comer at the DA,” while healthcare software pioneer Paul Egerman, an Elizabeth Warren confidant, is listed as “important in Democratic Party fundraising circles.”
And there are signs that Working America is trying to reach donors whose animating issues haven’t always figured prominently into labor’s playbook, like climate change. Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund billionaire who in 2014 donated $67 million to a super PAC pressing for climate change action, is described as “an advocate of promoting economic development” who is engaged in “ongoing discussions with AFL-CIO and Working America about possible points of agreement and collaboration.”
Steyer’s political adviser Chris Lehane declined to say whether Steyer or his foundation has donated to Working America or the AFL-CIO. “Tom is working closely with our allies, including labor, to build a coalition that will talk to voters about the three justices – economic justice, climate justice and educational justice,” Lehane said.
Labor’s increasing forays into big-money politics come at a pivotal time for unions and the Democratic Party.
The longtime traditional allies appeared to be closely synched heading into 2016 until a simmering feud boiled over this week. Congressional Democrats sided with Republicans to pass trade legislation bitterly opposed by labor but backed by President Barack Obama and promoted by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. Unions and their allies are promising to turn up the heat on Democrats who don’t take labor’s side on trade. Yet unions are relying on Democrats to help beat back well-funded conservative attacks on bargaining power, and many Democratic candidates, including presidential favorite Clinton, are embracing labor’s causes, such as raising the minimum wage and requiring paid sick leave.
In interviews, labor leaders confirmed that they hope to expand the reach — and revenues — of outfits outside traditional unions, which have seen their ranks and budgets slashed by Republican efforts to limit organizing rights. Labor unions have enthusiastically embraced super PACs, which focus on election spending and were an outgrowth of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. So-called “alt-labor” groups like Working America, which seek to organize non-unionized employees, such as fast-food workers, have been billed as the the labor movement’s future.
In April, four labor-linked non-profits won coveted spots among the Democracy Alliance’s portfolio of 34 groups recommended for funding. Insiders expect that to translate into serious 2016 cash for the labor groups added to the portfolio — Working America, the Working Families Party/Organization, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project.
The DA’s member donors (“partners,” in club parlance) must donate anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million to endorsed groups. And the club’s members intend to steer a total of $100 million or more to recommended groups during the 2016 election.
The list of DA partners now includes six prominent unions, with four (the American Federation of Teachers, the Communications Workers of America, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union) joining in the last two years, according to a list and other club documents obtained by POLITICO.
The partnerships require the unions to pay annual dues of $60,000. But they give the unions’ leaders access to the deep-pocketed donors and foundations who constitute the majority of the partners at the DA, which is a kind of nerve center and bank for the progressive movement, serving a similar — if less well-financed — role as the Koch brothers’ conservative funding network.
The finances of Working America illustrate labor’s efforts to diversify its funding.
The group was started in 2003 by the AFL-CIO, which originally provided 93 percent of its funding.
But by 2013 – the most recent year for which records were available – the AFL-CIO and other unions contributed only 40 percent of the $25 million raised by Working America and Working America Education Fund. The two arms are registered under sections of the tax code — 501(c)5 and 501(c)3, respectively — that do not require them to disclose their donors. But a significant portion of their budgets now comes from members who pay small voluntary dues, and deep-pocketed liberal foundations and donors who write five- and six-figure checks.
Labor non-profits like Working America in recent years have seen their fundraising spike, with non-union sources playing a major role, according to a POLITICO analysis of filings with the Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service using data aggregated by the conservative Center for Union Facts. The analysis found that 18 leading labor non-profits (including Working America and the three others added to the DA portfolio this year) raised $52 million in 2013 — 15 percent more than in 2012, despite the presidential election that year — with 13 percent of the haul coming from liberal foundations (which are required to disclose their grants in their tax filings).
“There’s a huge upsurge in this type of activity,” said Larry Cohen, the outgoing president of the Communications Workers of America, who sits on Working America’s board and helped start a handful of labor non-profits that have received funding from the CWA and have delivered presentations to Democracy Alliance donors.
Democracy Alliance president Gara LaMarche said unions are becoming more involved in the DA partly because “they recognize that the groups they have backed need to have a broader base of support. Any healthy organization shouldn’t be dependent on one main source of revenue.”
Since assuming the club’s leadership last year, LaMarche has worked to build bridges between labor and rich liberals who sometimes hold sharply different views on trade pacts and school reform – even the role of unions in public life.
“One of the good things about bringing labor and capital together in the DA is that they can have discussions about the issues on which they have been at loggerheads,” he said. He noted that the group last year for the first time elected a labor leader, National Education Association executive director John Stocks, as board chairman.
The emerging synergy is both ironic and worrisome to conservatives who track liberal money, to whom there are no greater threats than “Big Labor” and the Democracy Alliance.
“They’re constantly complaining about the horrors of our campaign finance system and yet this is a savvy way for them to make use of all the available political finance avenues to fight their battles,” said Scott Walter, executive vice president Capital Research Center, which studies liberal funding networks.
For its part, Working America says it’s more focused on courting moderate working-class members than liberal billionaire donors.
“We were delighted to be put among the groups within the Democracy Alliance and have some support, but it’s just not mostly who we are,” said the group’s executive director Karen Nussbaum.
Working America has demonstrated an ability to effect legislative and campaign fights in recent years, from city halls to Capitol Hill. It helped temporarily derail Obama’s trade deal and played a major role in lifting its preferred candidate to victory in Philadelphia’s Democratic mayoral primary. Plus, it was a leading player in pushing through minimum wage increases in more than 15 states.
It’s planning an aggressive door-to-door campaign ahead of 2016, said Nussbaum, who declined to discuss funding sources for the effort. She said Working America sees Democracy Alliance primarily as a place to forge collaborations with like-minded groups, not as a funding source.
Yet the donor profiles produced for her group suggest the efforts to build collaborations and high-dollar fundraising relationships are not mutually exclusive.
The profiles — like those prepared by development staffs across Washington ahead of prospecting meetings — include donors’ contribution histories, pet causes, hometowns, spouses’ names, etc.
Investor Sandor Straus and his wife Faye Straus are described as “genuine progressives (who) have given $10k to (Working America) through the DA for past two years” – donations that previously have not been disclosed. They did not respond to requests for comment.
At the DA’s spring meeting in April in San Francisco, they co-hosted a panel to discuss “how aligned donor, labor, and foundation investments” in regional secret-money non-profits were “making progressive wins possible at the state and local levels,” according to an agenda obtained by POLITICO.
Likewise, the Working America briefing describes Ken Zimmerman, a top official for Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic network founded by the billionaire investor Soros, as “central to meeting with the AFL-CIO about possible collaborations.” An Open Society spokeswoman said Zimmerman “has no formal relationship or involvement with the AFL-CIO,” but added that foundation officials “meet with people all the time to talk about areas of overlapping interest.”
Indeed, a pair of foundations in Open Society’s network have donated more than $10 million to various alt-labor groups since 2001, with $600,000 going to an arm of Working America in 2012, according to foundation tax filings.
Sources familiar with Soros’s relationship with Working America say he donated $150,000 from his own pocket to the group in 2006 and $400,000 in 2008, when it organized a massive canvassing campaign supporting Obama and other Democrats.
But Steve Early, a former CWA official and the author of Save our Unions called labor’s courtship of foundation donors “troubling” at times because “these philanthropic institutions are not fundamentally on the same side as any real working class movement.” He said alt-labor groups “need to develop a dues paying membership base” to become permanent sustainable organizations.
GOP insiders expect no harm from Confederate flag controversy // Politico // Kyle Cheney – June 26, 2015
Republican insiders overwhelmingly say the GOP presidential candidates gave an adequate – or even strong — response on the issue of the Confederate flag this week, after its presence over the South Carolina state capitol became a symbol of America’s racial divide in the aftermath of last week’s shootings in Charleston.
That’s the assessment of this week’s POLITICO Caucus, our weekly bipartisan survey of the top operatives, activists and political hands in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Despite a week’s worth of unfavorable headlines over the issue, the GOP insiders said the 2016 field struck the right notes after South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for removing the flag from the capitol grounds.
“Governor Romney opened the gate last weekend for Republicans to do the right thing on the flag, and to their credit, the majority of the candidates followed his lead,” said one New Hampshire Republican. “The Republicans like to talk a lot about expanding the party and reaching out to minority communities. This week, we took action on those words.”
Sixty-one percent of the Republican insiders surveyed called the collective message on the flag “adequate,” and another 21 percent called it “strong.” Democratic insiders had an opposite view: roughly two-thirds rated the GOP candidate responses as “weak” or “disastrous.”
“What a bunch of babies,” said a New Hampshire Democrat. “They couldn’t do the right thing until Haley gave them cover.”
Beneath the Republican insiders’ overall assessment, however, was some pointed criticism toward the uneven and belated responses of some of the individual candidates before they ultimately called for the flag’s removal.
“Finally they all got in line,” said another New Hampshire Republican. “Trying to work into their response a weak state rights argument completely missed the point.”
Less clear was which candidate handled the matter best. Some suggested Bush’s decision to highlight his own effort as governor to remove the Confederate flag from Tallahassee’s capitol portrayed him as a man of action. Others noted that Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, came across as the most statesmanlike. One common thread: the moment was a missed opportunity for Sen. Rand Paul, who’s staked his campaign on a push to mobilize young and minority voters he says have been left behind by Republicans.
“Rand Paul continues to be one or two beats off the mark,” said one Iowa GOP insider. “He’s building an outreach, big tent brand and would have helped himself with an immediate, unequivocal call to banish the Confederate symbol once and for all.” Other Republicans fingered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is expected to announce his candidacy next week, as the most significant flop.
“Mr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is was a ghost,” said one New Hampshire GOPer.
Here are three other takeaways from this week’s POLITICO Caucus:
Bernie Sanders is gaining traction
It’s just an iota, a speck, a lonely molecule of hope for Clinton’s progressive critics — but a handful of Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic insiders say Bernie Sanders could compete with, and perhaps even defeat, overwhelming frontrunner Hillary Clinton if the vote in their states were held today.
“Bernie Sanders is picking up steam and he has met with key groups throughout Iowa in the last 30 days,” noted one Iowa Democratic insider, who said Sanders is leading. “He is scheduled to be in town for most of next week, traveling to both northwest and southwest Iowa which are the most conservative areas of the state He looks serious and his campaign staff is targeting the most difficult areas of Iowa first. That is good strategy.”
While the majority believes Clinton would still win, there’s a palpable sense of a momentum swing in Bernie’s direction.
“Bernie is getting hot, and though the Clinton support seems broad, I wonder what would actually happen if someone said you vote next Tuesday,” offered a New Hampshire Democrat.
Chris Christie still has a shot in New Hampshire
Christie was left for dead after the Bridgegate scandal seemed to torpedo his presidential prospects, but he’s begun a slow climb back to viability. Though he’s still considered a longshot, two-thirds of New Hampshire insiders agree that he’s got a chance to win their state – a prospect that would vault him back into the top tier.
“Chris Christie has made New Hampshire his Waterloo and he will commit as many resources as possible here as he can,” said one New Hampshire Republican. “While the likelihood of a Christie win in the Granite State is still small, by flooding the zone, similar to John McCain in 2000 and 2008, Christie has an opportunity.”
Another put it more bluntly: “Live in NH or die.”
But even those who see signs of life for Christie in New Hampshire question whether Christie missed his moment.
“After being MIA for months, he’s been doing everything he’s meant to do since April in NH and he’s doing very well on the stump,” said one Republican. “But he still has zero - zero - publicly committed supporters. Time for some early TV ads? Not sure he’ll even end up filing for the primary come November.”
Iowa is a different story: few insiders think he has a prayer of winning. Two-thirds of Iowa respondents say his path there ends in a cliff. Iowa Republicans largely see him as too late and too moderate to compete in the Hawkeye State.
“He is so disliked I don’t know how he’s got a path to the nomination unless there’s a simultaneous implosion of Walker, Bush, Rubio and Kasich,” said one Iowa Republican. “The Establishment wing has more than enough choices. The Christie Casserole in the Republican buffet line will go untouched.”
