podesta-emails
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----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=5a6T
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
*H4A Press Clips*
*May 9-10, 2015*
SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS
This weekend Hillary Clinton attended a fundraising event in San Francisco
where she was “She was on fire,” said one Democratic donor who joined the
crowd of about 200 at a $2,700 per person fundraiser at the home of eBay
CEO John Donahoe and his wife, Eileen, a former ambassador. “She was
erudite, compassionate, funny…I came away saying, “Bring on the f#4%ing
debates.”
Canada based CHAI disclosed the names of 21 of its largest donors after
facing scrutiny for keeping the names of its donors secret. Friday, Giustra
released a new analysis from a Canadian law firm supporting his position
that he cannot disclose his group's donors without their written
permission, the second such advisory notice he has publicized
There is some speculation on what the outcome of the House vote on the
20-week abortion limit will be and suggest it will draw another line in the
sand for the 2016 election and will be the "defining abortion issue of the
2016 elections.". Polls indicate that American voters support a ban on
late-term abortion by a wide margin. A Quinnipiac poll from November 2014
found 60 percent supported the bill passed in 2013 that “would ban
virtually all abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except in
cases of rape and incest that are reported to authorities ”
Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House select committee
investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi will likely be delayed
if the panel does not gain access to U.S. Department of State emails.
SUMMARY OF TODAY’S
NEWS..............................................................................................
1
TODAY’S KEY
STORIES...........................................................................................................
3
*Canadian Clinton Foundation affiliate discloses some donors* // WaPo //
Brendan McDermid - May 8, 2015.. 3
*Hillary “on fire” at Portola Valley fundraiser, Dems say* // SF Chronicle
// Carla Marinucci - May 9, 2015.... 4
*House to Vote on 20-Week Abortion Limit Next Week* // The Weekly Standard
// Michael Warren - May 8, 2015 5
*Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony likely to be delayed* // POLITICO //
Lauren French - May 8, 2015..... 8
*The surprising strategy behind Hillary Clinton's liberal moves* // Vox //
Jonathan Allen - May 8, 2015........ 9
SOCIAL
MEDIA..........................................................................................................................
10
Dan Merica (5:32pm) May 9, 2015 @danmericaCNN: David Axelrod says Clinton
campaign will start to feel pressure on access when it becomes a "meme in
the press." "I think you do feel
that.".........................................................................................................................
10
Maggie Haberman (11:59) May 9, 2015 @maggieNYT: Jeffrey Sachs criticizes
"ad hoc" nature of Clinton Foundation work nytimes.com/politics/first…
10
HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE.................................................................................................
11
*Why Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Opponents Only Throw Softballs* // TIME
// Sam Frizell - May 8, 2015 11
*Clinton campaign moves in on the metro while Republicans prepare for
multiple candidates* // Indianola Record-Herald // Paige Godden - May 8,
2015 13
*Democrats Relish Hillary Clinton’s Embrace of Cultural Issues* // NYT //
Maggie Haberman - May 8, 2015 15
*Inside the 'Clinton Cash' war room* // POLITICO // Annie Karni - May 8,
2015.................................... 16
*Top Economist Sees Clinton Money Machine as Problematic* // NYT // Alan
Rappeport - May 8, 2015..... 19
*Hillary Clinton Caps L.A. Fundraising at Home of Haim Saban* // Variety //
Ted Johnson - May 8, 2015... 20
*Three Areas Where Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Her Husband’s Legacy*
// BuzzFeed News // Andrew Kaczynski and Christopher Massie -May 8,
2015 21
*Debunking Hillary Clinton’s liberal ‘problem’* // WaPo // Chris Cillizza -
May 7, 2015.......................... 26
*Bush nods to early states and general election battlegrounds, Clinton
sticks to primary path* // AP // Thomas Beaumont and Julie Pace - May 7,
2015 27
*Hillary's State Dept. aides consulted on Bill's speeches* // POLITICO //
Josh Gerstein - May 8, 2015......... 29
*Rancor marks Benghazi panel’s first year of work* // Greenville Online //
Mary Troyan - May 8, 2015......... 34
*Hillary Clinton's Hill Whisperer* // National Journal // Sarah Mimms - May
8, 2015............................... 37
*Hillary Clinton to attend Chicago fundraisers in late May* // CNN // Dan
Merica - May 9, 2015................. 40
*Why Character Attacks on Hillary Won’t Work* // Daily Beast // Jeff
Greenfield - May 9, 2015.................. 41
*Hillary Clinton under fire in South Carolina for being 'old, white and
rich' as Republican presidential hopefuls pile on the Democratic
front-runner* // Daily Mail // David Martosko - May 9,
2015.............................................................................................................................
42
*Chelsea Clinton is no longer off limits* // The Telegraph // Peter Foster
- May 10, 2015........................... 44
*GOP slow-plays Benghazi investigation* // The Hill // Scott Wong and
Martin Matishak - May 9, 2015..... 46
*British Election Good News For Hillary Clinton, Cameron Aide Says* //
BuzzFeed News // Ben Smith - May 8, 2015 49
OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL
COVERAGE................................................................. 50
*Deval Patrick: The Man Who Isn’t Running For President* // BuzzFeed News
// Darren Sands - May 8, 2015 50
*Lincoln Chafee Is Trying to Re-Run Obama’s 2008 Playbook* // TIME // Tessa
Berenson - May 8, 2015.... 57
*The exception to Bernie Sanders’ liberalism* // MSNBC // Steve Benen - May
8, 2015............................ 58
*Josh Earnest is wrong; Obama's job on immigration not over* // The Hill //
Cesar Vargas - May 8, 2015..... 59
*De Blasio’s National “Contract With America” Strategy Leaks* // Daily
Beast // May 8, 2015................... 60
GOP..............................................................................................................................................
62
*Chris Christie got into an epic shouting match with a radio host who
compared him to Bernie Madoff* // Business Insider // Colin Campbell - May
8, 2015 62
*The Big Issue Haunting Top Republican Presidential Hopefuls This Weekend*
// Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur - May 8, 2015 63
*Ohio Governor John Kasich’s positive politics, even with Hillary Clinton*
// Boston Globe // Scot Lehigh - May 8, 2015 64
*Scott Walker heads to Israel* // Washington Examiner // Ryan Lovelace -
May 8, 2015............................. 65
*Mike Huckabee's Message Is As Formidable As Jeb Bush's Money* // National
Journal // Josh Kraushaar - May 8, 2015 67
*For Sen. Marco Rubio, a question of friendship vs. politics* // WaPo //
Ben Terris - May 8, 2015.............. 68
*NBC/Telemundo Republican Debate Set For Feb. 26* // NBC News // Mark
Murray - May 8, 2015........... 72
*Obama Calls Elizabeth Warren ‘Absolutely Wrong’ on Trade Deal* // NYT //
Peter Baker - May 9, 2015.... 72
*Bernie Sanders perfectly sums up why elites love apathetic voters* //
Salon // Zaid Jilani - May 9, 2015....... 73
*Jeb Bush Casts Wide Net on Religious Liberty in Address* // TIME // Zeke J
Miller - May 9, 2015........... 74
*Jeb Bush's $100M May* // POLITCO // Alex Isenstadt - May 8,
2015................................................... 75
*Fiorina Promises to Restore Possibilities* // Iowa Public Radio //
Kathleen Perkins and Dean Borg - May 8, 2015 78
*Bobby Jindal Offers Rare Praise for Hillary Clinton* // NYT // Nick
Coransanti - May 9, 2015................... 79
*Ben Carson on God, Country, and His Ailing Mom* // NYT // Nick Coransanti
- May 9, 2015................. 79
*Billionaire Lifts Marco Rubio, Politically and Personally* // NYT //
Michael Barbaro and Steve Eder - May 9, 2015 80
*Scott Walker Woos South Carolina G.O.P. With Tough Talk on Terror* // NYT
// Nick Corasanti - May 9, 2015 84
*Walker: I’d end sequester, not cut military* // McClatchy // David
Lightman - May 9, 2015...................... 85
*Republican Hopefuls Push a Muscular Foreign Policy* // NYT // Nick
Corasanti - May 9, 2015................. 87
OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS..........................................................................................
88
*The Beauty of a Big GOP Field* // Real Clear Politics // Senator Joe
Lieberman & Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. - May 9, 2015 88
*The Battle for DuPont* // NYT // Joe Nocera - May 8
2015.................................................................. 90
TOP
NEWS..................................................................................................................................
91
Domestic..................................................................................................................................
91
*At least 1 death reported after tornadoes hit northern Texas* // AP // May
9, 2015.................................... 91
*Suspects in Freddie Gray Case: A Portrait of Baltimore Police in Miniature*
// NYT // Cheryl Gay Stolberg and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. - May 9,
2015 93
*US created 223,000 jobs in Apr vs. 224,000 expected; unemployment rate at
5.4%* // CNBC // John Melloy - May 8, 2015 97
*Justice Department Launches Civil Rights Probe Of Baltimore Police* //
Reuters // Julia Edwards - May 8, 2015 98
*State Legislatures Put Up Flurry of Roadblocks to Abortion* // NYT //
Frances Robles - May 8, 2015........ 99
*Frustrated Jury in Etan Patz Trial, but No Rancor for the Holdout* // NYT
// Russ Buettner - May 8, 2015 101
International......................................................................................................................
104
*In Liberia, Ebola outbreak is declared officially over* // WaPo // Peter
Halley - May 9, 2015..................... 104
*Gunfire, explosions in Macedonia as police battle 'armed group'* //
Reuters // Ogenen Teofilovski - May 9, 2015 106
*Liberia, Ravaged by Ebola, Faces a Future Without It* // NYT // Norimitsu
Onishi - May 8, 2015........... 108
*A Dark Election Day for U.K.’s Pollsters* // WSJ // Charles Forelle - May
8, 2015................................ 112
*VE Day anniversary: Party leaders join in Cenotaph ceremony* // BBC//
Sarah Campbell - May 8, 2015.... 115
TODAY’S KEY STORIES
Canadian Clinton Foundation affiliate discloses some donors
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/05/08/canadian-clinton-foundation-affiliate-discloses-some-donors/>
// WaPo // Brendan McDermid - May 8, 2015
A Canadian charity affiliated with the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton
Foundation on Friday disclosed the names of 21 of its largest donors after
facing scrutiny for keeping the names of its donors secret.
Officials with the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which is based
in Vancouver, B.C., said they were keeping with Canadian law in refusing to
release names of donors without written permission. But the lack of
disclosure appeared to conflict with the Clinton Foundation's 2008 pledge
to make annual disclosures of all of its donors.
The disclosure issue with the previously obscure Canadian group has proven
to be just one foundation-related headache that has faced the Clintons as
Hillary Rodham Clinton has launched her presidential candidacy.
The Canadian group was founded in 2007 by Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining
magnate who pledged $100 million to help the Clinton Foundation spark
economic development in impoverished regions of the world. The group
transfers much of its annual revenue to the Clinton Foundation in New York.
A spokeswoman for Giustra said earlier this month that 1,100 people had
donated to the group, though most were one-time small-dollar donors who
contributed as part of a major 2008 gala for the charity. Giustra had said
earlier this month that he was seeking permission from his largest donors
to reveal their names.
Donors whose names were posted to the Web site of the group Friday included
Ian Telfer, a Giustra friend who formerly chaired the company Uranium One.
A recent New York Times story recounted how the State Department under
Hillary Rodham Clinton signed off on the sale of Uranium One to a Russian
state-owned company. Her aides have said she was not personally involved in
the decision, which involved multiple government agencies.
Other Giustra colleagues from the mining industry are also on the list,
including Sergey Kurzin, who worked with Giustra on a deal to buy uranium
in Kazakhstan in 2005. The deal closed days after Giustra had dinner with
Bill Clinton and the country's president. Giustra has said Clinton was not
involved.
Also Friday, Giustra released a new analysis from a Canadian law firm
supporting his position that he cannot disclose his group's donors without
their written permission, the second such advisory notice he has publicized.
But here's the full list of donors made public so far:
Frank Giustra
B2Gold Corp.
Stephen Dattels
Endeavour Mining Corp.
Fernwood Foundation
Fiore Management & Advisory Corp.
GMP Securities
Gran Colombia Gold Corp.
Griffiths McBurney Canada Corp.
Gord & Katherine Keep
Sergey Kurzin
Alison Lawton
Sam Magid
Pacific Coal Resources Ltd.
Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp.
Ian Telfer
The Dragon Group of Companies
The Radcliffe Foundation
Anna Wallner
Trevor Wilson
Neil Woodyer
<http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2015/05/08/hillary-on-fire-at-portola-valley-fundraiser-dems-say/>
Hillary “on fire” at Portola Valley fundraiser, Dems say
<http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2015/05/08/hillary-on-fire-at-portola-valley-fundraiser-dems-say/>
// SF Chronicle // Carla Marinucci - May 9, 2015
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton talked about foreign
policy, joked about dying her hair, and spoke about the passing of David
Goldberg, the husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, during her stop in
Portola Valley today, according to an insider on the scene.
“She was on fire,” said one Democratic donor who joined the crowd of about
200 at a $2,700 per person fundraiser at the home of eBay CEO John Donahoe
and his wife, Eileen, a former ambassador. “She was erudite, compassionate,
funny…I came away saying, “Bring on the f#4%ing debates.”
The donor at the fundraiser didn’t want to be named for publication, and is
a longtime Democrat — one who backed Barack Obama over Clinton in the 2008
election.
The backer said that Clinton’s appearance in Portola Valley included a
wide-ranging discussion of issues, and questions from the audience, and
even a joke about what would happen if she made it to the White House. To
laughs from the crowd, she quipped: “Let me just tell you, I have been
dying my hair for decades..you will never see me go gray.”
Both she and Donahoe referenced the passing of Goldberg, 47, an event that
stunned Silicon Valley last week.
But the most memorable moment came when Clinton got an emotional question
from a high school girl, who asked her to address the pressures that teens
are under — and the epidemic of teenage suicides, said the donor.
Clinton’s “very impressive” detailed response showed both compassion and
knowledge of the issue, and included “referencing programs around the world
that have been successful” in dealing with the devastating issue, including
one in Israel, the guest said.
Clinton stayed until the very end in Portola Valley, and “even in the hot
sun, she stopped and greeted every single person there and took a picture
with all of them — including the wait staff,” the backer said.
Asked if there were any doubts in the monied donor crowd about Clinton in
the wake of recent headlines about emails and the Clinton Foundation
donations, the supporter said, “If she had been unpolished, unprepared,” or
too scripted at the Portola Valley event, some of the Silicon Valley
insiders might have been feeling shaky.
But “she was amazing…she did it in a way that just brought us in,” on
issues ranging from foreign policy to income inequality, the donor said.
“It was as if it was a month before the election and she had had six months
of debate prep…she was at the top of her game.”
House to Vote on 20-Week Abortion Limit Next Week
<https://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/house-vote-20-week-abortion-limit_941073.html>
// The Weekly Standard // Michael Warren - May 8, 2015
The House of Representatives will vote on a bill next week that would ban
nearly all late-term abortions, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy tells
THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The legislation would establish a national limit on
abortion at 20 weeks after conception—five months into pregnancy—which is
the gestational age at which infants can of feel pain and survive long-term
if born prematurely.
“Life is precious and we must do everything we can to fight for it and
protect it,” said McCarthy, a California Republican. “Our commitment for
the House to consider this important legislation has been steadfast and I
am proud of the work of our members to prepare this bill for House
consideration next week.”
In 2013, the House passed the bill, called the “Pain Capable Unborn Child
Protection Act,” which included exceptions in the cases of rape, incest,
and when a physical health issue endangers the life of the mother. But an
effort to pass identical legislation in the new Congress was scrapped in
January on the eve of the annual March for Life because some GOP members,
led publicly by Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina, objected to the
bill's reporting requirement for late-term abortions in the case of rape.
The bill required the crime to be reported to law enforcement officials at
any point prior to performing a late-term abortion.
According to House Republicans, that requirement has been removed from the
bill. Instead, the legislation requires abortion doctors to ensure that
victims have received either medical treatment or licensed counseling at
least 48 hours prior to the late-term procedure. With that change, the bill
has assuaged the concerns of those Republican members while still garnering
strong support of national pro-life groups, including the National Right to
Life Committee and the Susan B. Anthony List.
“I’m proud we’ve gotten to a point where we found a consensus between our
members and the pro-life groups out there,” said Rep. Diane Black of
Tennessee.
“We will have even stronger support than we did in the last Congress,” said
Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, a leading pro-life advocate in the House.
“It will be good to have a truly unified pro-life conference.”
National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias worked closely with
Republican leadership staff members and met Thursday with McCarthy. “I felt
very comfortable working with leadership staff,” said Tobias. “We were
working as allies.”
"We are thankful to our pro-life allies on the Hill, including House GOP
leadership and the Congressional Pro-Life Women’s Caucus, who have
tirelessly worked to bring this bill to a vote," said Marjorie
Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. "This process has
yielded a strong bill which we expect to pass next week with enthusiastic
bipartisan support."
Smith suggested up to three pro-life House Democrats could support this
bill:Dan Lipinski of Illinois, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, and Henry
Cuellar of Texas, all three of whom voted for the 2013 legislation. Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina is sponsoring related legislation in the Senate.
President Obama vowed earlier this year to veto a pain-capable abortion
ban, saying the legislation "disregards women’s health and rights, the role
doctors play in their patients’ health care decisions, and the
Constitution."
The new House bill also has some added provisions that Republican sources
say aim to protect the lives of infants and the well-being of mothers.
These include protections for infants born alive in the process of an
abortion, an informed consent form for those women seeking an abortion that
describes the law and the gestational age of the child in the womb, and
empowerment of women with a civil right of action against abortion
providers who fail to comply with the law.
Many of these provisions address issues raised during and after the
investigation and trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who was
convicted of murder for killing born-alive infants.
The Gosnell story, with its gruesome details of unsanitary conditions and
the routine killing of infants with scissors, has greatly influenced the
legislation. The House will vote on the bill on or around the two-year
anniversary of Gosnell’s May 13, 2013, conviction.
“The bill does fit in well with the conviction of Kermit Gosnell,” said
NRLC's Tobias. “If he had done the abortions before he killed [the babies],
he wouldn’t be in jail right now.”
"What we need to learn from the Gosnell case is that late-term abortion is
infanticide," wrote liberal columnist Kirsten Powers in 2013. "Legal
infanticide."
Prominent Democratic opponents of legal limits on abortion, including Nancy
Pelosi and Wendy Davis, have been unable to explain the difference between
the Gosnell killings and late-term abortion.
Representatives Black and Smith both pointed to a Thursday New York Times
article citing a new scientific study published in the New England Journal
of Medicine showing some premature infants are "surviving earlier outside
the womb than doctors once thought possible."
“Forty years ago, we had a lot of arguments about where life begins,” says
Black, who was once a registered nurse. “Now we have knowledge about what
babies look like in the womb. It has changed the hearts and minds of
people.”
"I'm here because it's easy for me to imagine these babies at 20 to 24
weeks post-fertilization age because they are my patients in the [neo-natal
intensive care unit]," Dr. Colleen Malloy of Northwestern's Feinberg School
of Medicine testified before Congress in 2012.
Polls indicate that American voters support a ban on late-term abortion by
a wide margin. A Quinnipiac poll from November 2014 found 60 percent
supported the bill passed in 2013 that “would ban virtually all abortions
nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape and incest
that are reported to authorities ” Only 33 percent opposed the legislation,
according to Quinnipiac. Polls conducted in 2013 by Washington Post/ABC and
Huffington Post/YouGov both similarly found 2-1 support for the
legislation. "One of the clearest messages from Gallup trends is that
Americans oppose late-term abortion,” according to a report by the Gallup
polling firm in May 2013.
Every declared or likely Republican presidential candidate has already
voiced support for a 20-week limit on abortion. Dannenfelser, whose
organization promotes and supports pro-life candidates, said the debate
over terminating late-term pregnancies will be the "defining abortion issue
of the 2016 elections."
"Already, the entire Republican presidential field has rallied behind this
popular legislation while Hillary Clinton remains elusive on her late-term
abortion position," said Dannenfelser. "The national conversation on this
bill will force Clinton to choose between the American people or her
uncompromising, deep-pocketed friends in the big abortion industry who
accept no limits to abortion on-demand."
Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony likely to be delayed
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/hillary-clinton-benghazi-testimony-delayed-emails-117771.html>
// POLITICO // Lauren French - May 8, 2015
A highly-anticipated appearance this month by former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton before the House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist
attacks in Benghazi may be postponed if the panel does not gain access to
State Department emails, the panel chairman indicated on Friday.
Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Committee on
Benghazi, signaled in an interim report that the panel is not yet ready to
question Clinton because it has not been given access to documents from her
tenure as secretary. The South Carolina Republican previously asked Clinton
to testify the week of May 18.
But a hearing that week appears unlikely based on the language in the
report. “The Committee will call Secretary Clinton to testify once it is
satisfied that all the relevant information has been provided by both the
State Department and her,” it stated.
In the report, Gowdy criticized the Obama administration for the slow pace
of turning over documents to the panel. He noted that dozens of subpoena
requests have not been answered — making it hard, Gowdy argued, to
effectively question Clinton.
Gowdy said last month he wanted Clinton to answer questions at two public
hearings starting the week of May 18 — an offer Clinton’s lawyer David
Kendall rejected. Kendall told lawmakers earlier this week that Clinton
only intended to appear before the panel one time.
Gowdy has not officially countered that request.
“The State Department has told the Committee that it cannot certify that it
has turned over all documents responsive to the Committee’s request
regarding the former Secretary’s emails. Absent access to the server that
housed the former Secretary’s private emails, the Committee has no way to
verify the assertions: (1) the former Secretary has produced the full
universe of emails related to Benghazi and Libya; and (2) the server has
been wiped clean and is currently void of any data that may reflect any
email sent or received during her tenure as Secretary of State, including
during the relevant time frame….,” the report said.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the panel, accused Gowdy of
moving the goalposts for the investigation.
“At every turn, the Select Committee comes up with a new excuse to further
delay its work and then blames its glacial pace on someone else,” Cummings
said. “Republicans are desperately trying to validate the $3 million in
taxpayer funds they have spent over the past year, but they have nothing to
show for it other than a partisan attack against Secretary Clinton and her
campaign for president.”
Gowdy also outlined the next phase of the panel’s investigation, which
includes obtaining emails from and interviewing top aides to Clinton and
officials from the Obama administration, including Cheryl Mills, Jake
Sullivan, Huma Abedin, Susan Rice and Patrick Kennedy. The panel is also
planning to interview former National Security advisors Tom Donilon and
Dennis McDonough — now Obama’s chief of staff — and former chief aides Ben
Rhodes and Tommy Vietor.
Gowdy said the committee has identified 60 Obama administration officials
to interview.
The panel has held more than two dozen private briefings with the Obama
administration, according to the report, which provided an update on the
committee’s work a year after it was created by Speaker John Boehner
(R-Ohio).
The surprising strategy behind Hillary Clinton's liberal moves
<http://www.vox.com/2015/5/8/8574707/Hillary-Clinton-strategy-left> // Vox
// Jonathan Allen - May 8, 2015
There's a counterintuitive reason for Hillary Clinton's recent shift to the
left: it could help her win the general election.
First there was her embrace of same-sex marriage in a video for the Human
Rights Campaign shortly after she left the State Department in 2013. Then
she started talking tough on corporate tax dodgers. And in just the past
couple of weeks she's said she would protect more undocumented immigrants
from deportation, reverse elements of her husband's 1994 anti-crime law,
and equip police departments across the country with body cameras.
Separately, each item is a small but significant step toward a core
Democratic constituency: gays and lesbians, African Americans, Latinos, and
unions. Taken together, they're a giant leap to the left.
The quickly gathering conventional wisdom about Clinton's hop, skip, and
jump to the left is that she's thinking about the Democratic primary —
specifically, how to avoid getting blindsided like she did in 2008, when
Barack Obama took her out in the trial heat. But there aren't any Barack
Obamas on the Democratic horizon, and Clinton's commanding lead in the
Democratic primary field — fueled by numbers that are highest among
self-described liberals — makes it hard to believe she's really looking
over her shoulder.
The truth is that her move to the left is a general-election strategy that
has the benefit of working well in the primary, too.
Clinton allies say one of the lessons she learned from 2008 was to follow
her gut — to be herself — rather than mold her platform to the politics of
the moment. That's what she's doing now, they say. While that may be true,
it's also the self-serving part of the picture.
The fuller view shows a tactical decision to update her positions in areas
where the country has become more progressive since her last run for the
White House, and to play up the parts of her agenda that appeal to core
Democratic voters. If the moment were right to talk about her muscular
approach to US foreign policy — and surely that time will come — there's
little doubt her team would be doing just that.
Here's the gamble Clinton's taking: targeted policy shifts will activate
key Democratic voting constituencies early in the campaign without
alienating swing voters. If it works, African Americans, Latinos, gays and
lesbians, and straight white men (the group that seems to like her the
least among Democrats) will see her as a true champion and remain energized
through the general election. Her campaign views the risk of pushing away
independents as minimal compared with the advantage of rallying Democrats.
"Over time, the landscape has shifted on so many of these issues that now
Democrats don’t have to hide from them," one campaign official said. "The
data is pretty clear: the independent voters are on our side on issues like
gay marriage. So leaning into them comes with a benefit, not a cost."
Meaning that, at least on these issues, the same positions could rally the
Democratic base now and appeal to independents in November 2016.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Dan Merica (5:32pm) May 9, 2015 @danmericaCNN
<https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/status/597152129049059328>: David Axelrod
says Clinton campaign will start to feel pressure on access when it becomes
a "meme in the press." "I think you do feel that."
Maggie Haberman (11:59) May 9, 2015 @maggieNYT
<https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/597068369695760387>: Jeffrey Sachs
criticizes "ad hoc" nature of Clinton Foundation work
nytimes.com/politics/first…
HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE
Why Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Opponents Only Throw Softballs
<http://time.com/3851301/hillary-clinton-democratic-primary/> // TIME //
Sam Frizell - May 8, 2015
Republican presidential candidates are already running hard against Hillary
Clinton. Hours before she announced her campaign for president, Kentucky
Sen. Rand Paul released an online video accusing Clinton of “corruption and
cover-up, conflicts of interest,” calling her “the worst of the Washington
machine.” Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush challenged her on her use of a
personal email account while she was Secretary of State. Texas Sen. Ted
Cruz asked a crowd, “How can the American people trust her with another
position of power?”
In the Democratic primary, things are very different.
Clinton’s three top likely challengers — former Maryland Gov. Martin
O’Malley, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb —
have notably refused to criticize Clinton’s ethics. All three have avoided
mentioning her private email account, her handling of the Benghazi attacks
in 2012 or the controversy surrounding the Clinton Foundation fundraising,
among other popular GOP lines of attack. Aides from several of the emerging
campaigns told TIME they don’t plan to do so, either.
“We’re not going down that road,” said Tad Devine, a top advisor for
Sanders’ campaign. “We’re not going to run a negative campaign.”
“Jim’s the kind of candidate who’s going to focus on what he wants to talk
about and let the media make all the contrast and comparison that are to be
made,” said Craig Crawford, spokesman for Webb. “He won’t get in this
because he wants to run against somebody.”
Instead, Clinton’s Democratic challengers are taking on her positions on
trade, income inequality and foreign policy, arguing either that she’s
wrong on the policy or that she’s come to the right position late. When
they have been asked about the email or conflicts of interest, they have
consistently deflected the question.
Asked in March about Clinton’s use of personal email, O’Malley basically
ducked the issue. “I’m not an expert on federal requirements or state
requirements, and I’m, frankly, a little sick of the email drama,” O’Malley
said. When questioned about Clinton, Webb told a scrum of reporters that
the email story is “between her and you all.” Sanders has said repeatedly
he wants to run a campaign a debate “over serious issues” and not
“political gossip.”
Clinton, for her part, has hardly mentioned her likely challengers for the
nomination or she’s been charitable when speaking about them. When Sanders
announced his candidacy last week, Clinton amicably tweeted her welcome to
the race.
Much of the reticence around staging personal attacks on Clinton comes from
her relative strength. She is widely admired in the Democratic Party, while
her contenders are relatively unknown at the national level. O’Malley has
been in Maryland politics for more than two decades as the state’s governor
and a city council member and mayor in Baltimore, while Webb was a one-term
Virginia senator. A full 69% of Iowa Democratic voters said they weren’t
sure whether they rated Webb favorably or not, a good indication that many
first-in-the-nation residents don’t yet know who he is, and 65% said the
same of O’Malley, according to a Public Policy Polling survey taken last
month.
For O’Malley, Sanders and Webb, a presidential bid would be their
introduction to many voters across the country. A first impression as a
harsh critic against a widely admired candidate would likely be a poor
first impression.
“If you’re a lesser-known candidate and your first introduction to
Democrats is a vicious attack on Hillary Clinton, it would backfire
completely,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist. “But if you’re
trying to become the lefty in the party or new fresh ideas person it helps
you to get there to pick a policy argument with her.”
On that front, her challengers are happy to fight.
Though not yet officially a candidate, O’Malley has been the most vocal
critic of Clinton’s policies, responding to each position she’s taken. He
has drawn contrasts with Clinton on issues like the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, an Obama initiative loathed by the Democrats’ progressive wing
that Clinton called a “gold standard” when she was Secretary of State.
When Clinton tiptoed carefully around the deal last month, O’Malley sent an
email to his supporters with the subject line “Hard choice?” and answered
the question in the body: “Nope. To me, opposing bad trade deals like TPP
is just common sense,” he wrote.
O’Malley also has painted himself as a more forward thinker on same-sex
marriage and immigration, pointing out recently that he came to progressive
views on both issues before her. “I’m glad Secretary Clinton’s come around
to the right positions on these issues,” O’Malley said last month,
referring to Maryland’s 2012 legislative approval of gay marriage.
“Leadership is about making the right decision, and the best decision
before sometimes it becomes entirely popular.”
His campaign is likely to continue to make Clinton’s credibility on
hot-button policy issues a central part of his campaign against her. Hours
after Clinton spoke at a roundtable about her support for immigration
reform, O’Malley’s campaign reminded reporters that he was in favor of
allowing children fleeing violence in Latin America last year to stay in
the United States.
Clinton said at the time that the children needed to be sent back in order
to “set an example.”
“When most leaders in the Democratic and Republican parties were saying
that we should close our border to children fleeing violence in Central
America, he defied them and said that we could not send children ‘back to
certain death,'” a spokesperson for O’Malley said. “He was criticized for
that position, but leadership is about forging public opinion, not
following it.”
The other candidates have chimed in on policy occasionally, too. Before he
announced his candidacy, Sanders suggested that Clinton isn’t ready to
confront the “billionaire class.” Webb said earlier this month after
Clinton gave a speech about criminal justice reform that that he had been
talking about those issues “for nine years.”
All the same, Clinton’s likely rivals are keeping personal criticism to a
minimum, and most policy distinctions have been indirect references. Left
unspoken among them is that if the candidates lose to Clinton, any personal
vitriol against her will be remembered in the Democratic Party — and
possibly replayed in Republican attack ads — and could hurt their chances
for public office in the future.
That means, for now, that the sharpest attacks on Clinton will continue to
come from the Republican side.
“By the time it gets to Iowa and New Hampshire, the Republicans are going
to be jumping over themselves to attack her. For us to get in any way
associated is a liability,” said Devine, Sanders’ advisor. “Bernie is going
to try to move toward his own strengths at all times.”
Clinton campaign moves in on the metro while Republicans prepare for
multiple candidates
<http://indianolarecordherald.desmoinesregister.com/article/20150508/INDIANOLA01/305080042/Clinton-campaign-moves-metro-while-Republicans-prepare-multiple-candidates>
// Indianola Record-Herald // Paige Godden - May 8, 2015
While Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is already focusing on voters
in and around Warren County, the county Republicans are trying to rally
around the multiple 2016 candidates expected to visit within the coming
months.
Clinton, who already has stopped in Norwalk, is organizing a grassroots
campaign by building six regions – which will soon turn into seven – with
three organizers in each region.
Kane Miller, a regional organizer for Polk County and those surrounding it,
said the first couple of weeks have been exciting. The campaign has been
out talking to people, listening to what’s important to them, he said.
“We’re going to be doing as much stuff one-on-one as possible,” Miller
said. “Sitting down with activists in coffee shops and make-shift
workspaces all over the region.”
Meanwhile, organizers will share Hillary’s vision by taking cues from
Clinton’s “long and clear record of public service,” Kane said.
Eventually, he said Clinton will use the information gathered from the
one-on-one conversations to launch her platform.
The Clinton campaign also has launched a frenzy on social media. Miller
said the organizers are asked to give out cards to the people they meet.
Those who pledge to caucus for Hillary fill out a form with their name and
address, and the campaign sends the form back to the person who pledged a
few days before caucus day.
