Scott Pruitt just tried to explain those raises and it went oh so terribly wrong
Brian De Los Santos, Mashable April 3, 2018
It’s been a helluva few days for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt.
After controversy on top of controversy, Pruitt was found to have used a little-known provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act to give sizable raises to political aides on Tuesday.
The provision permits the EPA administrator to hire up to 30 people without White House or congressional approval, but Pruitt instead used it to hand out raises of $28,130 and $56,765 to his aides, ballooning one of his staffers salaries to more than $160,000. All of this has put Pruitt in hot water with his political counterparts in Washington, with some calling for his resignation over ethical issues.
A day after the news broke, Pruitt granted Fox News an exclusive interview to deny knowing about the raises. You might have imagined it went well, since Pruitt almost only goes on Fox News and other friendly outlets. But, actually, it did not. At all. See the clip below.
“Now if you’re committed to the Trump agenda, why did you go around the president and the White House and give pay raises to two staffers?” Fox News national correspondent Ed Henry said.
“I did not, my staff did and I found out about it yesterday and I changed it,” Pruitt responded.
“So who did it?” Henry said.
“I don’t know,” Pruitt said.
“You don’t know? You run the agency, you don’t know who did it?” Henry said.
“I found out about this yesterday, and I corrected the action. And we are in the process of finding out how it took place and correcting it,” Pruitt said.
Henry then went on to point out that both of the staffers who received the raises — Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp — are friends of Pruitt’s from Oklahoma, a point that Pruitt dodged. He then also pointed out that the largest of the raises is just about equal to the median income in the country, some $57,000.
“They didn’t get a pay raise,” Pruitt responded. “I stopped that yesterday.”
It’s not the best look for Pruitt, who seems to be having scandal after scandal break by the minute. In Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was asked if Trump is OK with Pruitt’s actions, to which she replied, “The president’s not, we’re reviewing the situation.”
It’s a rapid departure from the White House’s message just a few days ago, when President Trump reportedly called Pruitt and said “Keep your head up, keep fighting.”
Pruitt, who does not recognize mainstream climate science findings and has called for a televised science debate with climate deniers, has played a leading role in undoing the Obama administration’s actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions from global warming.
This week, he announced a move to rescind the Obama-mandated car and truck fuel economy standards, meant to incentivize more fuel efficient cars, and he has taken numerous other steps that would increase U.S. emissions compared to the track we were on before President Trump took office.
So, maybe, Pruitt should stay away from the TV. You know, until the next scandal breaks.
Andrew Freedman contributed reporting to this article.
EPA Chief Denies Knowing Who Raised Aides’ Pay in Heated Fox Interview
By Ari Natter April 4, 2018
Scott Pruitt. Photographer: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Bloomberg
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a heated interview with Fox News that he doesn’t know who at the agency raised the pay of two aides in defiance of the White House — the latest controversy to engulf him.
Pruitt, in an interview aired Wednesday, said he wasn’t the one who gave the raises and “I don’t know” who did.
“It should not have been done,” Pruitt says. “There will be some accountability”
The Atlantic, citing a source it didn’t identify, reported Tuesday that Pruitt last month used a provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act to boost the salaries of two aides by tens of thousands of dollars after the White House refused to go along with raises he had proposed.
Pruitt has been under fire over revelations that he rented a Capitol Hill condo from the wife of a prominent energy lobbyist whose firm has clients regulated by the EPA. The unconventional lease terms permitted Pruitt to pay $50 only on days his bedroom in the unit was actually occupied — with a total of $6,100 in payments over a roughly six-month period last year.
An EPA ethics adviser said the rental arrangement met federal guidelines and didn’t violate a gift ban.
Pruitt said he didn’t know who authorized the pay raise when pressed by Fox News’ correspondent Ed Henry over whether he would hold accountable the person who authorized the raise.
“You don’t know? You run the agency. You don’t know who did it?” Henry asked. “One of them got a pay raise of, let’s see, $28,000 the other was $56,000. Do you know what the median income in this country is?”
Pruitt said “No.”