Moving past gay marriage
With the possibility of a Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, a majority of Republican insiders say their presidential nominee should recognize the court decision, reiterate their support for traditional marriage, and say it’s time to move on.
“In New Hampshire the vast majority of Republican voters are [past]this issue, so it’s time for the party to get [past] it too,” said one New Hampshire Republican. “Candidates need to pivot to a more positive policy agenda: strengthening the many versions of the American family.”
“Gay marriage is already the law of the land in New Hampshire. It’s been on the books for several years, and the sky hasn’t fallen,” said another Granite State Republican. “If the Court rules in favor, Republicans should see it as an opportunity to clear the decks of an issue that they’re on the wrong side of in terms of public opinion and re-focus on better issues.”
An Iowa Republican said much the same: “Republicans need to moderate on this issue because public opinion is changing rapidly on this issue in favor of gay marriage.”
About a quarter of Republican respondents argued that Republicans can pivot from the ruling to a fight about religious liberty — a theme that several candidates struck at a cattle call last week hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
“The marriage debate is over. Religious liberty actually still has broad support in this country, unlike a federal marriage amendment,” argued one Iowa Republican.
“The logical extension of a SCOTUS decision upholding [same-sex marriage] will be for the proponents … to begin to FORCE churches to perform the marriages,” argued another Iowa Republican. “[A]dvocates will never be satisfied until every church has to perform their weddings and every vendor has to serve their cakes.”
Republicans Cite Health Care Ruling in Pushing Candidacies // NYT // Alan Rappeport – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidates were quick to pivot off the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold Affordable Care Act subsidies, arguing that the decision shows the need to replace President Obama with a member of their party.
Former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said that it should not be left to the Supreme Court to “save us from Obamacare.”
“We need leadership in the White House that recognizes the folly of having to pass a bill to know what’s in it,” Mr. Perry said. “We need leadership that understands a heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all policy does nothing to help health outcomes for Americans.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said the court erred in trying to correct Mr. Obama’s mistakes. The decision was another reason that he should be elected president, Mr. Rubio said.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said the decision should be more motivation for Congress to overturn the law.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the administration’s implementation of Obamacare means Republicans in the House and Senate must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive and costly law,” he said.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said he was the man to lead the overturn of the law.
“This decision turns both the rule of law and common sense on its head,” Mr. Paul said in a statement. ” As president, I would make it my mission to repeal it, and propose real solutions for our health care system.”
Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida said that if he becomes president, he will make fixing the health system through the private sector a top priority.
“We need to put patients in charge of their own decisions, and health care reform should actually lower costs,” Mr. Bush said. “Entrepreneurs should be freed to lower costs and improve access to care – just like American ingenuity does in other sectors of the economy. ”
The Republican National Committee decided to focus its statement not on Mr. Obama, but on Hillary Rodham Clinton and the 2016 election.
“Today’s ruling makes it clear that if we want to fix our broken health care system, then we will need to elect a Republican president with proven ideas and real solutions that will help American families,” said Chairman Reince Priebus. “Hillary Clinton supports big government mandates and expanding the government’s reach into our health care system, maneuvers that have made our health care system worse off.”
The statement made no direct reference to Mr. Obama.
GOP lawmakers: Time to move on from Obamacare repeal // Politico // Manu Raju & Burgess Everett – June 25, 2015
Republicans have tried to kill the health care law twice at the Supreme Court, only to be rebuffed. They’ve held more than 50 repeal votes, virtually all of which have died in the Senate. They tried to defund the law through the spending process, but the government shut down instead.
As Republicans process Thursday’s sharp rebuke at the hands of the Supreme Court, they’re struggling with what to do next — beset by internal divisions and procedural roadblocks that severely limit their options.
The reaction to the ruling ranged from defiance to resignation.
Many, like Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), concede the law is here to stay until at least 2017, when they hope a GOP president will finally kill it. But conservatives like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz insist Congress should use “every single tool at our disposal” now to stop the law, including holding spending bills hostage to force President Barack Obama to acquiesce.
Bad idea, say other GOP lawmakers. “We’ve tried that before, and it didn’t work very well,” said Cruz’s fellow Texan, Sen. John Cornyn.
Still others, such as Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), say it’s time to focus on fixing aspects of the existing law, rather than continuing a fruitless repeal effort.
“No, no,” responds Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.). “It needs to be repealed and replaced.”
The dissension has left some GOP lawmakers resigned and ready to move on.
“We’re going to have to go back to the drawing board, figure out if there is an alternative at this point,” Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) said Thursday. “Perhaps it’s time to move on from this particular topic.”
The latest round of soul-searching came in the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s decision in King v. Burwell. In a 6-3 ruling, the high court upheld subsidies for 6.4 million people who receive health care coverage through the federal exchange. Had the Obama administration lost the case, Republicans planned to use the ruling as leverage to push through a range of legislative options to further erode key elements of the sweeping law.
With the law intact and the president’s veto pen in the way of any conservative attempts to weaken Obamacare, the GOP has few viable alternatives. They could try to use annual spending bills again to try to gut elements of the law, but that would risk a government shutdown. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has disavowed a strategy that could lead to a repeat of the 2013 closure, by virtually all accounts a debacle for the party.
The most obvious vehicle to gut all or part of the law now is through the so-called budget reconciliation process. But budget rules are likely to prevent Republicans from doing a full-scale repeal through reconciliation legislation, given that they are required to include policy provisions that will decrease the deficit, rather than increase it.
“There are very strict rules,” warned Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a senior member of the Senate Budget Committee.
Even though reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered and can pass with just 51 votes in the GOP-led Senate, Obama could still veto any measure that emerges from Congress.
Adding to the complication is a growing debate internally within the GOP over whether to use reconciliation to attack Obamacare. Some Republicans say they should channel their energy instead on hard-to-pass legislation — like changes to entitlements or tax laws — that Obama may ultimately agree to sign.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), an ally of Speaker John Boehner’s, said the party should focus on reforms “you might be able to talk the president into,” such as changing how Medicare benefits and Social Security cost-of-living adjustments are doled out.
“To me it doesn’t make much of it point,” Cole said of using reconciliation to repeal the law.
But Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) responded: “I think we’ve got to use it for Obamacare. We’ve just got to do it.”
On Thursday, senior Republicans said the House and Senate will still hold repeal votes, even if they’re essentially for show. “In some ways, this just gets us back to our old game plan,” Cornyn said of the court ruling.
Some Republicans argue more repeal votes will keep the issue front-and-center in the 2016 congressional and presidential elections, making next November a referendum on the law.
“It means that the most significant domestic issue in 2016, at every House race, in every Senate race and for president will be centered around whether or not the country wants to keep Obamacare,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is seeking his party’s nomination for the White House.
And if Hillary Clinton wins, Graham said: “It means that Obamacare becomes Hillarycare.”
“At the end of the day, there is not going to be any complete repeal of the law until there is a new administration,” Aderholt said. “But we can’t sit back as a party who stood against it, and pretend that it is what it is and we aren’t going to do anything.”
Republicans will have a very hard time changing the law even if they sweep the 2016 elections. The Senate will likely be narrowly divided, and the vast majority of the Affordable Care Act will already be in place and relied upon by tens of millions of people.
Only a handful of provisions would still be waiting to take effect in 2017, such as the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost insurance plans, which faces some bipartisan opposition, and the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a controversial panel tasked with reducing Medicare spending growth. So far, health costs haven’t risen at a rate that would trigger the board to act.
Beginning in 2017, states will be able to get a waiver to essentially opt out of some of the ACA’s structural rules — and some Republicans see the waivers as a chance to escape some of the most onerous aspects of the law. But states will receive a waiver only if they agree to cover the same number of people and to the same extent that Obamacare would have, meaning it would be difficult to venture too far outside the confines of the ACA.
Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers said fellow GOP lawmakers should continue to press their case to keep the issue at the top tier in 2016. But he said Republicans should work now with Democrats on reforms that can win support from both parties.
“What I hope we’ll do is stay focused on the big bipartisan issues like repealing the medical device tax right now,” Stivers said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who is up for reelection in 2016 but could be vulnerable in a primary, said in an interview that she believes the priority should be to make piecemeal fixes to the law such as tweaking the 40-hour workweek requirement and boosting competition across state lines.
“We can go ahead and we can vote once again to repeal it, and I will vote to repeal it,” Murkowski said. “But I’m also very pragmatic that this repeal is not going to go anywhere with this president.”
But Cruz, who is running for president, railed against unnamed GOP colleagues whom he contended are “quietly celebrating” that the law was upheld. In an interview after making a speech on the Senate floor railing against the law, he pointedly refused to rule out using spending bills to try to defund the law again — a tactic that led to the government shutdown two years ago.
Cruz also lashed out at the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice John Roberts.
“I am disappointed in every justice who today violated their judicial oath of office and rewrote the law in a way that is contrary to the constitutional separation of powers,” Cruz said.
The Supreme Court Just Did Republicans a Big Favor // The New Yorker // John Cassidy – June 25, 2015
In public, at least, the reaction among Republicans to the decision the Supreme Court issued on Thursday to let the Affordable Care Act subsidies stand was uniform and predictable: outrage. “#ObamaCare ruling is judicial tyranny,” Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, commented on Twitter. Not to be outdone, Ted Cruz, one of Huckabee’s rivals in the upcoming G.O.P. primary, tweeted, “Any candidate not willing to make 2016 a referendum on Repealing Obamacare should step aside.”
The language from the three leading Republican candidates was a bit more measured, but their basic sentiments were pretty much the same. “This decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare,” Jeb Bush wrote in a statement on his campaign Web site. “As President of the United States … I will work with Congress to repeal and replace this flawed law with conservative reforms that empower consumers with more choices and control over their health care decisions.”
“I disagree with the Court’s ruling and believe they have once again erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama,” Bush’s fellow Floridian, Senator Marco Rubio, said on Twitter, adding, in two more tweets, “I remain committed to repealing this bad law and replacing it… with my consumer-centered plan that puts patients and families back in control of their health care decisions.”
Governor Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, tweeted: “Today’s #SCOTUScare ruling means Republicans must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive & costly law.”
Elsewhere, Republicans tore into Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted with the six-to-three majority and wrote the opinion justifying the court’s decision. Some of his critics suggested that he could no longer be termed a conservative. ”I don’t know that you can label the guy in any way, shape or form right now,” Matt Salmon, a Republican congressman from Arizona, said, according to the Wall Street Journal. Senator Cruz and Indiana Governor Mike Pence both said that Roberts and his colleagues had committed the heinous crime of “judicial activism.” (My colleagues Amy Davidson and Jeffrey Toobin have more on the particulars of the decision.)
But despite all this rhetoric, I’d be willing to wager that many Republican strategists were privately relieved at the court’s ruling. The Burwell v. King lawsuit provided a rallying point for conservative Republicans, but had it prevailed in the high court it would have blown up in the faces of the Party’s elected representatives. Not only would they have been held responsible for wrecking the federal health-care marketplace and making health insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans, they would have had to say what precisely they intended to put in its place. Despite the claims of Bush, Rubio, and others, this is a task that the Party wasn’t prepared to take on.
To be sure, over the past few months, various Republicans have put forward various suggestions for replacing all or parts of Obamacare. But these plans are all over the place. Some would maintain the generous federal subsidies as they are now; others would cut them. Some would leave the state exchanges alone; others would dismantle them. At least one proposal would jettison the requirement that insurers cover people with preëxisting conditions. And practically all of them would end the individual mandate, which would skew the risk pool toward sick people and drive up premiums. In a recent article in which she described how each of the plans would work, Vox’s Sarah Kliff wrote, “The result would likely be a world that looks much more like America before Obamacare—where fewer people are enrolled in coverage and are paying higher premiums.”
Going into an election year, that is hardly something that the G.O.P.’s 2016 candidates would want to advertise. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled against the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, Republicans can go back to what they do best: railing against the evils of Obamacare and promising to repeal it, without committing to much in the way of specifics about its putative replacement.