Then, citizens are asked to take a picture with another card and post it on
their social media accounts saying they’ve pledged to Hillary.
“Right now we’re just trying to engage as many people as possible,” Miller
said. “We need to do our part to re-energize the democratic process.”
No individual Republican candidates have organized quite like Clinton has
in Iowa yet, but Rick Halverson, chair of the Warren County Republicans,
said there is still a lot to do this summer.
Local Republicans are working on an event for either May 15, May 17 or both
to complement the Lincoln Dinner, May 16 in Des Moines. That event usually
attracts several presidential candidates.
Overall, Halverson said he works to bring in as many candidates to Warren
County as possible.
“We’re lucky here in Iowa that we have all of these presidential candidates
stumping around our towns and county,” Halverson said. “It gives us a
chance that most people across the United States don’t get. We need to
appreciate that.”
He said he was disappointed by the small crowd at a recent event for Rick
Santorum at the Corner Sundry in Indianola.
“If one candidate comes here and has a low turnout, that news spreads,”
Halverson said. “If we want to get high on the candidates’ list of places
to go, we need to get people to turn out.”
He said he believes this election is one of the most important in the
230-plus years of this country.
“The world is on fire and in my opinion it’s because of the lack of
leadership from this administration,” Halverson said. “This lead from
behind mentality isn’t working and I don’t think it’s going to get any
better under a Hillary Clinton administration than Obama.”
Hopefully, he said, the Republicans who stayed home in 2012 and sat on
their hands because Romney “wasn’t their candidate or wasn’t a good enough
Christian” will get out to vote this time around, and support the
Republican candidate who is chosen in the primary through to 2016.
Democrats Relish Hillary Clinton’s Embrace of Cultural Issues
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/08/democrats-relish-hillary-clintons-embrace-of-cultural-issues/>
// NYT // Maggie Haberman - May 8, 2015
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s call this week for more expansive action on
immigration was the latest in a series of policy statements likely to
appeal to her party’s liberal base. But her comments also reflect a growing
feeling among Democrats that the political balance on cultural issues has
shifted in their favor since her last campaign.
Mrs. Clinton is undoubtedly a more sure-footed candidate, even in the short
time she has been on the trail, as The Times’s Patrick Healy noted in an
article this week. Her campaign has so far stayed on message and avoided
chasing media flare-ups, and Mrs. Clinton herself is more at ease taking
positions on issues that she had hedged on during her last presidential bid.
But another explanation for her newfound comfort on the issues is the
feeling among Democrats that public opinion on cultural issues like
same-sex marriage and immigration is more aligned with their party than
Republicans.
During the 2008 Democratic primary, Mrs. Clinton’s top strategist was
focused on preserving her electability in a general election and not
turning off the swath of self-described independents who they expected to
swing the race.
But the issues on which she is now perceived to be tacking to the left —
primarily on immigration and same-sex marriage — are not likely to be
dangerous for her in 2016, Democratic strategists argue, because a majority
of voters in the center favor her views on those topics over the positions
Republicans take.
“Every policy position that Hillary Clinton has staked out so far will help
her in a general election, as well as advance her campaign for the
nomination,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who worked on Mrs.
Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “On a personal level, the fact that she is showing
her passion on these issues matters, because voters of all stripes respect
candidates who speak out for their beliefs.”
On immigration and same-sex marriage, in particular, the national picture
has changed. About six in 10 Americans said they support President Obama’s
executive action on immigration, according to a recent poll by The
Associated Press. Almost an equal number in a New York Times/CBS News
survey this week supported same-sex marriage.
Some of Mrs. Clinton’s critics have suggested that her embrace of a more
liberal agenda is directed at keeping Elizabeth Warren, the populist
senator from Massachusetts, from running and diffusing any primary
challenge from her left. And Republicans are taking note of the fact that
Mrs. Clinton has changed positions on some of these issues over the years —
most notably trade, immigration and same-sex marriage — hoping to raise
questions with voters about her character.
But her stance on immigration, for instance, has nothing to do with Ms.
Warren, and is all about a contrast with Republicans.
The strategy is reminiscent of the one employed by Terry McAuliffe, her
friend and 2008 campaign chairman, during his successful 2013 run for
Virginia governor. The assumption heading into that race was that Mr.
McAuliffe would run a centrist candidacy in an effort to appeal to more
moderate voters. Instead, Mr. McAuliffe — whose campaign manager, Robby
Mook, now runs Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — focused on bread-and-butter
Democratic issues — like women’s health and immigration — and cast them
through an economic lens.
It’s the frame Mrs. Clinton is almost certain to use, and one that has many
Democrats feeling confident about her prospects.
Inside the 'Clinton Cash' war room
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/hillary-clinton-2016-book-controversy-117774.html?hp=t1_r>
// POLITICO // Annie Karni - May 8, 2015
This was an updated version of the famed war room that fought the first
round of Clinton scandals in 1992, propelling Bill Clinton to the
presidency; now, two months later, aides point to the handling of the
“Clinton Cash” threat – a still-unfolding stream of allegations involving
the Clinton Foundation and its donors, but one that seems not to have
seriously altered perceptions of Hillary – as proof of the campaign’s
ability to manage messaging and counter the inevitable blowback of an
18-month campaign.
The campaign systematically raised questions about the objectivity of
author Peter Schweizer and, according to sources with knowledge of the
deals, strategically leaked details of the book to news outlets to undercut
the exclusivity of excerpts given to reporters at The New York Times and
Washington Post, who had obtained special deals with Schweizer.
Sources close to Clinton described meetings at her personal office in
Midtown Manhattan that were so focused that when Fallon’s twins were born
April 8 — four days before Clinton officially launched her campaign — he
continued to join the conferences by phone from the hospital in Washington,
D.C., despite being on leave.
The game plan at first was two-pronged: debunk author Peter Schweizer by
stressing his ties to Republicans and his close friendship with the Koch
brothers, while a second group of research and communications operatives
pushed positive messages the campaign would roll out while the book was
making headlines.
Instead of hunkering down, Clinton would make news herself with a speech on
criminal justice — where she called for an end to mass incarcerations — and
a newsy speech on immigration, where she vowed to expand on President
Obama’s executive actions to include another 5 million undocumented
immigrants from deportation.
Behind the scenes, the strategy turned from defense to offense in late
April, when the campaign caught a break and obtained an early copy of the
256-page book.
At that point, the campaign began pitching its own stories about “Clinton
Cash,” and then finally turned to new media to tell its own version of the
story.
Campaign operatives leaked single chapters of the book to national media
outlets, sources with knowledge of the deals said — a strategy that allowed
them to undercut the reporters who, through exclusive agreements with
Schweizer, had obtained early copies of the entire tome, and also to attack
the content at the same time.
Schweizer, in an interview, said he was aware of the strategy.
“I knew fairly early on they had access to the book,” he said. “Sure, it
helped them. They’re famous for that. I was aware they were leaking
selectively chapters, particularly as journalists who had access to the
full book had contacted them with questions. They didn’t want to share the
complete book, just chapters. For me, the power of the book is in the
pattern of the behavior.”
Schweizer said he caught on to the strategy when the New York Times
investigative team was working on a 4,000-word story about the connection
between Clinton donor Frank Giustra and the approval of a sale of a mining
company to Russia, which drew from chapters 2 and 3 of his book.
Indeed, the Clinton team was particularly concerned that the Times and Post
would use his book as a jumping off point for investigations — coverage
that would make it harder for them to simply dismiss Schweizer as a tool of
the right.
Just as the New York Times was preparing to publish its investigation of
the Giustra matter, “the Clinton team is sending chapter 3 of the book to
Time magazine and other reporters,” Schweizer said. “Who gets just one
chapter of the book? They gave them chapter 3 but not chapter 2, which is
also on the uranium deal. You’ve got reporters running with stories that
didn’t have the full picture. That was the Clinton strategy: to muddy the
waters and not have an honest conversation.”
The campaign says that Giustra, the Canadian billionaire whose role in the
uranium deal is outlined in chapter 3, sold his stock two years before
Clinton was appointed as Secretary of State. Schweizer says that’s only
part of the story. “The book talks about nine people who are shareholders,
not just Giustra,” he said. “They never mentioned the other eight. They’re
mentioned in chapter 2, not 3.”
The goal of aggressively parceling out parts of the book was to generate
headlines that could be discredited before the book hit the shelves and
before Schweizer went on the television circuit promoting his work.
When Schweizer started making the media rounds on the Sunday shows ahead of
the May 5 book release, the Clinton team had managed to get ahead of him to
put him on the defensive. “We’ve done investigative work here at ABC News,
found no proof of any kind of direct action,” “This Week” host George
Stephanopoulos said of the claims about the uranium deal with Russia.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and Fallon published their own posts
directly to Medium, to point out what they said were errors and omissions.
During the weeks that various chapters of the book were making headlines,
the campaign began releasing nightly memos to surrogates and supporters
with stories and commentators on air who had discredited the book, or
raised questions about the reporting. In total, the campaign put out five
detailed memos to its network.
“In the last two days alone, three new claims by the partisan author of the
Clinton Cash book have been discredited by independent news outlets,” read
a line in one of the memos.
The final push came on the day of the book’s release. The campaign spent
over 96 hours building out “The Briefing,” a website that launched on the
day of the book’s release, which included an upbeat video featuring Fallon
responding to the book and a supercut of Clinton surrogates and talking
heads with the general message: “there’s no there there.”
In the donor world, the painstaking strategy to deal with the book was
noticed.
“The campaign didn’t get paralyzed,” said Tom Nides, a vice chairman at
Morgan Stanley and a close Clinton confidant who is her main liaison to
Wall Street. “They didn’t get in a bunker, they kept supporters up to date
daily— it felt very proactive.”
And perhaps most important to the donor class who may have harbored fears
about Clinton’s weaknesses on display so early in the campaign, the
candidate herself appeared relaxed and confident as she attended
fundraisers in Washington and New York City.
“This could have gotten nutty,” Nides admitted. “She herself was a more
relaxed Hillary. I’ve gotten universal feedback from these meetings that
she’s excited to be there, she hung around. She was supposed to be at the
event for an hour-and-a-half, she stayed for almost two hours. She didn’t
act like she had to get back to the bunker. She was upbeat, positive, and
not defensive. People tee off of that.”
So far, Clinton herself has answered only one question about the book,
without referring to it by name. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire last
month, she dismissed it and said she expected to be “subject to all kinds
of distractions and attacks.” She has not addressed it publicly since then.
But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been on the minds of the staffers and
volunteers who manned the war room. As Clinton was speaking about
immigration reform at a high school in Las Vegas on Tuesday, her campaign
operatives back in Brooklyn waited eagerly on the results of a new poll.
When The New York Times poll popped, showing Clinton’s favorability had
risen over the past year, the team from the war room finally exhaled.
“Clinton Cash,” the poll showed, had not had the devastating impact the
campaign had feared. After weeks of stories pegged to chapters in the book,
only 10 percent of voters said they believed foreign donations affected
Clinton’s decisions as secretary of state, according to the poll, and more
voters said they saw Clinton as a strong leader than they did earlier in
the year.
But Schweizer notes that the themes of the book have now become a part of
the Clinton narrative, and could easily pop up later in the campaign —
especially as news organizations continue to plumb the Clinton Foundation
and its donors.
“I think they have done a very detailed and aggressive campaign to try to
undermine the credibility of the book,” Schweizer said. But he pointed to
polls showing a relatively high percentage of voters questioning her
trustworthiness.
“The narrative is now framed around the foundation and Bill’s speeches, and
what role did that have on her decisions at the State Department,”
Schweizer said. “My sense is those questions are going to be asked whenever
she decides to actually talk to the press.”
Top Economist Sees Clinton Money Machine as Problematic
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/08/top-economist-sees-clinton-money-machine-as-problematic/?emc=edit_tnt_20150508&nlid=69776137&tntemail0=y>
// NYT // Alan Rappeport - May 8, 2015
Questions surrounding foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation are
beginning to fester beyond the usual conservative critics who hope to
derail the presidential hopes of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs, a leading economist and philanthropist, said on
Friday in an interview on MSNBC that the fuzzy lines between the
foundation’s donations and the political influence wielded by the Clintons
is problematic.
“There is a lot here that is real,” said Professor Sachs, a special adviser
to the United Nations secretary general and director of Columbia
University’s Earth Institute. “Whether it’s quid pro quos or not, who
knows? But the amount of schmoozing involved and crossing lines and one
person putting money in a foundation, and then Clinton getting unbelievable
amounts for his speeches, and then contracts going one way or another, it’s
not good.”
Professor Sachs suggested that the Clinton money machine was a distraction
that interfered with serious policy and the relief work it was trying to
accomplish in places like Haiti. He said that members of the international
philanthropy community have been concerned about the Clinton Foundation’s
practices for years.
“There were too many friends around, too many ad hoc plane flights in to do
this deal or that deal, and there was not the systemic approach that one
needs after a devastation,” he said. “That’s the sad part of it.”
Former President Bill Clinton defended his foundation this week during a
trip to Africa. He said it has never done anything “knowingly
inappropriate” and pointed to all the good work it does around the world.
Hillary Clinton Caps L.A. Fundraising at Home of Haim Saban
<http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/hillary-clinton-fundraising-haim-saban-1201490427/>
// Variety // Ted Johnson - May 8, 2015
Hillary Clinton capped a day of fundraising for her 2016 presidential bid
at the Beverly Park home of longtime supporters Haim and Cheryl Saban, as
she appeared before a crowd that included such industry figures as Casey
Wasserman, Stevie Wonder, Peter Chernin and Clarence Avant.
Donors paid $2,700 per person at the event, the last of three fetes that
were expected to bring in close to $3 million, according to fundraisers.
Also attending, according to a guest who was there, were Lions Gate’s Rob
Friedman, WME Entertainment’s Patrick Whitesell, talkshow host Larry King,
Mike and Irena Medavoy, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and
Mary Steenburgen.
Co-chairing the event at the Saban home was Wasserman, another longtime
Clinton family friend, and his wife Laura.
In tented area of his sprawling estate, Saban gave just brief remarks, and
Wasserman introduced Clinton.
In her 35-minute remarks, Clinton tied her speech to her granddaughter and
her role as a grandmother, and some attendees said came across as more
folksy and accessible than during her 2008 campaign.
“A lot of people think she is speaking more from the heart, someone you can
relate to,” said David Wolf, a finance consultant who raised for the group
Ready for Hillary, a SuperPAC set up to lay the groundwork for Clinton’s
campaign. “People like what they hear.”
Clinton echoed some of the remarks she said earlier in the day, talking
about domestic concerns like mass incarceration and expanded economic
opportunity, and at one point quipped that she has long dyed her hair so it
won’t go gray if elected president — as has happened with so many males.
She also quipped that “it was nice of the royal family to name their baby”
after her granddaughter, Charlotte. She was referring to the name that
William and Kate gave to their newly born daughter.
Clinton devoted most of her time to domestic issues, but when it came to
foreign policy said that any deal needed to “make sense,” according to one
attendee. Saban and Wasserman, in a letter sent to potential donors several
weeks ago, wrote that she was a “true friend when it comes to the U.S. and
Israeli relationship.” In her remarks before the crowd, Clinton did not
specifically mention the recent framework of an agreement for a deal over
Iran’s nuclear program.
In another area of the estate, she also did a photo line with donors who
raised at least $27,000.
John Gile, public affairs and fundraising consultant, said that Clinton’s
speech was “beautiful and crisp and purposeful.”
Compared to her 2008 campaign, he said, “she seemed much more relaxed, more
focused, more personable.”
In Beverly Hills, some union and environmental groups staged rallies
calling for Clinton to oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade pact
among a dozen countries including the United States.
Three Areas Where Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Her Husband’s Legacy
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/three-areas-where-hillary-clinton-is-running-against-her-hus?utm_term=.rxYyvXeav#.cb9lOk52bv>
// BuzzFeed News // Andrew Kaczynski and Christopher Massie -May 8, 2015
Hillary Clinton called for changes to the criminal justice system last week
in a speech at Columbia University that rejected the “tough on crime”
agenda pushed by her husband and centrist Democrats and Republicans in the
1990s.
But that’s not the only area where Clinton has moved to the left of her
husband’s legacy. Some of the shifts, like her position on same-sex
marriage, reflect an overall shift in the Democratic Party — and in the
country — but many of the issues were ones her husband used to win
political battles during his 1996 re-election campaign and presidency.
Here’s a look at three issues that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is focused on
that rejects policies her husband pushed and campaigned on.
Immigration
About a week after he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, in September
1996, Bill Clinton signed an appropriations bill that included measures
meant to reduce illegal immigration.
Among these were enhancements to border security, a 12-month deadline to
submit asylum applications, and a rule banning undocumented immigrants who
had spent over a year in the country from returning to the United States
for 10 years after leaving or being deported. Bill Clinton said then that
the bill “strengthens the rule of law by cracking down on illegal
immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice
system — without punishing those living in the United States legally.”
The month before, the president had signed a welfare package that blocked
some legal immigrants from receiving food stamps.
At the time, public opinion in much of the country was in line with these
positions.
During an appearance on C-SPAN near the end of the campaign in 1996,
Hillary Clinton discussed her husband’s immigration policy noting what he
had done “to stem the flow of illegal immigrants,” including his efforts to
beef up the border.
Hillary: “The United States is a nation of immigrants and I think all of us
should recognize that and be grateful for it. You know, my grandparents on
both sides of my family immigrated to the United States. And I think that
the President has been absolutely right in saying that we should honor and
respect our immigrant tradition and we should do all we can to make sure
people come here legally. Because that is the important difference between
those who wish to come and choose to come legally and those who do not. But
that legal immigrants should not be denied the services and the
opportunities that are available to people living in our country. And
illegal immigrants—we should stop the influx of illegal immigrants. But
there are certain services and needs that people have whether or not they
are illegal or legal immigrants and I think the President is right that we
have to be very careful about cutting off healthcare and educational
opportunities for the children of illegal immigrants, while we try to do a
better job, which the President has actually been able to do in the last
four years, to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.”
Interviewer: “A better job than any previous administration.”
Hillary: “That’s right. I mean, he has taken very seriously the efforts to
try to beef up our border patrols, put more people on the borders. We were
in San Diego just a few days ago for the debates and talked with the people
there who are working and their very pleased at the kind of effort that’s
been undertaken to prevent people from coming illegally into the United
States and that has to continue.”
Clinton also notably repeated a claim about all her grandparents
immigrating to the United States. Her campaign recently admitted that claim
was incorrect and said that “her grandparents always spoke about the
immigrant experience…”
“The United States is a nation of immigrants and I think all of us should
recognize that and be grateful for it. You know, my grandparents on both
sides of my family immigrated to the United States.
During one speech, she noted that Bill signed an executive order “to revoke
the federal contracts of businesses that hire illegal workers.”
“He also said that he would issue an executive order to revoke the federal
contracts of businesses that hire illegal workers. Everyone who does
business with the United States government should obey the laws.”
Bill Clinton’s 1996 website noted the same theme of increasing deportations
and hiring more border agents that his ad talked about.
Bill Clinton's 1996 website noted the same theme of increasing deportations
and hiring more border agents that his ad talked about.
It also noted he would streamline the deportation process and increase
deportations the following year:
It also noted he would streamline the deportation process and increase
deportations the following year:
Today:
Speaking in Las Vegas this week Hillary Clinton moved to the left on
immigration in an anticipated event where she outlined an agenda which
included a a path to citizenship and protections for parents of DREAMers.
Clinton left open the option of going further than the White House’s
expanded policy of deferred deportation for undocumented immigrants.
During her 2008 campaign, Clinton also supported “a path to legalization”
if undocumented immigrants attempted to learn English and paid back taxes.
Maybe the first glimpse of a Clinton softening on immigration came in 2000,
when the president signed a law that reopened the cases of thousands of
immigrants seeking amnesty. The law, which was drafted by the GOP, also
granted visas to spouses and children of some legal immigrants, regardless
of whether their family members had been previously living in the country
legally.
Same-sex marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act
When Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, he
was careful to argue that the law did not condone “discrimination of any
kind.” Yet, the law, which was overturned in June 2013, barred federal
recognition of same-sex marriage and permitted each state to ignore them if
the couple was married in another state.
That July, the White House denounced the law as “gay-baiting, pure and
simple,” and “a classic use of wedge politics designed to provoke anxieties
and fears.” But press secretary Michael McCurry pledged that the president
would sign it anyway, because of his “very strong personal views” that
marriage was between a man and a woman.
DOMA passed with overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate. In
1996, fewer than 30 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage. By
2014, that number had risen to 55 percent, according to Gallup.
In the 1996 election, after signing DOMA, Clinton ran this ad touting that
he signed DOMA and was “protecting religious freedom.” The ad ran on
religious radio stations.
Protecting religious freedom, it’s the foundation of our nation. When the
Justice Department went after a church to gather the parishioners’ tithing
money, the government was stopped cold because President Clinton overturned
the government’s policy and protected us. It’s not the only time he’s
defended our values. Don’t be misled by Bob Dole’s attack ads. President
Clinton wants a complete ban on late-term abortions except when the
mother’s life is in danger or faces severe health risks, such as the
inability to have another child. The president signed the Defense of
Marriage Act, supports curfews and school uniforms to teach our children
discipline. The president enacted the v-chip to block out violent TV
programs. His crime bill expanded the death penalty for drug kingpins. Bob
Dole opposed him and is resorting to untrue negative attacks. President
Clinton has fought for our values and America is better for it.
During her 2000 campaign for Senate, Clinton said she supported her husband
signing DOMA and would have voted for had she been in the Senate.
Clinton added same-sex couples should have the same rights extended to
heterosexual couples.
“Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to
the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always
been, between a man and a woman,” the First Lady said in White Plains. “But
I also believe that people in committed gay marriages, as they believe them
to be, should be given rights under the law that recognize and respect
their relationship.”
Today:
“Hillary Clinton supports marriage equality and hopes the Supreme Court
will come down on the side of same-sex couples being guaranteed that
constitutional right,” Adrienne Elrod, spokesperson, Hillary for America,
recently told BuzzFeed News about the landmark same-sex marriage case
before the Court.
Clinton included two same-sex couples in her two-minute-long campaign
announcement video last month. She supported leaving the issue of same-sex
marriage to the states in her 2008 campaign and supported civil unions. She
announced her support for same-sex marriage in 2013.
In 2013 her husband also penned the op-ed, “It’s time to overturn DOMA” for
the Washington Post
The crime bill President Clinton signed in September 1994 sought to add
100,000 officers to the police force and offered federal money to states to
build new prisons, on the condition that they agreed to force inmates to
serve out their whole sentences.
The bill passed with bipartisan support. Only one Democratic senator voted
against it. (Since the law’s passage, there has been a significant,
bipartisan shift on the issues of incarceration and drug policy,
particularly among progressive and libertarian-influenced politicians.)
As president, Clinton also signed the Brady bill in 1993 and a ban on
assault weapons in 1994. The Brady bill mandated that buyers of handguns
undergo background checks, while the weapons ban expired in 2004.
During the 1996 campaign, Hillary Clinton boasted about all three laws in
touting her husband as a candidate who was “tough on crime.” A position she
would advocate repeatedly throughout years, including in her 1996 book It
Takes A Village
In 1994, speaking to a conference for female police officers, Hillary
Clinton spoke favorably of the crime bill’s efforts to build more prisons
as well as the “three strikes and you’re out” policy.
“We will be able to say, loudly and clearly, that for repeat, violent,
criminal offenders — three strikes and you’re out. We are tired of putting
you back in through the revolving door,” noted Clinton at one point.
Clinton added noted that the crime bill would help build more prisons.
“We will also finally understand that fighting crime is not just a question
of punishment, although there are many dollars in the crime bill to build
more prisons,” she said. “It is also a question of prevention. We want to
give police officers the tools to help young people stay out of trouble. We
want to begin to give young people something to say yes to, not just to
have to face the bleak, alienated streets that too often push them in the
wrong direction.”
“I think as more Americans focus on the fact that this bill would have put
more police on the street, would have locked up violent offenders so they
could never get out a again,” she said. “Would have given more prison
construction money available to the states as well as the federal
government. But also would have dealt with prevention, giving young people
something to say yes to. It’s a very well thought out crime bill that is
both smart and tough. ”
Clinton in 1996 argued her husband’s policy was working so “why would we go
back?”
“I think we’ve made progress. The President against extraordinary
opposition that was marshaled against his efforts was able to pass an
anti-crime bill that is putting more police on the street and has begun
taking guns off the streets and out of the hands of felons and fugitives
and stalkers. The ban on assault weapons has made a difference. The Brady
bill has made a difference. And not many people know this but the
President’s proposal to expand the Brady bill was actually passed so that
people convicted of domestic violence will also be prevented from buying
handguns. So we are seeing the results of the President’s anti-crime
strategy. I just don’t want that set back. I don’t want to elect a
President or Congress who don’t believe in the Brady bill, don’t believe in
the assault weapons ban, don’t believe in putting police on the streets.
You know, it’s working, why would we go back?”
In one speech that year, she called kids in gangs “super-predators” with
“no conscience, no empathy.”
“But we also have to have an organized effort against gangs, just as in a
previous generation we had an organized effort against the mob. We need to
take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels. They
are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that
are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about
why they ended up that way but first we have to bring them to heel and the
President has asked the FBI to launch a very concerted effort against gangs
everywhere.”
In the same speech, Clinton argued the crime bill was helping local law
enforcement make “progress” in the “challenge” to “take back our streets
from crime, gangs, and drugs.”
“The fourth challenge is to take back our streets from crime, gangs, and
drugs. And we have actually been making progress on this count as a nation
because of what local law enforcement officials are doing, because of what
citizens and neighborhood patrols are doing, we’re making some progress.
Much of it is related to the initiative called ‘community policing.’
Because we have actually gotten more police officers on the streets, that
was one of the goals that the President had when he pushed the crime bill
that was passed in 1994. He promised 100,000 police. We’re moving in that
direction, but we can see it already makes a difference. Because if we see
more police interacting with people, having them on the streets, we can
prevent crimes, we can prevent petty crimes from turning into something
worse.”
In her columns (in which she repeatedly spoke positively of the law),
Clinton further argued in the column that “the same approach can work” for
juveniles as for adults and condoned policies wherein “young people who
break the law are held accountable.”
“This same approach can work for juvenile crime. Communities all across the
country are abandoning rhetoric for prosecution and prevention strategies
that show real results.
San Diego County is attacking this problem with a comprehensive plan in
which law enforcement, schools, public agencies and communities work
together. There is zero tolerance for guns and drugs in school. Young
people who break the law are held accountable. Families in trouble are
directed to a wide array of support services. And at-risk youth are steered
into a variety of after-school activities.”
Today:
Hillary Clinton last week called for changes to the criminal justice system
including mandatory body cameras for police and an end to the “era of mass
incarceration.”
“We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in
America,” she said.
Debunking Hillary Clinton’s liberal ‘problem’
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/07/no-hillary-clintons-does-not-have-a-liberal-problem/>
// WaPo // Chris Cillizza - May 7, 2015
One of the most persistent tropes of the 2016 election is that some large
number of liberals are deeply dissatisfied with the centrist approach to
politics long championed by Hillary Rodham Clinton and, as a result, are
actively engaged in a search for a more progressive alternative.
Persistent -- and wrong. The truth is that scant evidence exists in any
poll to suggest that Clinton is anything short of beloved (or, at the very
least, be-liked) by the party's liberal base.
Take a new Iowa poll conducted by Quinnipiac University. In it, Clinton
stands at 60 percent in a hypothetical caucus vote, with Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) running second at 15 percent. Clinton's standing among the
base of the party? She gets 61 percent among those who consider themselves
"very" liberal and 66 percent among the "somewhat" liberal. Her poorest
performing ideological group is "moderate/conservative" Democrats, where
she wins only 58 percent.
Take it a step further. It's not just that liberals in Iowa are going to
vote for Clinton. They also have an extremely positive view of her.
Overall, 83 percent of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers told Quinnipiac
that they view Clinton favorably. That number jumps to 88 percent among
"very" liberal Democrats. So, 9 in 10 of the most liberal voters in Iowa
like Clinton. Not exactly a liberal problem, right?
And it's not just Iowa. The last national poll conducted by the Washington
Post-ABC News, in late March, showed similar popularity numbers for
Clinton. Eighty four percent of Democrats rated her favorably. Seventy
seven percent of self-identified "liberals" had a favorable opinion of
Clinton, including 50 percent who felt "strongly" favorable toward her.
Bush nods to early states and general election battlegrounds, Clinton
sticks to primary path
<http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/05/08/bush-clinton-taking-different-tracks-on-potential-matchup>
// AP // Thomas Beaumont and Julie Pace - May 7, 2015
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — To judge them solely by their travels over the past
month, you might think Jeb Bush has already plunged into the general
election and Hillary Rodham Clinton has a serious fight on her hands for
the Democratic nomination.
Whereas the conventional thinking, at least, is quite the opposite: He's
got a real primary race to settle first and she doesn't.
Bush, who has yet to declare his candidacy for the Republican nomination,
has been stopping in states far from the early testing grounds of Iowa and
New Hampshire. Over the past month, he's made appearances in Ohio, North
Carolina and Colorado, all crucial general election states.
On Saturday, he'll be in Virginia, which will also be hotly contested in
November 2016, even as most of his Republican nomination rivals are
appearing in South Carolina — an important state in the primary race.
"It's a conscious effort, as he goes through the consideration process, to
talk to and hear from people across the board," Bush spokesman Tim Miller
said. "That means in the early primary states and other states that would
play a role in the process."
Bush's strategy carries potential risks. Voters in early primary and caucus
states are used to personal attention from candidates and could see Bush's
apparent flirtation with the general election as premature. Clinton, in
contrast, is narrowly focusing her travel schedule on the first four states
in the primaries, suggesting she wants voters to know she's taking nothing
for granted despite her dominant position in the party.
To be sure, Bush isn't avoiding the early states. He's made visits to Iowa
and New Hampshire, as well as South Carolina and Nevada, which round out
the first four primary contests, and is headed back to Nevada and Iowa next
week.
Also, he does not have paid staff on the ground in the battleground states.
But a candidate's time remains one of any campaign's most valuable assets
and how and where the candidate spends it provides the clearest glimpse
into their strategy.
Bush's relentless travel schedule has been largely driven by his aggressive
fundraising campaign. But he took time out in Ohio last month to speak to
the influential Ohio Chamber of Commerce conference, a coveted speaking
engagement in a perennial swing state.
This weekend, Bush will give the commencement address at Liberty University
in Virginia, a state that Democrat Barack Obama carried twice. In just the
past month, Bush has also spoken in Colorado and North Carolina.
Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina were each decided by less than
five percentage points in the 2012 election, and are expected to be pivotal
in 2016.
Since announcing her campaign in early April, Clinton has limited her
campaign appearances to Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. She also plans to
travel to South Carolina in the coming weeks.
It's not a liability for Bush to dip a toe into a key fall election state,
because such travel is still a priority, said veteran GOP presidential
adviser Charlie Black.
"Your first driving force is fundraising," he said, referring to travel
plans. "Second is early-primary states and third is swing states. Sometimes
it's a major speech, or a national speech that's driving them."
Black presumed that Clinton would alter her schedule under the right
conditions.
"If there were a NARAL conference in St. Louis, you can bet she'd be
there," he said, referring to the pro-abortion-rights group.
Clinton's campaign is initially raising money for the primaries, not the
general election.
But it's clear she is keeping an eye on Bush, who is viewed by many of her
advisers as the toughest potential GOP candidate in a general election.
Hillary's State Dept. aides consulted on Bill's speeches
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/hillary-clinton-state-department-bill-clinton-117763.html>
// POLITICO // Josh Gerstein - May 8, 2015
Hillary Clinton’s State Department aides were sometimes consulted “as a
practical matter” during the independent review process of President Bill
Clinton’s lucrative global appearances and business deals to get
“additional perspective,” a State Department official acknowledged to
POLITICO.
In one instance, the department’s top ethics lawyer Jim Thessin decided to
consult with the secretary’s close aides about a 2010 request from the
former president to accept an invitation to speak in China, according to
documents obtained by POLITICO.
The planned speech was to the Beijing Forum, an annual education-related
event paid for by the state-run Peking University, the Beijing Municipal
Education Commission and a Korean foundation. The fact that two of the
three sponsors were effectively part of the Chinese government raised a red
flag.
When Bill Clinton’s team pressed for an answer on whether he could speak to
the event devoted to “The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All,”
they were told Thessin needed to consult with Hillary Clinton’s staff about
it.
“In response to the request involving the Beijing Forum, Jim Thessin is
attempting to contact the staff at the Secretary’s Office to discuss the
issue,” State ethics lawyer Violanda Botet wrote to Bill Clinton’s Director
of Scheduling and Advance Terry Krinvic.
“Will a foreign government or a foreign government entity provide
compensation?” Botet asked in another email.
It’s unclear with whom Thessin discussed the proposed Bill Clinton
appearance, one of several with Chinese-government sponsors, but thousands
of pages of State Department ethics-review records obtained by POLITICO
under the Freedom of Information Act show that Hillary Clinton’s Chief of
Staff and longtime aide Cheryl Mills was copied on virtually all requests.
In some instances, the records show Thessin and Mills exchanged emails
about Bill Clinton’s proposed speeches or travels. The substance of those
emails was deleted from the records released by the State Department, which
cited a need to preserve internal deliberations.
The documents, released sporadically by State in response to a request made
more than five years ago, are often a confusing muddle. Redactions obscure
most of the State lawyers’ specific concerns. In addition, the State emails
have been released separately from the original memos from Bill Clinton’s
office, which were sent to his lawyers to be reviewed for potential
confidential information.
However, it’s clear that the vast majority of Bill Clinton’s proposed
speaking engagements sailed through with no resistance from State, while a
handful of proposals drew scrutiny over possible funding from foreign
governments.
Asked about the ethics consultations with Hillary Clinton’s immediate
staff, a current State Department official defended the practice.
“As a practical matter, the office of Secretary Clinton was included for
additional perspective on the Secretary’s schedule and work she personally
involved herself in. Their role was to identify concerns that could present
even the appearance of a conflict and which may not have been apparent to
the ethics officials reviewing each case,” said the official, who commented
on condition of anonymity.
It does not appear the former president ever spoke to the Beijing Forum,
although the records made public by the State Department don’t show a
definitive decision one way or another. Bill Clinton did give at least two
high-dollar, paid speeches in China while his wife served as secretary: a
$750,000 address in Hong Kong paid for by telecom firm Ericsson and a
$550,000 speech in Shanghai paid for by the Huatuo CEO Forum. They took
place days apart in 2011.
The State ethics review process — established under a series of agreements
struck prior to Hillary Clinton becoming secretary in 2009 — has come under
close scrutiny in recent months as reports emerged that the Clinton
Foundation did not always submit foreign-government donors for conflict of
interest reviews or disclose them publicly.
POLITICO sought records of that process under the Freedom of Information
Act more than five years ago, in November 2009. In late 2013, State began
releasing some of its files on the ethics reviews after the conservative
watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit.
The internal State Department records released this week reveal new details
about the process, including:
—The level of concern at State about foreign-government funding appears to
have varied dramatically by country. Government financial backing seems to
have scuttled several proposed speeches by the former president in China
and at least one in Turkey. However, events in Canada, Thailand and the
United Arab Emirates were green-lighted despite money from government
sources.
— One such government-funded speech delivered by Bill Clinton appears not
to have been reported on his wife’s annual financial disclosure, as
required by law.
Bill Clinton’s aides sought and received approval for a November 12, 2010
speech in Bangkok paid for by the Thai energy ministry and a state-owned
oil-and-gas company there, PTT. Photos of the event show Clinton stood
under logos for the Thai ministry and PTT as he delivered a speech titled,
“Embracing Our Common Humanity.” PTT’s role in the event is also noted in
the company’s annual report.
However, the address does not appear on the yearly list Hillary Clinton
submitted of paid speeches given by her husband, nor was the fee the former
president received ever made public.
The speech itself was mentioned in passing in news accounts about something
else the former president reportedly did in Bangkok on that trip: film a
cameo for Hangover II. (The scene was apparently cut and one actor in the
film said Clinton just visited the set and never planned a cameo.)
—Until now, agency officials and Clinton aides have been vague about
whether any foundation donations ever wound up being cleared under a
vetting arrangement set up before Hillary Clinton became secretary, but the
records show at least one such foreign-government gift was submitted and
approved at State.
Part of the current controversy surrounding the foundation was generated in
February when the fund acknowledged, in response to a query from the
Washington Post, that Clinton aides had not submitted for review a $500,000
gift the Algerian government contributed for earthquake relief in Haiti.
But a request for approval did come in for a planned $175,000 donation from
a Colombian government agency to a development program run by the Clinton
Foundation in coordination with Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra. Part
of the money was intended for a spice-growing cooperative; another chunk
was destined for a foundation run by singer Shakira.
The initial submission to State prompted Mills to ask Bill Clinton’s office
by email: “Can you provide any context for the purpose of the contribution?”
A memo shows a State ethics lawyer later signed off on the donation.
While the records released by State this week appear to reveal disparate
treatment for government-backed requests to pay Bill Clinton for speeches,
the files don’t clearly state the reason for the divergence.
State began raising questions about government-supported speeches in China
early on in Hillary Clinton’s tenure, but requests from Bill Clinton’s
office continued to roll in. In 2009, State officials appear to have forced
cancellation of a planned video address by the former president to a sports
gala in Shanghai sponsored by a hedge-fund titan routing money through a
Chinese-government-run foundation.
In addition to the Beijing Forum, there were red flags from State for
proposals for paid speeches to the Chinese E-Commerce Association, the
China Association for International Friendly Contact and a business
aviation event to take place in Shanghai in 2012.
Kathryn Youel Page said that aviation event raised questions because the
request “states that the Shanghai Airport Authority (SAA), a state-owned
enterprise, would be a ‘title sponsor only.’”
“Does this mean that SAA is not contributing any funds to pay for President
Clinton’s speaker fees?” she asked Krinvic via email. “I don’t believe
we’ve previously cleared acceptance of fees from PRC [People’s Republic of
China]-linked entities but could consider this variation.”
“We are actually pulling that offer from our list,” Krinvic replied. “It’s
not feasible schedule wise now.” (Former Republican presidential candidate
and publisher Steve Forbes appears to have taken the speaking slot first
offered to Bill Clinton.)
A proposed Bill Clinton speech in Turkey in 2009 met similar resistance,
with State lawyers asking about possible government funding. The “keynote
address” planned for the International University Festival in Istanbul was
to be underwritten by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the
Office of then-Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.
The proposal generated email traffic between State headquarters and U.S.
diplomats in Ankara, as well as with climate change experts, since that was
one proposed subject of Clinton’s talk. The substance of the exchanges was
redacted from the released documents, but the speech appears to have never
taken place.
A friendlier reception was accorded to the Canadian government when aides
to Bill Clinton asked ethics officials to approve a speech to the Canadian
National Exposition in Toronto. Clinton’s participation in a “photoline,
speech and moderated Q&A” was to be paid for by a tourism-promotion agency
of the Canadian government, Clinton’s office said in a July 21, 2009
request.
State Department lawyer Violanda Botet wrote back 10 days later asking
Clinton’s people to clarify the foreign government funding.
“All funding for this event comes from a Government program that supports
tourism in Canada,” Krinvic replied. “Funds have been provided in the grant
from Industry Canada to market President Clinton’s appearance in key US
border states (New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan).”
By August 5, Krinvic had grown frantic.
“Anyword [sic] on this? I have about 30 more min before we lose the offer,”
he wrote via email.
One hour and one minute later, Thessin — State’s top ethics official —
finally weighed in.
“I do not have a problem with this as long as President Clinton is not
serving as a U.S. government employee at the time of the appearance and
when he is paid an honorarium,” Thessin wrote. “If not an employee, he may
accept reimbursements of expenses and an honorarium for his speech/talk,
but he may not receive any gifts from the Canadian government.”
That speech, delivered on August 29, 2009, brought Clinton a fee of
$175,000, according to his wife’s financial disclosure.
Bill Clinton got similar approval for the 2010 speech sponsored by the Thai
government, for an unknown amount, and for an environmental event in Abu
Dhabi in 2011, which carried a $500,000 paycheck.
The records suggest that ethics reviewers generally did not know how much
money Clinton was receiving for the speaking engagements until his wife’s
disclosure form was filed months or even a year or more after the events.
Spokespeople for the Clintons and for the Clinton Foundation did not
respond to requests for comment for this story.
However, traveling in Africa for the Clinton Foundation this week, the
former president said he needed to give the paid speeches to keep his
family finances afloat. “I’ve got to pay our bills,” Bill Clinton told NBC
in Nairobi.
Clinton said the speech circuit was the least problematic way for him to
bring in income without establishing permanent business ties to individuals
or companies.
“It’s the most independence I can get,” he argued in the NBC interview. “If
I had a business relationship with somebody, they would have a target on
their back from the day they did business with me until the end….People
like hearing me speak. And I have turned down a lot of them. If I think
there`s something wrong with it, I don`t take it. And I did disclose who
gave them to me so people can make up their own mind.”
A State Department spokesman declined to comment when asked why the ethics
reviewers seem to have concluded that government funding from some
countries was problematic, but money from other nations was not.
At a regular briefing for reporters Thursday, a State Department spokesman
said the agency does not plan to take any action to address or investigate
the failure by the Clinton Foundation and related organizations to submit
some foreign government donations for review or to make public the names of
donors.
”The State Department has not and does not intend to initiate a formal
review or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not
submitted during Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” spokesman Jeff Rathke said.
Rathke noted that the various ethics-related agreements struck just prior
to Clinton becoming secretary of state did not require any approval of
donations made to the Clinton Foundation by private individuals or
businesses, just foreign governments. The agreements do raise the
possibility of State ethics officials advising Clinton personally on
potential conflicts of interest arising from her husband’s speeches and
business contacts.
Rathke said that while any omissions in the donation vetting process are
unfortunate, there is no indication that any gifts to the foundation or
payments for husband’s speeches or advice impacted her work at State
“We regret that we did not have the opportunity to review all new and
increased foreign government donations,” Rathke said.” The department’s
actions under Secretary Clinton were taken to advance administration policy
as set by the President and in the interest of American foreign policy…. We
aren’t aware of any actions taken by Secretary Clinton that were influenced
by donations to the Clinton Foundation or its offshoots, or by speech
honoraria and consultancies of former President Clinton.”
Rancor marks Benghazi panel’s first year of work
<http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/2015/05/07/rancor-marks-benghazi-panels-first-year-work/70976428/>
// Greenville Online // Mary Troyan - May 8, 2015
WASHINGTON – After a year of operations, the mostly secret work of the
special House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks is fueling
partisan rancor that threatens to bleed into the 2016 presidential election.
Public hearings have been scarce, a final report is many months away, and
the committee, which marked its one-year birthday on Friday, has spent most
of its time reviewing documents and talking to witnesses behind closed
doors.
The only work product available for public viewing consists of snippy
letters between Republicans and Democrats on the committee, and between
those Republicans and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s
lawyer over who will be interviewed when, and by whom.
But Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the panel’s self-assured chairman, said the
lack of transparency is intentional and doesn’t mean there hasn’t been
progress.
In a Thursday interview, Gowdy said he expects to review 25,000 documents
Congress has never seen and to interview 50 witnesses never before
interviewed. He said the committee, formally known as the House Select
Committee on Benghazi, could finish its report by the end of the year.
“We were asked to write the final, definitive accounting... not have a
hearing with great ratings or provide a lot of theater and drama,” Gowdy
said. “I am willing to put up with the criticism until we produce a final
report.”
Committee Republicans will issue a one-year progress report on Friday.
Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed when
terrorists attacked U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
One suspect, Ahmed Abu Khatallah, is in U.S. custody, and the criminal
investigation is ongoing.
The Benghazi committee, created by a House vote, has grown into a
multimillion-dollar operation complete with staff, security clearances,
offices and subpoena power.
It spent about $1.8 million in 2014, most of it in salaries. Pay is typical
for congressional staff, including $172,500 annually for the Republican
staff director/chief counsel, and $70,000 for the Democrats’ press
secretary.
In the first quarter of 2015, the committee spent another $916,000. It has
almost $3.7 million remaining, but Gowdy has said he doesn’t expect to
spend that much.
The panel was created because House Republicans were unsatisfied with the
seven previous congressional inquiries into the attacks. House Speaker John
Boehner picked Gowdy, a former state and federal prosecutor, to chair the
committee and appointed six other Republicans to the panel. Democrats,
initially reluctant to participate, received five seats.
The committee has three lines of inquiry: inadequate security before the
attacks, the military’s inability to respond in time, and whether the Obama
administration, for political reasons, intentionally mischaracterized the
attacks as the spontaneous outgrowth of a protest.
Democratic critics of the Benghazi committee say all three issues have
already been explored, leading to changes in security protocols,
repositioning of military assets and the conclusion that the
protest-gone-awry description was a mistake, not a cynical attempt to
disguise the attacks’ links to terrorism.
Gowdy and the panel’s other GOP members say nothing is settled as long as
new evidence is still being uncovered.
The biggest revelation to date is that Clinton used a private email account
to conduct official business during her term as secretary of state. She
decided which emails to turn over to the committee and deleted the rest,
igniting a confrontation over whether the public record of her tenure is
complete.
The focus on Clinton has led Democrats to speculate that the committee is
nothing more a Republican plot to sully her presidential candidacy ahead of
the 2016 election.
The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said Republicans
have strayed from the priority pushed by the families of the four men
killed in the attacks — better security for American personnel overseas.
“They said, ‘Please do not turn this into a political football,’” Cummings
said in a Thursday interview.
Gowdy, who has asked Clinton to turn over her personal email server to an
independent third party for review, said he’s focused solely on her
Libya-related communications. Broader questions over her email policy will
be handled by a separate committee of Boehner’s choosing, Gowdy said.
“There is no question someone else is going to do that. I don’t want to do
it,” he said.
Gowdy said Democrats are more focused on how Benghazi affects Clinton than
he is, and tensions over 2016 helped short-circuit the committee’s
bipartisan cooperation. Democrats complained in January that Republicans
had shut them out of witness interviews. Gowdy and Cummings gave
contradictory explanations at the time.
“I think there are forces outside the committee that probably don’t benefit
from it being perceived as professional and real and want it to be viewed
as other committees — hyper-partisan and fighting — and that’s when the
tactics changed,” Gowdy said.
Cummings said it is “absolutely wrong” to think anyone pressured Democrats
to be uncooperative.
“Nobody ever made any kind of that statement to me,” he said.
Cummings said tensions flared after Republican leaders said the committee
would adopt operating rules, but never did.
On Thursday, Gowdy said Democratic members or their staffs have been
present at all witness interviews, including interviews of five witnesses
who survived the attacks. Four of the five have never before been
interviewed by Congress, he said.
The committee’s pace of witness interviews has doubled, from two to four
per week. Next up: individual interviews of members of the CIA’s global
response staff in Libya who were interviewed as a group by a previous
congressional committee, Gowdy said.
Document production is not moving as swiftly, he said. The committee’s last
public hearing, in January, focused on the committee’s pending requests to
the State Department.
Gowdy said the committee also is awaiting records from the Justice
Department, the White House and the CIA. He recruited lawmakers on the
House and Senate Appropriations Committees to pressure the State Department
to speed compliance, especially regarding emails from senior agency
officials other than Clinton.
Gowdy also said he wants the committee to interview Susan Rice, who was
U.N. ambassador at the time of the Benghazi attacks. Rice said on Sunday
talk shows after the attacks that they appeared to be linked to widespread
protests reacting to an anti-Muslim video.
The House intelligence committee, in its report released last year, said
her comments were based on incomplete and contradictory intelligence at the
time.
Democrats say the Benghazi investigation already has lasted longer than
congressional inquiries into Iran-Contra, the John F. Kennedy
assassination, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Hurricane Katrina.
Cummings confirmed Gowdy’s statement that Democrats have been included in
witness interviews, but he said they have yet to discover information that
contradicts previous reports.
“Witnesses are just verifying what is already known,” Cummings said.
One Republican committee member, Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama, said the
yearlong investigation has been worthwhile.
“We’re closer now than we ever have been before… to establishing a clear
record of what happened, how it happened and why the attacks happened,”
Roby said Thursday.
In South Carolina, conservatives critical of how the Obama administration
handled Benghazi say they believe the committee will unearth new
information.
“Trey is bringing order to chaos,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Nic Lane, former chairman of the Spartanburg County Republican Party, said
the conservatives in Gowdy’s hometown will accept the findings, even if
they don’t confirm some of the especially sinister conspiracy theories of
wrongdoing by Clinton or other Obama administration officials.
“True conservatives who know Gowdy… know what kind of a prosecutor he was
and will stand behind him no matter the outcome,” Lane said. “No political
maneuvering or inside baseball is going to stop him from producing what he
believes is a presentation of all the facts.”
Hillary Clinton's Hill Whisperer
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/hillary-clinton-s-hill-whisperer-20150507>
// National Journal // Sarah Mimms - May 8, 2015
May 7, 2015 Eager to line up support from top members of the national
Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton sent three of her senior aides to Capitol
Hill last month. For the Clinton campaign, it was an opportunity to brief
members of Congress on her plans, avoid any surprises, and shore up support
among the party's electeds.
For Clinton's political director Amanda Renteria, it was a homecoming.
After running a failed congressional campaign in California last year, the
40-year-old former staffer for Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Debbie Stabenow
returned to Capitol Hill in April as a top liaison between Team Hillary and
some of the members she knows well from nearly a decade on the Hill.
Given her knowledge of working in (and running for) Congress and her
sterling reputation among Democratic senators, Renteria could be a secret
weapon for Clinton in keeping the campaign and the minority party in
Congress on the same page.
"Oh, I was so proud of her," Stabenow said beamingly, reflecting on
Renteria's performance in a closed-session luncheon with the Democratic
senators. "I feel like it's one of the family, for me. … I think she's very
well-respected in the caucus. People were very excited to see that she is
in this position. I think people have a lot of confidence in her."
In the three weeks since, Stabenow said several members have approached her
to praise Renteria and her team of regional political directors for their
quick responses to their queries about the campaign's views on policy,
surrogacy needs, fundraising, and more. "She understands both the
importance and the benefits of having members totally engaged and also the
importance of being able to respond quickly with information," Stabenow
said.
"I've worked on a lot of campaigns for a really long time and I'm shocked
by how good this campaign is at keeping people in the loop. Usually this is
the one thing that campaigns do badly. And in the past weeks, I've just
been astounded," said Bill Sweeney, Stabenow's current chief of staff who
served as Renteria's deputy. "I think that a lot of it really does stem
from Amanda's leadership … understanding that folks out here are trying our
best to be helpful."
It's been a long and unusual road for Renteria, the daughter of a
Mexican-immigrant father and Mexican-American mother, who was raised in
California's Central Valley. After graduating from Stanford University,
where she played both softball and basketball for the school, Renteria
briefly worked at Goldman Sachs. Then she took a job teaching high school,
left to get her MBA at Harvard, and then took a job as a budget analyst and
consultant to the City of San Jose, before finally landing on Capitol Hill
in 2005.
At age 30, Renteria took a job as a legislative aide to Feinstein, her
home-state senator. Just two years later, she became the first Latina chief
of staff in Senate history, working for Stabenow.
That quick rise was fueled not only Renteria's ambition and work ethic but
her warmth and ability to quickly earn the trust of those she's working
with, current and former Democratic staffers said.
Nowhere was that more evident than in the fight to pass a farm bill through
both chambers of Congress last year. Renteria was instrumental in bridging
the gap between not only the two parties, but the regional factions of
members that grew up around the bill. That kind of coalition-building could
be instrumental to the Clinton campaign, as the presumptive nominee faces
criticism from the party's liberal wing.
And her relentless optimism helped to keep a team of warring staffers
together. "That farm bill almost died about 20 different times I think,"
one former Senate Democratic staffer said. "But she ... was never sort of,
dour. Even at sort of the darkest times she remained positive and
determined. That's part of the reason why she's such an effective
leader—because then everybody else said, if Amanda still thinks it's
possible [then maybe it is]."
Renteria declined to be interviewed for this story, but Sweeney said he
sees clearly how she'll translate her skills honed in the Senate to a
presidential campaign. "Really, the job of the chief of staff is really
just to keep everything running. She was really good at that, good at
keeping the trains running on time, keeping everybody in the loop. And
that's the key thing she's going to be doing at the Hillary campaign," he
said.
After wrapping up the farm bill and seeing Stabenow reelected in a tough
2012 contest, Renteria left the Hill on a high note, preparing to return
two years with a very different title: Congresswoman.
It didn't work out that way. Although California's 21st District was
redrawn in 2012 to be much more favorable to Democrats and now is 72
percent Hispanic, Renteria lost to incumbent Republican David Valadao by
almost 16 points.
The loss was difficult for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,
which helped to recruit Renteria for the seat. She was one of their most
promising candidates for a seat that the party finally had a shot at after
years of Republican control, executive director Kelly Ward said in an
interview. But it was one of many in the 2014 cycle to swing toward
Republicans, and the DCCC had to switch its focus to protecting its own
incumbents rather than trying to make inroads in new territory.
In preparing for the 2016 election cycle, Renteria was the first candidate
that the DCCC reached out to, Ward said. Ward had been impressed during the
previous cycle by Renteria, a mother of two who she described as "warm, but
tough." She was rumored to be considering a second run for Congress, but
had told local reporters she was leaning towards running for an open
California State Assembly seat.
"Her number one focus was going home and doing right by her community,"
Ward said.
As a candidate in 2014, Renteria did everything "110 percent," Ward said,
and although it's often difficult for "doers" like Renteria, she handled
the transition from staffer to candidate, who had to pass a lot of the work
she typically did to a staff of her own, better than almost any other
candidate Ward had seen.
The 2014 loss "was no fault of hers," Ward said.
And the California Democratic Party is hoping that the energy she brought
to Democrats in the Central Valley will pay dividends in 2016, even without
Renteria as a candidate. "She brought new people into the party because she
… just drew them in because she is so dynamic," Shawnda Westly, the party's
executive director said in an interview. Renteria built an incredibly loyal
volunteer base in the district that impressed Westly and other members, a
skill she could use in building a team for Clinton as well.
The personal experience of campaigning for Congress clearly informs
Renteria's work as political director for the Clinton campaign. But it also
gives her another connection to members on Capitol Hill. The DCCC, too, has
kept in touch with Renteria—not as a candidate, but as a liaison to help
keep the campaign committee in the loop with Team Hillary.
"I'd love to have her as a candidate in a presidential election cycle,"
Ward said, but she understands why Renteria is moving on to the Hillary
campaign rather than running another of her own. "I think she is going to
do a great job."
Sweeney echoed that sentiment. "Frankly the best thing is if she was in
Congress right now, the second best thing is her working to get Hillary
elected," he said.
Hillary Clinton to attend Chicago fundraisers in late May
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/politics/hillary-clinton-fundraisers-chicago/>
// CNN // Dan Merica - May 9, 2015
Hillary Clinton will headline two fundraisers in her hometown of Chicago on
May 20, according to two invitations obtained by CNN.
Clinton will start her afternoon in the Windy City with a fundraiser at the
home of Fred Eychaner, a philanthropist, chairman of Newsweb Corporation
and prolific Democratic donor.
Eychaner has been a longtime Clinton supporter and has donated more than
$25 million to The Clinton Foundation. He is also a supporter of Priorities
USA, a Democratic super PAC run by former Clinton aides that recently
received the presidential candidate's blessing.
Clinton will then head to the home of J.B. Pritzker, the co-founder of the
Pritzker Group and Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign co-chair, and his
wife, M.K. According to his own reported estimates, he raised upwards of $1
million for her failed bid.
Pritzker is the brother of Penny Pritzker, the current secretary of
commerce.
"Please join us for a conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton in support
of Hillary for America," both invites read.
The Chicago Sun-Times first reported that Clinton was holding the events.
The two fundraisers will be Hillary Clinton's first visit to her hometown
of Chicago since she declared her second presidential campaign last month.
Clinton was raised in Park Ridge, a small Chicago suburb, and regularly
mentions her Midwestern roots.
The fundraisers will be part of Clinton's "Hillstarter" program that asks
donors to raise a total of $27,000 by encouraging 10 people to donate the
maximum $2,700. The invites also give donors a chance to "host" the event
by raising $50,000. Clinton has already held Hillstarter events in New
York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
She is spending Friday in Silicon Valley, where she will headline a
fundraiser at the home of Eileen Chamberlain and John Donahoe, CEO of eBay.
Why Character Attacks on Hillary Won’t Work
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/09/why-character-attacks-on-hillary-won-t-work.html>
// Daily Beast // Jeff Greenfield - May 9, 2015
Why the former first couple has always survived attacks on their character,
and probably always will.
If you’re Martin O’Malley, or one of the other potential Democrats
pondering a race against Hillary Clinton, you’ve been presented with an
unexpected opportunity—and a very, very tricky challenge.
The spate of stories about the interconnections between the Clinton
Foundation, the Clintons’ wealth, and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary
of State have opened up a line of attack against the prohibitive Democratic
favorite that was once the province of her ideological foes. For close to a
quarter-century now, the willingness—make that eagerness—of voices on the
Right to embrace every accusation against the Clintons has proven to be a
pearl of great price for Bill and Hillary, serving to insulate them
politically from allegations that were, in fact, credible. (No, the
Clintons did not murder Vince Foster, nor profit from the Whitewater deal.
Yes, there was something distinctly non-kosher about how Hillary Clinton
made so much money trading cattle futures. No, the Clintons did not hang
pornographic toys on a White House Christmas tree; yes, the Marc Rich
pardon was indefensible).
The immediate instinct of Clinton defenders to attack the credentials or
motives of accusers is going to be undergoing a heavy stress test with
these latest stories, requiring the addition of the New York Times and the
Washington Post to the members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. More
seriously for the presumptive Democratic nominee, the stories help take the
ideological patina off the argument that the Clintons chronically exempt
themselves from the rules that are supposed to apply to the rest of the
political universe. Throughout their political lives, the Clintons have
successfully—and often accurately—argued that the criticism have come from
those opposed to their agenda. Now, two news outlets that embody the
“Mainstream Media” so much scorned on the Right have weighed in with
stories that undergird precisely the same argument.
And herein lies the opportunity—and the dilemma—for O’Malley or any of the
other possible Democratic challengers: what do you do with the argument
that the case against Hillary Clinton is a matter not of ideology, but of
character?
As far as I can tell, no intra-party campaign against a prohibitive
favorite has ever been waged on such grounds. The more formidable
challengers to sitting Presidents have all been made on policy grounds. The
Eugene McCarthy-Robert Kennedy campaigns against Lyndon Johnson were based
on disagreements over the Vietnam War (RFK clearly believed LBJ was unfit
by character to be President, but it was not part of the campaign). Ronald
Reagan fought Gerald Ford in 1976 over what he saw as a weak foreign
policy, created by (Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Ford”—a rhetorically brilliant
evocation of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”). Ted Kennedy opposed President
Jimmy Carter for presiding over a shaky economy with insufficiently liberal
remedies.
Throughout their public lives, Bill and Hillary Clinton have benefitted
enormously from the fury of their ideological enemies.
The same is true when the odds-on favorite was not a White House occupant.
Bill Bradley tried to run to Al Gore’s left in 2000, but never raised an
issue of character. (When I asked him during a New York City debate whether
he thought Gore was honest enough to be President, he said, in effect,
that’s a judgment for the voters to make). In 2008, Barack Obama’s case
against Hillary Clinton was both generational—I’m free of the arguments of
earlier times—and positional—I opposed the Iraq War; she voted for it.
(The closest use of “character” came in 1992, when Jerry Brown raised the
question of Hillary Clinton’s legal work in a TV debate with Bill
Clinton—permitting Clinton to indignantly declare that Brown should be
ashamed of himself for attacking his wife).
Up to now, Clinton’s potential rivals have been taking the traditional
route of arguing that she does not truly reflect the Democratic base on
issues like income inequality and corporate regulation. Now, they have been
handed a much more potent argument: that the financial behavior of the
Clintons demonstrates that they identify with the one per cent—or one-tenth
of one per cent—and that their conduct will be as big a liability to
Hillary Clinton as Mitt Romney’s business career and tax returns were to
him in 2012.
But, as with nitroglycerin, a potent substance can also be highly
dangerous. Bill Clinton is the most admired man in America; and among
Democrats, his approval rating is stratospheric. Up to now, there has been
no significant unhappiness within her party at the prospect of a Hillary
Clinton nomination—not to mention the significant cohort of voters eager to
see a woman elected President. (Indeed, a recent New York Times poll
suggests that Clinton has retained, even increased, her popularity among
Democrats) There’s also the pragmatic argument that a frontal assault on
the likely democratic nominee will do neither the party nor the advocates
of such an assault any good.
Moreover, nothing is more likely to rally Democrats around Clinton than the
assaults from across the political divide. Throughout their public lives,
Bill and Hillary Clinton have benefitted enormously from the fury of their
ideological enemies. Making a case that will persuade Democrats to move
away from Clinton on character grounds will be the political equivalent of
defusing a ticking bomb.
Hillary Clinton under fire in South Carolina for being 'old, white and
rich' as Republican presidential hopefuls pile on the Democratic
front-runner
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074826/Hillary-Clinton-fire-South-Carolina-old-white-rich-Republican-presidential-hopefuls-pile-Democratic-runner.html#ixzz3ZfPgHJQG>
// Daily Mail // David Martosko - May 9, 2015
Democrats 'don't like "old, white and rich",' a red-meat conservative
audience heard Saturday in the early hours of the South Carolina Freedom
Summit.
'And their answer to that is Hillary.'
Mrs. Clinton, the American liberal most likely to contend for the
presidency in 2016, rivaled the ISIS terror army in taking punches from
Republicans at the event, held in Greenville.
The demographic quip came from Kellyanne Conway, a pollster. But she wasn't
alone.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, four years ago the Iowa Caucus
victor, complained that Clinton stood in the way of nuclear-related
sanctions he once drafted when they were both senators.
Asked after his speech if he could think of a nice work or two for the
former secretary of state, he stood puzzled and then shrugged: 'Happy
Mother's Day?'
Donald Trump, the brand-happy real estate billionaire, told Daily Mail
Online that Hillary Clinton would 'destroy the country.'
He pursed his lips, though, when asked if he could say anything nice about
her. And then 15 seconds ticked off silently.
'Honestly,' Trump said after the pregnant pause, 'I think it would be
inappropriate right now.'
'Hillary's got some very big problems, I think,' Trump said in an interview
backstage. 'Much more significant than people understand, with respect to
the emails and other things.'
'If you look back eight years ago, she had it made. And then Obama came
along. Now? I'm not even 100 per cent sure she's going to go all the way.'
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal also made a positive note of Clinton's
motherhood, saying she and former presdient Bill Clinton had 'raised their
daughter under the glare of the media spotlight.'
'By all accounts she's turned out to be a very accomplished adult in her
own right,' Jindal said. 'And happoly married.'
But he said he doesn't want to see Chelsea visiting her mom in the Whtie
House in 2017.
'The only thing she's ever run is President Obama's foreign polic,' he said
of Hillary, ticking off disappointments in Russia, Ukraine, Israel and
Iran. 'It's been a complete failure.'
He also criticized her recent comments that 'deep-seated cultural codes,
religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed' to give more of
the world's women access to abortion and other reproductive interventions.
'I can't imagine a more preposterous and offensive comment,' Jindal said
Saturday.
'My religious beliefs aren't between me and Hillary Clinton. They're
between me and God. And I'm not going to change them simply because she
doesn't like them.'
Jindal snarked that Clinton hadn't proposed a method for shifting the
religious views of pro-life Republicans.
'I don't know – does that mean re-education camps?' he asked.
'I think the Democrats are making a mistake simply by crowning Hillary
Clinton. But that's their choice to make.'
The president of Citizens United, the constitutionally famous group behind
Saturday's event, called for a criminal investigation into her time as
America's top diplomat.
'The Clintons are synonymous with the word "scandal",' David Bossie told
Daily Mail Online, referring to allegations that she traded her influence
for foreign donations to her family foundation.
'I actually hope there is a grand jury looking into this right now, because
there needs to be.'
Asked during a press conference what Clinton's strongest political quality
is, Iowa congressman Steve King didn't mince words.
'It's not her likeability,' he said.
King also blasted Clinton as a holdover from an Obama administration whose
foreign policy stumbles carried her personal brand for four years.
'I don't know how that works for her,' King said with a shrug.
'We need to make a change from Barack Obama. The country knows that. She's
partly an extension of Barack Obama. She has to defend her policies and
still separate herself [from him]. That's a tough campaign for her to run.'
Conway, whose Polling Company Inc. runs a 'WomanTrend' division targeting
female consumer opinion, hammered Hillary for trying to corner the market
on the feminine-candidate mystique.
WIth Clinton as the Democrats' standard-bearer in 2016, she predicted, 'the
gender card will be played.'
'The idea of a female president? I think it's terrific. I have three
daughters.'
But ultimately, she said, 'the question isn't whether you want "a" woman to
be president. It's whether you want "that" woman to be president.'
'Hillary is not a hypothetical. She's Hillary.'