To their credit, some commentators pointed out some of this before Thursday’s judgment came down. The New Republic’s Brian Beutler wrote that a court ruling in favor of the King v. Burwell plaintiffs would be “an administrative and political nightmare” for a newly elected Republican President. At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall wrote a post headlined “Did Republicans Swallow Their Own Grenade?” Greg Sargent, of the Washington Post, published figures showing the numbers of people in key swing states who stood to lose their health coverage if the Supreme Court voted to gut the federal exchanges. “In Florida we’re talking about 1.3 million people,” Sargent wrote. “In North Carolina it’s over 450,000; and in Virginia it’s nearly 300,000—suggesting the political stakes are high indeed.”
The people running G.O.P. Presidential campaigns were surely aware of these figures, and the dangers they implied. But such is the level of opposition to the Affordable Care Act among Republican activists that it made no sense for any of the candidates to do anything but toe the party line. Even Bush and Carly Fiorina, who are supposedly positioning themselves as moderates, went along with it—and they continue to do so. “It is outrageous that the Supreme Court once again rewrote ObamaCare to save this deeply flawed law,” Fiorina wrote on Facebook on Thursday, before adding the obligatory, “We need to repeal ObamaCare.”
During the upcoming G.O.P. debates, we will hear much more of this kind of rhetoric, although how much it will help the Party in the general election is unclear. Taken together, the opinion polls suggest that a plurality of Americans still oppose the Affordable Care Act. But there is some suggestion that opinion is shifting. This year, the numbers favoring Obamacare have been creeping upward, and in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll, forty-seven per cent of respondents said that they approved of the reform, compared to forty-four per cent who opposed it.
It seems unlikely that Obamacare will decide the 2016 election, but it will continue to provide Republicans with something to rail against. For that, and more, the G.O.P. has John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy to thank. The two justices, both of them Republican-appointed, just saved the Party from itself.
Republicans to fight Obamacare through election campaign despite ruling // Reuters // Susan Cornwell – June 25, 2015
Republicans will keep attacking Obamacare in the U.S. Congress and on the presidential election campaign trail to energize right-wing voters and raise money, but analysts said there was little chance of the healthcare law being rolled back before 2017 now that the Supreme Court has again validated it.
On Thursday, the high court upheld a central part of the Affordable Care Act, as it is formally known. It was the second time the court confirmed the legality of President Barack Obama's biggest domestic achievement.
That greatly reduces the chances of any substantive legislative or legal challenge to the law by Republicans until a new president takes office in January 2017 after Democrat Obama leaves office.
By then, the law will have been on the books for seven years and millions of Americans will have a stake in it, making it even more difficult to dismantle.
"It is entrenched. There certainly will be no legislation (signed into law) that will change anything for the next year and a half," said Joseph Antos, an expert in health policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
View galleryRepublican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio …
Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) addresses a legislative luncheon held a …
"This administration is done with health policy. Everybody's done," Antos said.
Obamacare survived a major legal test when the Supreme Court upheld tax subsidies at the heart of the law that help millions of Americans afford premiums they pay for health insurance.
Enacted in 2010, the law was meant to provide health insurance coverage for millions of Americans who neither had insurance through an employer nor could afford an individual plan. Republicans opposed the law from the start, calling it unnecessary government interference and "socialized medicine."
More than 10 million people now have insurance purchased through state and federal marketplaces set up under the law. About 8.7 million of them get subsidies, the government says.
Following Thursday's 6-3 court ruling, Republicans quickly vowed to make the 2016 election campaign a referendum on Obamacare, expressing disappointment with the court's decision.
Democrats cheered it, however. On the presidential campaign trail, Democratic Party front runner Hillary Clinton expressed delight via Twitter. "Yes! SCOTUS affirms what we know is true in our hearts & under the law: Health insurance should be affordable & available to all," she said.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner said, "We will continue our efforts to repeal the law and replace it."
But it was unclear what Republicans could do to make good on that pledge. Republican lawmakers had worked on action plans for a high court ruling against the subsidies, but there seemed to be no clear Republican strategy for the ruling that was handed down, a resounding victory for Obama.
The Republican party is divided, said Robert Blendon, a health policy and politics analyst at Harvard University.
One wing "wants to go back to 2009" before Obamacare existed. Others have proposed alternatives. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, for instance, is urging the approval of tax credits to help people buy insurance.
Some Republicans "feel they dodged a bullet" with the court's decision, which means they won't have to anger their base by preserving the subsidies, even temporarily, said John Ullyot, a Republican strategist and former longtime Senate aide.
Most of the dozen or so Republican candidates running for their party's nomination vowed to repeal Obamacare if elected.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's campaign issued a fundraising appeal for "emergency" contributions to ensure the law is rolled back. "I will work with Congress to repeal and replace this flawed law," Bush said in a statement.
Senator Marco Rubio, another Republican contender, said: “I remain committed to repealing this bad law."
Brookings Institution analyst Stuart Butler said the law may be modified, but it is now hard to imagine it being totally repealed, even after a new president takes office in 2017.
"The longer it is on the books the harder it will be to dislodge," he said. "Not harder - impossible."
After Charleston shootings, poll highlights race dilemma for Republicans // Reuters // John Whitesides – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential contenders face a dilemma when talking about racial issues after last week's racially motivated murders at a South Carolina church, as a new poll shows many Republican primary voters are less likely to see the topic as important.
While more than three-quarters of Americans believe race relations must be addressed in the United States, a smaller majority of only about 65 percent of likely Republican primary voters agree, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found. (Graphic: link.reuters.com/dun94w)
One-third of likely Republican primary voters see race relations as unimportant to some degree, compared to only 9 percent of likely Democratic voters who feel that way.
"There is a tension Republicans are trying to navigate, and they are really stuck between a rock and a hard place," said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson.
"You have the majority of the public on one side, but the people who are actually going to vote for them in the primaries are less interested in this particular issue and may have different takes or alternate priorities altogether," he said.
The poll, carried out after the murder by a white gunman of nine black members of a Bible study group at a Charleston church, also found Democrats were more trusted to deal with race relations by more than a 2-to-1 margin.
The findings illustrate the Republican Party's challenge in trying to expand its appeal among minorities - crucial if the party is to win the presidency - and could help explain the largely muted response to the Charleston shootings by the party's 2016 presidential contenders.
Around a dozen hopefuls, who must court the white, conservative voters who dominate the party's primaries, largely steered clear of calls to action or policy prescriptions after the shootings, focusing instead on messages of condolence.
Several Republican presidential contenders and other party leaders did join South Carolina state officials earlier this week in calling for removal of the Confederate battle flag from in front of the State House, seat of the legislature, labeling it an act of healing and unity.
Republican National Committee spokesman Orlando Watson noted that call was led by Indian-American Governor Nikki Haley and a prominent black Republican, U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
"Republican leaders have stepped up and are working hard to address all voter concerns, including those involving race," he said.
After losing the 2012 presidential election, Republicans had vowed to expand their appeal beyond their shrinking base of white males and reach out to court new supporters among blacks, Hispanics, Asians and the young.
But blacks have for decades been the most loyal Democratic voting bloc, a trend only reinforced by the election of President Barack Obama, the first black in the White House.
When Obama won re-election in 2012, Mitt Romney received 6 percent of the black vote. No Republican presidential contender has won more than 12 percent of black votes since President Gerald Ford's 15 percent in 1976.
The poll found Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was considered the presidential contender who was best suited to handle the issue of race relations, with 17 percent of all adults and 32 percent of blacks viewing her that way.
The top-ranked Republican was retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the only black Republican in the race. He was seen as best suited by 7 percent of all adults and 6 percent of blacks. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was next, with 6 percent of all adults and 1 percent of blacks viewing him as best suited.
Carson and Bush are among 13 candidates who have formally jumped into the race for the Republican presidential nomination in the November 2016 election.
Some respondents to the poll said the issue of race relations simply took a backseat to more heavily debated topics such as unemployment, crime, education and trade.
"I don't know if it's really an election issue, it's a people issue. Our political leaders can't change it," said Alex Jackson, a white Republican who is a student at West Georgia College in Carrolton, Georgia. She rated race relations as "somewhat unimportant."
Mary Wickham, a white Republican in Naperville, Illinois, who also said race relations were "somewhat unimportant", said she did not see it as an issue in her diverse community and she was much more interested in a candidate's views on immigration.
"It's just not a problem here," she said of racial issues. "We pray together, we stay together."
The online poll of 1,402 Americans was taken between June 18 and 22, and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percent for all Americans and 6.4 percent for Republican primary voters.
GOP presidential hopefuls in Colorado for conservative summit - and a marijuana policy grade // The Washington Times // Jennifer Harper – June 25, 2015
Here’s another one of those bodacious weekend events, and this begins Friday: The Western Conservative Summit, staged in Denver by Colorado Christian University. “There’s a rebirth going on in America. Be part of it. After decades of slipping to the left, citizen patriots have re-engaged in the public arena, and our political discourse has been enriched by their voices,” the organizers advise the 4,000 incoming delegates.
The two-day event has also drawn seven presidential hopefuls and a spate of heavyweights ranging from radio host Hugh Hewitt and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins to CNBC anchor Larry Kudlow, security maven Frank Gaffney and Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. A “Rally on the Right” is also planned. Find it all here: WesternConservativeSummit.com
Along with all the serious policy talk and presidential posturing, the GOP hopefuls have something else to consider. Or maybe not. The Marijuana Policy Project, a research group, will release a report card on the 2016 presidential hopefuls, detailing their positions on marijuana policy. The group has organized a press conference only blocks from the summit to reveal their ratings.
“Candidate grades are based on actions they have taken and statements they have made that indicate their levels of support for ending marijuana prohibition, allowing legal access to medical marijuana, and defending states’ rights to adopt their own marijuana policies without interference from the federal government,” says Mason Tvert, the organization’s spokesman, who adds that a mammoth report card will be hoisted aloft for all the public to see.
GOP lawmaker: Blumenthal Benghazi deposition should be released // The Hill // Martin Matishak – June 25, 2015
A Republican member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi says the panel should make public the deposition of Hillary Clinton adviser and confidant Sidney Blumenthal.
“I think it needs to be released,” Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) told The Hill on Thursday.
He also argued that Democratic demands for the release are “an excuse” for the panel’s seven Republicans to do so.
If Westmoreland joined with Democrats on the special panel to vote for the deposition’s release, they’d be within one vote of forcing the matter.
Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has resisted publishing the deposition, arguing that the select committee hasn’t released a transcript of any of its previous interviews.
Democrats contend that the panel has already released nearly 60 emails to and from Clinton that Blumenthal himself turned over earlier this month.
They also believe the transcript will show the questions centered around political matters and not the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the ambassador.
Westmoreland said that Gowdy is concerned that if the transcript is published, “it would discourage, maybe, some other people from coming in voluntarily,” such as longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
“But this is the only person we had to subpoena to come in,” Westmoreland noted.
Blumenthal appeared before the committee last week.
THE LID: Glass Half Full for GOP After Obamacare Decision // NBC News // Carrie Dann & Andrew Rafferty – June 25, 2015
Republican presidential candidates have released a barrage of statements slamming the Supreme Court over today's decision to uphold Obamacare subsidies. But we have a sneaky suspicion that the court's decision isn't all bad news for GOP candidates with their eyes on the White House. For one, it allows them to keep up the drumbeat for a full repeal of the law, which will energize the base (In the latest NBC/WSJ poll, a majority of GOP primary voters - 55 percent - said that the law should be "totally eliminated," and an additional 36 percent said it needs a "major overhaul.") And they can make a big-picture argument that a Republican-held White House really is the only way to ensure the end of Obamacare, which remains relatively unpopular with independents, too. (A combined 56 percent of indies say that the law should be gutted or dramatically changed, and just eight percent of ALL Americans say they think it's working well as it is.)
The other advantage is they can continue to lambast the law without the immediate need to craft a legislative replacement, or at least figure out what to do about 6.4 million Americans who would have been effectively kicked off their health insurance plans. The candidates who are talking about repealing and replacing Obamacare are going to be under pressure to present a tangible alternative. But at least now they can avoid getting hit with ads featuring Americans who can no longer afford care after losing their subsidies.