Chelsea Clinton is no longer off limits
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/hillary-clinton/11594742/Chelsea-Clinton-is-no-longer-off-limits.html>
// The Telegraph // Peter Foster - May 10, 2015
American presidential campaigns are always more about personality than
policy, requiring voters to pass judgment on the characters of the
candidates - which is why losing is such a bruising business. Just ask Mitt
Romney.
It's also why both parties have long agreed that when it comes to personal
attacks, spouses and children are off-limits. Candidates get what is coming
to them, but basic decency and a bit of tactical commonsense - attacking
someone's family is guaranteed to make you look cheap - means that
loved-ones are spared the hurt.
But the 2016 campaign could be rather different, thanks to the unique
situation thrown up by the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
Her spouse, as a former US president and a political figure in his own
right, is clearly fair game as, potentially - and this is where it could
get really interesting - is the Clinton's daughter, Chelsea.
Chelsea Clinton with her parents BIll and Hillary in Chicago in 1996 (AP)
Now 35, she is no longer the gawky teenager of her father's tumultuous
White House years or indeed the slightly awkward, just-out-of-college
twenty-something who campaigned so hard (400 events) for her mother in 2008.
Eight years on, she has grown into a very different figure, as could be
seen last week as Chelsea and Bill made their semi-Royal progress around
Africa reviewing the good works of the Clinton Foundation, where Chelsea
has played a leading role since 2011.
The trip was a good example of how Chelsea is no longer just a public
figure - a matter in which she had no choice - but also now a political one
too.
The Clinton Foundation undeniably does good works but has it always
laboured somewhat under the impression that its philanthropy is at least as
much about showing love to the Clinton family brand as it is about
dispensing medicines and hearing aids in Africa.
Chelsea Clinton during a visit to a Kenyan hospital to see work of the
Clinton Health Access Initiative (EPA)
The recent raft of allegations about the Clintons using the foundation as a
part of a hazy web of influence-pedalling has hit the nascent Hillary
campaign hard, and it is noteworthy that Chelsea has been directly involved
in the push-back.
“It's always about the work,” she said in an interview with Washington Post
in Africa this week. “I've never had anyone talk to me about my parents in
a political capacity for a foundation programme.”
Only the voters can decide if Chelsea really believes in that simplistic
account of how influence works, but equally they can be clear that she is
part of the family firm now.
Chelsea told The Telegraph last year that she never wanted to join the
family business, but ultimately felt “called” to do so.
That decision comes with a price. Republican strategists will have to
decide whether to attack Miss Clinton, or not, but there is sense in which
Chelsea, once pitied for enduring her teenage years at the White House, is
now part of the wider Clinton conundrum.
It is an oblique point, but it was interesting to note that Chelsea was
photographed alongside her father at the memorial to those who died in the
1998 US Embassy bombings in Nairobi, taking a moment to remember.
Nothing wrong in that, but as the former US president on whose watch those
213 people died, Mr Clinton is always present in a semi-official capacity.
Chelsea's position is less clear, more dynastic in nature: she is a former
first-daughter, heir-apparent, and, ultimately, lone princess to the Court
of Clinton.
The birth of the first Clinton grandchild last year - also called
Charlotte, as it happens - was greeted with fawning fanfare in the US media
worthy of a real royal birth.
The feted infant often appears in New York gossip columns being wheeled
round Lower Manhattan, and is also fast becoming an unwitting fixture of
the Hillary Clinton campaign - under the Hillary hashtag
#grandmothersknowbest.
Like all good princesses, Chelsea is dutiful and demure - and only her
harshest critics would suggest she is not earnestly engaged in the realm of
international development, often to the point of tedium - but that hasn't
stopped her developing a Clintonian sense of entitlement.
Mrs Clinton campaigns in populist fashion against America's upper echelons,
but as Bill Clinton said this week when quizzed about his $500,000-a-pop
speaker fees, “we gotta pay our bills” and Chelsea, married to a Goldman
Sachs alum turned hedge fund manager, apparently does too.
Until she quit last year, NBC News paid Miss Clinton $600,000-a-year for a
handful of utterly lousy television reports that caused the Washington
Post's television critic to describe her (accurately) as “one of the most
boring people of her era”.
Chelsea feigns naivety about why corporations and governments throw vast
sums at her parents, and yet she must know that third-rate trainee
television reporters don't receive that kind of money, unless they happen
to be called Clinton.
She has played the game herself too long to fail to understand the rules,
and the electorate knows it It might still feel mean and gratuitous to beat
up on Chelsea - and Republican strategists might decide against it for that
reason - but the fact is Chelsea is no longer the young woman who moved the
needle positively for her mother in 2008.
Chelsea has moved on these past eight years and - like the rest of Clinton
machine - she comes with baggage now, too.
GOP slow-plays Benghazi investigation
<http://thehill.com/homenews/house/241516-gop-slow-plays-benghazi-investigation>
// The Hill // Scott Wong and Martin Matishak - May 9, 2015
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has agreed to testify before the
Benghazi committee this month but don’t expect Republicans to be satisfied
with her appearance.
House Republicans have now spent a full year investigating the 2012
terrorist attacks in Libya — including whether any of the former secretary
of State’s actions may have contributed to the incident — and there are few
indications there will be a speedy conclusion to their inquiries.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi,
signaled he’s prepared to drag out his investigation well into 2016 if
Clinton and the Obama administration continue to stonewall his requests for
documents and answers.
That would mean the probe would not conclude until the homestretch of
Clinton’s long campaign for the White House.
“Chairman Gowdy said early on in this investigation that there is no
statute of limitations on the truth. Our job is to get to the truth,” Rep.
Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a leading House conservative who serves on the
Benghazi panel, told The Hill. “I wish we could already be there but based
on the way this administration has conducted themselves has just made it
difficult.
“They’re the ones who’ve been driving the pace and the timing of all this.”
So far, there’s no agreement on when exactly Clinton would appear on
Capitol Hill. In an interim report on of the Benghazi committee’s first
year of work, Gowdy wrote Friday that the panel would call Clinton to
testify once she and the State Department had provided all relevant
information.
Since Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) created the Benghazi committee a year
ago this week, the panel has adopted a go-slow approach. Gowdy, a former
federal prosecutor, has been thorough and methodical, while being careful
not to make his investigation appear too overtly political or partisan.
When the committee discovered that Clinton had used a personal email
account while leading the State Department, Gowdy called for her to turn
over her email server to the agency’s inspector general or another neutral
third party, GOP aides noted. That way an independent arbiter could
separate the private emails from the public ones.
“The goal here is not pomp and circumstance or show hearings,” said a GOP
leadership aide familiar with the investigation. “The goal is to get facts
and a full and complete record of what happened before, during and after
the attack. And that is the mandate Gowdy has steadfastly pursued."
But Republicans are also fully aware the investigative panel — and the
Benghazi issue in general — is proving to be a major political headache for
the 2016 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Boehner, whom Gowdy
briefed last week on the Benghazi probe, has used recent news conferences
to bring attention to the Clinton email scandal.
“Of course this is all detrimental to her political ambitions,” said one
House GOP lawmaker.
It’s been more than two and a half years since Islamic militants attacked
U.S. diplomatic facilities in Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and
three other Americans — an assault that Clinton took responsibility for.
Republicans have long contended that Clinton and other senior State
officials denied repeated requests for more security at the mission before
the attack.
Democrats, meanwhile, have pointed out that Gowdy’s Benghazi investigation
has lasted longer than congressional probes into the Pearl Harbor attack,
John F. Kennedy assassination, and Iran-Contra scandal.
But Republicans have made no apologies about their slow-and-steady
approach. The Benghazi panel, they argue, unearthed the existence of
Clinton’s private server that numerous other House and Senate committees
missed in their own investigations.
And the panel contacted eyewitnesses who never had been interviewed before,
and secured tens of thousands of new documents related to the attack. Just
last week, the State Department handed over more than 4,000 documents from
the agency’s own investigation into the deadly attack. Congress had never
reviewed them before.
The disclosure was soon followed by a May 4 letter from Clinton’s attorney
to Gowdy that she would appear once before the committee, not twice as he
had insisted for months.
The missive was the latest in a months long chess match between Clinton’s
team and the panel about when she would make her third congressional
appearance on the attacks.
In January, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the panel’s top Democrat, said
Clinton had agreed to testify again on Benghazi.
But the March revelation that Clinton used a personal email server while
helming the State Department complicated the calendar, prompting Gowdy to
say Clinton would have to appear twice: first to address the email
controversy behind closed doors, and again during an open hearing on the
2012 assault.
Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, eventually pushed back, writing in an
April 22 letter that there was “no reason to delay her appearance or to
have her testify in a private interview.”
Gowdy then said in an April 23 response that both hearings could be held in
public.
The South Carolina lawmaker has yet to respond to Clinton’s latest demand
for a single hearing and likely won’t until after meeting with fellow panel
Republicans this week.
Jordan and others are still pushing for two hearings, saying they’d have an
enormous amount of material to cover. For instance, Gowdy has asked Clinton
136 questions about her private email server alone, none of which have been
answered.
“My focus is on: What did Mrs. Clinton know? What was she involved with?
What decisions did she make when she was secretary of State, and
specifically secretary of State relative to Benghazi?” Jordan said in a
phone interview from Ohio. “I am not concerned about Hillary Clinton who
wants to be president.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill declined to comment for this story.
But Clinton’s attorneys have rebuffed Gowdy’s request for more documents,
saying her server has been wiped clean and that she’s already turned over
900 pages worth of emails.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s allies on Capitol Hill insist the Gowdy investigation
is nothing more than a smear campaign, a GOP effort to undermine her
credibility and reputation before voters elect a new president in November
2016.
“The Republicans want to have her here every 10 minutes. It’s a political
exercise for them,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a member of the
Armed Services Committee who in 2013 became the first senator to endorse
Clinton this cycle.
“I think she is saying, ‘I’ll come. I’ll answer any questions you want me
to answer. But I’m not going to come repeatedly to satisfy your need for
political theater,’” McCaskill added. “I think they’ll use every trick they
possible can to try to damage her politically.”
But GOP senators who’ve been monitoring the Benghazi panel say its members
have been measured and thoughtful in their pursuit of the facts.
“Let’s face it. This administration is not transparent. They are not
turning over records willingly,” said Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron
Johnson (R-Wis.), who famously tangled with Clinton over Benghazi at a 2013
hearing.
“It’s like pulling teeth, and it takes a while to pull teeth.”
British Election Good News For Hillary Clinton, Cameron Aide Says
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/cheers-hillary#.lyd9K47eO> // BuzzFeed
News // Ben Smith - May 8, 2015
The former Obama aide who helped Britain’s Conservatives stay in power
Thursday told BuzzFeed News that Hillary Clinton, rather than U.S.
Republicans, should be taking hope from the victory of Britain’s right.
Prime Minister David Cameron is “a progressive leader” who “pushed for gay
marriage and a world climate change deal and proposed to increase child
care subsidies and cut taxes on the minimum wage,” Jim Messina said in a
telephone interview from London, where he said he’d just departed a
celebratory tea at 10 Downing Street.
Messina served as a top adviser to the conservative campaign, and spent the
run-up to the election in London, and said he’d slept about an hour in the
last two days. He helped steer a re-election campaign that combined intense
attacks on Labour leader Ed Miliband with policies — from support for
nationalized health care to intervention in the housing market — that would
fit easily inside the U.S. Democratic Party. (Labour, which is well to the
left of the Democrats, was advised by Messina’s old boss, David Axelrod,
who declined via email to comment on the lessons for Clinton from the U.K.
election.)
But Cameron clashed with Miliband over the incumbent’s relatively hawkish
foreign policy and support for, and from, London’s booming financial
industry.
Messina said he’d learned from Bill Clinton that elections should always
look forward, and said Miliband “was talking about going back to the ’70s
and ’80s.”
He declined to draw any direct lines between this election and next year’s
American presidential campaign.
“I don’t think this election has anything to do with Hillary Clinton,” he
said.
But Messina said Clinton could take heart from the results.
“Cameron showed, again, that all presidential elections are about the
future and Hillary is by far the right candidate in the U.S. to do that,”
Messina said.
He said Cameron would likely follow Obama’s example in staying neutral in
the U.S. election, as Obama did in Britain’s.
He said he’d been struck by the difference between the electoral system —
in particular, Britain’s cap on spending, at just over £31 million per
party, that means that election campaigns aren’t dominated by television
advertising.
“The very hard cap on spending was a very good thing,” said Messina, who
said it created an environment in which the press had more power than it
does in the U.S.
Britain has a “way more partisan press corps than what we have in the
U.S.,” Messina noted, though he disputed the notion that the press had
tilted toward the Tories.
Messina said he will return to continue to work for the super PAC
Priorities U.S.A., which he co-chairs and whose relationship to Clinton’s
campaign has at times been complicated.
“I plan to do whatever else I can to help,” he said.
OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE
Deval Patrick: The Man Who Isn’t Running For President
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/darrensands/deval-patrick-the-man-who-isnt-running-for-president#.tqjjWg2aOe>
// BuzzFeed News // Darren Sands - May 8, 2015
The man who probably isn’t going to be the second black president was
speaking at Selma’s Tabernacle Baptist Church one Sunday in March,
recalling his days working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Deval Patrick has an unusually direct connection to the civil rights era
for a man of the Joshua Generation: Back in 1985, he was the junior lawyer
on the Alabama vote fraud case against Albert Turner, an old ally of Martin
Luther King Jr., who had helped organize the march across the Edmund Pettus
Bridge on Bloody Sunday; his wife, Evelyn; and another man named Spencer
Hogue Jr. They became known as the Perry County Three, accused by the
Justice Department of altering absentee ballots. If found guilty, each
could have gone to jail for life.
He remembered his clients, he told the congregation, “as being old black
people. In fact, they would now only be the age I thought they were then.”
The crowd laughed at Patrick, who likes being referred to as still a
relatively young man. “The scary thing is, I am now the age they actually
were.”
Theirs, and others, was a legacy of resilience, Patrick said, and it served
black folks well to remember that even in the face of all manner of
injustice, including injustice related to police violence — “A grand jury
can’t see in the videotaped strangling of Eric Garner what the rest of the
world sees!” he said, also making reference to Michael Brown — that legacy
was dishonored by declaring defeat. “The key it seems to me is to be as
mindful and as determined as our forebearers to keep on marching whether we
are desperate or comfortable — maybe especially if we are comfortable.”
The point about being comfortable recalled another line for Patrick: “Being
first doesn’t mean a thing unless there’s a second.”
The crowd approved and applauded — and Patrick let that applause linger in
the air, sharp and abiding as it had been at any point during his address.
Deval Patrick, the first black governor of Massachusetts and only the
second black governor in U.S. history, did no public Hamlet act over
whether he’d run for president. He did, however, consider it in private, he
told BuzzFeed News in an interview. Top advisers to Hillary Clinton also
eyed Patrick warily through much of last year. He was, in their view, one
of the few Democrats with a path to beating her.
But Deval Patrick is not challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic
nomination — he’s not running for president and he’s not going to follow
Barack Obama. Instead, the former two-term governor of Massachusetts, a
powerful speaker with a liberal record, works at Bain Capital, and
complains from time to time that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a strong
enough challenger.
“If our forebearers had been defeated by the challenges around them, which
were in many respects more profound, then we wouldn’t get to sit in a room
like this,” Patrick recently said of that Selma speech, gesturing from the
41st floor of the Boston high-rise where he now works toward the state
house, whose golden dome was beaming under the sunlight. “I wouldn’t have
got to sit in a building like that.”
It’s a unique bit of symmetry that Patrick’s new office at Bain Capital,
the private equity firm intertwined with the 2012 election where he will
lead a new “social impact” investment fund, overlooks his old one. His new
office is “not quite fitted out yet.” For now, it’s just two purple orchids
and pictures of his family lined up in a row.
The nondescript space is a little like Patrick’s newly formed
post-governorship life so far. He left office in January — and looks little
changed from years past, a bit more trim, perhaps. He rocks a bit of
closely cropped salt-and-pepper haircut, and is perpetually clean-shaven.
And while the 58-year-old walks gingerly — the effect of hip replacement
surgery in 2009 — Patrick’s appearance is not the evidence we all needed
that black don’t crack, but he looks good. And now, he’s out of public life
and back to near anonymity.
“One thing I have noticed about being a black man,” he wrote in his 2011
memoir, “if you’re dressed in jeans and a casual shirt with a cap on,
people will often look right past you.” Earlier this year, a local high
school hosted a panel on the legacy of civil rights with, among others,
former Sen. William “Mo” Cowan and J. Keith Motley, the chancellor of the
University of Massachusetts–Boston. Patrick showed up in a cap and sweater.
“I look up and see him,” Motley said, “look around and realize, ‘My god, no
one even realizes he’s here.’” His next-door neighbor, State Sen. Brian A.
Joyce, spotted him — ball-cap clad and being assisted at the Apple Store’s
Genius Bar recently. “There was not a person who recognized him. I think he
relished that.”
Even if Patrick relishes this anonymity, however, he occupies an unusual
perch in the Democratic Party, at the intersection of three current centers
of power: He is close friends with the president; he has a long, albeit
less close, history with the Clintons; and he shares a home state with the
woman — Elizabeth Warren — who leaves progressives enamored and creates
problems for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
And, at the end of the day, he could have run for president.
A true progressive who oversaw a major transportation consolidation
project, helped implement the state’s health care insurance system, and
signed into law criminal justice changes popular in the Democratic Party,
Patrick was widely considered capable of winning a third term. The question
of a presidential run indeed weighed on Patrick, too, last year. If some
Democrats were looking for a real challenger to Hillary Clinton, why not
him? Democrats could do worse than a two-term governor with name
recognition in New Hampshire.
Last December, Obama called into Patrick’s monthly “ask the governor” radio
show as a final good-bye. When Obama hung up, Patrick was asked about what
it’s like for that kid — the kid from the South Side of Chicago — to field
a personal call from the president of the United States. Patrick took a
deep breath to collect himself. “I’ve had reporters asking me about another
political job — even that political job,” Patrick said. “I know I’m
supposed to keep a straight face and try to give the best answer I can, and
an honest answer, which is, ‘I don’t have any plans.’ But it really blows
my mind that people would ask a kid from the South Side of Chicago a
serious question like that.”
He wrestled with the decision, one prominent Democrat said, and woke up
daily for a time unable to say that he was not going to run. When told
this, Patrick’s closest advisers downplayed how close Patrick got, given
that there was a clear path — Obama’s path — to the nomination.
Sitting in the Bain office last month, Patrick acknowledged that he gave
running for president some thought. But, he said, his personal obligations
eliminated the slightest possibility. “I didn’t have to think about it very
long,” he said. “I never ran for governor to be something else.”
“My sense is that he didn’t come as close as people think,” Joyce told
BuzzFeed News. “I don’t know a governor or a U.S. senator who doesn’t take
a close look at it — who doesn’t at least close their eyes and say, ‘Hey, I
could do that.’
“He certainly has not issued any Sherman-like statements,” he added. “Would
I rule him out in the future? Absolutely not.”
A close former aide who went to dinner with Patrick recently said politics
didn’t come up once. He is most upbeat when he begins to talk about his
work at Bain Capital. “Oh, man!” he let out when asked what indication he
had the work was going to be fulfilling. “The enthusiasm inside the
building has been over the top.” The mission of social impact investing is
one Bain Capital is trying to figure out how to be in, he said “and the
field is exploding and that is a very hopeful thing.” He emphasized field
and that like a politician who is trying to inspire.
Still, even Obama himself recommended Patrick for higher office. “Deval
would make a great president or vice president. But I think based on me
talking to him, it sounds like he’d like to take a little bit of a break,”
Obama told a Boston cable news station. “He’s still a relatively young man.”
Asked if Obama asked him to consider a run, Patrick laughed. “That’s a nice
try,” he said. “What’s your next question?”
The curious thing about Patrick — a man who is not running for president —
is his seemingly incurable habit of talking about Hillary Clinton’s
“inevitability” problem.
It started in early 2014, when Patrick was asked outright by a reporter if
there was going to be a “Hillary–Deval ticket in 2016.” He looked
bewildered before saying no, and began laughing.
In July, Patrick expressed doubt about what he perceived to be her
inevitability. “I worry about the campaign,” he said then. “I don’t think
it’s so much her.” He noted they’d spoken at a conference in San Diego —
but he added, “It’s not like we’re pals.”
In September, he emphasized she was “fantastic and incredibly strong,”
before saying that “the problem with inevitability is it’s sometimes
interpreted as entitlement, and I think that voters want competition and
they want their candidates to have to work for it.”
And again in November: “Secretary Clinton has been an extraordinary public
servant and would be a terrific candidate for president,” he said. “But I
think the narrative that it’s inevitable is off-putting to regular voters.”
Patrick said, in the interview with BuzzFeed News, that he doesn’t mean
that point he’s made — that Clinton’s inevitability reads to the general
public like entitlement — as a criticism of Clinton so much as it was of
the people she had around her, noting this time around that her campaign
manager, Robby Mook, is “off the charts good.” Patrick said what he hungers
for is authenticity. He also wants competition. “I think if she has a
competitive primary, she will be a better nominee.” Asked if she was better
now, Patrick said he saw her at a rally for Martha Coakley, the former
attorney general who lost to Gov. Charlie Baker. “She was brilliant. She
was fantastic,” Patrick said. “She really got to, sort of, the nub of
people’s aspirations and anxieties. It was beautiful.”
That was last October. Clinton arrived in Boston to campaign for Coakley,
speaking to a packed ballroom at the Park Plaza Hotel for a little less
than a half hour. People say Clinton and Patrick began with political
chitchat. Patrick congratulated her on the new addition and before long,
babies Gianluca and Charlotte were the main topic of conversation. Clinton
and Patrick got a glimpse of the other’s grandchild on their phones. It
lasted about 15 minutes.
The former governor and the former first couple have a long history, dating
back more than a quarter century. When the NAACP LDF sued to stop voting
rights violations in Arkansas he befriended Bill Clinton, who saw Patrick
work the room in a meeting that settled the lawsuit and observed, “He has a
future as a politician.” In 1994, Clinton tapped Patrick to lead the
Justice Department’s civil rights division.
When Barack Obama entered the presidential equation, however, the
relationship shifted a little. Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton had called in 2007
asking for his endorsement, he said in the interview last month. “I told
her I was going to keep my powder dry,” he said. “I like the competition.”
Then, in the summer of 2007, he told Obama he would endorse him on Martha’s
Vineyard at a home Valerie Jarrett rented. Run like you’re willing to lose,
run at the grassroots, and keep your rhetoric high-minded and positive he
told Obama, according to his memoir, repeating the occasion in the
interview. (When he recalled offering Obama to use his “just words” riff,
Patrick briefly got emotional when he recalled giving the original speech
on Boston Common. It was an especially rough time for “what they were
trying to do to my family.”) Patrick’s recollection now of telling Obama
he’d endorse him is less than crisp. “We’ve had lots of Vineyard
conversations,” he said.
If there is leftover angst from endorsing Obama years ago, a Democrat close
to Patrick said he’s not interested in rehashing it. “He’s been a civil
rights lawyer, a corporate executive, governor … he’s worked in the Clinton
administration and he’s close to Obama,” the Democrat said. “By virtue of
his tremendous experience, you can’t put him in a box. It’s just not that
simple.” When Obama appointed Clinton secretary of state, he signaled to
the rest of the party that “Democrats have been tasked with showing a way
forward. So when talking about the past, some of these issues are, like,
who cares? Except with how it relates to moving forward.”
In 2015, the only criticism is that of “inevitability.” The source familiar
with Patrick’s thinking reiterated that it’s not personal. “For him, talk
of inevitability is off-putting because it’s self-defeating. It assumes
that the voters don’t matter, that what they care about doesn’t matter,
that there’s no value in engaging with them. He views that that’s a failure
of politics and policy.”
The danger Clinton’s inevitability candidacy poses, Patrick noted, is that
someone like, well, Deval Patrick could come along. “That was the view of
the Democratic establishment in 2005 and 2006,” he said, referring to his
Massachusetts primary victory over two members of the state party
establishment in 2006. “If you’d asked a lot of people then — and maybe
even me — about whether it was going to be a really competitive primary
with this newcomer, meaning me, coming into the race, I think a whole lot
of people would have been equivocal. Things happen in politics. People find
their voice and their footing.”
“If there’s a political doctrine that consistently governs Deval Patrick’s
actions as a political player, it’s that if you want to know what he
thinks, you can literally just listen to what he says,” said longtime ally
and former campaign manager John Walsh. “He’s not the kind of guy who says
things he doesn’t believe. His biggest asset in an election is his
willingness to lose. I’ve never heard him say, ‘What do I need to say here
to win?’” Walsh said, in a way explaining his willingness to shake things
up.
Behind the scenes, Patrick’s been a little less resistant to the Clinton
operation: On April 27, after attending the swearing-in of Attorney General
Loretta Lynch that morning, he attended the so-called “road show” the
Clinton campaign has embarked on in some cities as a way to brief her most
ardent supporters. It was held at the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP,
according to sources familiar with the meeting. Mook and Obama campaign vet
Marlon Marshall held forth in a large conference room, with Mook telling
the audience even if Clinton is the likely nominee, her staff wasn’t taking
it for granted — and neither could they.
Other attendees included Clinton loyalists Beth Boland, a partner at Foley;
Steve Grossman, former state treasurer and former Democratic National
Committee chair; Cheryl Cronin, a lawyer and fundraiser; and Shanti Fry, a
wealthy Cambridge activist who was a former finance co-chair for
Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren.
It wasn’t known by every attendee that Patrick would attend or who had
invited him; Patrick’s comments in the press about Clinton’s inevitability
and her need for a competitive primary, irked some who were present at the
meeting and were said to be surprised by his appearance a third of the way
into the presentation. He arrived in a suit and tie. When asked to speak,
he did. He said that Democrats need to speak with conviction in this
election about what they believe in, about the tough road that lay ahead
and the importance that the Democratic nominee follows President Obama to
the White House. “Democrats need to have conviction to make sure we
actively explain to voters what we stand for,” he said, adding that voters
are going to be have a clear choice in the election. Two people present at
the meeting couldn’t remember if he said anything about Clinton.
Even so, when asked in the interview about Clinton, Patrick remained almost
noncommittal. Will he campaign for her?
“Within bounds,” Patrick said. “I mean, I’ve got demands on my time.”
Patrick said, even though she’s the likely nominee, “I’m going to be
listening to all the candidates.”
Would he be helping her raise money? Patrick repeated himself.
“I’m going to be listening to all of the candidates, and we’ll see.”
His relationship with Obama is far less complex. The pair met in 1995 at
the behest of Abner Mikva, the former congressman and former White House
counsel who once told Obama to study preachers to cultivate his speaking
style. Patrick, in the middle of his stint at the Justice Department, met
Obama for coffee, remarking in his memoir he was immediately taken with his
intellect.
Now, he says, he serves a slightly different role in Obama’s life.
“I may be one of the few people who called him every once in a while, or
comes to see him without saying, ‘Do this differently,’ or ‘do that
differently,’” he said. “It’s just, “How you doing?” It’s hard to have
these jobs and know people who are just interested in you.”
Patrick says he’s pushed Obama to push the limits of his own bubble, well
aware of how they can be debilitating. But increasingly, Patrick reiterated
that while his relationship with Obama is of a personal nature, he does not
see his role of defending the president as a defense of his friend but as a
defense of visionary leadership. “The president can stick up for himself —
he’s the president,” Patrick said. “My defense of the president is not just
a defense of my friend, it’s a defense of visionary leadership, and that’s
what I think we have in this president.”
When you speak with Democrats who worked for Obama or are friends with
Obama, they emphasize his legacy; they talk about the importance of how he
will be seen going forward, the cornerstones of his record, and what best
will preserve that legacy — a Democratic successor.
Political surrogates with name recognition like Patrick’s are not easy to
come by. His standing and political capital make him a serious and possibly
indispensable surrogate for the Democratic nominee. And people around him
say he does like campaigning, that he was eager to stump for Coakley last
year and escape the grind of governing.
He will make speeches, he said, “when I have something to say.” And he does
have plenty to say about the issues of criminal justice, police violence
against the community, and mass incarceration — something the Clinton
campaign has already signaled will be a part of her platform, and something
the Obama White House has faced over the last year. If Patrick is
interested in the defense of Obama, whose exit from the White House is
actually inevitable, it may be on this subject that Patrick is seen out on
the campaign trail.
After all, his message in Selma was connected to a legacy of black people
who “faced their fears” and fought for civil rights.
The absentee ballots organized by the Perry County Three were about
political power. “The charges were a response to growing black political
power,” Patrick said.
And then, Patrick said if the heroes of Selma hadn’t been resilient, hadn’t
fought to vote and exercised their political power — and gotten back up —
that there would be no Barack Obama.
“Imagine if they hadn’t?”
Lincoln Chafee Is Trying to Re-Run Obama’s 2008 Playbook
<http://time.com/3851723/lincoln-chafee-hillary-clinton-iraq/?xid=tcoshare>
// TIME // Tessa Berenson - May 8, 2015
In 2008, Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama
when he hammered her on her vote in favor of going to war in Iraq. Now,
former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee wants Clinton to keep paying for
that vote in 2016.
Chafee, a Republican turned Independent turned Democrat, is running against
Clinton for the Democratic nomination. He hasn’t officially announced yet,
he’s still in the exploratory phase, but making it official is something he
“plan[s] to do soon.” And when he does, he’s going to make Clinton’s vote
for war his central argument against her.
“I always go back to what I call one of the biggest mistakes in American
history, the decision to go to war in Iraq,” he told TIME, “and the
judgment call made by Senator Clinton.”
Chafee was a Senator at the time too; he served as a Senator from Rhode
Island from 1999 to 2007 before he became governor. He voted against the
war, and he says that split between him and Clinton highlights a
fundamental difference in their common sense.
“That was a critical time in American history, October of 2002, and I made
a different judgment call,” he said, again referring to Clinton’s vote in
favor of the war. “I think we should have a debate, not only as the
Democratic Party first of all, but also in America about where we’re going
on in the world and who can make the correct judgment calls as we go
forward.”
Even Clinton has publicly regretted her vote. In her 2014 book Hard
Choices, Clinton wrote, “I thought I had acted in good faith and made the
best decision I could with the information I had. And I wasn’t alone in
getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple.”
Although this lynchpin of Chafee’s burgeoning campaign happened over a
decade ago and was already used at the center of the 2008 election, Chafee
says the so-called “biggest mistake” will resonate just as much with voters
today.
“We’re still paying for it,” he said, saying the war will end up costing
the country $6 trillion. “We’re paying for it financially in taking care of
our brave veterans … but we’re also paying for it overseas … The repair
work goes on. It’s relevant to today.”
But polling data shows that voters may not agree. In 2008, a Gallup poll
found that Americans cited Iraq as the second most important issue facing
the country, behind the economy. In 2015, Gallup separated economic
concerns from non-economic issues, but even in the non-economic poll the
situation in Iraq came in 15th, after issues like race relations,
immigration and education. (No. 1 was dissatisfaction with government.)
Chafee outlined some other policy positions: he supports the Affordable
Care Act, he would vote for the Trade Promotion Authority, he supports a
path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. But he kept coming back to Iraq.
Chafee faces a steep uphill battle towards the nomination; so far he’s
barely even been included in Democratic primary polling.
He said his biggest challenge will be “getting out to every possible
potluck supper and gathering in Iowa and New Hampshire and other states.”
But, “I look forward to it, meeting the people. I started my career at the
local level … by going door to door … It’s going to be no different in this
campaign.”
The exception to Bernie Sanders’ liberalism
<http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-exception-bernie-sanders-liberalism>
// MSNBC // Steve Benen - May 8, 2015
On Capitol Hill, there’s literally only one member of Congress who
describes himself as a European socialist. I’m referring, of course, to
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who launched his Democratic presidential
campaign last week, to the delight of many progressive activists.
And why not? Sanders isn’t favored to actually win the Democratic
nomination, but the Vermont senator has a bold, progressive vision, and is
prepared to take advantage of the national platform a White House campaign
offers. For liberal voters who yearn for a standard bearer whom no one has
ever considered a “moderate,” Sanders is a welcome breath of unapologetic
fresh air.
There is, however, an exception to Sanders’ liberalism. Mark Joseph Stern
highlighted it at Slate this week.
[B]efore liberal Democrats flock to Sanders, they should remember that the
Vermont senator stands firmly to Clinton’s right on one issue of
overwhelming importance to the Democratic base: gun control. During his
time in Congress, Sanders opposed several moderate gun control bills. He
also supported the most odious NRA–backed law in recent memory – one that
may block Sandy Hook families from winning a lawsuit against the
manufacturer of the gun used to massacre their children.
Sanders, an economic populist and middle-class pugilist, doesn’t talk much
about guns on the campaign trail. But his voting record paints the picture
of a legislator who is both skeptical of gun control and invested in the
interests of gun owners – and manufacturers. In 1993, voted against the
Brady Act, which mandated federal background checks for gun purchasers and
restricted felons’ access to firearms. As a senator, Sanders supported
bills to allow firearms in checked bags on Amtrak trains and block funding
to any foreign aid organization that registered or taxed Americans guns.
In fairness to Sanders, the senator does not always see eye to eye with the
far-right gun group, but over the course of his congressional career, the
Vermont independent has generally sided with the NRA on most of the major
legislative fights regarding gun policy.
Indeed, it’s probably safe to say that Sanders will be to Clinton’s left on
most issues in their primary fight, except when it comes to guns.
To understand why, it’s important to realize that Vermont has some of the
most lax gun laws in the nation, in large part because gun violence in the
Green Mountain State is so low.
Indeed, a wide variety of prominent Vermont Democrats and liberal
independents routinely enjoy support from the NRA. Former Gov. Howard Dean,
his reputation as a liberal firebrand notwithstanding, was endorsed by the
NRA in Vermont more than once – a fact he used to brag about during his
2004 presidential campaign.
It’s easy to forget, but back in November 2003, when it looked like Dean
was surging in the race for the Democratic nomination, John Kerry actually
used this against the Vermont governor: “We don’t need to be a party that
says we need to be the candidacy of the NRA. We stand up against that.”
With this in mind, Sanders is simply in line with his home state’s
political norms. His position may not be expected given his reputation in
D.C., but in Vermont, it’d be odd if Sanders didn’t oppose many gun reforms.
It’s tough to say whether progressive activists who’ve rallied to the
senator are going to care much about this, and it’s a safe bet that Sanders
won’t make opposition to gun-safety measures an important part of his 2016
pitch. But as the campaign progresses, it’s an angle worth watching anyway.
Update: My colleague Sunita Sohoni makes a nice catch, flagging this
Washington Post report from a few years ago, in which Sanders got a D-
rating from the NRA.
Josh Earnest is wrong; Obama's job on immigration not over
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/241418-josh-earnest-is-wrong-obamas-job-on-immigration-not-over>
// The Hill // Cesar Vargas - May 8, 2015
The 2016 presidential season has kicked off, and all attention has focused
on the candidates from all sides who are talking about immigration.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration seems to be preparing for retirement.
Election Day is still more than a year away, however, and the White House
still has much to do: toasting at a Cinco de Mayo celebration is not the
end of the line for President Obama's job on immigration.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest is legally wrong that the
president did all that he could. For example, by utilizing Section
504(b)(2) of the enlistment statute, the president has statutory power to
direct the secretary of Defense to allow talented Dreamers to enlist
because their enlistment is "vital to the national interest."
Republicans have shown, time and time again, that they are completely
incapable of addressing immigration reform, allowing only bills attacking
Dreamers to pass through the House of Representatives and never touching
even the rightward-leaning Gang of 8 bill that passed the Senate with
strong bipartisan support.
Even though Hillary Clinton took a great step by committing to further
action on immigration, Obama should not defer to future presidents on
leadership that is needed now.
Legal experts from around the country have agreed that a president has
expansive legal authority to act to temporarily protect additional groups
from deportation — and that this authority is rooted in statute, court
opinion, regulations and precedent.
Obama has not exhausted the legal limits of this power yet, despite finding
some political relief within a Department of Justice memo that outlined
certain limits regarding executive power.
His authority on deportation relief, however, is fairly clear. Needless to
say, the latest lawsuit against the president's immigration actions is
nothing more than political theatrics by the far right of the Republican
party and not based on law.
While almost everyone running for president puts an emphasis on immigration
legislation, ferrying legislation through Congress will not be easy or
quick, however, and will require executive solutions to bridge the gap
between now and the enactment of new laws.
The president can still expand deportation relief — as he did with Dreamers
— to help keep more families intact and talent in the U.S.
Significantly, the "bed mandate" is an arbitrary policy offensive to
contemporary notions of due process written into the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) Appropriations Act of 2010. DHS has interpreted this as a
mandate to contract for and fill 33,400 beds in detention centers, which
was increased in 2013 to 34,000.
As an agency, DHS is of course subject to executive authority: If the
president were to direct DHS to interpret the funding differently, such as
interpreting the 34,000 beds as an upper limit rather than a minimum, this
could drastically change immigration detention, thereby allowing nonviolent
immigrants to rejoin their families while their cases are processed.
Rather than settling for a legacy of executive timidity, President Obama
can still leave a legacy of hope. While Congress is still relearning how to
tie its shoes, the country needs an executive who will protect our families
where our broken immigration system, and equally broken Congress, have
failed.
De Blasio’s National “Contract With America” Strategy Leaks
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/08/de-blasio-s-national-contract-with-america-strategy-leaks.html?via=desktop&source=twitter>
// Daily Beast // May 8, 2015
Everyone from Susan Sarandon to Van Jones is helping draft and push de
Blasio’s new “Contract with America,” which will push for paid sick leave
and free, universal pre-K.
First New York City. Then America.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is heading to Washington D.C. next week
to present a progressive “Contract with America,” a 13-point agenda
intended to push the Democratic Party leftward.
According to a draft of the document provided to The Daily Beast by someone
asked to join the effort, de Blasio will call for a number of measures for
which he has already pushed in New York City, including national paid sick
leave and free, universal pre-kindergarten and afterschool programs.
During the 2013 mayoral campaign, de Blasio used his support of paid sick
leave to pummel the Democratic front-runner, Council Speaker Christine
Quinn, sparking his come-from-behind victory. De Blasio then signed an
expansive law on the topic soon after becoming mayor. Universal pre-K
became de Blasio’s signature accomplishment of his first year in office,
even if his mechanism to pay for it—a tax on the city’s upper income
earners—was rejected by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The contract will also put de Blasio in the center of some of the debates
currently roiling Washington. According to a draft of the document
circulated this week, de Blasio will call for the passage of comprehensive
immigration and for Democrats to “oppose trade deals that hand more power
to corporations at the expense of American jobs, workers’ rights, and the
environment.”
President Barack Obama has called for a new Pacific trade deal that he says
would open up new markets for American goods. He has received little
support for that view among Democrats, however, and Hillary Clinton has
declined to back the agreement.
According to a draft of the document circulated this week, de Blasio will
call for the passage of comprehensive immigration and for Democrats to
“oppose trade deals that hand more power to corporations at the expense of
American jobs, workers’ rights, and the environment.”
Some of the items on de Blasio’s wish list have not yet been made a
priority in his time as mayor, like universal free childcare and a $15 per
hour minimum wage. The mayor has pushed for a $13 minimum wage indexed to
inflation, which would not rise to $15 until 2019. The mayor’s push locally
for the $13 minimum wage has likewise been rejected by Albany.
De Blasio is expected to be joined in Washington by a more than 60 members
of Congress, progressive activists and labor leaders, among them Oregon
Senator Jeff Merkley, Congressmen Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva and the
actor Susan Sarandon. Last month de Blasio convened a number of progressive
thinkers at Gracie Mansion, including Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel
and civil rights activist Van Jones in order to hash out ideas about how to
build a progressive agenda in 2016. De Blasio has pointedly declined to
endorse Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, even though he was the campaign
manager of her 2000 Senate run in New York and even though both Bill and
Hillary Clinton were on stage with de Blasio at his inauguration.
Aides to de Blasio dismiss the suggestion that this effort is designed to
lift de Blasio’s profile, and say instead that it is intended to get a more
progressive government into Washington D.C.—one that will be more attentive
to New York City’s needs. The contract is modeled on Newt Gingrich’s
Contract With America, which helped Republicans retake the House in 1994.
Many of the items that de Blasio calls for are unlikely to pass, even with
a Democratic president and a Democratic congress, such as the “Buffet
Rule,” which would force millionaires to pay a higher tax rate.
Among some of the other items expected to be on de Blasio’s agenda are a
reform of the National Labor Relations Act “to enhance workers’ rights to
organize and rebuild the middle class,” the expansion of the Earned Income
Tax Credit, allowing students to refinance student loan debt, closing the
carried interest loop, ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs
overseas, and the closing of a “CEO tax loophole that allows corporations
to take advantage of ‘performance pay’ write-offs.”
GOP
Chris Christie got into an epic shouting match with a radio host who
compared him to Bernie Madoff
<http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-christie-debates-howie-carr-on-social-security-2015-5>
// Business Insider // Colin Campbell - May 8, 2015
Boston conservative talk radio host Howie Carr is not a fan of New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie's (R) plan to rein in entitlements spending.
Indeed, Carr repeatedly tore into the likely 2016 presidential candidate in
an interview on his Thursday radio show. At times, Carr and Christie
attempted to shout over each other as they debated whether Social Security
benefits should be cut.
"You're proposing what amounts to a bait-and-switch, aren't you? I mean,
what's the difference between this and Bernie Madoff?" Carr asked at one
point, comparing Christie's plan to Madoff's infamous Ponzi scheme.
Last month, Christie proposed a number of specific reforms to entitlements
like Social Security and Medicare. Among other things, he called for
raising the retirement age, cutting back benefits for seniors who earn more
than $80,000, and completely ending benefits for those who make more than
$200,000.
But Carr, who's nearing retirement age, said the proposal amounted to
"raising taxes on the American people."
"I'm older than you are. I'm 63. I started paying into this program when
Lyndon Johnson was president, right? Nobody said anything about
means-testing," he said. "I'm going to get a union pension. A union
pension, governor. And you say I'm going to be making too much in
retirement? I have to give up my Social Security?"
Christie didn't back down, however, and challenged Carr to propose his own
plan to prevent the US entitlements system from going bankrupt.
"What's your solution, Howie? What's your solution? It's going to go broke,
what's your solution?" Christie asked. "I'm dealing responsibly with the
problem. You're complaining and putting forward no solution. That's your
right, you're radio talk show host, you don't have to come forward with
solutions. But your questions have to have some — some — degree of realism
to them."
Christie further said he was simply giving Carr some "hard truths."
"These are hard truths, Howie. I'm sorry to have to bring hard truths onto
your air. But the fact is that the Social Security system will broke if we
don't make changes, or have massive tax increases. You keep talking about
the cuts, we should talk about the massive tax increases that we'll pay to
make sure everybody gets every nickel that they were ever promised," he
said.
The Big Issue Haunting Top Republican Presidential Hopefuls This Weekend
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-08/the-big-issue-haunting-top-republican-presidential-hopefuls-this-weekend>
// Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur - May 8, 2015
Immigration.
Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio, two top contenders for the Republican
presidential nomination, will deliver major speeches on Saturday: Bush at
Liberty University in Virginia and Rubio at the Republican Freedom Summit
in South Carolina.
Both are expected to make compelling cases for themselves. But don't expect
them to emphasize the issue atop the minds of the Hispanic voters who could
help elect the country's 45th president: immigration.
One reason: Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton put them in a box this
week by making an offer to Hispanics that Republicans cannot feasibly
match. She will expand President Barack Obama's executive actions to
include protections from deportation for parents of undocumented young
people who have been given "deferred action."
"This is where I differ from everyone on the Republican side," she told
young undocumented immigrants at a roundtable in Las Vegas on Cinco De Mayo.
The two Floridians are the most pro-immigration candidates in the
Republican presidential field. Each offers a unique appeal to Latinos. In
Puerto Rico recently, Bush hailed "the power of the immigrant experience,"
adding: "I live it each and every day." The reference was to his
Mexican-born wife, Columba, and their bicultural children. Rubio too has a
compelling personal story as the son of Cuban immigrants. Both have
championed legislative reforms to help undocumented immigrants gain legal
status.
But neither can match Clinton's offer. Bush, Rubio and just about all
Republicans have said Obama's executive actions to protect more than 4
million people from deportation exceed his presidential powers and must be
reversed. The president's moves (which have been halted by a federal judge
as a court battle plays out) ignited the fury of conservative voters, whom
no candidate for the Republican presidential nomination can afford to
alienate.
Another top-tier Republican contender, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, was
quick to channel the anxieties of that conservative base. "Hillary
Clinton's full embrace of amnesty is unfair to hardworking Americans and
all immigrants who followed the law," said the prospective candidate, who
is against legalizing unauthorized immigrants.
Clinton's proposal goes even further than the Obama administration did in
November. The White House would protect two categories of undocumented
persons from deportation: 1) the undocumented parents of children who were
born in the United States and who are, therefore, Americans and 2) young
people who were brought here illegally as children by their parents. Under
Obama's order, the parents who brought their children here illegally could
still be subject to deportation. Clinton, however, would grant them
leniency.
The political implications of Clinton's move are obvious. Hispanics, the
country's fastest-growing demographic, provide critical votes in swing
states like Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. And they support
Obama's executive actions by large margins—64 percent in aGallup survey in
December; 89 percent in a Presente poll in November—because the initiatives
delivered results where Congress has repeatedly failed to.
That might explain why Bush and Rubio haven't said a word about the issue.
There's no easy way to discuss it without alienating either the Republican
voters they need in the primary or the Hispanic voters they'll likely need
in the general election.
Ohio Governor John Kasich’s positive politics, even with Hillary Clinton
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/05/07/ohio-john-kasich-positive-politics/cqcXxf2WbcORnX5we2t5CK/story.html>
// Boston Globe // Scot Lehigh - May 8, 2015
HALFWAY THROUGH John Kasich’s testing-the-presidential-primary-waters pitch
at a local restaurant on Wednesday, something odd struck me: Ohio’s
Republican governor hadn’t engaged in Obama-trashing or Clinton-bashing.
Indeed, he declined even when an audience member asked for “two or three of
the best reasons you can give us as to why Hillary should not be president
of the United States.”
“I’m not getting into Hillary today,” Kasich replied. He answered another
question, then circled back. “If I’m talking about what I don’t like about
Hillary, then I’m not telling you what I think. And I think you need to
know more about who I am, and what I think, than what I think negative
about somebody else.”
That response won Kasich a round of applause, prompting him to note that at
the New Hampshire GOP’s presidential-candidate cattle call last month, he
had stuck to a positive message while most other candidates had ripped into
Obama and Clinton.
“If I’ve gotta spend my time trashing people to be successful in this, you
can count me out,” said the man who hasn’t yet counted himself in, but
sounds increasingly like a candidate. He then launched into a story about
raising turnpike tolls in Ohio to back bonds for infrastructure
improvements.
A while later, I ran into the please-pillory-Hillary questioner on Main
Street, and asked what he had thought of Kasich’s answer. He was (sometime)
ski mogul Les Otten, a former Republican candidate for governor in Maine,
who says he may well be a New Hampshire resident by primary time. Otten
claimed Kasich’s reply was just what he wanted.
“I think people in the north country of New England are pretty tired of
politics as usual, and will be looking for a candidate that speaks plainly
and just talks about the issues,” he said.
Otten may be onto something there. I also expect New Hampshire Republican
primary voters will end up favoring a results-oriented conservative
pragmatist over the right-wing to-the-barricade ideologues. Further, as
Granite State GOP graybeard Tom Rath observes, if the Democratic primary
looks like a Clinton cakewalk, independents may decide to take GOP ballots
— and that group in particular could find Kasich politically attractive.
A pragmatic rather than a doctrinaire conservative, Kasich, 62, hasn’t
retooled his stands to pass right-wing litmus tests, at least not so far.
He supports Common Core, for example, citing the need for better
educational standards. He expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act,
though he wants to repeal the rest of Obamacare and let the states craft
health-coverage solutions. Kasich has said he thinks climate change is a
problem, but hasn’t displayed any urgency about addressing it. Fiscally,
Kasich, whose resume includes nine terms in the House, has been a tax
cutter and budget balancer, but also someone who thinks government should
help the poor, a belief rooted in his strong religious values.
In Concord, I asked him if he was trying to reclaim the party from its
hard-right ideologues.
Kasich said no, but then added: “I would hope that people will see what
worked in Ohio for a conservative Republican who was able to win the state
with a big margin, and I hope leading by example will help them to kind of
rethink maybe where they are.”
As a smart, accomplished swing-state governor, Kasich belongs in the
lightly populated category of Republican hopefuls one could actually
imagine as president.
And in New Hampshire, that’s a very good place to be.
Scott Walker heads to Israel
<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/scott-walker-heads-to-israel/article/2564207>
// Washington Examiner // Ryan Lovelace - May 8, 2015
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker heads to Israel for the first time this
weekend, where he hopes to augment his foreign policy credentials in
advance of formally launching his presidential campaign. The governor has
become a conservative darling for his stances on domestic issues, but
doesn't have a lot of international experience.
Touring Israel is very nearly a requirement for Republicans looking to
compete in the presidential race, as many GOP primary voters believe the
United States' relationship with Israel is critical. An unflattering GQ
profile painted Ben Carson, a newly minted presidential candidate and
retired neurosurgeon, as unable to grasp Israel's system of government.
While waiting for his flight to Israel, Carson peppered his guide with
questions about the Jewish state, before reportedly remarking, "It sounds
complex; why don't they just adopt the system we have?"
Walker appears to have adopted a different approach designed at minimizing
attention to his trip. The Walker campaign describes the trip as a
"listening tour," and he does not seem to have scheduled any public
appearances overseas. Walker told reporters in Milwaukee that he only plans
to bring staff and advisers with him to the Middle East, and would not
travel with donors.
Ford O'Connell, a GOP strategist and veteran of the McCain-Palin 2008
campaign, said Walker made the right choice to watch and listen. "Frankly,
he doesn't know much about foreign policy and the best place to start, if
you're going to understand the fine points of foreign policy, is starting
with Israel and the Middle East," he said. "He's really starting at a lower
rung than a lot of the others [on foreign policy]."
The Walker team has kept quiet about the governor's itinerary, but Walker
has acknowledged he plans to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish
Coalition, is traveling with Walker to Israel and has helped organize the
trip. Brooks said the governor will tour Israel on the ground and via
helicopter.
"The governor's going to receive briefings from leading Israeli officials
on a variety of policy matters," Brooks said. "We'll have an opportunity to
do some sight seeing and go to some of the historic and religious spots,
such as the Western Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, meaningful places
for him as a devout Christian."
Walker is the son of a Baptist minister.
Ari Morgenstern, communications director for Christians United for Israel,
said voters look at a candidate's attitude toward Israel because it is
often a good indicator of a politician's larger foreign policy and shows
whether the candidate espouses the Judeo-Christian values both societies
share.
Omri Ceren, The Israel Project's managing director for press, said the
Israel issue is not a litmus test, but a gut check for conservative
candidates' chances of electoral success. "If you're on the wrong side of
the Israel issue, Americans — and especially American conservatives — think
that you're not like them," Ceren said in a statement. "Then you have to go
the extra, extra, extra, extra mile to try to convince Republicans that
you're one of them, that you think like they do. It's a cultural issue as
much as it is a security issue."
As Walker seeks to get a better grasp on foreign affairs, he has increased
his overseas travel, having already made multiple trade missions throughout
Europe this year. Unlike the trade trips, however, taxpayers will not pay
for Walker's trip to Israel. The Republican Jewish Coalition and Our
American Revival, Walker's political group, will be paying for his visit.
Walker leaves Saturday from South Carolina, where he will speak at the
South Carolina Freedom Summit hosted by Citizens United, and he will return
stateside on Thursday, May 14.
Mike Huckabee's Message Is As Formidable As Jeb Bush's Money
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/against-the-grain/mike-huckabee-s-message-is-as-formidable-as-jeb-bush-s-money-20150507>
// National Journal // Josh Kraushaar - May 8, 2015
If you listen to the rhetoric from the GOP elite in Washington, Republicans
view immigration as an unquestioned asset, support free trade agreements,
and believe entitlement reform is necessary to get the country's fiscal
house in order. But those reformist positions embraced by party leaders
threaten to alienate a significant constituency within the Republican
party, one that has been growing in recent years. That populist faction of
the party—call it the Huckabee wing—is one that Republicans are overlooking
at their own peril.
Indeed, what's most notable about Mike Huckabee's presidential launch is
that he hasn't bought into any of the conventional GOP positions on those
issues—and instead is using his populist bona fides as a weapon to separate
himself from the opposition. He slammed free trade agreements for reducing
the cost of wages, saying he'd "like to think the U.S. government would
stand up for the U.S. workers rather than let them take it in the
backside." In his kickoff speech, he pledged to prevent politicians from
rolling back popular Social Security and Medicare benefits. After Clinton's
embrace of liberalized immigration policies, Huckabee called her
"absolutely wrong" and emphasized his tough stance on border security. And
the overall anti-Washington tenor of his message—even calling on candidates
who hold public office to resign their seats to run for president—suggest
that he'll be a force to be reckoned with in the GOP nomination fight.
It's this heterodoxy that drives fiscal conservatives, such as the Club for
Growth, batty. The Club has taken the unusual step to spend $100,000 in
Iowa and South Carolina to blast Huckabee over his record raising taxes in
Arkansas. And many Republicans dismiss his chances of contending in a
crowded Republican field, citing his financial disadvantages and smaller
campaign organization.
But when it comes to winning over disaffected voters that make up a growing
share of the Republican party, Huckabee's message is poised to resonate.
Huckabee's positions may be dismissed by liberals and conservatives alike,
but they're representative of a significant chunk of the electorate. He
starts out with 11 percent of the Iowa caucus vote, according to this
month's Quinnipiac poll, holding more than double the support of Jeb Bush.
As FiveThirtyEight noted this week, his average net favorability in all the
national, live-caller polls this year is stronger than any other candidate.
Public polling shows that the populist sentiment within the Republican
party is rising, and is ripe for the picking from a candidate willing to
exploit it. As Democrats have shed many of its working-class supporters
during the Obama administration, many of them have found a home with the
Republicans—and given the party a more blue-collar flavor.
For Sen. Marco Rubio, a question of friendship vs. politics
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/for-sen-marco-rubio-a-question-of-friendship-vs-politics/2015/05/08/7a75ca9c-dd30-11e4-be40-566e2653afe5_story.html>
// WaPo // Ben Terris - May 8, 2015
As an underdog candidate for the U.S. Senate going nowhere in the polls,
Marco Rubio thought about dropping out. Then his close friend David Rivera
showed up at his house, armed with giant sticky notes to paste reasons not
to quit all over Rubio’s living room.
But now, as Rubio pursues another audacious, uphill campaign, this time for
the Republican presidential nomination, the man he has called his “most
loyal friend and supporter” could be a big political problem.
That’s because Rivera — a fellow South Florida pol who won a U.S. House
seat in 2010, the year of Rubio’s come-from-behind Senate victory — has
left politics under an ethical cloud.
Rivera, who lost his 2012 reelection bid, has been a target of state and
federal investigations looking into his alleged failure to disclose income
as well as his alleged role in supporting a shadow campaign in 2012
designed to undercut his Democratic rival for Congress.
Rivera has never been charged with a crime, and he has said he did nothing
wrong. But the revelations have been embarrassing. A former girlfriend, for
instance, told prosecutors that Rivera recruited her to help with the
shadow campaign and then helped her flee to Nicaragua — allegations denied
by Rivera.
Last month, a Florida ethics commission slapped Rivera with a $58,000 fine
for routinely billing the state for travel and other expenses while paying
himself back out of campaign accounts when he earlier served as a state
legislator.
Rubio, meanwhile, has begun to gain traction as a White House contender.
Since announcing his candidacy last month, he has been a consistent
presence in polls near the top of the GOP pack.
So far, Rubio has largely stood by Rivera. But, as the campaign grows
heated and rivals begin to take aim at his potential weaknesses, he may
face a quandary: whether to minimize his ties with a potential liability or
remain true to his best friend in politics.
At the moment, Rubio and Rivera are linked on paper, through their joint
ownership of a home in the state capital, Tallahassee. The house has been a
cause for embarrassment, with Rubio and Rivera served with a foreclosure
notice in 2010 after failing to make mortgage payments.
They put the house on the market for $125,000 a few weeks before Rubio’s
formal campaign announcement, a move first reported by Politico. It has not
yet sold.
Rubio declined through a spokesman to be interviewed. The spokesman, Alex
Burgos, said that Rubio’s team knows opponents will bring up the
relationship but that they are comfortable there is nothing for Rubio to be
concerned about.
“David Rivera is an old friend of Senator Rubio’s,” Burgos said. “His hope
is that Mr. Rivera can put his recent troubles behind him and go on with
his life.”
In 2012, when GOP nominee Mitt Romney was considering Rubio as a possible
running mate, Rubio did not cast aside Rivera — even though Rivera,
according to news reports, had already been under federal investigation for
alleged tax improprieties. Rubio hosted a fundraiser for Rivera that year.
“I guess it’s because I’m new to Washington, but I’ve never felt it — I
mean, maybe it’s acceptable here — it isn’t to me — to turn your back on
friends when they’re going through a difficult time, no matter, you know,
what they may have done or not done,” Rubio told Fox News. “He’s a friend,
and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Rivera, in a recent e-mail exchange with The Washington Post, said the two
remain in touch.
“We’re friends,” Rivera said. As for how often they speak, he added:
“Depends on the month.”
Asked why Rubio has stood by him, Rivera was incredulous.
“Why wouldn’t he?” Rivera wrote. “After all, no federal government agency
has ever said I was under investigation for anything.”
Some who are close to Rubio say they see no reason why the friendship would
be relevant in a political campaign.
“My feeling on it is, whatever it is the authorities are looking at has
nothing to do with Senator Rubio,” said Al Cardenas, a former Florida GOP
chairman who has known the two men since the 1990s. “That was just not his
sphere of knowledge or control when it came to Rivera. I’m sure Rubio is as
saddened as I am by what’s happened.”
Dan Gelber, a former Democratic leader of the state House of
Representatives who worked with Rubio and Rivera as fellow members of the
Miami delegation, said Rivera’s troubles are “wholly unrelated to Marco.”
But already, American Bridge, a Democratic group raising money for
researching ads in the presidential race, has signaled that it intends to
highlight the Rubio-Rivera relationship as part of a broader strategy to
raise doubts about Rubio’s ethics. The group has also pointed to past
criticism of Rubio for using a state GOP credit card to pay for personal
expenses.
“It’s hard to imagine a world where Marco Rubio does not know the inner
workings of David Rivera,” said Christian Ulvert, a Democratic strategist
who once worked with Rivera on a campaign to bring slot machines to
Miami-Dade County. “Because David Rivera sure knows the inner workings of
Marco Rubio.”
The connection dates to the genesis of Rubio’s political career.
The two met as volunteers on Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s successful 1992
congressional campaign, and, four years later, Rivera recruited Rubio to
work on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign.
Rivera, who was born in New York to Cuban immigrant parents, moved to Miami
with his family when he was 9. By the time he was 14, he had volunteered
for Youth for Reagan. After college, he worked for U.S. Sen. Connie Mack
III (R-Fla.) and, at 24, landed a gig in 1990 as executive director of the
Miami-Dade County Republican Party.
After they worked together on the Dole campaign, Rubio’s and Rivera’s own
political aspirations quickly became known. Rubio ran for the West Miami
City Commission and then the state House with financial and strategic
support from Rivera. In 2002, Rubio, who had been elected to the Florida
House two years earlier, helped Rivera with his own successful state House
bid.
In Tallahassee, they were inseparable.
“There were always two phrases to define them,” Ulvert said. “Batman and
Robin, and good cop and bad cop. Marco was always out front trying to be
friendly, and David Rivera was always behind the scenes doing the heavy
lifting.”
It worked well for them. Rubio, with his boyish good looks, lofty ideas and
good-natured humor, made friends easily. And while some colleagues have
described Rivera as charming in his own way, as well, he has always seemed
a better fit for a sidekick role.
Former colleagues say the dynamic helped propel Rubio’s rise through the
House.
When Rubio ran for the speakership, Rivera traveled the state making the
hard sell to fellow lawmakers. According to “The Rise of Marco Rubio” by
Washington Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia, Rivera once surprised a group
of legislators by pulling out pledge cards and demanding that they sign
them. The lawmakers knew that the wrath of Rivera, with his
behind-the-scenes power, could affect their own future elections.
One former House colleague, Republican J.C. Planas, said he personally felt
Rivera’s heat when he stepped out of line.
When Planas, now a Miami lawyer, would not sign on to support Rubio’s
chosen successor for the job — speakers are typically anointed years in
advance — Planas said that Rivera personally recruited a candidate to
challenge him in the next GOP primary.
He wasn’t the only legislator to recall being on the other side of Rivera’s
efforts. Alex Villalobos, a Miami Republican who once had designs on the
top slot in the state Senate, said that when he didn’t vote the way Rubio
and Rivera wanted on an amendment involving school class sizes, they tried
to engineer his defeat at the polls.
“They raised $8 million to take me out,” Villalobos said. “I got fired as
majority leader, I got stripped of my office and ended up in a little
office down the hall.”
The most insulting part, Villalobos said, was showing up at his polling
precinct with his 15-year-old daughter only to find Rivera was there to
whip votes against him.
“He’s a real a------,” Villalobos said.
Rivera did not respond to questions about the recollections from Planas and
Villalobos.
In 2010, Rubio and Rivera both set their sights on Washington. Rivera ran
for the U.S. House, but he also played a pivotal role in Rubio’s Senate
campaign — stepping in to talk Rubio out of shifting gears and running
instead for state attorney general.
That was when Rivera came with a group of friends and a sticky pad to
Rubio’s house. Together, they brainstormed reasons why Rubio should run for
Senate — and Rivera plastered those reasons all over the living room.
Rubio wrote in his 2012 memoir, “An American Son,” that part of the reason
he stayed in was because he didn’t want to lose the respect of these
friends. Back when Rubio had run for speaker, he said Rivera had “done more
for my candidacy than anyone else.” Rivera clearly was playing a pivotal
role again.
Rivera’s hard-fought congressional race in 2010 brought heightened scrutiny
to his own political machinations. That year, local news organizations
reported details of a 2002 highway collision in which Rivera ran his car
into a truck carrying campaign fliers printed by his political opponent.
Rivera said he was simply trying to pull the truck over to retrieve some of
his own campaign literature. The crash delayed the truck from getting to
the post office before it closed for the day.
In 2012, the Miami Herald reported that state law enforcement investigators
had examined Rivera’s campaign spending practices and that, as a result,
his arrest once seemed “all but certain.” Miami-Dade prosecutors had
written a “draft” complaint that contained 52 counts of theft, money
laundering and racketeering, the Herald report said. But after Rivera and
his attorneys fought back, officials never charged him, citing among other
things “statute-of-limitations issues.”
Later, a federal prosecutor named Rivera as a co-conspirator in a scheme to
prop up a shadow candidate to undermine his chief Democratic opponent.
Rivera ultimately lost that election. In testimony this year, Rivera’s
former girlfriend Ana Alliegro told a federal grand jury that Rivera used
her to supply more than $81,000 to fund the operation, helped plot a
coverup and then helped her flee to Nicaragua to avoid arrest.
Rivera said via e-mail that Alliegro’s allegations were “false.” He blamed
“media hype” for the attention over the years paid to his alleged ethical
problems.
Rubio’s relationship with Rivera was a point of concern for some members of
Romney’s team as they vetted the senator for a possible vice presidential
nomination in 2012. According to “Collision 2012,” by The Post’s Dan Balz,
some Romney aides worried that an indictment of Rivera in the throes of the
campaign could become a major distraction. In the end, the Romney team
determined that Rivera’s issues were unrelated to Rubio and included him on
the short list — although the deliberations took place before the 2012
shadow campaign allegations against Rivera.
Matt Rhodes, Romney’s campaign manager, said that Rubio was “thoroughly
vetted for vice president” and that the campaign was “confident that, if
chosen, his legislative record and high personal character would have been
a great asset to Mitt on the campaign trail and in office.”
Those close to Rubio say that not only should the senator not be punished
for his loyalty but that he also deserves credit for standing by his friend.
“Would you stab a friend in the back?” said Nelson Diaz, a GOP strategist
who knows both men. “I’ve stood by David, too. If he wants to go to the
gates of hell, I’ll go with him. If Marco wants to go for the presidency,
I’ll go with him. It’s a test of friendship more than anything else.”
NBC/Telemundo Republican Debate Set For Feb. 26
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/nbc-telemundo-republican-debate-set-feb-26-n356176>
// NBC News // Mark Murray - May 8, 2015
Mark your calendars.
NBC News and Telemundo, along with National Review, will host a 2016
Republican presidential debate in Houston, Texas on Feb. 26 .
It's billed to be the last GOP debate before the March 1 "Super Tuesday"
contests of Colorado, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont
and Virginia.
The NBC/Telemundo debate, sanctioned by the Republican National Committee,
was originally set to take place in Florida, but has been moved to Texas.
In addition to setting the date and location, NBC and Telemundo have
announced that they're partnering in the debate with the conservative
publication National Review.