Supreme Court Lets GOP Candidates Off the Hook on Obamacare // The Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 25, 2015
Jeb Bush didn’t waste any time not fundraising off the King v. Burwell decision.
The former Florida governor, who is currently polling at the top of the Republican pack, blasted out a statement to reporters that landed in The Daily Beast’s inbox at 11:26 a.m. And a fundraising email to supporters pegged to the decision came our way five minutes earlier.
“Friend, you know in your heart that we cannot afford four more years of the same policies, which will be the case under a Clinton White House,” the fundraising email read. “But the only way to prevent that is to make the most generous contribution you can afford right now to stop her. [that last sentence hyperlinked to a donation page].”
In his official press statement, Bush said the loss in court doesn’t mean the GOP will stop pushing for repeal. He didn’t add any specifics about what he would do as president, beyond saying that he would push for “conservative reforms that empower consumers with more choices and control over their health care decisions.”
Republican presidential candidates like Bush must have a lot of feelings about Obama’s big win at the Supreme Court today. On the one hand, they’re univocally opposed to the Affordable Care Act, and they seem to share a deep disappointment that SCOTUS ruled to keep it unchanged.
On the other hand, though, this really gets them out of the hot seat. Proposing policy fixes for the millions of people who received government subsidies to offset the costs of health insurance they bought through the federal exchange would have been, from a political standpoint, extraordinarily dicey.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry promptly blasted out a statement decrying the justices’ move and calling for new leadership in the White House (hint hint!).
“While I disagree with the ruling, it was never up to the Supreme Court to save us from Obamacare,” he said in the statement. “We need leadership in the White House that recognizes the folly of having to pass a bill to know what’s in it.”
Senator Ted Cruz, meanwhile, compared the justices to the 20th century’s most celebrated illusionist.
“Today, these robed Houdinis transmogrified a ‘federal exchange’ into an exchange ‘established by the State,’” he wrote.
“These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans,” he continued. “Unelected judges have once again become legislators, and bad ones at that. They are lawless, and they hide their prevarication in legalese. Our government was designed to be one of laws, not of men, and this transparent distortion is disgraceful.”
Proposing policy fixes for the millions of people who received government subsidies to offset the costs of health insurance they bought through the federal exchange would have been, from a political standpoint, extraordinarily dicey.
And Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin who’s expected to announce a presidential bid next month, immediately looked to Republicans in Congress for answers.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the administration’s implementation of ObamaCare means Republicans in the House and Senate must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive and costly law,” he said in a statement.
“Now, instead of just finger-pointing from the president for why his law is failing, we need real leadership in Washington, and Congress needs to repeal and replace ObamaCare,” he continued.
And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal also came out swinging.
“Republicans must outline a clear and coherent vision for health care to win the trust of the American people to repeal Obamacare,” he said. “And right now, I am the only candidate to put forward a comprehensive plan.”
Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner summarized Jindal’s healthcare plan as an approach that would “wipe out Obamacare completely, return tax and spending levels to where they would have been if the law had never passed, and build a free market alternative from scratch.”
And former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina took to Facebook to call the court’s decision “outrageous.”
“We need to do the one thing we’ve never tried in our healthcare system—real competition,” she continued.
“And competition doesn’t mean eliminating care for those with preexisting conditions,” she added. “States should administer high-risk pools for those who have real needs. We’ve seen this in action—New Hampshire was able to administer high-risk pools effectively before Obamacare.”
Fiorina’s response is about as detailed as the Republicans got. The Burwell decision has taken them off the hook. And if others follow Bush’s lead, it might get them a windfall.
GOP chairman: Only way to fix healthcare is to elect Republicans // The Hill // Ben Kamisar – June 25, 2015
The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold ObamaCare shows that the only way to fix the healthcare system is to elect Republicans, the party’s national chairman wrote Thursday.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus joins scores of GOP lawmakers bashing the court’s opinion with an op-ed published hours after the ruling.
“The Supreme Court’s decision today doesn’t change the facts: Obamacare was so poorly written, so sloppily created, that all these years later it is still creating confusion and frustration for Americans,” he writes.
“The country is ready for a new direction, and today’s ruling makes it clear that if we want to fix our broken health-care system, we will need to elect Republican leaders with proven ideas and real solutions that will help American families.”
Priebus laments the costs of the healthcare law, attributing it to “slow job growth, rising insurance premiums and even shuttered small businesses.
He also bashes President Obama for promising that everyone would be able to keep their plans and doctors and pushes back at the assertion that the GOP doesn’t have its own health care plan.
“Democrats continue to suggest that Republicans don’t have other plans. That’s because they want people to think there’s no choice but to put up with Obamacare,” he writes.
“There are Republican alternatives, proposed by members of both the House and the Senate. All Republican plans are better than what Democrats, President Obama, and Hillary Clinton have forced on us — and would continue to force on the country. All are better than the mess we’re in.”
His rival, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), critiqued similar arguments in comments Thursday on CNN’s “Wolf.”
“This is a case of sour grapes and a case where Republicans are entitled to their opinions but not their own facts,” she said.
“The facts are that healthcare insurance rates are increasing at their slowest rate in 50 years. We have 16 million people who have health insurance coverage who didn’t have it before.”
Priebus's piece adds that the party is in agreement on providing access to those with preexisting conditions, keeping young adults on their parents’ plans until they turn 26, a patient-centered approach instead of a government-centered approach, insurance competition across state lines and lawsuit reforms.
GOP Field Renews "Repeal Obamacare" Battle Cry // Real Clear Politics // Caitlin Huey-Burns – June 25, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court moved Thursday to uphold a law that Republicans, particularly those running for president, intensely dislike.
But the court’s decision to leave the Affordable Care Act intact may have a silver lining for the GOP field: It allows them to renew a once potent rallying cry -- anti-Obamacare rhetoric -- that had become somewhat dormant on the campaign trail as the justices mulled whether subsidies for health coverage purchased on the federal insurance exchange were lawful.
Almost immediately after Thursday’s 6-3 ruling, Republican White House hopefuls lined up behind a revamped cause: to repeal and replace the law entirely.
“This decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said. “As president of the United States … I will work with Congress to repeal and replace this flawed law with conservative reforms that empower consumers with more choices and control over their health care decisions.”
In announcing his candidacy last week in Miami, Bush notably left off the “repeal” mantra from his speech. And several candidates running for president had been markedly quiet about the ACA ahead of the court’s ruling, tending to mention it only as one in a litany of complaints about what they consider big-government overreach.
As the subsidies for 6.4 million Americans hung in the balance, Republicans were faced with a politically sticky challenge of wanting the court to unravel the law while also worrying about how to address the needs of millions of Americans who would lose their coverage. Republicans were divided on how best to proceed if the court struck down this integral part of the law, with some wanting to temporarily extend the subsidies while others preferred holding to principle and letting them expire.
The matter would have been particularly challenging for candidates in swing states with high numbers of voters receiving the federal aid. Florida, for example, the home state of Bush and fellow candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, has the largest contingent of people (1.3 million) getting subsidies. (Florida is one of 34 states that uses the federal exchange instead of a state-run marketplace.)
Now, Republicans can privately breathe a sigh of relief about avoiding a divisive and politically complicated scenario on the policy and constituent-relations front.
“I think that in some ways this actually could help our presidential candidate because there won’t be the folks out there without subsidies screaming out,” Arizona Republican Rep. Matt Salmon told RCP. “I think that most Americans that have really been hurt [by Obamacare changes] over the last couple years will be the loudest voices now and I’m not sure that won’t help our candidate.”
Rubio, who was hosting a veterans event in New Hampshire when the ruling came down, said he was committed to repealing the law and replacing it with his own proposal of a “consumer-centered” plan that he says would give patients and families more control over their health care decisions, something for which most of the GOP contenders have advocated.
While Republicans will push more loudly on the campaign trail for gutting the law, the replacement part could become tricky. There are various proposals from members of Congress and outlines suggested by presidential candidates. But the party is not united around an alternative plan. Still, the Oval Office aspirants will argue that a replacement can only come with a Republican in the White House.
“Today’s decision only reinforces why we need a president who will bring about real reform that repeals Obamacare and replaces it with a plan that expands consumer choice, increases coverage, delivers better value for the dollar, and gives states more control, without stifling job creation,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a GOP presidential contender who voted against the law in 2010.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is expected to announce his candidacy next month, echoed those sentiments, and added that the ruling “means Republicans in the House and Senate must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive and costly law.”
Most of the Republican candidates released similar statements.
Ohio's John Kasich, one of the few Republican governors to accept the expansion of Medicaid coverage in his state offered under the Affordable Care Act, called for replacing Obamacare with a more market-driven solution administered by the states. "We will continue to pursue innovative ways for Ohio to best meet the unique needs of our residents, in line with our priorities, and reduce the negative consequences of this flawed law," the governor's spokesman, Rob Nichols, said.
Though the Supreme Court removed doubts about pieces of the law, enabling Republicans to run fully against it -- as occurred in 2012 and during the 2010 and 2014 midterms – the GOP may find the issue to be less of a driving issue for voters. Recent polls show a slight majority of Americans oppose the law.
Democrats, on the other hand, are poised to run by fully embracing it—literally. After Thursday’s court decision, Hillary Clinton tweeted a picture of her and President Obama embracing. Democrats will likely frame Republicans as working to take away insurance from people who now have it under the health care act.
Republicans, however, wasted no time in focusing on the general election opposition. "Hillary Clinton supports big government mandates and expanding the government’s reach into our healthcare system, maneuvers that have made our healthcare system worse off,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
Republican Presidential Candidates Blast Supreme Court Ruling // The Daily Caller // Alex Pappas – June 25, 2015
The Republicans running for president in 2016 expressed disappointment — and in one case accused the high court of “judicial tyranny” — after the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld federal subsidies under President Obama’s health care law.
“Today’s King v. Burwell decision, which protects and expands Obamacare, is an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny,” said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. “Our founding fathers didn’t create a ‘do-over’ provision in our Constitution that allows unelected, Supreme Court justices the power to circumvent Congress and rewrite bad laws.”
“This decision turns both the rule of law and common sense on its head,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said. “Obamacare raises taxes, harms patients and doctors, and is the wrong fix for America’s health care system.”
“It is outrageous that the Supreme Court once again rewrote ObamaCare to save this deeply flawed law despite the plain text and in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is not working for the majority of Americans,” said former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
“I disagree with the court’s ruling and believe they have once again erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama and Congress in forcing Obamacare on the American people,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“I am disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling in the King v. Burwell case,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said. “But this decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare.”
“While I disagree with the ruling, it was never up to the Supreme Court to save us from Obamacare,” former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. “We need leadership in the White House that recognizes the folly of having to pass a bill to know what’s in it.”
“Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, the debate will grow,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said. “Conservatives must be fearless in demanding that our leaders in Washington repeal and replace Obamacare with a plan that will lower health care costs and restore freedom.”
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the administration’s implementation of Obamacare means Republicans in the House and Senate must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive and costly law,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who’s exploring a run, said Thursday.
Conservatives Unleash Fury at One-Time Hero John Roberts // Bloomberg News // Sahil Kapur – June 25, 2015
After the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to reject an existential challenge to Obamacare on Thursday, conservatives took direct aim at the author of the decision: their one-time hero Chief Justice John Roberts.
Their sentiments were channeled by several Republican presidential candidates, who lashed out at the Roberts Court for its purportedly activist pro-Obamacare ruling.
“Roberts told everybody he was just going to be an umpire and call strikes and balls, but now as justice he’s got two results-oriented decisions that go far beyond that role,” said Club For Growth President David McIntosh, suggesting his group will seek to avoid future nominations like Roberts. “What the Club does, in picking candidates, is look at their record, and look at not just what they have stood for on economic issues but what they’ll do in the future. What the Club will want candidates to ask their potential nominees is: Will they be faithful to the Constitution?”
"Today the Supreme Court allowed itself to be intimidated."
Michael F. Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute
Shortly after the decision, Competitive Enterprise Institute general counsel Sam Kazman told reporters that Roberts’s rationale seemed to abandon the logic of “what words mean” in favor of executive power.
“We were very surprised by his reasoning in the NFIB case [in 2012 about Obamacare's individual mandate], and we’re even more surprised by his reasoning here,” said Kazman, who largely coordinated the plaintiffs’ case. “Frankly, since the entire purpose of the Constitution was to impose restrictions on government, we see his ruling as a weakening of that.”
Elsewhere on the right, Roberts’s decision was being interpreted as a failure of Republicans to properly vet nominees–or worse. Phil Kerpen, whose group American Commitment had popularized videos of Obama administration consultant Jonathan Gruber appearing to make the plaintiffs’ case in King, directed followers to a 2005 column that decried Roberts as a “political” appointee who would not rely strictly on the Constitution. The author of that column, Ben Shapiro, took a sort of Twitter victory lap.
“Republicans should be asked: knowing then what you know now, would you have voted to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts?” Shapiro wrote.
Conservatives had plenty of help from their presidential contenders, who didn't explicitly name Roberts but launched a series of arrows at his ruling and his court.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a former lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court, came out swinging against the ruling as "judicial activism, plain and simple," and swiped the majority as "robed Houdinis" who made a "nakedly political" move.
"These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans," he said. "Unelected judges have once again become legislators, and bad ones at that. They are lawless, and they hide their prevarication in legalese. Our government was designed to be one of laws, not of men, and this transparent distortion is disgraceful."
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was no less fired up.
"Today's King v. Burwell decision, which protects and expands Obamacare, is an out-of-control act of judicial tyranny," he said. "Our Founding Fathers didn't create a 'do-over' provision in our Constitution that allows unelected, Supreme Court justices the power to circumvent Congress and rewrite bad laws."
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a likely candidate, adopted the attack with a string of tweets quoting Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent that the law should now be called "SCOTUScare." Senator Marco Rubio subtly accused the justices of taking policy in their own hands, saying they "erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama and Congress in forcing ObamaCare on the American people." Other Republican candidates took aim at Obamacare but not the Supreme Court.
A blog post by Michael F. Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute, an architect of the King v. Burwell lawsuit, blared "Supreme Court Validates Obama’s Power Grab."
"Today the Supreme Court allowed itself to be intimidated," he wrote, warning that the ruling "establishes a precedent that could let any president modify, amend, or suspend any enacted law at his or her whim."
The anger at Roberts spanned generations, uniting all manner of conservatives in a distrust at the Republican establishment. David Limbaugh, the author and brother of radio host Limbaugh, asked why Republicans “end up with so many Trojan Horse Supreme Court appointments.” Sean Davis, a senior editor at the conservative web site The Federalist wrote bitterly that “every fancy conservative legal foundation said Roberts was the most amazing nomination ever.”
On the more conspiracy-minded end of the spectrum, libertarian author Wayne Root wondered in the website The Blaze: "Has Supreme Court Justice John Roberts been blackmailed or intimidated? I would put nothing by the Obama administration that lives and rules by the Chicago thug playbook."
Republicans Go On Obamacare Offensive: 'A Reckless Law' // The Weekly Standard // Daniel Halper – June 25, 2015
In anticipation of the Supreme Court's forthcoming ruling on the Obamacare case, the Republican National Committee is going on the offensive. In a new 66-second web video, which is set to be released later today, Republicans are blaiming the law on Democrats who "pushed through Obamacare." Not a single Republican voted for Obamacare's passage.
Watch here:
The ad features some of the loudest (and most unpopular) voices on Obamacare.
"You know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever," Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber is quoted as saying in the ad.
"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it," Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, says in the ad.
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," Gruber is heard saying.
Then news reports are played describing that the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, is not working as intended and that it isn't affordable as promised.
An on screen graphic says that Obamacare is "hurting the American people."
Finally, the ad ends with Hillary Clinton, who advocated Hillarycare in the 1990s and who is seeking the Democratic nomination.
"Obama & the Democrats rush to pass Obamacare," reads the finaly on screen graphic. "Americans are paying the price. Help us stop Hillary. StopHillary.gop."
The web ad is titled, "A Reckless Law."
Obamacare ruling: Six takeaways for 2016 // Politico // Glenn Thrush & Kyle Cheney – June 25, 2015
Today was the rarest of days in American political history — the legacies of both a sitting president and a Supreme Court chief justice were defined in an instant.
While the jockeying swarm of 2016 aspirants aren’t posing for posterity, they are angling for power — and the court’s 6-to-3 decision upholding Obamacare subsidies alters their calculations. It’s nothing compared to the unpinned hand grenade that would have been chucked into the field if the Affordable Care Act had been toppled as many analysts (and Republicans) conjectured, but it’s forcing a rethinking nevertheless.
President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hailed the decision as an unalloyed and historic victory, even if one cynical Democrat interviewed by POLITICO thought a loss would have galvanized Clinton’s sleepy base like “nothing else could have.”
The ruling’s real political import lies on the Republican side, which is united in opposition to Obamacare but deeply divided on how to get rid of it — and even over the tone to use when saying nasty things about it.
The consensus: It was a constitutional abomination and an electoral godsend. “The ‘repeal Obamacare’ idea was good politically, but in practice, to peel back that whole program, was more complicated and less realistic,” said Jason Roe, a California-based Republican consultant. “I don’t think there is any [Republican] who can point to something and say, ‘this is the consensus replacement,’ and that was part of our struggle. What’s next? Republicans don’t need to answer that now.”
“In general, I’d say this was decent day for the Republican Party,” said a top staffer for a Republican 2016 candidate. “It’s cleared off the table… And we don’t have to spend the next 18 months trying to create a replacement for all the people who would lose coverage.”
With the case off the table, here are six takeaways on the decision and its impact on a very rattled 2016 GOP field:
1. The pitchforks are coming for you, Jeb and Marco
Rage-against-the-machine anger has fueled the Republican resurgence since 2010 – actually since CNBC’s Rick Santelli coined the “Tea Party” moniker during a rant against a proposed mortgage bailout in February 2009. Six-plus years later, the tension between the party’s conservative base and more moderate/establishment/big-money candidates remains a serious issue, which explains why the second-tier candidates wasted little time in adopting the language of grievance demanded by the party’s base.
With the ultimate fate of the health care law seemingly decided for good, there are really only two moves left for a GOP field seeking to derive political capital from Obamacare: move on, with a promise to repeal it later, or point fingers and demand Republican traitors get the tar-and-feather treatment.
The top tier candidates as defined by establishment support and cash — namely Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio –were more muted in their responses than lower-down-the-pole candidates like Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson, who has likened Obamacare to slavery.
Bush’s statement was bloodless, trust me-I’m-angry boilerplate: “I am disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling in the King v. Burwell case. But this decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare.” Bush also vowed to go the repeal-and-replace route, even though he hasn’t backed a specific plan.
Marco Rubio, who also favors repeal and replacement, touted his “consumer-centered plan that puts patients and families back in control of their health care decisions,” employing the measured language of a man with one eye on a general election audience.
Contrast that with Huckabee’s fight-to-the-gates-of-hell rhetoric. A press release/fundraising pitch blasted minutes after the decision came down featured the following subject line “Breaking: Judicial tyranny & Obamacare!”
Carson likened to the decision to a death. “Those of us who pledge to repeal ?#Obamacare must redouble our efforts and not waste time and energy mourning today’s ?#SCOTUS ruling,” the surgeon-turned-politician tweeted.
These factions are about to collide on a debate stage. If there was any doubt of that, it was dispelled by Ted Cruz’s post-decision salvo pointed at many in his own party. “[C]rocodile tears are flooding our nation’s capital today over the Supreme Court’s decision to illegally rewrite Obamacare, which has been a disaster since its inception. But one day of faux outrage from the Washington Cartel won’t fool the millions of courageous conservatives across our country,” he wrote in a fundraising email. “They know the Republican leadership in Washington is quietly celebrating the Court’s decision. If they believe this issue is now settled so they don’t have to address it, they are sorely mistaken.”
Then, this: “Every GOP candidate for the Republican nomination should know that this decision makes the 2016 election a referendum on the full repeal of Obamacare.”
2. It’s Ted Cruz’s moment – not
The tea party favorite – who has repeatedly crossed from Senate to House to whip up the anti-ACA faithful against leadership foot-draggers – had his most memorable (and donation-inducing) moments battling Obamacare, including orchestrating the government shutdown strategy that earned him bipartisan scorn but near-deification among conservatives. This could’ve been the Texas senator’s Supreme-Court endorsed moment of triumph, and he could have rightly taken credit for creating many of the arguments that led to the undoing of a law he views as an abomination.
Had the law been toppled, as Cruz and many other GOP candidates anticipated, he would have had a crowning moment of political product differentiation from the 2016 field – he had already said that he would block efforts by fellow conservatives to extend Obamacare subsidies temporarily to deal with the post-Obamacare shock. “I think the best legislative option is to allow states to opt out,” Cruz said. “I am cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will conclude in King vs. Burwell that the Obama IRS … acted lawlessly.”
That didn’t happen – robbing Cruz of a chance for another big look-at-me moment in the Capitol and keeping him, for the moment, pinned to the 4 percent national showing he managed in the most recent FOX News poll.
3. Start calling it “Hillarycare,” please
Hillary Clinton bashed Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign for refusing to put the individual mandate in his somewhat half-baked campaign health-care proposal. As it turned out, Obama flipped quickly once he took power, and the Hillary-backed mandate was the basis for the King v. Burwell challenge – vindicated by the Roberts Court today.
Clinton has been very complimentary toward her one-time rival but she also wants America to know that the idea was, um, hers. In a five-graph statement applauding the decision Clinton didn’t once use the words “Obama” or “Obamacare” – and she concluded with it a not-so-subtle reminder that she was crusading on health care when the president was still an unknown community organizer in Chicago. “I’ve fought for the promise of quality, affordable health care for every American for decades. And I’m not going to stop now. Anyone seeking to lead our country should stand up and support this decision.“
4. Scott Walker is a happy man
That low whoosh is the sound of Wisconsin’s Republican governor – and the third member of the presumptive top tier – breathing easier. Walker had jammed 90,000 constituents onto the federal exchange as part of a contorted health care overhaul – meant in part to snub Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. But if the court had ruled against the White House, those 90,000 people – plus another 70,000 who also signed up — might’ve been left uninsured. Walker was preparing to blame the White House for the crisis, but more than any other GOP governor, he hung his own reform effort on the success of the federal program.
But Walker’s not the only governor wiping sweat off his brow. Chris Christie vetoed efforts by lawmakers in New Jersey to establish a state-based exchange, forcing his constituents to sign up for the federal version. That left more than 170,000 residents at the mercy of the court, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Bobby Jindal never even sniffed in the direction of a state exchange, and another 137,000 residents there could’ve been in trouble. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich – often painted as a friend of Obamacare because of his crusade to implement Medicaid expansion – refused to build a state exchange, leaving 160,000 residents on the hook.
Earlier in the week, Walker took to the CNN op-ed page to pre-spin the ruling, declaring that the onus fell on the White House and Congress to quell any crisis created by the court. Post-ruling, he returned to a more comfortable flavor: vanilla. “Today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the administration’s implementation of ObamaCare means Republicans in the House and Senate must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive and costly law,” he said.
5. Ca-ching
Cue the pleas for credit card numbers and contact information. Faster than John Roberts’ gavel could come down, campaigns stuffed their supporters’ in-boxes and Twitter feeds with frantic appeals. Huckabee asked for $10 – or $50 – to help him “lead this fight as President to repeal Obamacare.” EMILY’s List, a Democratic powerhouse, asked for $3 to “help elect a president who will appoint thoughtful Supreme Court justices and a Senate who will confirm them.” And on Twitter, Hillary Clinton asked for supporters to enter their email addresses if they “stand with Hillary for health care.”
6. Benedict Roberts
Once hailed by Republicans as the youthful leader of a new conservative jurisprudential era, Roberts is being vilified after penning the two decisions that preserved the signature Democratic policy accomplishment of the last four decades. Cruz, didn’t call him out by name, but it’s only a matter of time. “For the second time in just a few years, a handful of unelected judges has rewritten the text of Obamacare in order to impose this failed law on millions of Americans,” Cruz wrote. “The first time, the Court ignored federal law and magically transformed a statutory ‘penalty’ into a ‘tax.’ Today, these robed Houdinis transmogrified a ‘federal exchange’ into an exchange ‘established by the State.’”