Obama Calls Elizabeth Warren ‘Absolutely Wrong’ on Trade Deal
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/us/politics/obama-calls-elizabeth-warren-absolutely-wrong-on-trans-pacific-trade-deal.html>
// NYT // Peter Baker - May 9, 2015
WASHINGTON — Escalating the fight with his own liberal base, President
Obama, in an interview posted online on Saturday, took on Senator Elizabeth
Warren, a champion of the left, by suggesting that she was motivated by
politics in her battle against his proposed Pacific trade accord.
Mr. Obama said that some of Ms. Warren’s warnings about the potential
damage of the trade deal were nothing more than the “hypotheticals” of a
law-school professor and, repeating an assertion he used recently,
“absolutely wrong.”
“The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like
everybody else,” Mr. Obama told Matt Bai of Yahoo News in an interview
conducted on Friday at Nike’s headquarters near Beaverton, Ore. “And, you
know, she’s got a voice that she wants to get out there, and I understand
that. And on most issues, she and I deeply agree. On this one, though, her
arguments don’t stand the test of fact and scrutiny.”
The president’s rebuttal of Ms. Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who came
to national prominence in part through her work with the Obama
administration, underscored the schism within the Democratic Party over the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal.
Ms. Warren, a former Harvard law professor, has become an outspoken leader
of those Democrats who argue that the agreement would cost American jobs.
Mr. Obama’s comments came after he delivered a speech at the Nike
headquarters in which he lashed out at liberal critics of the agreement,
arguing that they were fighting an old fight even though he was negotiating
what he called the most progressive trade deal in history.
He seemed most irritated at Ms. Warren’s suggestion that the trade pact
could be used as a vehicle to undercut the financial overhaul that Mr.
Obama signed in 2010 in response to the Wall Street excesses that led to
the recession.
“She’s absolutely wrong,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “Think about the
logic of that, right? The notion that I had this massive fight with Wall
Street to make sure that we don’t repeat what happened in 2007, 2008, and
then I sign a provision that would unravel it?” He added, “I’d have to be
pretty stupid.”
Mr. Obama said liberal opponents of his trade deal were living in the past.
“Their arguments are based on fear,” he said, “or they’re fighting Nafta,
the trade deal that was passed 25 years ago or 20 years ago.”
He added: “I understand the emotions behind it. But when you break down the
logic of their arguments, I’ve got to say there’s not much there there.”
The president’s criticism of Ms. Warren in particular has irritated some of
her allies. Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate and former
presidential candidate, said on Saturday that the president ought to debate
Ms. Warren in person, much as Al Gore, then vice president, did with Ross
Perot over Nafta in 1993. “A president can get away with his soliloquies
when he stays on his throne,” Mr. Nader said by telephone. But if he is
going to go after critics, he said, “then I think he is obligated to engage
in a public debate that will inform the American people.”
Bernie Sanders perfectly sums up why elites love apathetic voters
<http://www.salon.com/2015/05/09/bernie_sanders_perfectly_sum_up_why_elites_love_apathetic_voters_partner/>
// Salon // Zaid Jilani - May 9, 2015
American voter turnout has long lagged behind that of most countries. A new
Pew survey released this month found that among developed countries the
United States had higher voter turnout in the last national election than
only Japan, Chile, and Switzerland:
This lower voter turnout has consequences – it is a well-established fact
that the groups of people that do not vote tend to have more progressive
views. Thus lower voter turnout tends to benefit conservative political
parties.
In the 2006 film American Blackout, which chronciled voter suppression,
then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) explained how high turnout was a
“nightmare” for the elites who rule America:
SANDERS: The truth of the matter is that the media, large corporations, the
people who control politically our country today do not want you to
participate. They want a low turnout of primarily upper middle class
people, they want big money to dominate the political process. Their
nightmare is that young people, lower income people, working people jump
into the process. They do not want that.
Jeb Bush Casts Wide Net on Religious Liberty in Address
<http://time.com/3853036/jeb-bush-liberty-university/> // TIME // Zeke J
Miller - May 9, 2015
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush courted social conservative voters with a
sharp defense of religious liberty Saturday, but sought to distinguish
himself from his party’s more vocal bomb-throwers on the subject.
In a commencement address at the evangelical Liberty University in
Lynchburg, Va., the all-but-declared Republican presidential candidate
charged President Obama with “supporting the use of coercive federal power”
against those practicing their faith.
Bush pledged to govern influenced by his faith, rejecting the “politically
correct” idea that it should be kept out of the public sphere.
“The mistake is to confuse points of theology with moral principles that
are knowable to reason as well as by faith,” Bush said. “And this confusion
is all part of a false narrative that casts religious Americans as
intolerant scolds, running around trying to impose their views on everyone.
… Our friends on the left like to view themselves as the agents of change
and reform, and you and I are supposed to just get with the program.”
Bush cited the case of Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic charity that
objects to providing contraceptive coverage to their employees — as
mandated by the Affordable Care Act — which has become a cause célèbre for
conservatives wary of government influence in the religious sphere.
“I’m betting that when it comes to doing the right and good thing, the
Little Sisters of the Poor know better than the regulators at the
Department of Health and Human Services,” Bush said. “From the standpoint
of religious freedom, you might even say it’s a choice between the Little
Sisters and Big Brother – and I’m going with the Little Sisters.”
But even as he struck the conservative chords on religious freedom, Bush
sought to position himself as a social conservative capable of reaching out
to those of all beliefs. Bush declared that “some moral standards are
universal” and can’t be shifted by public opinion, referencing his
opposition to abortion and his efforts to keep Terri Schiavo alive, as well
as the need to fight sex trafficking and stand up for oppressed minorities.
But he conspicuously skirted the issue of same-sex marriage, which has
divided the GOP field but is growing in support among young Republican
voters.
He also made a religious case for environmentalism, saying the political
debates “can be too coldly economical.” “Men and women of your generation
are striving to be protectors of creation, instead of just users, good
shepherds instead of just hirelings – and that moral vision can make all
the difference,” he told graduates.
A convert to Catholicism, Bush didn’t directly reference his own faith, but
briefly referenced Pope Francis. Bush quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to
make the case that he sees his faith as one that can help overcome
injustice and raise up the poor.
“‘No law in the world,’ said Martin Luther King, “could have produced such
unalloyed compassion, such genuine love, such thorough altruism,” Bush
said. “The Christian faith, as Dr. King proclaimed, ‘adjourns the
assemblies of the hopeless, and brings new light into the dark chambers of
pessimism.’”
The even-keeled address contrasted greatly with the more red meat rhetoric
adopted by many of Bush’s fellow Republicans on social conservative issues,
such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who launched his campaign at Liberty
University.
Some Republicans have promised to fight to nullify an expected Supreme
Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationally, and have used more
forceful language to criticize the Obama administration. Bush’s approach
was designed to signal to social conservatives that he believes with them,
but that he won’t adopt rhetoric that could turn away the voters the party
will need to retake the White House next fall.
Jeb Bush's $100M May
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/jeb-bush-right-to-rise-super-pac-campaign-117753.html?google_editors_picks=true>
// POLITCO // Alex Isenstadt - May 8, 2015
Jeb Bush is putting in motion an ambitious plan to develop a super PAC that
would be unprecedented in its size and scope — a blueprint growing in scale
and intensity as he nears the formal launch of his presidential campaign.
The group, called Right to Rise, is said to be on track for raising an
historic $100 million by the end of May, and its budget is expected to
dwarf that of Bush’s official campaign many times over. In interviews, more
than half a dozen sources familiar with the Right to Rise plans described a
juggernaut that was rapidly taking shape — from its likely headquarters in
Los Angeles, 2,700 miles from the Miami office where Bush was basing his
campaign, to a new fundraising push aimed at expanding its ballooning
coffers.
Bush is even setting the timing of his official campaign announcement —
which is increasingly likely to come in mid-June, following a trip to
Europe — around a cross-country fundraising tour. In the final weeks
leading up to the launch, his strategists have been devising a plan to
allow both arms of the campaign — the official one and the super PAC — to
work seamlessly, even as they will be legally barred from coordinating once
he officially becomes a candidate.
There is little question that Right to Rise, with its deep cash reserve,
will give Bush a leg up in the Republican nomination contest, especially if
it becomes a protracted and costly affair.
“It’s an advantage. No question,” said Fred Malek, a prominent GOP donor
who chairs the Republican Governors Association’s finance committee. “I
think Bush will be able to raise three or four times as much as anyone
else.”
While many of Bush’s rivals are also setting up super PACs, they are not
expected to be nearly so well-heeled. Bush, thanks to his family’s deep
network of supporters and his long career in politics, has an unmatched
reach into the Republican donor world. His likely nearest rival in the
money race, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, is expected to raise just a fraction
of Bush’s haul during the opening months of the primary race.
Some opponents are growing increasingly concerned about how the group might
be used to damage them.
“People are looking at that $100 million figure and wondering, ‘Is it going
to be aimed at us?’” said a top adviser to a rival Republican campaign who
spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe internal
discussions. “Any time you’re within a stone’s throw of the Bush campaign,
you’re in the radius of the baseball bat.”
Last month, at a posh Miami hotel, Bush held a private event for 350 of his
top donors and other major supporters. The weekend confab was described by
organizers as an opportunity to thank his biggest backers — and give them a
chance to meet with Bush and the people who will be running his super PAC.
In recent weeks, with his launch date fast approaching, Bush has been
rushing to fill the Right to Rise bank account. On Wednesday, he was in New
York City for a get-together headlined by New York Jets owner Woody
Johnson, a much sought-after Republican donor. A week from Monday, he’ll be
in Miami for an event with Florida Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario
Díaz-Balart.
Over the coming days, according to one person briefed on the Right to Rise
plans, Bush will try to accelerate the cash flow. Hoping to avoid the
public perception that he’d been indebted to a few extremely wealthy
benefactors, the former governor initially imposed a $1 million cap on
donations to the super PAC.
But now, the source said, that restriction is being lifted. The move is
partly out of concern that, with other Republican candidates raising large
sums, more cash could be needed. (A Bush spokesman declined to comment.)
Some see Right to Rise as the latest development in the post-Citizens
United world of political spending, where cash-flush super PACs, which can
raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, are increasingly supplanting
candidates and their campaigns.
In 2012, the super PAC supporting Republican Mitt Romney’s candidacy,
Restore our Future, spent only about one-third as much money as his
official campaign. Bush’s advisers declined to provide an estimate of just
how much the super PAC will outraise and outspend the official campaign —
but said it would be significant.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is shown.
“I think the way they’ve designed the campaign is the wave of the future,”
said Charlie Black, a longtime lobbyist in Washington, who has advised a
number of Republican presidential campaigns. “It’s a new model.”
Bush’s decision to put off a formal announcement is rooted in the complex
nature of campaign-finance laws. As a non-federal officeholder who hasn’t
yet become a candidate, he’s allowed to travel the country and solicit
large contributions of unlimited amounts for Right to Rise. Once he becomes
a declared candidate, though, Bush won’t be able to ask for donations of
more than a few thousand dollars for the super PAC. At that time, he’ll
also be prohibited from discussing strategy with the consultants and
operatives who will be running the group.
One person who’d been briefed on Bush’s timeline said he was eying a June
announcement, tied to his return from a trip to Poland, Germany and
Estonia. Under that scenario, the former governor would have about another
month to, without restriction, raise funds for Right to Rise and to
communicate with the strategists who are likely to guide it. One of them,
veteran Republican media consultant Mike Murphy, has played an integral
role in guiding Bush’s exploratory committee and is one of his closest
political confidants.
HOPE, AR - MAY 05: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks as he
officially announces his candidacy for the 2016 Presidential race on May 5,
2015 in Hope, Arkansas. Huckabee, a Republican, previously ran for the
presidency in 2008.
Some Republicans contend that Bush’s super PAC-centric setup poses a
potentially serious hazard: That he will, in a sense, be walled off from
the vehicle that has most of his financial resources. It’s a dynamic that
could lead to confusion or disagreements between two wings of the campaign,
neither of which will be allowed to talk to the other.
“The risk is you’re going to end up going in two different directions,”
said Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who’s helped lead nine
presidential campaigns. “What’s going to happen is, you’re going to end up
with two campaigns.”
Bush’s strategists say they’re well aware of the pitfall, but are taking
steps to avoid it. One adviser to the super PAC said a division of labor
had been established. While the official campaign arm would take the lead
on dictating messaging, the super PAC would take on the role of a follower
and be an echo chamber. “There’s an understanding that Miami is in charge,”
the adviser said.
Another dividing line: While Right to Rise will house the TV and digital
advertising efforts, the official campaign will be in charge of voter
outreach. “We’re not going to have a staff with clipboards going around
Iowa,” the super PAC adviser said.
Right to Rise has been assembling a core staff that is eventually expected
to number a little less than a dozen. It’s also expected to hire advisers
in key primary and battleground states who, one aide said, will serve as
“eyes and ears” on the ground and funnel information back to headquarters.
Those headquarters, according to two sources, are likely to be based in Los
Angeles, where Murphy works. Matt Leonardo, a Murphy business partner who’s
served as a top strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is likely to
take on a leading role in Right to Rise, as are two other veteran
Republican operatives, Larry McCarthy and Liesl Hickey. Murphy is expected
to oversee the group.
Those close to Bush point out that he’s long had a penchant for bold
strokes and innovative thinking in his campaigns — and a hands-on approach.
In his 2002 reelection race, one ally recalled, Bush came up with his own
form of early micro-targeting: sending mailers to readers of Golf Digest
that highlighted his endorsement from Jack Nicklaus.
“He and the people with him have always been forward-looking,” said Mac
Stipanovich, a former Bush adviser and a prominent lobbyist in Florida.
“It’s interesting to hear people say that he’s the old guy in the race
because he’s always been on the cutting edge, and I expect him to be now.”
Fiorina Promises to Restore Possibilities
<http://iowapublicradio.org/post/fiorina-promises-restore-possibilities>
// Iowa Public Radio // Kathleen Perkins and Dean Borg - May 8, 2015
Republican presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina, spent an hour-and-a-half
speaking to about 75 people in a downtown Cedar Rapids coffee house
Thursday morning. She promises to restore what she calls "possibilities,"
in Americans' lives.
“And we knew, we knew that our lives were defined by possibilities, and our
children and our grandchildren’s lives would be filled with even greater
possibilities. And yet, people don’t know that anymore. And when we lose
the sense of limitless possibilities that has always defined this nation,
we are losing the core of who we are.”
In a brief conversation with reporters as she was leaving, she was asked
about her strategy for competing in the Iowa Republican caucuses.
“We’re three days into a presidential campaign…and the Iowa caucuses are
obviously very important and they are one of many important things that
need to happen. And so, we’re not going to put all of our eggs in any one
basket. But, we are going to work hard and compete hard and hopefully
continue to perform well in every opportunity, including the Iowa caucuses.”
Fiorina went on to say that she’s running against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“What I want to know is what have you done? And the truth is Hillary
Clinton hasn’t done a lot except for obfuscate, muddy up, fuzz up a whole
bunch of questions
Without mentioning opponents she must defeat to win the Republican
nomination, Fiorina portrayed herself as a leader rather than a manager.
“Everything about me is different. My experience is different. My life is
different. My experience is different. My perspective is different. My
voice is different. My approach to problem solving is different.”
Fiorina also says to win the presidency, Republicans must first win with
women voters.
Fiorina is a former business executive who ran an unsuccessful 2010
campaign for U.S. Senate in California. Later in the evening she spoke at
a Dallas County Republicans event in West Des Moines.
Bobby Jindal Offers Rare Praise for Hillary Clinton
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/09/bobby-jindal-offers-rare-praise-for-hillary-clinton/>
// NYT // Nick Coransanti - May 9, 2015
GREENVILLE, S.C. – With Mother’s Day following the Freedom Summit here in
South Carolina, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana was able to compliment
Hillary Rodham Clinton during a news conference.
After running through a list of criticisms, such as declaring that the only
thing Mrs. Clinton had run was “President Obama’s foreign policy” and that
she “doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment,” Mr. Jindal was
pressed to say something nice about her. He paused, until being reminded
tomorrow is Mother’s Day.
“I will say this: She and her husband, former President Clinton, raised
their daughter, Chelsea, under the glare of the media spotlight,” he said.
“As we get closer to Mother’s Day, I respect the fact they worked very hard
to shield their daughter from the politics, from the media scrutiny, and by
all accounts, she’s turned out to be a very accomplished adult in her own
right.”
He added: “You gotta give her and Bill credit, they did everything they
could, from the outside, it seems, to protect Chelsea and raise her and
give her as normal a childhood as they possibly could.”
Ben Carson on God, Country, and His Ailing Mom
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/09/bobby-jindal-offers-rare-praise-for-hillary-clinton/>
// NYT // Nick Coransanti - May 9, 2015
GREENSVILLE, S.C. – Ben Carson, appearing at the South Carolina Freedom
Summit here on Saturday, used his first major appearance alongside his
rivals since he formally entered the Republican presidential field to focus
on economic and fiscal issues, while imbuing his remarks with repeated
references to God and faith — and demonstrating the sort of thoughtful,
studied way of speaking that he acquired as a neurosurgeon.
On Religion: Mr. Carson formally entered the race with a kickoff event in
Detroit on Monday, but quickly left the trail to be with his ailing mother
in Dallas. He told the crowd here that her condition had improved. “I met
one lady who said she had a group of 2,200 people praying for my mother,”
Mr. Carson said. “And the last few days, she’s been eating and drinking
again. So I just want to thank you for all those prayers.” He spoke of the
ways in which religion’s importance was recognized by the founding fathers
and their heirs, from the Declaration of Independence’s acknowledgement of
“the creator, or God,” to how “every coin in our pocket, every bill in our
wallet, says ‘In God We Trust.’” He repeatedly said he believed that
marriage was between one man and one woman.
On the Economy: Mr. Carson called the nation’s $18 trillion dollar debt
“beyond ridiculous” and unfair to future generations. He argued for a flat
tax, and traced the recent unrest in Baltimore to the problems caused by a
battered economy, for which he blamed President Obama. “One of the reasons
that a lot of people are frustrated and manipulated into rioting is because
they hear all this stuff, but then when they open their eyes and look
around, they don’t see it,” he said. “There’s been plenty of change, but
very little hope. And that’s what’s killing people.”
On the Stage: Mr. Carson paced back and forth, speaking slowly and
pensively. He offered asides as he spoke, joking that his own mother was
“kind of like that Baltimore mom you saw on television” who roughed up her
son when she caught him among the looters. He lamented the nation’s racial
tensions, saying that, as a neurosurgeon, “When I open someone’s head, I’m
operating what makes them who they are. The skin, the nose, the hair
doesn’t make them who they are. It’s the brain that makes them who they
are.”
Billionaire Lifts Marco Rubio, Politically and Personally
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/us/billionaire-lifts-marco-rubio-politically-and-personally.html?google_editors_picks=true>
// NYT // Michael Barbaro and Steve Eder - May 9, 2015
MIAMI — One day in the State Capitol in Tallahassee, Marco Rubio, the young
speaker of the House, strayed from the legislative proceedings to single
out a lanky, silver-haired man seated in the balcony: a billionaire auto
dealer named Norman Braman.
This man, Mr. Rubio said in effusive remarks in 2008, was no ordinary
billionaire, hoarding his cash or using it to pursue selfish passions.
“He’s used it,” Mr. Rubio said, “to enrich the lives of so many people
whose names you will never know.” As it turned out, one of the people
enriched was Mr. Rubio himself.
As Mr. Rubio has ascended in the ranks of Republican politics, Mr. Braman
has emerged as a remarkable and unique patron. He has bankrolled Mr.
Rubio’s campaigns. He has financed Mr. Rubio’s legislative agenda. And, at
the same time, he has subsidized Mr. Rubio’s personal finances, as the
rising politician and his wife grappled with heavy debt and big swings in
their income.
Now, with Mr. Rubio vaulting ahead of much of the Republican presidential
field, Mr. Braman is poised to play an even larger part and become Mr.
Rubio’s single biggest campaign donor, with an expected outlay of
approximately $10 million for the senator’s pursuit of the White House.
Norman Braman, a Miami businessman, signaled support as Senator Marco Rubio
announced his presidential candidacy. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A detailed review of their relationship shows that Mr. Braman, 82, has left
few corners of Mr. Rubio’s world untouched. He hired Mr. Rubio, then a
Senate candidate, as a lawyer; employed his wife to advise the Braman
family’s philanthropic foundation; helped cover the cost of Mr. Rubio’s
salary as an instructor at a Miami college; and gave Mr. Rubio access to
his private plane.
The money has flowed both ways. Mr. Rubio has steered taxpayer funds to Mr.
Braman’s favored causes, successfully pushing for an $80 million state
grant to finance a genomics center at a private university and securing $5
million for cancer research at a Miami institute for which Mr. Braman is a
major donor.
Even in an era dominated by super-wealthy donors, Mr. Braman stands out,
given how integral he has been not only to Mr. Rubio’s political
aspirations but also to his personal finances.
Mr. Rubio, 43, is unabashed in acknowledging the influence of Mr. Braman, a
commanding and litigious figure with so much clout in Miami that he almost
single-handedly recalled a sitting mayor.
In an interview, Mr. Rubio described Mr. Braman as a father figure who had
given him advice on everything from what books to read to how to manage a
staff. After Mr. Rubio’s father died in 2010, Mr. Braman called every other
day to check in.
Pressed on his financial ties to Mr. Braman, Mr. Rubio said in an interview
that he saw no ethical issue. “What is the conflict?” he asked. “I don’t
ever recall Norman Braman ever asking for anything for himself.”
He acknowledged that Mr. Braman had approached him about state aid for
projects, such as funding for cancer research, but said that he had
supported the proposals on their merits.
The reliance on Mr. Braman is likely to put a spotlight on the finances of
Mr. Rubio, who ranks among the least-wealthy candidates in the emerging
Republican field. Mr. Rubio left the Florida House of Representatives in
2008 with a net worth of $8,351, multiple mortgages and $115,000 in student
debt. In his latest financial disclosure form, for 2013, he reported at
least $450,000 in liabilities, including two mortgages and a line of credit.
Mr. Braman and aides to Mr. Rubio have declined to say how much personal
financial assistance he has provided to Mr. Rubio and his wife, directly or
indirectly, but it appears to total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In a series of interviews at his office in downtown Miami, above showrooms
of shiny BMWs and Rolls-Royces (he also sells Cadillacs, Audis and
Bugattis), Mr. Braman praised the Rubios. He recounted what he described as
“excellent service from them” over the years, and said he wanted nothing in
return for his financial help.
What Marco Rubio Would Need to Do to Win
“I’m not going to be an ambassador or anything like that,” he said.
Mr. Braman — a former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles; the chairman of
Art Basel, which stages art shows; and a collector who owns works by Andy
Warhol, Alexander Calder and Picasso — emphasized that there were limits to
the friendship.
“I also have a yacht,” Mr. Braman said, “that Senator Rubio has never seen.”
Mr. Braman has the manner of a man accustomed to getting what he wants. He
was vacationing in France one summer when the mayor of Miami — not the one
he had recalled from office — informed him that he would seek to raise
taxes. Mr. Braman hung up the phone, turned to his wife and declared:
“Goodbye, I’m heading back to Miami to fight this.” He returned home and
led a successful campaign to block the increase.
“If you’re going to do something, you do it all the way,” he said.
As early as 2008, Mr. Braman made a bold prediction, captured in a video
tribute to his friend: Mr. Rubio would be the first Hispanic president of
the United States. Seeing that through in 2016, Mr. Braman said in one of
the interviews, is “part of my legacy.”
The partnership began in the early 2000s when a Miami lawmaker introduced
them. Mr. Braman, himself the son of immigrants, was instantly drawn to the
story of Mr. Rubio, a child of struggling Cuban refugees. By 2004, Mr.
Braman and his wife had donated $1,000 to Mr. Rubio’s State House campaign,
the first of many contributions.
Mr. Rubio quickly emerged as a dogged champion of Mr. Braman’s most
cherished cause: state funding for a Miami cancer institute that bears the
Braman family name.
Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, had vetoed the funding in 2004, incurring Mr.
Braman’s public fury. “Frankly, as a very active Republican, I’m ashamed of
him,” Mr. Braman said then of Mr. Bush.
Mr. Rubio did not let it happen again. The next year, he secured the cancer
funding over Mr. Bush’s objections. “Marco,” Mr. Bush wrote in a somewhat
grudging email to a lobbyist at the time, “strongly wanted the Braman
Cancer money.”
Soon, Mr. Rubio became a regular visitor to Mr. Braman’s office on Biscayne
Boulevard. By the time Mr. Rubio was elected speaker of the House, the
youngest in Florida’s history, Mr. Braman felt close enough to show up at
the 2005 celebration in Tallahassee and deliver a memorable — and valuable
— token of affection: a framed Revolutionary War-era American flag. It
hung, on loan, in Mr. Rubio’s office for the entirely of his tenure as
speaker.
Continue reading the main story
In Mr. Braman, a Republican with a strong distaste for wasteful government
spending, an ardent commitment to Israel and a seemingly limitless bank
account, Mr. Rubio found a devoted sponsor.
When Mr. Rubio geared up for re-election to the House, more than a dozen
individuals and companies linked to Mr. Braman, including his Honda and
Cadillac dealerships, gave Mr. Rubio $500 each, the maximum donation
allowed under Florida law.
When Mr. Rubio decided to write a book laying out a conservative vision for
Florida’s future, Mr. Braman said, he chipped in money to pay for its
publication.
When Mr. Rubio announced his signature legislative goal, an initiative to
slash property taxes and raise the sales tax, Mr. Braman contributed
$255,000 to the advocacy group lobbying for the changes, becoming by far
its largest donor.
Mr. Rubio said the flow of donations from Mr. Braman had no effect on his
decision-making as House speaker, adding that he would never give
preferential treatment to a donor. But in 2008, when Mr. Braman sought the
$80 million for the genomics institute at the University of Miami, a large
taxpayer grant to a private college, Mr. Rubio delivered the opposite
message: Mr. Braman’s request, he said, had tilted the scales.
Usually, Mr. Rubio said at a news conference at the time, he would have
laughed off such an eye-popping pitch. “But when Norman Braman brings it to
you,” Mr. Rubio said, “you take it seriously.”
Later that year, when Mr. Rubio left state government, determined to shore
up his finances before running for the United States Senate, he landed a
teaching job at Florida International University, agreeing to raise much of
his salary through private donations.
Mr. Braman gave $100,000, according to records he shared with The New York
Times. Dario Moreno, who oversaw the university center where Mr. Rubio
worked and who taught classes with him, confirmed that Mr. Rubio had raised
the money from Mr. Braman.
In the spring of 2010, as Mr. Braman was donating heavily to Mr. Rubio’s
Senate campaign, his company, Braman Management, hired Mr. Rubio as a
lawyer for seven months. According to records provided by Mr. Braman, the
company paid Mr. Rubio until a week before he was sworn in as a senator.
Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?
Four months after Mr. Rubio left the payroll, Mr. Braman hired Mr. Rubio’s
wife, Jeanette, who had little professional experience in philanthropy, and
her company, JDR Events, to advise the Braman foundation. Mr. Braman
declined to discuss her compensation.
Mr. Rubio said the offers of work from Mr. Braman had a simple motivation:
“We are close personal friends. They trust us.”
Mrs. Rubio’s job, fielding and vetting requests for donations to one of
Miami’s biggest charitable foundations, has given her a major profile in
the world of Florida philanthropy.
An internal Braman foundation document makes clear that Mrs. Rubio has
become a crucial gatekeeper. “On hold,” read a notation next to a pending
donation. “Wait to hear from Jeanette.”
At times, the foundation’s work has coincided with Mr. Rubio’s own
globe-trotting political needs. In 2013, when Mr. Rubio traveled to the
Middle East, Mrs. Rubio joined him, with the Braman foundation paying for
her travel. According to Mr. Rubio’s aides, she was conducting work for the
foundation abroad.
On four occasions, Mr. Rubio has traveled on Mr. Braman’s private plane,
reimbursing him each time.
Mr. Braman acknowledged seeking the occasional “small favor” from Mr.
Rubio’s Senate office. There was the daughter of the woman who does his
nails, Mr. Braman recalled, who had an immigration problem, and the student
from Tampa who wanted a shot at military school. In both cases, he said,
Mr. Rubio’s staff was quick to respond. (Mr. Rubio’s staff said it had
decided not to recommend the Tampa student.)
Mr. Braman seemed conflicted about his reputation as civic power broker, at
once boasting of his ability to draw a high-ranking Miami official to his
office with a single phone call and seeming anxious that he not be viewed
as entitled.
“I don’t consider myself a fat cat,” he said. “Don’t make me out to be a
fat cat.”
As he spoke in his office, an aide interrupted, presenting Mr. Braman with
a yellow sticky note. The Florida Senate was about to vote on a bill he had
sought, granting auto dealers like himself greater leverage over car
manufacturers.
“That was fast,” Mr. Braman said.
Moments later, another adviser popped his head in, declaring victory.
“Thirty to four,” he said of the vote, with a fist pump.
Scott Walker Woos South Carolina G.O.P. With Tough Talk on Terror
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/09/bobby-jindal-offers-rare-praise-for-hillary-clinton/>
// NYT // Nick Corasanti - May 9, 2015
GREENVILLE, S.C. – Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin told Republicans gathered
here how the last time he was in town he swung by the local Harley-Davidson
shop and picked up a T-Shirt — and before taking the stage, he even tweeted
a picture of himself in the shirt.
With that, Mr. Walker was trying to say one thing: Although I’ve only been
here once this year, I know South Carolina. Now get to know me.
In his address to the Freedom Summit here sponsored by Citizens United, Mr.
Walker ran through an extended list of his accomplishments as governor of
Wisconsin. “We did some pretty big things,” he said.
He recalled how he survived a recall election, lowered his state’s
unemployment rate, and passed gun-friendly legislation and voter
identification laws. And he spoke often of his wife and children.
“The reason I tell you that all here is not to brag — well not much,” he
joked, before making the case that his actions in Wisconsin could translate
to national stage.
As he does in most of his stump speeches, Mr. Walker sprinkled personal
stories around references to his platform, trotting out his story of
learning to shop at Kohl’s department store for discounts with his wife,
recalling his “humbling” history trip to Philadelphia and discussing his
time flipping burgers at a McDonald’s during high school.
But he seemed to really capture the crowd when he spoke about national
security, or, as Mr. Walker described it, “safety.”
“National security is something you hear about,” Mr. Walker said. “Safety
is something you feel.”
He framed the debate in personal terms, describing a fear that “it is not a
matter of if” but when another “attempt is made on American soil.” And then
he launched into the line that got him his biggest standing ovation of the
day: “I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they
take the fight to us.”
Indeed, in a state with deep ties to the military, Mr. Walker knew his
audience.
Walker: I’d end sequester, not cut military
<http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article20590440.html> //
McClatchy // David Lightman - May 9, 2015
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Saturday he would end the budget sequester
requiring automatic defense and domestic spending cuts if he became
president, a critical issue in South Carolina, a state with a large
military economy and site of the first primary in the South.
Walker, who is weighing a bid for the Republican presidential nomination,
quickly said yes when asked if he would reverse the automatic cuts due to
take effect in October. “There’s no way we can adequately fund the defense
budget under the sequester,” Walker said in an interview with McClatchy.
He also would end the automatic cuts for domestic programs. “The reason the
sequester is there is they needed to do something to get things under
control between a Republican House, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic
president,” Walker said. “That was the best that could be done under the
circumstances.”
South Carolina officials are deeply concerned about the impact of the
automatic cuts.
Eight military bases, as well as thousands of defense contractors, are
responsible for about $16 billion to the state economy annually. More than
11,000 civilians work for the military in the state, including 3,500 at
Fort Jackson. It also has another 3,500 active duty military employees.
Fort Jackson is the nation’s biggest training base, sending out 70,000
soldiers last year. It also serves 421,000 veterans in the state, half over
65. Its annual impact on the Midlands part of the state is about $2 billion.
While officials believe Fort Jackson’s stature could insulate it somewhat
from cuts, there’s still a widespread feeling reductions are coming.
The Army has asked 30 of its largest bases to gauge the impact of cuts to
the local economy. Not only is funding affected by the end of the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, but by the sequester that would go into effect later
this year unless Congress acts.
The automatic cuts were enacted in 2011 after Congress and the White House
were unable to agree on spending reductions to dramatically curb the
nation’s escalating debt. The plan was aimed at cutting $1.2 trillion over
10 years from anticipated spending on discretionary programs, or those
under legislative control. That means annual cuts of about $109 billion and
about half is to come from defense.
Pentagon officials warned the cuts would create a “readiness crisis.” The
sequester’s impact was eased under a December, 2013, bipartisan agreement,
but that only stretches through the end of this fiscal year Sept. 30.
Instead of a sequester, Walker’s plan for reducing spending involves
sending federal functions back to the states. His key example was Medicaid,
the joint federal-state health care program for the poor.