GOP, Democrats seek campaign cash from Obamacare ruling // USA Today // Fredreka Schouten – June 25, 2015
Republicans and Democrats alike quickly sought to raise political donations off the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday to uphold a key component of President Obama’s health-care law.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who says he will repeal the law if elected, asked supporters for an “emergency contribution of $50, $25 or $10″ to ensure that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton won’t be elected.
Bush, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said Obama “forced” the law on the public “in a partisan and toxic way” and “Hillary Clinton will be more of the same.”
America Rising, a group dedicated to digging up unflattering information on Clinton and other Democrats, picked up the theme in its plea for cash. “We need to make sure Hillary Clinton — the mother of Obamacare — does NOT become president,” the group said in a reference to Clinton’s unsuccessful health-care initiative as first lady.
The Senate Majority Fund, a group working for a Democratic takeover of the U.S. Senate, asked supporters to “give every dollar you can spare this second” to prevent Republicans from controlling both the Senate and White House in 2017 and repealing the law.
In an email sent out early Thursday afternoon, Clinton celebrated the high-court victory, but didn’t ask for cash — at least not yet. Instead, her missive sought to collect the email addresses of people who agree with her that “access to health care is a basic human right.”
Tuesday marks the first major fundraising deadline for most 2016 presidential candidates.
Campaign swag and “Made in America” in the 2016 election // CBS News // Jenna Sakwa – June 25, 2015
The selling of presidential campaign swag is a fundamental part of nearly every major political campaign. It helps bring in money, build donor databases, and swag also makes a statement about the candidate.
One question some campaigns wrestle with is whether every piece of merchandise sold with their names writ large needs to be stamped "Made in America." For many, the answer is, in essence, not necessarily.
Republican candidate Rand Paul is currently selling a shirt on his website that declares "Defeat the Washington Machine, Unleash The American Dream."
Its label reads "Made in Guatemala."
"All of our products are either made in America, or printed in America," a spokesman for the Paul campaign said. "The [campaign] store was built and is run in the heartland of America. Unfortunately, not all products sold in the US are American made, but we are continually looking for products to offer that are."
Bella + Canvas, the company who manufactures the t-shirt says it does, in fact, have a "Made in the USA" collection as part of its full line. However, the shirt sold on Paul's website is not part of it.
Candidates on both sides of the aisle are pledging American-made products this cycle. Democrat Hillary Clinton's store advertises that her campaign's items are both American-made and union-made.
And spokespeople for the campaigns of Republicans Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio tell CBS News all of their merchandise is made in the USA.
In 2012 both Mitt Romney and President Obama's presidential campaigns sold exclusively made-in-America swag.
Romney's former digital director Zac Moffatt, who oversaw the campaign's e-commerce store, explained that sourcing all of a campaign's products in the U.S. can present some challenges.
"You would be surprised how hard that can be," Moffatt said. "We were often running out of inventory."
Meaghan Burdick, who was in charge of marketing and merchandising for Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns, said American-made goods can also be more expensive, but the campaign products set the tone.
"You're running for President of the United States, so I think it should be made in the U.S.," Burdick said of the products she ordered. "We felt extremely strongly about it. We tried to have everything union-made, so it was made in the U.S. and union printed."
Many of the Republicans running are more flexible than Democrats on the origins of their candidate bobble-heads or bumper stickers. They largely support trade initiatives, as their congressional votes on trade suggest (Democrats are divided), and they say that the wares on their websites reflect this attitude.
"We live in a global society," explains Sean Spicer, communications director for Republican National Committee. "We are a party that welcomes and believes in free trade."
So, it depends on the message candidates want to send. The lengths to which campaigns will go to ensure every product is made in America, Spicer says, are the decisions of each individual candidate.
Obamacare Ruling May Have Just Killed State-Based Exchanges // NYT // Margot Sanger-Katz – June 25, 2015
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that health insurance consumers can receive federal subsidies regardless of their state’s role in running their insurance market, fewer states may stay in the game.
When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, most people expected that each state would want to run its own health insurance marketplace. That never really happened, as many states opted to let the federal system, HealthCare.gov, do the work for them. Many of those states that did try running their own marketplaces are starting to think twice.
Now, with the Supreme Court ensuring that every state’s consumers will have equal access to federal subsidies, it is becoming clear that more of those states will revert to a federal system for enrolling people in health insurance.
“There may be a little bit of buyers’ remorse going on in some state capitals right now,” said Sabrina Corlette, the director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. She said states underestimated the difficulty and expense of building and maintaining state marketplaces. Now, she said, many officials are asking: “What did we get ourselves into?”
As the law envisioned, state exchanges would provide an opportunity for state insurance regulators to oversee their markets, a role they have long performed. The state exchange system would also allow a greater degree of policy flexibility and control, so state officials could customize the marketplaces for local conditions. What few people grasped was the technical and logistical challenge of building a complex website and customer service operation from scratch.
“Certainly, one of the lessons learned was that it is much more difficult than was expected,” said Joel Ario, who ran the office in the Department of Health and Human Services devoted to building the exchanges after the law passed. He is now a managing director at Manatt Health Solutions, a consulting firm that is assisting several states.
In the first year of operation, three state exchanges — Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon — had technology failures so profound that they handed the bulk of their operations to the federal government. Other states managed to rebound from a troublesome first year by rebuilding their systems, but only with substantial effort and expense. Both Massachusetts and Maryland essentially started from scratch in 2015.
As my colleague Abby Goodnough reported this month, state struggles continue. The Hawaii exchange is collapsing, while Vermont’s looks shaky. Even some exchanges that have performed relatively well — including Washington and Minnesota — are experiencing substantial information technology problems. And the expense of managing an exchange is also climbing in many places as federal start-up funding diminishes. The Washington Post reported in May that nearly half of the states are suffering from financial difficulties.
“There is no new money now to build new infrastructure, and there are no grants available to fix these systems if they’re struggling,” said Heather Howard, the director of the State Health Reform Assistance Network at Princeton University, which was set up to advise states on exchange building. “So the only path forward may be to use HealthCare.gov.”
Lawrence Miller, chief of health care reform in Vermont, who reports to the governor, said his state was still working hard to try to repair its exchange architecture — and he hopes he succeeds. But he said he also took some solace in the court’s decision.
Ms. Howard says the future for many states may be something along the lines of the New Mexico system. That state performs some of the functions envisioned for a state exchange, including selecting the health plans that will be sold on the state’s marketplace, and collecting fees from insurers. But it uses the federal government’s HealthCare.gov infrastructure to determine people’s eligibility for insurance and sign them up for health plans.
The National Association of State Health Policy, an organization closely watched by state officials, recently published a paper describing how states can transition to the New Mexico model. People working closely with state governments say they expect the template to become increasingly popular.
If the court had ruled for the health law’s challengers, we would have seen more states adopting the state-based model to preserve subsidies for their residents. Now that the government has won, movement is likely to be in the other direction.
Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling benefits way more people in red counties than blue // WaPo // Philip Bump – June 25, 2015
Whether or not Republican politicians consider Thursday's Supreme Court ruling a negative for them is open to interpretation. The 2016 candidates have railed against it in press releases, but deep down inside, it's hard to believe that they wanted to deal with the fallout of the nuclear detonation that a ruling against Obamacare would have been. They still have their political cudgel, and they don't have to clean up a mess. Win-win.
And for Republican voters, the win is even clearer.
The government releases regular updates on how many people are enrolled in the federal exchange. The Supreme Court decision only dealt with those enrollees, as you probably know; at issue was whether or not the government subsidies for people in the federal exchanges would be continued. Without those subsidies, costs for mandatory health insurance would have spiked. And, according to our analysis of government data, it would have affected a lot more people in Republican counties than Democratic ones.
Here's the distribution of enrollees by county. (This is Enroll America's aggregation of ZIP code-level data provided by the government.) The darker the color, the more enrollees. (Counties in gray didn't have data.)
(Note the heavy enrollment in Jeb Bush's and Marco Rubio's back yard.)
As you'd expect, the numbers are much bigger near cities. But notice that several large states are missing, including California and New York. They've got their own exchanges, and so they're not on the federal exchange. The states that are reliant on the federal exchange are often more Republican -- which is why they're in the exchange. They chose not to set up their own exchanges in large part because it was viewed as enabling the law as a whole.
On a county-by-county basis, you can see that a lot of people in counties that backed Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in 2012 would have been affected.
But when you tally the number of those enrolled through the federal exchange in each county, according to the Enroll America data, with how those counties voted, the difference is staggering.
About 1.8 million people in federal exchanges live in counties that voted for Obama. About 4.5 million live in counties that voted for Mitt Romney.
Not all of these people would have seen big spikes in what they have to pay for insurance if the decision had gone the other way. But nearly nine-in-10 nationally receive some subsidy, meaning millions would have been negatively affected.
And just because a county leans Republican doesn't mean its Obamacare beneficiaries lean Republican -- but it seems much more likely that they do.
Overall, the effects of Obamacare have been pretty widely distributed. Enroll America also has estimates of the change in the number of uninsured between 2013 and 2014. Compare that to the 2012 election results, below.
It's not just Democrats or Democratic areas that have seen a benefit from the law. Which gives prominent Republican politicians another reason to feel relieved. A lot of their voters might have been very angry if the Supreme Court's decision went the other way.
Supreme Court Rules That Disparate Impact Claims Are Allowed Under Fair Housing Act // Buzzfeed // Chris Geidner – June 25, 2015
The Supreme Court Thursday ruled that claims of “disparate impact” can be brought under the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
The 5-4 closely divided decision — authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by the four more liberal justices — was a victory for civil rights advocates, who have been long concerned about how the high court would resolve the issue.
In January, the justices heard arguments in the case — which was brought back in 2008 by the Inclusive Communities Project against the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.
The question that ultimately reached the Supreme Court is a relatively simple one: Whether “disparate impact” claims are able to be brought under the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
“Disparate impact” claims address policies that are not discriminatory on their face but have a “disparate impact” on a particular race, and civil rights advocates have said they are a key tool in addressing housing discrimination.
While the FHA makes no specific mention of whether such claims are covered by the law, every court of appeals to decide the issue and the federal government — through the Department of Housing and Urban Development — agree that such claims are permitted under the act.
“Congress’ use of the phrase ‘otherwise make unavailable’ [in the FHA] refers to the consequences of an action rather than the actor’s intent,” Kennedy wrote for the court on Thursday. “This results-oriented language counsels in favor of recognizing disparate-impact liability.”
The “disparate impact” question is one the court has been trying to review for several years now. Twice previously the justices have accepted a case to address the issue only to have it settle out of court before the justices could rule.
Putin Breaks Silence With Call to Obama // NYT // Peter Baker – June 25, 2015
WASHINGTON — President Obama spoke with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday in their first direct contact in four months as the United States and Russia try to manage their conflict over Ukraine while still working together on other issues like Syria and Iran’s nuclear program.
Mr. Putin initiated the call, the first between the estranged leaders since February, the White House said. He brought up the war against the Islamic State in Syria and the two leaders agreed to have Secretary of State John Kerry meet with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov to discuss how to counter the spread of radicalism in the Middle East. They also discussed the Iran talks in advance of next week’s deadline for an agreement.
But American officials said that Mr. Obama focused on the continuing separatist war in Ukraine fomented by support from Moscow and pushed Mr. Putin to abide by a shaky diplomatic agreement known as the Minsk accord. Violence has flared in recent weeks even as Russia failed to drive a wedge among the members of the European Union who agreed to renew economic sanctions on Russia for another six months.
“President Obama reiterated the need for Russia to fulfill its commitments under the Minsk agreements, including the removal of all Russian troops and equipment from Ukrainian territory,” the White House said.
The Kremlin said Mr. Putin agreed to have his deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, talk with Victoria J. Nuland, an assistant secretary of state, about the fulfillment of the Minsk accord.
Mr. Putin’s decision to call Mr. Obama and focus on Syria and Iran may reflect a desire to assert his continuing importance on the world stage despite Russia’s isolation and failure to break the Western consensus on sanctions.
The United States and Russia have been at odds over Syria. Moscow supports the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and Mr. Obama has called for his resignation. American officials hope Mr. Putin may see the rise of the Islamic State as enough of a threat to now be willing to apply pressure on Mr. Assad, but they also suspected his renewed interest in the issue may be a way of distracting from Ukraine.
ISIS Attacks Two Towns in Northern Syria // NYT // Ben Hubbard – June 25, 2015
The militants of the Islamic State carried out two new offensives in northern Syria on Thursday, entering a provincial capital and detonating large bombs in the border town of Kobani, where intensive airstrikes by a United States-led coalition helped Kurdish forces rout the jihadists last year.
In southern Syria, rebel groups began a new campaign to push government forces from the city of Dara’a.
The new attacks by the Islamic State came more than a week after its fighters lost the town of Tal Abyad, on the Turkish border, to Kurdish militias and Arab rebels in what was seen as a strategic setback for the group. In striking back, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, appeared to be trying to counter losses in one place with attacks on other sites it considers vulnerable, a tactic it has employed before.
Kurdish activists inside Kobani said Islamic State fighters disguised in the uniforms of Kurdish militiamen had sneaked into the town at dawn, when few people were awake. Then a large truck bomb exploded at the town’s border crossing with Turkey, setting off clashes between the Islamic State militants and local Kurdish forces.
“They entered the neighborhoods and started killing civilians on their way,” said Baran Mesko, a Kurdish activist in Kobani. In a telephone interview, he said about 100 Islamic State fighters disguised as locals had taken up positions in Kobani, a small, strategic frontier town near the Syrian border with Turkey.
At least one more bombing followed, reportedly a suicide attack by a jihadist on a motorcycle, and Islamic State fighters were said to be blowing themselves up with explosive vests and killing civilians.
Kobani, known as Ain al-Arab in Arabic, gained prominence in the fight against the Islamic State last year, when Kurdish fighters fought for months to keep the group out, eventually succeeding in January with the help of intensive airstrikes by the United States-led coalition that has been bombing the militants in Iraq and Syria.
The black flag of the Islamic State, left, flew over Tal Abyad, Syria, on Tuesday. After Kurdish and rebel fighters took over the town later Tuesday, they hoisted a Kurdish militia flag.ISIS Loses Control of Crucial Syrian Border TownJUNE 16, 2015
President Obama on Wednesday at West Point, where he laid out his foreign policy plan for his final two and a half years in office.Obama’s Evolution on ISISJUNE 9, 2015
By Thursday evening the Islamic State militants were holed up in a school that had been converted into a hospital and were holding a number of Kurdish families hostage, Mr. Mesko said.
Salih Muslim, another Kurdish activist in Kobani, said the fighting continued late Thursday, and that Islamic State snipers were preventing crews from removing bodies lying in the streets.
The death toll from the fighting was unclear. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict from Britain through contacts on the ground, said that 22 Islamic State fighters had been killed in addition to 35 civilians and Kurdish fighters. Activists reported higher numbers of casualties, but said they could not get a more accurate count because of the continuing fighting.
The Syrian state news agency, SANA, also reported the clashes, saying five people were killed by the initial truck bomb.
That battle highlighted Turkey’s complicated relationship with the war just over its border: the Turkish Army did not intervene against the Islamic State nor did its soldiers join the international coalition against them. While Turkish leaders have condemned the Islamic State, they have also made it clear that they consider any Kurdish advance near their border a potential threat to national security.
The Kurdish militias fighting in Syria are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which fought a deadly insurgency against the Turkish state.
Syrian Kurds from Kobani waited Thursday at a border fence to cross into Turkey. Islamic State militants have launched new attacks against Kurdish fighters and government forces. Credit Murad Sezer/Reuters
The distrust is mutual, and some Kurdish activists said Thursday that at least one bomber had entered the town from Turkey, a charge Turkish officials denied.
Speaking to reporters in Ankara on Thursday, a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry, Tanju Bilgic, called those claims “baseless lies.”
Mr. Bilgic said that 63 people who had been wounded were brought across the border from Syria for treatment in Turkey after the explosions and that two died in the hospital.
Farther east, Islamic State fighters seized southern parts of the city of Hasaka, the regional capital of the oil-rich province of the same name. Control of the city had been split between Kurdish forces and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but activists said government forces had withdrawn to the city center.
The Islamic State advance sent civilians streaming out of the area, according to photos and videos posted online.
The news agency SANA also reported the Islamic State incursion in Hasaka, accusing militants of using human shields in fierce clashes with government forces.
In southern Syria, a coalition of rebel fighters began a new offensive to push government forces from the city of Dara’a, widely regarded as the birthplace of the uprising against Mr. Assad that began in 2011 and later devolved into the civil war. The Syrian Observatory reported that more than 18 rebel fighters and at least 20 government soldiers were killed.
The Islamic State has only a small presence in southern Syria and most of the groups involved in the fighting there are nationalists seeking to oust Mr. Assad. Some have received financial and military support from the West through Jordan. Fighters from the Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, were also involved.
Palestinians press International Criminal Court to charge Israel // WaPo // William Booth – June 25, 2015
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry presented documents on Thursday to the International Criminal Court in The Hague asserting that Israel should be investigated for war crimes in last summer’s fighting in the Gaza Strip and for continued construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The presentation of files to the ICC, written in broad outline with no specific charges against named individuals, is another step in what the Palestinians describe as their new strategy of “internationalizing” the conflict with Israel by seeking ways to embarrass, isolate and pressure it to withdraw from occupied territories and allow them to form a sovereign state.
The Palestinians stress that they are not “referring” cases for prosecution but “supplying information” to the ICC prosecutor for her to make up her own mind about how to proceed.
If the Palestinians were seen as referring cases against Israel, that could trigger congressional ire — and real consequences. Congress could withhold $400 million that the United States annually provides for aid projects in the West Bank.
Israel has also warned the Palestinians that they will pay a price for taking their case to the ICC. After the Palestinian Authority signed documents to join the court, Israel withheld transfers of customs tax money for three months, forcing the authority to pay reduced salaries to civil employees.
The Palestinian Authority officially joined the court in April, although Israel and the Obama administration argue that “Palestine” is not a state and so cannot accede to the court’s founding document, the Rome Statute. Palestine is a “non-member observer state” in the United Nations.
The ICC’s top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, launched a preliminary examination into possible crimes committed in last year’s Gaza war and other actions in the West Bank. If she deems the alleged crimes “grave” and decides the court has proper jurisdiction, she can go before judges at a pretrial tribunal and ask the court for permission to begin a full-fledged investigation, a much more serious matter.
The Palestinian documents submitted on Thursday were not made public, although Palestinian diplomat Ammar Hijazi discussed the contents with reporters. Hijazi said the documents seek to describe Israel’s “settlement regime” in the West Bank — how the government, through laws, land seizures, funding and military orders, aids and abets Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and why the Palestinians think this is a violation of international law.
Israel argues that the West Bank is not occupied but disputed territory and that its settlements are legal. The Obama administration describes the settlements as “illegitimate” and not helpful to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
The other half of the Palestinian submission to the ICC focuses on the war in Gaza and describes how Israeli rules of engagement and intense artillery and tank fire led to civilian deaths.
“It presents a grim picture,” Hijazi said.The Palestinian presentation of documents follows the release this week of a report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council that found evidence that both the Israeli military and armed Palestinian factions such as Hamas, the Islamist militant movement that controls the Gaza Strip, may have committed war crimes in last year’s fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and government ministers have strenuously denied that Israel committed violations of international law in the Gaza war. The prime minister called the U.N. report “flawed and biased” and urged the world to ignore it.
Israel released its own report this month defending its military as cautious and moral. It blamed Hamas for civilian deaths because the group employed “human shields” and cached weapons and fired rockets near hospitals, mosques, schools and churches.
Netanyahu has vowed that he will never allow Israeli soldiers to “be dragged” before the ICC. But the ICC does not concern itself with low-level troops; instead it seeks to indict the highest authority in the chain of command. If Israel were ever prosecuted by the court, the defendant would not a conscript but a top Israeli commander or Netanyahu himself.
Some Palestinians relish this idea. “Our aim is to establish war crimes in order that an investigation by the chief prosecutor’s office is carried out and to remove immunity from Israel and its leaders, achieve justice, apply human rights conventions, protect Palestinians and hold criminals accountable for their crimes,” Mustafa Barghouthi, head of the Palestine National Initiative, told reporters Wednesday in Ramallah.
The ICC has never handled a case as politically explosive and legally complex as the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Those previously indicted by the court have been African warlords and leaders. Nor does the ICC move with speed. Some of its preliminary examinations have dragged on for years.
“We are not going to the ICC seeking revenge,” chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said, but to hold Israel “accountable.”
Responding to Israeli complaints that going to the ICC will not bring the Palestinians any closer to a state, Erekat said, “Those who are wary of courts should stop committing crimes.”Erekat suggested that going to the ICC also served to remind his constituents that the Palestinian leadership is doing something. “It is asking our people, ‘don’t despair, don’t go toward violence.’ ”
The ICC prosecutor in her preliminary examination is not limiting herself to Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank but is looking at “all parties,” including Hamas and its militia, as well as other armed factions, and presumably the Palestinian Authority itself, which formed a “united government” with Hamas.The recent U.N. report suggested that Hamas and the other militants may have committed war crimes with their rocket fire aimed at Israeli civilian centers and their curbside extrajudicial killings of alleged “collaborators.”
A Bush vs. a Clinton? // WSJ // Daniel Henninger – June 25, 2015
The one story many mumble that they don’t want to hear again is the tale of two dynasties—another Bush versus another Clinton. But when opinion polls ask about the dynastic matchup, the answer most people give is it doesn’t matter to them if the choice is Jeb versus Hillary. In short, get over it and maybe even, bring it on.
Only a legally actionable revelation about the Clinton Foundation could stop Mrs. Clinton, and with no chance of that from a Justice Department preoccupied with indicting Democrats like Sen. Robert Menendez for talking to Medicare bureaucrats, she is her party’s nominee.
Jeb Bush’s path to the nomination is less automatic. Unlike Hillary, he has competitors of substance bunched behind him, such as Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. But for all the carping about political rust, Gov. Bush retains the top spot in virtually every new poll. This week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll puts Mrs. Clinton’s lead over Jeb at eight points, which would probably translate into a dead heat by October 2016.
I’m not promoting a Bush-Clinton race (yet), but dynasties reflect a nation’s politics. “Bush” and “Clinton” stand for more than just Jeb or Hillary.
One thing they stand for is the baby boomers’ last shot at occupying the U.S. presidency. They’re done. The generation born to parents who fought World War II has given us Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and may produce one more president. After that, the country’s presidential politics transfers to the generation of a Rubio or a Walker.
To balance the reality of her own baby-boomer status, Hillary’s running mate may be 40-year-old Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and current HUD secretary, or 46-year-old New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. That many voters have never heard of Julián Castro testifies to the smothering power of the gerrymandered gerontocracy that rules Democratic politics. Hillary Clinton is the Democratic candidate for about the same reason Edward II followed Edward I as England’s king: She, none dare dispute, is next in line.
One reason public offices now seem to become family heirlooms—the Cuomos, the Pauls, the Romneys—is children and spouses witness the lives of officials making political decisions in ways not available to the rest of us. And so why, beyond neurotic ambition, one should want to be president of the United States, with voters believing the stakes so high in 2016, is a question Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton should be able to answer better than most. Each has been privy to two presidencies. (The fastidious will say it’s 1.25 for Hillary; only one person has been “close” to the Obama presidency.)
Conventional wisdom among Republicans holds that Jeb shouldn’t get bogged down talking about his brother’s and father’s presidencies. But he should indeed talk about them. Resistance to “another Bush,” an authentic and reasonable American instinct, could suppress voter turnout at the margins. Weak turnout hurt Mitt Romney.