“I’d send Medicaid back as a block grant without strings attached,” he
said. “We could make it work more effectively and efficiently.”:
The 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility for Medicaid, and
Washington offered states federal money to help. In future years, though,
that federal aid diminishes, meaning states have to come up with ways to
make the program more efficient.
Congress is now considering a fiscal 2016 budget, and there’s some hope
lawmakers can reach a deal that once again eases the sequester.
Walker said he’d model his budget along the lines of those urged by former
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in that post under President
George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Gates has said the military needs a more modern strategy, urging a blend of
conventional and unconventional tactics for what he has called “complex,
hybrid warfare.”
If he became president, Walker would face the challenge of working with a
bitterly polarized Congress. No problem, he said.
In his campaign, Walker said he would “really lay out a blueprint for how
to govern in America,” a plan that would include big changes to how
government operates.
He’d urge lawmakers to “do it early,” so that people can see how changes
are working, and ultimately support them.
Republican Hopefuls Push a Muscular Foreign Policy
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/us/politics/republican-hopefuls-in-south-carolina-push-a-muscular-foreign-policy.html>
// NYT // Nick Corasanti - May 9, 2015
GREENVILLE, S.C. — A group of Republican presidential hopefuls gathered
here Saturday to advocate a more muscular foreign policy and to criticize
the man they hope to succeed for what they described as a weak and
misguided approach to international affairs.
Declared candidates and those preparing to enter the race for the 2016
Republican presidential nomination sought to appeal to the crowd at the
South Carolina Freedom Summit, which included many current and former
members of the military and their spouses, by offering tough talk on
terrorism and calling for a stronger American presence in the Middle East
and a better relationship with Israel.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was cheered for his call for the United
States to be “the strongest military power in the world” and for his blunt
message to terrorists, which he cribbed from the movie “Taken.”
“We will look for you, we will find you and we will kill you,” Mr. Rubio
said.
Others framed their speeches as critiques of President Obama’s foreign
policy. Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who often speaks of
his commitment to religious liberty and social issues, spent more time than
usual attacking Mr. Obama’s leadership on foreign affairs.
“Heck, I would just be happy if the president would be able to tell the
difference between our friends and enemies,” Mr. Santorum said. “Let me
give the current president a little primer: Iran, enemy. Israel, friend.”
South Carolina, which hosts the first primary in the South, could play an
outsize role in the 2016 Republican nomination process, even as many
Southern states have moved their contests earlier. The current and
prospective candidates all promised that they would be back plenty.
“The great state of South Carolina plays a pivotal role in our nation,”
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said. “Y’all have the blessing and the curse of
being an early primary state, so you’re going to see presidential
candidates descend upon you like those federal regulators and locusts,” he
added, referring to a joke he had made earlier about the differences
between the two.
“My one request is: Please hold back on the pesticide,” he joked.
Several of the speakers were quick to acknowledge current and former
military members, who are influential in the state’s primary. Gov. Scott
Walker of Wisconsin began his speech as he has done before, by asking
members of the military and their spouses to stand up to be recognized.
About a third of the crowd rose.
“Thank you to each and every one of you,” he said, nodding and applauding
as the crowd’s response grew to a roar.
Mr. Cruz also drew attention to the military when speaking about his
support for an overhaul of the tax system. Calling, as he often does, for
the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Cruz said: “We spend
about $500 billion a year on tax compliance. That’s all wasted. That’s
about the budget of our entire military.”
Mr. Walker personalized the debate over national security.
“National security is something you hear about,” he said. “Safety is
something you feel.”
He described a fear that “it is not a matter of if” but when another
“attempt is made on American soil.” He then delivered a line that brought
his biggest standing ovation of the day: “I want a leader who is willing to
take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.”
Mr. Walker, who does not have as much experience as some of his potential
rivals on foreign policy, sought to demonstrate that he is working to
address what could be viewed as his greatest weakness. Hours after he left
the stage, he boarded a plane to Israel for what is being billed as a
“listening tour,” which he has said includes a meeting with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu. But aside from a quick mention during his remarks, Mr.
Walker was unwilling to discuss the trip.
“Really, for us, though, we wanted to make it an educational focus, not
just a media trip,” he said in an interview with reporters after his speech.
OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS
The Beauty of a Big GOP Field
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/09/the_beauty_of_a_big_gop_field.html>
// Real Clear Politics // Senator Joe Lieberman & Governor Jon M. Huntsman,
Jr. - May 9, 2015
It’s May, and Americans are planting — not just fruit and vegetable
gardens, but a large and historically diverse presidential field. Thanks to
an increasing variety of candidates, the 2016 presidential crop promises to
be competitive and healthy for the country.
Regardless of your party preference, it’s good to see people with different
ideas and perspectives — and a lot of them — running for our nation’s
highest office. The interest in the position reflects a shared sense our
country can be even better. We have big problems to solve, plenty of ideas
on how that should be done, and a lot of people who want to drive solutions.
This is all good, and the behavior deserves to be rewarded with our careful
attention to each candidate — particularly when those candidates share and
debate their ideas about how problems might be solved.
Our hope, in fact, is the issues debate that grows out of, and around, the
presidential field will serve to reinvigorate citizens for whom political
acrimony has encouraged apathy. A large presidential field has the
potential to make personal attacks more difficult by diffusing the “enemy,”
meaning the potential for substantive debate is greater for 2016 than it
has been in past presidential cycles.
Of course, for this to happen, presidential candidates and their advisers
must break old habits. The positive side of leadership is, sadly, a toolbox
that has grown rusty for many. Candidates will have to get used to talking
about shared goals instead of relying on the usual negative partisan
talking points.
The national movement we're part of — No Labels — has made it easier for
candidates to pick out and discuss goals that resonate by identifying four
that already have broad and deep public support from Democrats, Republicans
and Independents. These four goals make up No Labels' National Strategic
Agenda:
· Create 25 million new jobs over the next 10 years
· Secure Social Security and Medicare for another 75 years
· Balance the federal budget by 2030
· Make America energy secure by 2024
This list produces an intuitive nod from most Americans as well as most
politicians. You might say the goals are simply common sense, but they are
actually more powerful due to their inherent optimism.
Candidates who choose to tout these — or similar — goals will lead the pack
and engage the public’s interest by sparking substantive debate. Each goal
has dozens of possible paths to fruition; this makes for interesting
discourse.
The varying talent and experiences of the presidential candidates —
governors, senators, formers and nevers — all but ensure a certain level of
diverse and interesting conversation. And conversation makes our collective
minds and hearts better. It makes us grow, as a people. It can us bring
closer to working together, even if we don’t agree on everything.
The question that remains is whether a critical mass of candidates will be
hopeful enough — and confident enough — to focus that conversation on
setting goals and solving problems.
Because if the conversation drifts back toward personal attacks, this
currently fascinating presidential field will become boring and a turnoff.
For now, we choose to remain optimistic that more is more and that the
large number of interesting candidates planting the seeds for campaigns
will ensure that the presidential harvest will produce vibrant debate,
shared goals, and solutions to some of our country's biggest problems.
The Battle for DuPont
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/opinion/joe-nocera-battle-for-the-boardroom.html>
// NYT // Joe Nocera - May 8 2015
Though the DuPont Company has been trying to persuade me otherwise, I feel
safe in saying that Trian Fund Management is one of the better shareholder
activists around. Led by Nelson Peltz, 72, it takes stakes in good
companies that, in its view, are struggling operationally. It then seeks
board representation, from which vantage point it examines the company from
top to bottom and presses the rest of the board to make changes that will
raise the stock price.
Trian tends to stick with companies for years, rather than cutting and
running. Its track record for creating “shareholder value” is impressive.
Even Martin Lipton, the corporate lawyer who made a career out of
denouncing shareholder activists, has described Trian and Peltz as having
“established credibility.”
Edward Garden, who is Trian’s chief investment officer, says, “We work
constructively with companies to get their businesses back on track.”
And although Trian has been trying to persuade me otherwise, I feel equally
safe in saying that DuPont is a pretty well-run company. Under the
leadership of Ellen Kullman, a company veteran who became its chief
executive in 2009, this once unwieldy conglomerate has undergone a great
deal of change, with more still to come. It has cut some $2 billion in
costs, eliminating a third of its management; announced the spinoff of its
performance chemicals business; and “refreshed” its board with such
corporate stalwarts as Edward Breen, who is best known for turning around
Tyco International in the early 2000s. Since Kullman took over, the company
has delivered 266 percent in total shareholder returns, easily outpacing
the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. It is in the middle of a major
restructuring designed to boost earnings growth.
“I am passionate about building a company that will be relevant and will
deliver great value in the decades to come,” says Kullman.
Yet, since January, this activist hedge fund and this centuries-old company
have been engaged in a bruising proxy fight, which culminates on Wednesday
at DuPont’s annual meeting. Trian, which owns a $1.8 billion stake in
DuPont, has been pushing the company to add Peltz and others to its board
for the last year and a half. It’s come up with a series of white papers
outlining what it views as serious deficiencies in DuPont’s operational
track record, and it has suggested cutting out even more costs and perhaps
breaking the company into two. DuPont’s board, meanwhile, has spent a good
deal of money and time analyzing Trian’s ideas. But when it concluded they
weren’t an improvement over Kullman’s own plan, Trian refused to go away.
Hence the proxy fight.
There is a decent chance that Trian will win. The two biggest proxy
advisory firms are backing Trian to one degree or another. Given Trian’s
track record, the theory goes, what would be the harm of adding Peltz to
DuPont’s board? “When there’s doubt, companies rather than activists
probably deserve the benefit of it,” wrote Kevin Allison at Reuters
Breakingviews. But, he added, Peltz was often a constructive force, and
besides, under DuPont’s bylaws, he can be on the board only for a year
without a special exemption because of his age. In other words, why not
give him a whirl and see how it goes?
For anyone who has followed the rise of shareholder value, this is a
striking turn of events. Have we really gotten to the point where the
activist now gets the benefit of the doubt, no matter how well run the
company? And the corporation is expected to make whatever radical change
the activist seeks, all in the name of shareholder value? In the
DuPont/Trian fight, the hedge fund is on record as saying that the company
is not getting a return on its research-and-development spending. Yet R.&
D. — science — is at the very heart of DuPont’s business model and always
has been. And it can take years to turn a scientific advance into a
successful product. A DuPont stripped of much of its R.& D. doesn’t just
hurt the company; it hurts the country.
Which brings me back to Martin Lipton, the corporate lawyer who views
shareholder activism with disdain. It was the Trian side that pointed me to
a note he had written to his clients — that’s where he had described Peltz
as credible. But when I talked to Lipton, he made it clear that he was not
offering an endorsement but rather some practical advice: Activist funds
are now such a powerful force in the market that many companies — even good
ones — have no choice but to offer them board seats.
That doesn’t mean Lipton thinks the trend is a good one. “Activism has
caused companies to cut R.& D., capital investment and, most significantly,
employment,” he said. “It forces companies to lay off employees to meet
quarterly earnings.”
“It is,” he concluded, “a disaster for the country.”
TOP NEWS
Domestic
At least 1 death reported after tornadoes hit northern Texas
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-tropical-storm-nears-carolinas-southwest-braces-for-tornado-ordeal/2015/05/09/56dae082-f693-11e4-84a6-6d7c67c50db0_story.html>
// AP // May 9, 2015
DALLAS — At least two tornadoes touched down Saturday in northern Texas,
and officials said homes were destroyed and at least one person was killed
when one of the twisters tore through a farming and ranching area.
Cisco, Tex., Fire Chief Walter Fairbanks said one person was killed when a
tornado swept through the area, but he had no other details early Saturday
evening.
Eastland County Judge Rex Fields said authorities were going house to house
to assess the damage in the sparsely populated area, about 100 miles west
of Fort Worth, but that proved difficult amid the heavy rainfall.
“There is a considerable amount of damage,” Fields, who also serves as the
county’s emergency services coordinator, told the Associated Press. “Homes
have been lost.”
The extent of injuries or fatalities was not immediately clear there or in
the town of Burkburnett, about 15 miles north of Wichita Falls, where the
second tornado touched down. A police dispatcher said tornado sirens could
be heard in Burkburnett just before 6 p.m.
On Saturday afternoon, the weather service elevated to “moderate” the risk
of tornadoes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and elsewhere
across North Texas. Eastland County, which was part of the zone of enhanced
risk, was pelted with three-inch hail as the storm rumbled through.
Storms also brought heavy rain and quarter-size hail to parts of southwest
Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon, but meteorologists said there was so much
rain — and so little sun — that the tornado threat there lessened
throughout the day. Parts of western Kansas also were bracing for severe
storms.
The threatening skies stretched beyond the Plains states, as twin weather
systems stretching from the Carolinas to California produced an
unseasonably early tropical storm in the Atlantic and a late-season
snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains.
Beachgoers were warned away, emergency officials kept a watchful eye, and
at least one graduation ceremony was forced indoors as Tropical Storm Ana
plodded toward the Carolinas on Saturday in an early heaping of rough
weather weeks ahead of the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Ana was centered about 65 miles southeast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., on
Saturday evening, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The
storm had top sustained winds of 60 mph but had slowed from its earlier
speed, moving northwest at 3 mph, and was forecast to be “very near” the
coasts of South and North Carolina sometime Sunday morning.
Universities along the Carolina coastline were monitoring the storm as a
possible disruption to weekend commencements. Ceremonies scheduled for
Brooks Stadium on Saturday at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C.,
were moved indoors out of caution. In Wilmington, N.C., UNC Wilmington held
graduation indoors as planned, but the university urged students and their
family members to watch weather conditions and make their own determination
on the safety of traveling.
Meanwhile, up to five inches of snow was possible in the Nebraska panhandle
this weekend, and parts of South Dakota could receive between 12 and 24
inches of snow, according to the weather service.
Suspects in Freddie Gray Case: A Portrait of Baltimore Police in Miniature
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/us/suspects-in-freddie-gray-case-a-portrait-of-baltimore-police-in-miniature.html?google_editors_picks=true>
// NYT // Cheryl Gay Stolberg and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. - May 9, 2015
BALTIMORE — The first police officer Freddie Gray encountered on the
morning he sustained a fatal spinal cord injury was Lt. Brian Rice, a
seasoned 41-year-old white law enforcement officer who, several years
earlier, had his guns confiscated by deputies who took him to a hospital
after a worried ex-girlfriend expressed alarm about his well-being.
About 40 minutes later, when Mr. Gray, who was black, lay shackled in a
police van and was no longer breathing, Sgt. Alicia White — a 30-year-old
churchgoing black woman with a reputation as a rising star — tried to
remove him. “She’s not even the type of person that would jaywalk,” one
neighbor said.
In between, Mr. Gray was subdued and handcuffed by two rookie bicycle
officers, each in his 20s, both white. A 25-year-old black patrolman
arrived to check on him. The van driver, Officer Caesar Goodson, also
black, is an old-timer at 45. Described by colleagues as “passive,” he
never moved up the ranks.
In this mix of officers — who now face criminal charges in Mr. Gray’s
death, including, for some, murder and manslaughter — one can see a
portrait in miniature of the Baltimore Police Department, an agency
mistrusted by many black residents, and one suffering from its own racial
divide despite a decades-long effort to integrate. As the Justice
Department begins a full-fledged civil rights investigation, the Gray case
throws into sharp relief the department’s shortcomings and struggles for
change.
“You can’t just label this something racial,” said Representative Elijah
E. Cummings, a Democrat who lives just four blocks from West North and
Pennsylvania Avenues, where a burned and looted CVS store stands as a
symbol of the riots set off by Mr. Gray’s death on April 19. “When you have
three African-American officers involved, you’ve got to say: ‘Wait a
minute, is there a system in place in which they don’t want to tell on each
other? Has it become a routine?’ ”
Over the past three decades, Baltimore’s roughly 3,000-member police force
has undergone a slow, painful process of integration. In 1984, the year the
city settled a lawsuit that forced the department to hire and promote more
minorities and women, 19 percent of officers were black. By 2007, blacks
were 44 percent of the force; the city’s population is nearly two-thirds
black. The commissioner, Anthony W. Batts, is black, and African-Americans
hold other high-ranking posts.
Despite that, tensions between black residents and the police run deep.
Last week’s decision by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to request a
“pattern or practice” Justice Department inquiry — something she had long
resisted, even as she pushed for changes — emphasizes that mistrust. Civil
rights advocates say it is long overdue.
So do some black police officers. In 2004, Sgt. Louis Hopson, now the board
chairman of the Vanguard Justice Society, the association that represents
the city’s black officers, was the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit
alleging that the department systematically disciplined black officers more
harshly than whites. In 2009, the city settled the case, agreeing to pay
$2.5 million to more than a dozen plaintiffs and to hire an outside
consultant to monitor the internal discipline process for three years.
But the problems have persisted, some black officers say. In March, court
records show, Baltimore settled another bias suit, brought by a former
officer, Richelle Johnson, a black woman who complained that she was forced
to retire and that the department was more accommodating to white officers
who were injured and requested light duty than to blacks. The terms of the
settlement have not been made public, and a lawyer for Ms. Johnson would
not discuss it.
An Internal Divide
“There are two Baltimores, and there are two Baltimore City Police
Departments,” said Sergeant Hopson, 63, a 35-year veteran. “This department
is a very racist police department. The issues that you see manifesting
themselves on the outside are the same problems we have been dealing with
on the inside for years.”
The relentless drumbeat of criticism is depressing officer morale. Many
police officers are furious with Ms. Rawlings-Blake, whom their union
supported when she ran for mayor in 2011, for asking for the Justice
Department review. They feel undermined as they work to maintain the peace
in a city with a high homicide rate.
“Our police officers have a number of conflicting emotions, from anger and
shock to sadness and depression,” said Sgt. Robert F. Cherry, a 21-year
veteran and former president of the Baltimore chapter of the Fraternal
Order of Police Lodge 3, in an interview. “It is a tough time to be a
police officer.”
The union has stood firmly behind the six arrested in Mr. Gray’s death;
Sergeant Cherry accused Marilyn J. Mosby, the prosecutor who filed the
charges, of “political opportunism” and wondered aloud if she had “an exit
strategy for grossly overcharging our six officers.” Sergeant Hopson said
the Vanguard Justice Society was also planning a news conference for this
week to show support for the three black officers.
Sergeant White, the lone woman among them, is an example of how the six
officers reflect the two Baltimores, and the two Baltimore Police
Departments. After joining the force in 2010, she caught the eye of
Sergeant Hopson, who said he recruited her into a program he runs to
prepare black officers to take tests required for promotions.
She became a sergeant this year, said Dana Neal, a nondenominational
minister who said Sergeant White regarded her as an adopted aunt. “She is a
Christian and wants to be a good role model for young black women,” Ms.
Neal said, adding that Sergeant White hoped to “bridge the gap between the
police and the neighborhoods.”
Sergeant White grew up in Baltimore and lives here; Sergeant Cherry said 35
percent of the force now lives in the city. But black residents have
complained that too many officers live outside Baltimore and feel no
attachment to it. Sergeant White has worked for the Police Athletic League,
helping young people with homework, and her church, New Bethlehem Baptist
Church, is in Sandtown-Winchester, the blighted neighborhood where Mr. Gray
grew up and was arrested before his fatal injury.
Now, she faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault
and misconduct in office; Ms. Mosby alleges Sergeant White “did nothing” to
help Mr. Gray even though he was lying on the floor of the van and
unresponsive.
The encounter that led to Mr. Gray’s death began around 8:40 a.m. on April
12, when the three white officers — Lieutenant Rice, Officer Edward Nero
and Officer Garrett Miller — were patrolling the streets around the Gilmor
Homes, a public housing development in West Baltimore. Lieutenant Rice
spotted Mr. Gray, making eye contact with him, police have said, and Mr.
Gray ran off.
Three years earlier, amid a dispute with his ex-girlfriend over custody of
their child, Lieutenant Rice had been taken to a hospital by sheriff’s
deputies in Carroll County, Md., who — apparently fearing he was unstable —
confiscated his weapons and contacted his Baltimore police commanders,
according to sheriff’s records and court filings. The documents were
previously reported by The Guardian newspaper and The Associated Press.
In court papers, the ex-girlfriend’s husband, Andrew McAleer, a Baltimore
firefighter, accused the lieutenant of a pattern of stalking and
intimidation; at one point, he wrote that he feared he was “about to be
killed by Brian Rice.” In January 2013, a judge granted Mr. McAleer a
temporary “peace order” — a type of protective order — finding “reasonable
grounds” that Lieutenant Rice had committed harassment and had trespassed.
The order was rescinded a week later because of a lack of proof needed to
make the protective order final, records show.
Baltimore police officials declined to comment on the court filings, or to
say what, if any, medical treatment or disciplinary action Lieutenant Rice
received. He now faces one count of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of
second-degree assault, two counts of misconduct in office and one count of
false imprisonment.
Officers’ Stories
The two bicycle officers who arrested Mr. Gray, Officers Miller, 26, and
Nero, 29, have been on the force for just three years. Both face two counts
of second-degree assault, two counts of misconduct in office and two counts
of false imprisonment. The prosecutor asserts that Lieutenant Rice and the
two officers failed to establish probable cause for Mr. Gray’s arrest and
then, after placing him in handcuffs and leg shackles, did not secure him
with a seatbelt in the police van, as required by police policy. The
medical examiner has concluded that Mr. Gray’s fatal neck injury occurred
in the van, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.
All six officers have filed motions asserting that Ms. Mosby has multiple
conflicts of interests in the case and asking that she be required to step
aside or that all charges be dismissed.
In a brief interview outside his modest two-story beige brick home in the
distant Baltimore suburb of Bel Air, Officer Nero declined to address the
charges against him. Standing in his doorway, he said he and his family
were going through a difficult time, and were getting by with “a lot” of
support from relatives and friends and by concentrating on their young
daughter.
Officer Nero’s neighbor Seth Ranneberger, a high school science teacher,
said that on one of the rare occasions when the officer spoke of his work,
he described being a Baltimore police officer as “one of those jobs — the
doormat job — you do it and get no thanks for it.”
Officer William G. Porter, who arrived on the scene as backup when the van
carrying Mr. Gray made the second of several stops — seemed to be coming to
grips recently with just how tough his job was. Officer Porter grew up in
North Baltimore, in a transition neighborhood of simple brick rowhouses,
just one block away from Guilford, a neighborhood of stately single-family
homes. One neighbor, Keysha Waters, 40, described how, as a teenager, the
future officer smelled a fire that had started in her home and rushed
inside to grab her children and hustle them out the door. When he dropped
out of college and joined the police academy, he told Ms. Waters that he
wanted to “make a difference.”
She and others described Officer Porter as quiet and respectful, but said
he lately had seemed a bit worn down by his job. When Olivia Whitlock, a
childhood friend, sent him a Facebook message in August saying another
neighbor had seen him on the television news, he replied, “I’m surprised
you don’t see me more often,” because there is so much crime in the tough
Western District, where he worked.
Now Officer Porter faces charges including involuntary manslaughter and
second degree assault. Ms. Mosby says that although Mr. Gray complained he
“could not breathe” and twice asked for a medic, Officer Porter and Officer
Goodson, the van driver, ignored the request.
Officer Goodson, whose neighbors in the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville
describe him as friendly and kind, faces the most serious charge,
second-degree depraved-heart murder — in effect, murder with callous
indifference, or an intent to cause an injury that could lead to death.
This has led to speculation in Baltimore that Officer Goodson, who faces
other charges as well, was intentionally giving Mr. Gray a “rough ride,”
meaning he intended to jostle him and cause serious injury — though Ms.
Mosby has not used that term.
As Baltimore tries to make sense of what happened to Mr. Gray, and the
Justice Department inquiry gets underway, some say city leaders are
awakening to problems that black residents knew existed all along. Even
Representative Cummings, who said he had asked for a “pattern or practice”
review before Mayor Rawlings-Blake, said he had learned something about
Baltimore’s police. Never before, he said, had he heard the term “nickel
ride,” another term for “rough ride.”
On the wall of his home, Mr. Cummings said, he keeps pictures that ran in
The Baltimore Sun of people who have been beaten by the police. “That,” he
said, “seems to cry out for a deep dive.”
US created 223,000 jobs in Apr vs. 224,000 expected; unemployment rate at
5.4% <http://www.cnbc.com/id/102661776> // CNBC // John Melloy - May 8, 2015
The U.S. economy created 223,000 jobs in April, bouncing back from a
sluggish period the first three months of the year, as companies shook off
the effects of a surging U.S. dollar and falling profits. The unemployment
rate fell to a seven-year low of 5.4 percent, the Labor Department said
Friday.
Economists expected nonfarm payrolls to rise 224,000 in April, with the
unemployment rate dropping to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent in March. It was
the lowest number since lowest since May 2008.
Investors cheered the renewed strength in the economy, pushing S&P 500
futures higher by about 1 percent. The report was seen as a so-called
Goldilocks scenario, showing a rebound, but not strong enough to rush the
Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Government bond yields, which had
been rising, fell after the number was released.
The jobs figure vs. expectations was "close enough," said Jeffrey Saut,
investment strategist for Raymond James. It's "still consistent with the
Fed beginning to raise short-term interest rates later this year."
This jobs report follows a much weaker-than-expected increase for March
when the number of jobs created was the lowest since December 2013.
There were conflicting readings of U.S. employment this week leading up the
report. On Thursday, weekly jobless claims rose by less than Wall Street
expected. However, Wednesday's data from ADP showed 169,000 private sector
jobs were added in April, the fewest since January 2014.
The latest GDP reading from the government on the first quarter showed the
economy expanded at just a 0.2 percent annual rate on falling exports due
to the strong dollar, bad weather crimping consumer spending and dropping
oil prices cutting energy sector capital spending.
This report validated the theory that economic dip was just temporary. But
there were enough weak factors to keep the Fed at bay.
March nonfarm payroll growth was revised lower to 85,000 jobs, from a
126,000 gain previously reported. Another weak factor in the report was the
average workweek, which came in unchanged at 34.5 hours.
"While some will say the downward revisions mitigate the positive aspect of
an inline reading, we disagree," said Dan Greenhaus, chief strategist for
BTIG. "What matters most about this employment report is that the winter
slowdown did not bleed through into April."
Wage growth hinted at a rebound in the economy. Average hourly earnings
rose 2.2 percent from a year ago, although only by 3 cents to $24.87 from
March.
Hiring was up across a broad swath of industries, except for manufacturing
and retail. Services added 62,000 jobs, while health care and construction
sectors each added 45,000 payrolls.
Private payrolls were largely responsible for the gains, rising by 213,000.
The government added 10,000 jobs.
Justice Department Launches Civil Rights Probe Of Baltimore Police
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/08/justice-department-baltimore-police_n_7241664.html>
// Reuters // Julia Edwards - May 8, 2015
WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Friday
launched an investigation into the Baltimore police department's use of
force and whether there are patterns of discriminatory policing.
The probe, announced by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, was requested
by Baltimore's mayor in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray, a
25-year-old black man who sustained fatal injuries while in police custody,
and the outrage it sparked in Maryland's largest city.
The Justice Department has conducted similar reviews of U.S. police
departments. An investigation of police in Ferguson, Missouri, where a
white officer shot dead an unarmed black teenager last year, concluded in
March that the department routinely engaged in racially biased practices.
Though the Justice Department is already investigating Gray's death and
working with the Baltimore police on reform, Lynch said last week's
protests pointed to the need for an investigation.
"It was clear to a number of people looking at this situation that the
community's rather frayed trust - to use an understatement - was even worse
and has in effect been severed in terms of the relationship with the police
department," Lynch said on Friday.
The latest investigation will focus on allegations that Baltimore Police
Department officers use excessive force, including deadly force, conduct
unlawful searches, seizures and arrests, and engage in discriminatory
policing, Lynch said.
"If unconstitutional policies or practices are found, we will seek a
court-enforceable agreement to address those issues," she said.
Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings said he asked Lynch for the
investigation to "get to the bottom of the breakdown in trust between the
police and the community."
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a statement her goal was
for the city's police to reform through an enforceable court order.
Baltimore's chief prosecutor has brought criminal charges, including one
murder charge, against six officers, three white and three black, involved
in Gray's arrest.
Lynch, who took office last week, traveled to the largely black city on
Tuesday to meet with Gray's family as well as thank officers for their work
during the protests.
Any findings of the investigation would result in civil rather than
criminal charges. Departments that have been found in violation of civil
rights in the past have had to enter into court-ordered improvement plans,
which can include an independent monitor, required reporting of arrest data
and training for officers.
State Legislatures Put Up Flurry of Roadblocks to Abortion
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/us/politics/state-legislatures-put-up-flurry-of-roadblocks-to-abortion.html?smid=tw-share>
// NYT // Frances Robles - May 8, 2015
Oklahoma’s governor this week approved a law extending to 72 hours the
mandatory waiting period before a woman can have an abortion. Here in
Florida, lawmakers enacted a 24-hour waiting period that requires two
separate appointments — one for an ultrasound and information about fetal
development and another for the actual procedure.
These are just two laws in a surge of bills passed by Republican-controlled
state legislatures this year that make it harder for women to have
abortions.
Arkansas led the nation with six new abortion-related laws, including one
requiring minors to present a notarized consent from a parent and another
saying that a woman more than 20 weeks along must be told that her fetus
can feel pain.
Arkansas, along with Arizona, also passed the most novel requirement,
requiring doctors to tell patients that drug-induced abortions can be
reversed, an assertion that many doctors say is wrong.
The 37 new rules in 11 states are part of a strategy accelerated by
abortion opponents in 2011, when provisions restricting abortion access
began sweeping state legislatures. More than 200 such laws have passed in
the last four years, with Louisiana, Mississippi, Kansas, Oklahoma and
Arkansas leading the charge, according to Americans United for Life, an
anti-abortion legal group. This year, more than 300 regulations were
proposed in 45 states.
And they keep coming: On Thursday, a bill that would ban abortions after 20
weeks was introduced in Wisconsin, where lawmakers proposed a $10,000 fine
or 42-month prison sentence for physicians who break the law.
These laws have had a profound effect in states like Texas, where the
number of abortion clinics dropped by half because of strict regulations
governing their operation.
Advocates of legislation proposed this year say the restrictions are aimed
at safeguarding the health of women. Clinics and mainstream medical groups,
however, say most of these rules do not improve patient safety and are
thinly disguised efforts to discourage women from having abortions and to
make them more expensive, which has a disproportionate effect on the poor.
“State legislatures are restricting how doctors provide medical care
related to abortion, where doctors can provide that care, what doctors can
say to patients when they provide that care and more,” said Suzanne B.
Goldberg, the director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and
Sexuality Law.
But Anna Paprocki, staff counsel for Americans United for Life, which
opposes abortion, said, “The Supreme Court has been clear on this: Not
every burden is unconstitutional.” She added, “A lot of the arguments made
by the abortion industry against any regulation are red herrings.”
Ms. Paprocki’s group drafted 50 pieces of “model legislation” this year,
which made their way to statehouses across the nation. The most frequently
proposed bills from these suggestions included limitations on later-term
abortions, clinic regulations, hospital admitting privilege requirements
for clinic doctors and regulations on abortion-inducing drugs, Americans
United for Life said in a report on the 2015 legislative session.
Several states targeted the clinics themselves by instituting costly ways
to dispose of fetal remains and requiring doctors to have admitting
privileges, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a private research group
that supports abortion rights and tracks legislation.
Elizabeth Nash, a senior state policy associate at the Guttmacher
Institute, said some states had approved so many kinds of new rules that
together they served to make it difficult for women to obtain an abortion.
“In recent years, we have seen a lot become law because of shifts in state
legislatures,” Ms. Nash said.
Kansas and Oklahoma recently banned a standard method in second-trimester
abortions, in which the fetus is removed in pieces.
Several states have banned the use of telemedicine — treatment by phone or
video — in administering abortion-inducing drugs. Arkansas limited the
number of weeks that drugs to induce abortion can be used. Like Oklahoma,
Arkansas extended the length of the waiting periods before a woman can have
an abortion. Like Florida, Tennessee enacted a new waiting period law.
Florida enacted its law, which it calls a “reflection period,” in late
April. Abortion providers say it places an undue burden on women who will
be required to make two trips to a clinic to end a pregnancy.
“It adds a substantial burden to women’s lives, doubles the amount of time
they have to take off work, doubles the child care required, doubles the
distance traveled,” said Christopher Estes, the chief medical officer for
Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast. “It really adds
time and expense with no medical justification whatsoever.”
Jennifer Sullivan, a freshman legislator who at 23 is the youngest woman in
the Florida House, sponsored the bill.
“I have personally seen those women who are being practically dragged to a
clinic against their will,” she said.
Dian Alarcón, Florida field organizer at the National Latina Institute for
Reproductive Health, told lawmakers that the added obstacles would
encourage illegal abortions. She said she herself once had an illegal
abortion with no medical care.