Mr. Bush has a chance to tell a skeptical country that he understands the responsibilities of an American president because he knows how his father and brother succeeded—or stumbled. There is much to admire in both those presidencies, but if an honest appraisal requires criticism of them, so be it. “Own man” has to mean more than a promise.
For Hillary, answering why America needs another Clinton is, well, trickier—if indeed she or her campaign think it is a subject worth bothering with at all. But Mrs. Clinton has now spent 12 years close to a presidency. Surely she has views on what reason there is for holding that office, beyond one’s name.
It’s a good question how many voters remember what a complicated thing the Clinton presidency was. At the heart of Bill Clinton’s problems then were abuses of the presidential office on matters having nothing to do with the Lewinsky mess. How Hillary Clinton has sorted through all that and any recent lessons of the Clinton dynasty is a reflection that will have to await future histories. Indeed the operational theory behind the Clinton stonewall seems to be: Survive the moment and let history figure it out.
Dynasties fall, however, when they fail to see the political ground shifting beneath them. For both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, it has shifted.
Hillary is running for president, rather than retiring after eight years as president, because in 2008 the Democratic left defeated the Clinton machine, got Barack Obama elected president and captured the party’s policies. Now a Clinton is running as a woman of the left, and the bonfire this week over her violative statement, “all lives matter,” suggests she hasn’t arrived yet in the land of solidarity.
Jeb somehow got through the trial-by-ordeal of his official presidential announcement without reigniting right-wing mobs calling for his political head. One wonders how far he’d go if he said that the phrase “Common Core” is to academic standards what the Edsel was to cars.
A 17th-century political pundit described “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself.” If it’s Jeb versus Hillary, only one of them will overleap to dynastic oblivion.
Hillary Clinton has to attack Bernie Sanders // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 25, 2015
Bloomberg reports: “Bernie Sanders is gaining on Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, with an appeal as an issue-oriented protest vehicle potentially capable of slowing any coronation of the popular front-runner. In simultaneous surveys, the U.S. senator from Vermont received nearly a quarter of support from likely Democratic caucus and primary voters in the states that host the first presidential nomination balloting early next year, cutting sharply into Clinton’s still-huge lead.” In Iowa, she leads 50 percent to 24 percent and in New Hampshire she has a 56 percent to 24 percent lead.
On one level, she is in no danger of losing either contest at this point. On another, it is remarkable that the “inevitable” nominee is under 60 percent in both places. Clinton might not know how to charm voters or how to thrill them with innovative policy, but she knows how to attack. Hence:
Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) unloaded on her Senate colleague Bernie Sanders on Thursday, saying the Vermont independent is far too liberal to make it to the White House.
“I think that the media is giving Bernie a pass right now,” McCaskill said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist. I think everybody wants a fight and I think they are not really giving the same scrutiny to Bernie Sanders that they’re giving to, certainly, Hillary Clinton and the other candidates.”
It’s not clear how much sympathy that will drum up for Sanders, but he can now claim she’s threatened by him. His shtick as the underdog candidate works well if his opponent is hiding from the media and sending out surrogates to trash him. In fact, he might invite her to sit next to him on one of the Sunday morning shows so we can hear her complaints about him directly. Well, that is not happening anytime soon.
The danger here for Clinton is three-fold.
First, Sanders might start hitting her hard for her cronyism (The Huffington Post points out: “The newest hire for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is a longtime strategist who played a key role in her 2008 primary defeat while working for then-Sen. Barack Obama. He’s also a Washington lobbyist who lobbied the State Department — led, at the time, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — on behalf of the company seeking to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.”) That means going after the conflicts of interest, the speeches for hedge funds, the anti-woman regimes who donated to her foundation and more.
There is also the matter of her cronies. Sid Blumenthal found a back door into the State Department while getting paid by the “charitable” foundation. Hillaryland regulars Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin remained on the government payroll while working outside government (in the case of Mills, her status was not previously disclosed). The operating rules in Clinton’s orbit seem to be: Let the rules be damned, ignore conflicts and take the money and run. Not exactly the model of public service we expect.
It’s not clear he wants to go whole hog, but it might be the only way to roust Democrats from their slumber.
Second, carrying around the empty chair and excoriating her for refusal to engage and enunciate her views is another possible Sanders tactic. Clinton, to the extent she has views, surely does not want to reveal any controversial ones that would make either her nomination or general election candidacy more problematic. The progress Sanders has made in the polls bashing her for taking no definitive stance on trade may encourage him to keep at it.
Third, how much higher can Sanders go before a bigger name (Vice President Joe Biden? Michael Bloomberg?) decides to get into the race? That might come after a primary or two, or it could come this summer. Watching Clinton dodge and weave, leaving the president out to dry on trade must be infuriating to a guy like Biden who has spent seven years loyally serving the president, and in fact goading him into more liberal positions (e.g., gay marriage).
Clinton remains the prohibitive favorite, but to the extent Bernie Sanders of all people can inflict real damage or draw bigger fish into the pond, he remains a danger to Hillaryland. In any event, many of the potential attacks on her — greed, being out of touch, ethical lapses — will be fodder for the GOP in the general election. No wonder she is attacking him.
It's Official -- Bernie Sanders Has Overtaken Hillary Clinton In the Hearts and Minds of Democrats // HuffPo // H.A. Goodman – June 25, 2015
According to PBS, Bernie Sanders is "gaining against Clinton in early polls." Salon's Bill Curry believes "Hillary Clinton is going lose," primarily because millions of voters longing for a truly progressive candidate will nominate Sanders. POLITICO explained recently that Early-state polls hint at a Bernie Sanders surge, a headline that was unthinkable only several months earlier. Yahoo's Meredith Shiner calls Sanders a "progressive social media star and pragmatic legislator" and states that "Sanders also has a much more substantial legislative history" than any GOP challenger. In Iowa, 1,100 people packed a gym to hear Bernie Sanders speak in May.
In contrast, Team Hillary had an intimate business roundtable discussion with five "ordinary" Iowans. The only problem was that according to The Washington Post, "All five were selected to attend her events." In fact, Clinton's "staged roundtables" were attended by a total of 13 Iowans, picked by either the campaign or the host.
Therefore, a paradigm shift has taken place. Many Iowans drove 50 miles to hear Sanders speak in Des Moines, primarily because Bernie Sanders has surpassed Clinton as the ideal choice for Democratic nominee. Regarding electability, Sanders has also surpassed Clinton as the realistic choice for Democratic nominee in the minds of many voters, because as one Salon piece illustrates, Hillary "just doesn't get it."
When it comes to everything from immigration to climate change and economic issues (most Americans side with Democrats, according to Pew research and other data) some writers believe that Democrats "can nominate a ham sandwich and win the presidency." Although once thought of as an impossibility, a closer look at the electoral map shows why Bernie Sanders could realistically defeat any GOP challenger. If voters around the country still care about middle class economics, the federal budget, trade and other hot button issues in 2016, Sanders has a legitimate chance to win. Also, since Sanders isn't tied to Obama fatigue like Hillary Clinton, it's quite possible the Vermont Senator re-energizes an America that just recently decided the Confederate flag doesn't represent its value system.
According to a POLITICO piece titled The 2016 Results We Can Already Predict, "Assuming the lean, likely, and safe Democratic states remain loyal to the party, the nominee need only win 23 of the 85 toss-up electoral votes." Therefore, there's no need to jettison cherished values for the sake of pragmatism; those days are over. Senator Bernie Sanders, known in Washington and throughout the nation as an advocate for middle class Americans, veterans, the environment, and other cherished causes can win crucial electoral votes just as easily as Hillary Clinton.
Finally, we're all asking a question that we've been too frightened to ask, for fear of seeming unrealistic:"Why Not Bernie?"
Not long ago, many Democrats emphasized realism over progressive values. Sure, Hillary voted for Iraq and has close ties to Wall Street, but she'll raise $2.5 billion, so doesn't this represent our best chance to beat the GOP? This mindset, however, ignored the fact that the Associated Press, Vice News, and others are suing the State Department for access to tens of thousands of Clinton's emails. A Bloomberg piece titled Hillary Clinton Monthly E-Mail Releases Must Begin in June Court Rules highlights the reality of eventual email disclosures:
The U.S. must begin to make public 30,000 e-mails belonging to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a monthly basis beginning June 30, a federal judge ruled Wednesday amid competing proposals over their disclosure...
The State Department proposed releasing as many documents as possible at 60-day intervals, ending by Jan. 15. Attorneys for Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, who sued to gain access to the e-mails, proposed releases every two weeks.
Leopold's case is one of several seeking access to all or part of Clinton's State Department e-mail through the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Not long ago, winning meant voting for Hillary, even though someone like Bernie Sanders represented a candidate who spoke to the value system of citizens throughout the country. In reality, though, even billions of dollars in campaign funding won't help if a controversial email is uncovered before Election Day, or debated endlessly like other Clinton scandals.
As for why Bernie Sanders is finally being given the attention he deserves, the Vermont Senator is intimately involved with issues that affect the lives of everyday Americans. While Clinton supporters reference their candidate's experience, many people aren't aware of the various Congressional Committees that Sanders is involved with on a daily basis:
Environment and Public Works
The United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is responsible for dealing with matters related to the environment and infrastructure.
Energy and Natural Resources
The United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has jurisdiction over matters related to energy and nuclear waste policy, territorial policy, native Hawaiian matters, and public lands.
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
The United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) generally considers matters relating to these issues.
Budget
The United States Senate Committee on Budget... is responsible for drafting Congress's annual budget plan and monitoring action on the budget for the Federal Government. The committee has jurisdiction over the Congressional Budget Office.
Veterans' Affairs
The United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs considers matters relating to the compensation of veterans, life insurance issued on account of service in the Armed Forces, national cemeteries, pensions of all wars, readjustment of servicemen to civil life, and veterans' hospitals and medical care.
Joint Economic Committee
This joint committee of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives focuses on promoting maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.
While Hillary voted for Iraq, Sanders knows how the repercussions of this decision continue to affect veterans and their families. As for jobs, the federal budget, healthcare, energy, and the environment, Sanders has far more experience than Clinton, Bush, or any other candidate in 2016.
Finally, perhaps the biggest reason Sanders is surging is because he's a genuine person with real beliefs, while others become chameleons when votes and public image are at stake. It's important to note that Hillary Clinton just recently "evolved" on gay marriage and in 2004, Clinton's speech (forward to 0:22 on the Slate video or read the transcript of her passionate defense of marriage between only a man and woman) highlighted her views on the "sacred bond" of marriage:
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY): "I believe marriage is...a sacred bond between a man and a woman....a fundamental bedrock principle that it exists between a man and woman, going back into the midst of history, as one of the founding, foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization. And that it's primary principle role during those milennia has been the raising and socializing of children for the society into which they are to become adults."
According to The Atlantic, Clinton's stance remained unchanged for years, and "she also opposed gay marriage as recently as 2013, long after a majority of Americans already held a more gay-friendly position."
In terms of identity, Hillary Clinton might be a liberal according to fivethirtyeight.com, yet their analysis gives her a free pass on war, gay marriage, and other issues liberals had championed before they were popular. Adhering to polls is fine, but the words "poll driven," not "progressive," come to mind for someone with this type of persona. If one's views on war and foreign policy are enough for The New York Times to publish an article titled Are neocons getting ready to ally with Hillary Clinton?, then Bernie Sanders becomes an even better candidate for people opposed to never-ending American counterinsurgency wars. Clinton might say she was duped by faulty intelligence, but Bernie Sanders had enough intelligence and wisdom to vote against the Iraq war back in 2003.
In contrast to Clinton, Sanders has supported the issue of gay marriage since 2000, vehemently opposed the Iraq War, opposes TPP, wants student loan debt reforms, fights for veterans, and isn't afraid to blast "too big to fail" Wall Street firms. As for him being an "avowed Socialist," George Bush's $700 billion bailout of banks was textbook socialism, so Sanders will be able to shrug off the label after one or two televised debates. Bernie Sanders represents a new era in American politics; one where values trump Citizens United cash or cold pragmatism. America needs a human being like Sanders, now more than ever before.