Beth Harrison, 33, a personal trainer in Tavares, Fla., testified at a
legislative hearing last month that she deeply regretted having an abortion
10 years ago and urged lawmakers to enact the waiting period.
“When they did the ultrasound, the screen was behind me and I happened to
turn around and look at it,” Ms. Harrison, who thinks abortion should be
illegal, said in an interview. “I saw this baby and I was freaking out.”
There are more than two dozen states that have a mandated waiting period
before a woman can have abortion, usually 24 hours, said Michelle
Richardson, the director of public policy of the American Civil Liberties
Union of Florida.
Florida’s version is more stringent, though, because the first counseling
session must be done in person; most allow it to be conducted by phone or
electronically. She said advocates plan to fight the law, arguing that it
violates the right to privacy ensured in Florida’s Constitution.
“We’ll make the policy arguments about protecting a woman’s right to choose
and that hurdles are not in her best interest,” Ms. Richardson said. “The
law is just out of hope that it will make it so difficult to have abortion
that she won’t do it.”
Frustrated Jury in Etan Patz Trial, but No Rancor for the Holdout
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/nyregion/in-jury-room-at-etan-patz-trial-difficult-talks-that-stalled.html>
// NYT // Russ Buettner - May 8, 2015
Three weeks ago, seven men and five women entered a windowless room in a
courthouse in Lower Manhattan to decide the fate of Pedro Hernandez, who
had confessed to killing 6-year-old Etan Patz decades earlier. After a long
trial, they easily dispatched what could have been a vexing issue standing
between them and a guilty verdict: the absence of a body.
“The very first thing we did was talk about whether we thought Etan Patz
was actually, had actually been kidnapped and murdered, which we all agreed
to without a body,” said one juror, Jennifer O’Connor.
From there, consensus became increasingly difficult. Several described
their discussions as intellectual and respectful, but tense and ultimately
unsatisfying, both to themselves and the millions of others who have
followed the case since Etan disappeared from a SoHo street corner in 1979.
Etan Patz’s father, Stanley, said on Friday that he believed that Pedro
Hernandez had killed his son and should be retried.Jurors in Etan Patz Case
Fall One Vote Shy of a ConvictionMAY 8, 2015
Stanley and Julie Patz standing next to a poster of their missing son,
Etan, outside their loft in SoHo in 1980.Etan Patz’s Disappearance Has a
Lasting Impact on ParentingMAY 8, 2015
“Me personally, I’m very sad that we could not bring resolution for the
case, for a lot of reasons, for the Patz family, for the Hernandez family,
for the City of New York,” Ms. O’Connor said. “But we really tried our
hardest, and I don’t think we could have done any more.”
Justice Maxwell Wiley declared a mistrial in the case on Friday, the 18th
day of deliberations, after the jurors sent him a note for the third time
saying they were unable to reach a verdict. In a rare post-trial news
conference in the courthouse, several explained the course of their
deliberations. None hinted at any negative feelings toward the one juror
who, after several others changed positions, could not be persuaded to
convict Mr. Hernandez.
But as they left, one juror, Alia Dahhan, had a final word for the
defendant, who had already been escorted back toward his jail cell.
“Pedro Hernandez,” she yelled. “You know what you did!”
On the first day of deliberations, they took a vote. Eight were ready to
convict Mr. Hernandez. But a couple of them later became unsure. Defense
lawyers had raised substantial questions about Mr. Hernandez’s mental
health and intellectual abilities, saying he was incapable of giving a
reliable confession. The defense also offered a competing theory that the
killer was Jose A. Ramos, a convicted child molester who was the prime
suspect for years.
Their discussions were rigorous. Some jurors had kept several pads full of
notes. They made seven spreadsheets with details from the case, including
Mr. Hernandez’s medical history and timelines from the case. There were
times when the discussions grew heated, though never mean spirited.
One juror, Edwin R. Thompson, said there was “camaraderie,” along with
“argumentation,” some raised voices, and “tears on occasion,” most often
stemming from personal disagreements over who in the jury room had said
what.
The room itself did not help.
“The air is not good in there,” Mr. Thompson said. “The ceiling is 10 feet
or so. It’s not claustrophobic but it’s a conference room that you’re
locked in day after day.”
Mr. Thompson said he began deliberations “with a sense that the defendant
was guilty, and an open mind.”
Ms. O’Connor said that frustration arose at times “because two people read
the same sentence and looked at it through a different lens.”
“But there was no screaming or hitting or anything of that nature,” she
said.
She was among the jurors who were initially unsure. But she said Mr.
Hernandez’s descriptions of where he put the body were compelling, and the
arc of his mental health problems suggested something other than his
innocence.
“It seemed to be a profile of someone who did something heinous and was
trying to repress it, suppress it, bury it deep down,” Ms. O’Connor said.
“And that was another big piece for me.”
She also cited a chilling moment from the videotape of Mr. Hernandez’s
confession, in which he describes the sound Etan made when he was choking
him to death. Ms. O’Connor saw that as among several details that seemed
too specific to be concocted.
The jurors did not offer a precise timeline of their votes, but as
deliberations continued more of them were ready to convict Mr. Hernandez.
After a split vote, another came out 9 to 3 for conviction; later, there
were two 10 to 2 votes.
One juror, Douglas Hitchner, said he was the next to last holdout. He said
he entered the deliberations believing Mr. Hernandez was guilty but went
through what sounded like an intellectual exercise of arguing he was not
guilty.
“I did that for a couple of days, and to me it just didn’t hold enough
water,” he said. “Ramos factored in, but you couldn’t connect the two.”
Mr. Hitchner held onto the not-guilty position until Friday morning. He
said there was “no question” that Mr. Hernandez was there that day, and Mr.
Hitchner decided that the “quality” of his confessions — to friends and
relatives years before he confessed to prosecutors — “is what sort of
swayed me to finally go guilty.”
He moved to the guilty side on Friday morning. That left only one juror
unwilling to convict: Adam Sirois, 42, a consultant for an international
health care strategy firm.
Mr. Sirois saw something vastly different in Mr. Hernandez’s confessions.
“For me, his confession was very bizarre,” Mr. Sirois said. “No matter how
many times it happened, it got more and more bizarre.”
He gave weight to the defense argument that Mr. Hernandez was coerced into
admitting he killed Etan. He said that he had concerns about what happened
in the six hours Mr. Hernandez spoke with detectives and prosecutors, but
before they turned on a video camera to record his confession, and whether
Mr. Hernadez understood his rights. The defendant’s mental health was a
“huge” issue for him, he said, as well as the possibility that Mr. Ramos
committed the crime.
“Ultimately I couldn’t find enough evidence that wasn’t circumstantial to
convict,” he said.
Jurors who spoke at the news conference said they hoped prosecutors would
retry Mr. Hernandez, giving a new set of people a chance to decide his fate.
Mr. Sirois was asked what it was like to be the only holdout.
“It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t torture, either,” he said. “I feel all of my
fellow jurors were very respectful of my position. I’m proud to be on a
jury with all of them, even if I don’t agree with all of them about the
decision.”
International
In Liberia, Ebola outbreak is declared officially over
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/09/in-liberia-ebola-outbreak-is-declared-officially-over/>
// WaPo // Peter Halley - May 9, 2015
The worst Ebola outbreak in history is officially over in one of Africa’s
hardest hit countries, the World Health Organization announced Saturday.
Liberia, the West African nation where Ebola claimed the highest number of
deaths in the largest outbreak since the virus emerged in 1976, has gone 42
days without any new Ebola cases, according to a statement released by the
WHO.
The 42-day period represents double the maximum incubation period for the
virus since the last victim of Ebola was buried.
The announcement marks a return from the brink for Liberia. During the
outbreak’s peak in August and September, the statement said, the country
was reporting from 300 to 400 new cases every week.
At the time, the WHO noted, the virus paralyzed the country of 4.2 million
people, leading to canceled flights, fuel shortages and the closing of
schools, businesses at health facilities. In the capital city of Monrovia,
reports emerged of locals dumping the bodies of suspected victims in the
streets while hospitals shuttered because health workers were too
frightened to work.
With the nightmare fresh in their memories, officials urged residents not
to let their guard down in Ebola’s absence.
“We are out of the woods,” Liberia’s Information Ministry said on its
Twitter account Saturday. “We are Ebola free. Thanks to our partners for
standing with is in the fight against Ebola. We are Liberians.”
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Saturday referred to the
devastation endured by her country as “a scar on the conscience of the
world,” according to the AP.
For some survivors, she added, “The pain and grief will take a generation
to heal.”
Following Liberia’s announcement, the White House press secretary Josh
Earnest released a statement praising the milestone and highlighting the
Obama administration’s continued support.
“We congratulate the people of Liberia on reaching this important marker,
and once again pledge our commitment to ending the Ebola outbreak in West
Africa and helping to rebuild Liberia and other affected nations,” the
statement said. “As President Obama said when Liberian President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf visited the White House last month, ‘“We’re proud to
partner with you and we intend to see this through until the job is done.’”
Since Liberia’s latest outbreak began in March 2014, the country has seen
more than 3,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola and another 7,400
probable cases, leading to more than 4,700 deaths, according to the WHO. A
total of 375 health workers were infected and 189 lost their lives.
“Though the capital city was hardest hit, every one of Liberia’s 15
counties eventually reported cases,” the WHO statement said. “At one point,
virtually no treatment beds for Ebola patients were available anywhere in
the country.”
The country’s last victim, according to the WHO, was a Monrovia-area woman
who died on March 27 and whose case remains under investigation. After
close monitoring, the WHO noted, none of the 332 people who may have been
exposed the the woman have developed symptoms.
Civil war and chronic poverty left a shortage of doctors and nurses in West
Africa when Ebola swept through region last year. Early on, health workers
didn’t realize they were dealing with an Ebola outbreak and when seemed to
diminish, officials became overconfident. By the time the virus made the
leap from rural villages to crowded cities, health workers spent grueling
months struggling to catch up.
“The communities were the heroes in this fight,” Hassan Newland, who worked
with UNICEF in Monrovia last fall told NPR. “They took on Ebola and decided
enough is enough.”
Newland told NPR he credited neighborhood groups that rooted out the virus
by going house by house, slowly turning the tide on the outbreak.
“They were locating the sicknesses themselves,” Newland said. “They were
reporting the cases themselves. So when they decided to get involved we
started to defeat Ebola.”
New Ebola cases continue to be reported in the two other countries hardest
hit by the virus. Both Sierra Leone and Guinea, each of which share a
border with Liberia, confirmed nine new cases last week, the lowest weekly
total in 2015, according to the WHO.
There have been more than 3,000 cases in Guinea and more than 8,500 cases
in Sierra Leone, which has had the highest number of cases of any country
since December, according to WHO figures.
With Ebola still plaguing the region, the WHO has recommended that Liberia
maintain a state of “heightened surveillance” for the next 90 days due to
the possibility of the virus being transmitted through sexual contact with
a survivor or through an animal host.
Mamudu Salifu, Oxfam’s Country Director in Liberia, said in a statement
that the Liberian government recognized early on that working with
“ordinary people” was a better strategy for combating Ebola than “forcing
health measures on them” because it lessened the fear and mistrust
surrounding the virus.
“Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea should now work together to ensure the
region as a whole achieves zero cases,” the statement said. “Building
people’s trust is crucial and working with communities should be a priority
if the region hopes to reach zero and stay there.”
With the virus continuing to spread on Liberia’s border, officials said
they are cautiously celebrating the end of the Ebola considering months of
hard work could be undone with a single infected individual slipping across
the border, according to the AP. Officials plan to continue monitoring
border areas for sick travelers, “testing all dead bodies for the virus and
conducting burials with specially trained teams wearing full protective
gear,” according to the New York Times.
“We’re proud of what we collectively managed to do, but we need to remain
vigilant,” Peter Jan Graaff, the U.N. secretary general’s acting special
representative and head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency
Response (UNMEER) told the AP. “The virus is not yet out of the region, and
as long as the virus is in the region, we’re still all of us potentially at
risk.”
The Ebola epidemic, which began in southeastern Guinea in December 2013, is
believed to have killed more than 10,600 people and infected 25,791 in
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to the WHO.
Gunfire, explosions in Macedonia as police battle 'armed group'
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/10/us-macedonia-police-idUSKBN0NU06X20150510>
// Reuters // Ogenen Teofilovski - May 9, 2015
Five police officers died and dozens were wounded in a daylong gun battle
in an ethnic Albanian suburb of northern Macedonia on Saturday, adding the
threat of armed conflict to a deep political crisis rocking the ex-Yugoslav
republic.
The Balkan country's interior ministry said an unspecified number of gunmen
were also killed, but that it had no information on civilian casualties
during clashes that began before dawn and stretched into the evening.
Police said that acting on information about an "armed group" they had
launched an operation in an ethnic Albanian district of the northern town
of Kumanovo 40 km (25 miles) north of the capital Skopje. The region saw
heavy fighting during an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001.
Units of special police in armored vehicles locked down the neighborhood
and helicopters circled overhead. A Reuters photographer reported hearing
heavy automatic gunfire and loud explosions. Black smoke rose over the town
and residents were seen leaving the area carrying belongings.
The events will deepen concern in the West over stability in Macedonia,
where the government is on the ropes over allegations by the main
opposition, the Social Democrats, of illegal wire-tapping and widespread
abuse of office.
Protesters demanding the resignation of conservative Prime Minister Nikola
Gruevski clashed with police this week and the opposition is threatening to
rally thousands on May 17.
Observers fear political leaders on either side may try to stoke ethnic
tensions as leverage.
"DARK SCENARIO"
"The situation on the ground remains highly critical," Interior Minister
Gordana Jankulovska told a news conference. She said some gunmen had
surrendered, without saying how many.
"The action will continue until every last terrorist is caught,"
Jankulovska said.
A ministry spokesman, Ivo Kotevski, said the group was planning "terrorist
acts" and had "infiltrated" the country from a neighboring state, without
saying which.
Macedonia's neighbors are Albania, Greece, Kosovo, Serbia and Bulgaria, and
Macedonia has previously identified armed men in the country as coming from
Kosovo.
Opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who has been releasing damaging wire-taps he
says were recorded by the government and leaked to him by a whistleblower,
appeared to suggest Saturday's operation was carried out to create a
diversion.
"I call on Nikola Gruevski to immediately ... explain who wants to
destabilize Macedonia, why and with what purpose," he said in a statement.
"This dark scenario will not work. The citizens see who has an interest in
such a scenario."
An estimated 30 percent of Macedonia's 2 million people are ethnic
Albanians. Guerrillas took up arms in 2001, clashing with security forces
before the West brokered a peace deal offering the Albanian minority
greater rights and representation and the insurgents entered government.
But implementation has been slow and tensions sometimes flare. Many
citizens, regardless of ethnicity, are frustrated at the glacial pace of
development and integration with the West. Macedonia's bid to join the
European Union and NATO is blocked by a long-running dispute with Greece
over the country's name.
"I thought it would never come to this again," an unidentified ethnic
Albanian man told Macedonian television on the outskirts of Kumanovo. "It's
so scary, we can't stay here."
Liberia, Ravaged by Ebola, Faces a Future Without It
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/world/africa/liberia-ravaged-by-ebola-faces-a-future-without-it.html>
// NYT // Norimitsu Onishi - May 8, 2015
MONROVIA, Liberia — When a taxi dropped off a man dying of Ebola one
evening in June 2014, the Logan Town clinic was defenseless.
Workers had no protective suits — only a few pairs of faded gloves and a
shaky grasp of infection control. They examined the patient by candlelight
and washed their hands in buckets.
That single case set off a chain of contagion that killed six of the
clinic’s 29 employees and at least nine of their relatives, including one
of the country’s top basketball players, as Liberia became the center of
the deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.
Ten months after that fateful evening, the Logan Town clinic is now
equipped with a triage room and hand-washing station near the entrance, an
isolation room, a large generator and a water pump that feeds the taps.
“From the improvements, and how we examine the patients now, Ebola will not
come back,” said Bessie Johnson, 32, a nurse. “It won’t happen again.”
On Saturday, Liberia is expected to be declared free of Ebola by the World
Health Organization, having gone 42 days since its last victim was buried,
or twice the maximum incubation period of the virus.
It will be a seminal moment for a country that was once so overwhelmed by
the epidemic that bodies littered the streets and hospitals shut down,
leaving the sick helpless, often seeking treatment in vain.
“I am thrilled by the significant progress made by the people of Liberia,”
said Tolbert Nyenswah, a deputy health minister. But, he warned, “we still
need to keep up vigilance.”
The weak health systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three
nations hit hardest by the disease, did more than just crumple in the face
of Ebola’s onslaught last year. They played a central role in spreading the
disease.
Clinics routinely misdiagnosed the disease and discharged Ebola patients
with pills for common illnesses. Infected health care workers passed the
virus to their colleagues, families and communities.
Local and international health officials are now focusing on extinguishing
the waning Ebola epidemic in Guinea and Sierra Leone. But they have a
bigger goal as well: shoring up beleaguered health systems that were
inadequate long before Ebola struck.
“I don’t want to call Ebola an opportunity, but we’re using the experience
of Ebola to try to rebuild our health systems,” said President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.
In the decade leading up to the epidemic, the three nations made
significant health gains, especially in reducing child mortality. In
Liberia, immunization rates for childhood vaccines and life expectancy had
risen significantly. Health programs were one of the biggest recipients of
aid from the United States, the European Union and other donors.
A worker sprayed chlorine on the front mat at the Logan Town clinic in
February. The clinic is now equipped with a triage room and hand-washing
station near the entrance, an isolation room, a large generator and a water
pump. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
But long-running conflicts, poverty, mismanagement and corruption left the
three nations with some of Africa’s weakest networks of health care centers
and workers.
Only 51 doctors were working in Liberia, a nation of 4.5 million people, at
the time of the outbreak, the W.H.O. says. Even the biggest hospitals here
in Monrovia, the capital, lacked running water, electricity and basic
supplies like gloves.
Ebola has killed more than 500 health care workers in the three countries,
worsening an acute shortage of medically trained personnel.
During the height of the epidemic last year, more than half of Liberia’s
health facilities ceased operating. Those that stayed open offered only
limited services, often refusing to treat patients without proof that they
were free of Ebola.
Many pregnant women were refused admission to maternity wards when workers
fearful of being infected avoided delivering babies. Immunization rates for
measles and other childhood diseases fell.
Many of the sick, afraid of being infected or classified as Ebola patients,
stayed clear of hospitals. Unable to find treatment for malaria, diarrhea,
typhoid and other common illnesses, many people are believed to have died
for other reasons during the epidemic because the health system collapsed.
Dr. Bernice Dahn, who was recently picked by Ms. Johnson Sirleaf to be
Liberia’s new health minister, said that most of Liberia’s health
facilities had reopened and were providing basic services.
The Times produced more than 400 articles, including about 50 front-page
stories from inside the Ebola-afflicted countries themselves. Here is a
sample of work.
The government, Dr. Dahn said, will focus on raising the quality of its
health work force, on emphasizing disease prevention and control and on
adding triage and isolation facilities.
Physical improvements have already been made to many hospitals and clinics,
where infection control training has taken place.
But there is a lot more to do, and finding the money will not be easy.
Last month, Liberia put forward an Ebola recovery plan that included its
ambitions of building a “more resilient” health system — along with better
schools, sanitation, and access to clean water — at a cost of hundreds of
millions of dollars.
Given that Ebola delivered a huge economic blow to an already poor country,
much of the money it needs to rebound from the epidemic will have to come
from outside Liberia, the plan makes clear.
And some improvements can be fragile. During an Ebola outbreak in a
neighborhood called St. Paul’s Bridge in February, the sick scattered to
community clinics, and hundreds of health care workers had to be placed
under quarantine. A half-dozen clinics were shut down temporarily.
Dr. Dahn said that triage was not carried out properly at the affected
clinics, adding, “It’s difficult to change behavior. It requires a lot of
coaching and mentoring, which need to go on.”
A nurse at Logan Town checked the temperature of a patient in February with
a digital infrared thermometer. Liberia's last Ebola victim was buried over
a month ago. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
Even if the country is declared Ebola-free on Saturday, the threat
persists. Infections continue across the porous borders with Guinea and
Sierra Leone, though in much smaller numbers, and experts warn that another
outbreak at some point in the region is a near certainty.
Here in Monrovia, a major goal is rebuilding the government-run Redemption
Hospital, the first health center in the capital to be crippled by Ebola.
Its closing in June had a domino effect on the city’s other health
facilities.
Though it is the second-largest hospital in the capital, Redemption had
only sporadic running water and electricity before the outbreak. Its roof
leaked. Its plumbing and sewage systems did not function. Medical and
regular wastes were burned together in the open. Septic tanks underground
often overflowed and gave off a fetid stench.
“When you see the environment, you can be scared,” said Wallah Seth, who
took his ailing wife to Redemption a couple of years ago but never went
back.
“You feel you want to give up; I never wanted to come to this place,
Redemption, again,” he said, adding that his wife managed to recover
nonetheless.
Because of overcrowding, patients were often placed in any ward with an
available bed; in pediatrics, two to three children often shared one bed,
said Dr. Phil Afolabi, who has worked at Redemption since 2009 and is now
employed by the International Rescue Committee, the aid organization based
in New York that is rebuilding the hospital.
“Infection control was not a main concern at the hospital,” Dr. Afolabi
said, as construction crews loudly tore out walls and floors. “So many
things have actually not been in place at the hospital, and that’s been the
case for a long while.”
Nurses discussed the health of a girl brought in for treatment in February.
During the height of the Ebola epidemic last year, more than half of
Liberia’s health facilities ceased operating. Credit Daniel Berehulak for
The New York Times
In June, after a young woman with Ebola was admitted, eight health care
workers at Redemption died in quick succession. The hospital, located in
New Kru Town, one of the largest slums in the capital, was shut down.
The sick flooded the area’s private clinics, including Logan Town. The
clinic serves an area of 20,000 people, according to the aid group Oxfam,
which has made $7,200 in improvements to the clinic.
By the standards of Monrovia’s community clinics, Logan Town was average.
Two physician assistants led the medical staff, helped by a doctor who
visited twice a month.
An old generator seldom worked. Drugs and equipment were always in short
supply; the staff used gloves only for deliveries and minor surgeries, and
reused them until the color faded. Janitors fetched water in buckets from a
neighborhood well.
“It was difficult, especially when the patients were sick and needed to use
the bathroom,” said Nancy Kanneh, a nurse. “Often, we didn’t have water to
wash our own hands.”
On the evening of June 25, about a week after workers at Redemption started
dying, Logan Town took in a young Ebola patient named James Fallah, the
caretaker of a nearby Pentecostal church, United God Is Our Light.
The security guard who had wheeled Mr. Fallah into the building held him
down a few hours later when he became violent before dying. A week later,
the guard came down with Ebola and passed on the virus to two of his
children and one grandchild, all of whom died.
After the guard was treated at the clinic, the contagion widened to five
other clinic employees. All of them died, including the chief
administrator, Edwin Dour, who fatally infected his son, Kaizer, one of
Liberia’s most promising basketball players. Kaizer, in turn, passed the
virus on to five family members, who all died.
The clinic, which closed for three months, is now operating only during the
day and seeing about half of the patients it treated before the epidemic.
“Because of the stigma, people that used to come here before are afraid to
come,” said Edwin Sengar, the physician assistant who is now in charge of
the clinic.
Some of the staff members had not returned, either.
“I’m afraid,” said Moses Safa, the physician assistant who was on duty the
night the Ebola patient was brought in. “I’m not doing anything now. I’m
just staying at home. Maybe I’ll go back after Liberia is declared
Ebola-free.”
A Dark Election Day for U.K.’s Pollsters
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-dark-election-day-for-u-k-s-pollsters-1431096640>
// WSJ // Charles Forelle - May 8, 2015
LONDON—Britain’s vanquished Labour Party is hanging its head after a brutal
defeat in Thursday’s election.
So, too, are the country’s pollsters.
Heading into the vote, practically every major survey firm predicted a
knife’s-edge contest. Yet it has been a blowout: The Conservative Party won
331 seats to Labour’s 232, yielding a slender Conservative majority in the
650-seat House of Commons, an outcome predicted by practically no analysts.
Conservative Election Victory Sets Off Wave of Opposition Resignations
David Cameron’s Conservatives Sweep to U.K. Election Victory
Cameron, Heading for Win, Faces Tough Challenges Ahead
“Election results raise serious issues for all pollsters,” the survey
company Populustweeted in the wee hours of Friday, after its forecast of a
slim Labour win was upended. “We will look at our methods.” The British
Polling Council, an industry group, announced Friday an outside inquiry
into the election polls, saying they were “clearly not as accurate as we
would like.”
What happened?
First, the pollsters missed the countrywide result. Many surveys put the
gap in vote share between Conservatives and Labour at a point to two; the
actual gap was six and a half.
But far more significantly, pollsters and statisticians failed badly when
turning survey results into answers to the all-important question of who’d
win how many seats.
While not easy in practice, surveying is straightforward. Even in a country
the size of Britain, polling a few thousand people should give a close
estimate of the whole population’s views. The chief challenge is making the
sample representative—every voter should have the same probability of being
selected for the poll.
Several of the final election polls interviewed around 1,000 or 2,000
people. In theory, those surveys should have margins of error of around
three or two percentage points.
Ipsos MORI, for instance, interviewed 1,162 adults by telephone. It
eliminated uncertain voters, made minor adjustments for those who refused
to answer and came up with 36% for the Conservatives and 35% for Labour.
The actual outcome was 36.9% Conservative and 30.4% Labour. The
Conservative result is within the margin of error and the Labour result
isn't far off.
Others were further afield. Populus (2,417 people intending to vote) had
Labour ahead 34% to 33%. YouGov, which polled 10,307 people (a margin of
error around one percentage point), had the parties at 34% each.
Survation’s online poll of around 4,000 people came up with a 33% tie.
Survation’s chief executive, Damian Lyons Lowe, wrote in a blog post Friday
that his company had actually polled 1,045 people by telephone late on the
eve of the election and had the Conservatives ahead by 37% to 31%—almost
exactly the final outcome. (The total count includes voters in Northern
Ireland, whom many pollsters don’t survey.) “The result seemed so ‘out of
line,’” he wrote, “that I ‘chickened out’ of publishing the
figures—something I’m sure I’ll always regret.”
The projections of how many seats those votes would translate into were
much wider of the mark.
YouGov’s “NowCast” prediction gave the two main parties 276 seats each.
YouGov President Peter Kellner separately projected 284 seats for the
Conservatives and 263 for Labour. The website FiveThirtyEight, run by
statistics guru Nate Silver, who made his name with accurate predictions of
U.S. presidential elections, used a model developed by British academics.
It came up with 278 seats for the Conservatives and 267 for Labour, and put
the probability at 90% that the Conservatives would win between 252 and 305
seats. They won 331.
On Twitter, Mr. Silver said the forecasts should have had wider confidence
intervals—that is, they should have been presented as less precise.
Seat projections are vastly harder than national polls. Britain has 650
parliamentary seats. Each is a winner-takes-all contest, a system known
here as “first past the post.” An accurate overall projection must nail
both how many people vote for which party, as well as where they’re voting.
For pollsters, “first past the post is pretty much the most complicated
electoral system you could devise,” said John Curtice, a professor at the
University of Strathclyde and Britain’s dean of political polls.
Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos MORI, points out that small changes in
vote share can yield big changes in seat count. Labour won 35% of the
national vote in 2005 and 355 seats. The Conservatives won 36% in 2010 and
took 306. Thus divining seat projections from surveys of the national vote
is tough. “The opinion polls are a blunt instrument,” Mr. Page said.
Polling each constituency regularly is impractical. Even a national poll of
10,000 people at best only touches a dozen or so people in each
constituency. As in the U.S., there are “safe” seats, but hundreds are up
for grabs.
‘The result seemed so ‘out of line,’” he wrote, “that I ‘chickened out’ of
publishing the figures—something I’m sure I’ll always regret.’
—Damian Lyons Lowe, chief executive of Survation
And while election forecasters in the U.S. project outcomes in the
Electoral College, those projections at their core are based on robust
polls of the dozen or so states that are typically battlegrounds in
American elections.
In the U.K., there isn’t comprehensive, frequent polling data for
parliamentary seats. That means seat projections use reams of assumptions
to fill in gaps in the basic survey data. The model used by
FiveThirtyEight, for instance, tries to intuit from historical voting
patterns and demographics how people will vote, and then assigns
probabilities to outcomes in each constituency.
It predicted that Labour had a 72% chance of winning a seat, held by a
Conservative, in the battleground of Nuneaton in the West Midlands. It
pegged Nuneaton as the “298th most likely seat to go Conservative.”
The Conservative candidate won, 46% to 35%.
Simon Atkinson, of Ipsos MORI, said seat projections are difficult in any
year. This year, he said, was especially fiendish because there is scant
history for some of the resurgent smaller parties. The U.K. Independence
Party, or UKIP, won 3.9 million votes, or a 12.6% share, to become
Britain’s third-biggest vote getter. In the 2010 election, it had just 3%.
There have been some individual polls of constituencies: Michael Ashcroft,
a wealthy Tory peer, has commissioned scores of them, though only a small
fraction are current. His poll in Nuneaton, done in mid-March, had the
Labour candidate ahead 39% to 34%.
VE Day anniversary: Party leaders join in Cenotaph ceremony
<http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32626551> // BBC// Sarah Campbell - May 8, 2015
Prime Minister David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nicola Sturgeon
laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in London's Whitehall.
The Queen later lit the first of hundreds of ceremonial beacons.
Events this weekend will commemorate the 70th anniversary of VE Day - the
end of World War Two on the continent.
The Queen and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh greeted crowds gathered to
watch the lighting ceremony at Windsor Great Park.
A series of beacons were also due to be lit at events throughout the
country, including one at the Tower of London.
On 8 May 1945 people across the country lit hundreds of bonfires and
beacons to celebrate the end of the war.
Earlier, more than 100 veterans joined Prince Andrew - a former Royal Navy
helicopter pilot - along with senior politicians and military figures for
the ceremony.
Among them was Mr Cameron, who was joined by Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg, in
their last major roles as leaders of the Labour Party and the Liberal
Democrats following their post-election resignations, to lay wreaths.
What was VE Day?
VE Day held on 8 May, 1945, celebrated the end of war in Europe
The British government had been planning the celebration from late 1944.
The code word 'MOUSETRAP' alerted ministers when VE Day was imminent
Bunting was taken off rations, pubs stayed open late and searchlights were
used to light public monuments
Churchill broadcast to the nation at 3pm from Whitehall. Listeners later
heard their first weather forecast since war had begun
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) waving to crowds
gathered in Whitehall on VE Day, 8th May 1945.
Then prime minister Winston Churchill addressed thousands of people from
the Treasury balcony 70 years ago
The Queen - who as Princess Elizabeth waved to the crowds on VE Day from
the balcony of Buckingham Palace, alongside her parents King George VI and
Queen Elizabeth - will attend a service of thanksgiving on Sunday at
Westminster Abbey.
After the service, veterans and serving members of the armed forces will
parade along Whitehall, past the Treasury balcony from which Churchill
delivered his historic address.
In addition to the remembrance ceremonies taking place, there will also be
street parties and concerts across the UK to recreate the spirit of
celebration on the day 70 years ago.
The biggest will be at Horse Guards Parade on Saturday, where musical acts
including Pixie Lott and Status Quo will perform wartime songs and actors
John Simm, Julia Sawalha and Laurence Fox will give readings.
The Royal British Legion, which has worked with the government to prepare
the commemorations, will host a reception for 2,000 veterans at the park.
In a 24 hours which has been all about politics, the Service of Remembrance
has been a time for a truly momentous day in British history to be
remembered.
Seated around the Cenotaph were more than 100 veterans, sheltering under
umbrellas from a light rain. Watching from behind metal barriers, the
public.
Standing shoulder to shoulder were the Prime Minister David Cameron, Nick
Clegg and Ed Miliband as well as Nicola Sturgeon. This was clearly no time
for party politics.
After the laying of wreaths, Randolph Churchill, the great grandson of
Winston Churchill, read an extract from the speech he gave exactly 70 years
ago. "We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing but let us not
forget the toil and efforts ahead."
Hundreds of smaller community events have been planned across the country
after schools and local authorities were encouraged to take part.
There will also be commemorations in other European and Commonwealth
countries.
Russia, which lost more citizens to the war than any other nation, is
holding a Victory parade on Saturday in Moscow's Red Square. The UK, US and
Germany have declined to send a representative in protest at Russia's
actions in Ukraine.
--
*Alexandria Phillips*
*Communications | Press Assistant*
*Hillary for America *
https://www.hillaryclinton.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HRCRapid" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
ℹ️ Document Details
SHA-256
b9ced503adfbbe5466cbea11a7038708ab04d022cefd733c3cbbfadf5911425e
Dataset
podesta-emails
Document Type
email
Comments 0