“I found out this yesterday and I corrected the action and we are in the process of finding out how it took place and correcting it,” Pruitt responded.
Rep. Steve King Wants to Undo State Laws Protecting Animals and the Environment
The Iowa lawmaker’s proposal also threatens family farmers, rural communities, and food safety.
By Christina Cooke, Farming, Food Policy April 3, 2018
Missouri farmer Wes Shoemyer felt a huge relief last October when his state passed legislation restricting the application of the weed killer dicamba, which has a tendency to vaporize and drift, harming plants not genetically modified to resist it.
Before the new regulations, a neighbor’s application of the pesticide wafted onto Shoemyer’s property and turned the edges of his soybean plants brown and yellow. Further south, another case of dicamba drift caused millions of dollars of damage to the largest orchard in the state.
Shoemyer worries, however, that the state law protecting his crops from the herbicide will come under threat if legislation that Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) has introduced for inclusion in the 2018 Farm Bill gains traction in Congress.
House Resolution 4879/3599, officially known as the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act” (and dubbed the “States’ Rights Elimination Act” by opponents), would prohibit state and local governments from regulating the production or manufacture of agricultural products imported from other states and from passing any legislation that sets a standard that is “in addition to” the standard of another state or the federal government. Because Missouri is one of only a handful of states that has passed dicamba regulations, its laws would be subject to challenge.
“They’re moving on everybody’s rights and our ability to analyze situations and to make the best judgments for our local communities,” said Shoemyer, a former Missouri state senator, whose couple-thousand-acre family farm produces corn, soybeans, wheat, small grains, and cattle. “Who the hell does [King] think he is knowing what’s best for Northeast Missouri? If he wants to pass this bill for his Congressional district—hop on it, cowboy. But leave us alone.”
Shoemyer’s concern about Dicamba regulation is just one example of the way the law could impact food and farming. The proposal’s many opponents say it’s extremely broad and far-reaching: it could also undermine states’ abilities to protect air and water quality, workers’ rights, community health, consumer safety, and animal welfare, among other things.
“It would be probably one of the greatest tragedies in the history of animal protection if the King legislation was signed into law,” said Marty Irby, senior advisor with the Humane Society Legislative Fund.
This is not King’s first attempt to pass this type of legislation; the congressman introduced a similar proposal as part of the 2014 Farm Bill, but it failed after numerous groups opposed it.
King, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story, said in a statement last July that the latest legislation is a way to promote “open and unrestricted commerce” and “free trade between the states,” which he views as vital components of a thriving economy.
“Restricting interstate trade would create a great deal of confusion and increased costs to manufacturers,” the statement continued. “This would create a patchwork quilt of conflicting state regulations erected for trade protectionism reasons… [The Protect Interstate Commerce Act] will allow consumers to make their own choices about the products they buy, without the states interfering in that choice.”
How the Resolution Would Work
House Resolution 3599, introduced in July 2017, and its companion H.R. 4879, introduced in January 2018, are nearly identical. Under the section of both that prevents states or localities from imposing standards on imported agricultural goods that exceed either federal or state-of-production standards, no state would be able to pass animal welfare legislation like California’s AB 1437, an accessory bill to Proposition 2, which bans the sale of all eggs—produced in or out of state—from hens confined in cramped battery cages. This level of regulation would not be allowed because no federal standard exists regarding the on-farm condition of egg-laying hens, and California’s law exceeds the standard present in many states.
Some legal experts read the legislation to prevent states from regulating the production and manufacture of agricultural products made and sold within their own borders as well, if those products are also available for sale in other states.
The latter version of the resolution, 4879, is expected to be the one considered and includes a clause that allows for “private right of action,” giving anyone affected by a state or local regulation on an agricultural good sold in interstate commerce the right to challenge the regulation in court to invalidate it and seek damages.
In the case of California egg production, the legislation would set up a mechanism by which an egg supplier in Iowa that employs battery cages (or a distributor, or a trade association, or the state of Iowa itself) could sue the state of California for the right to sell its product there. And it could potentially open up the Golden State once again to factory-farmed products that don’t meet its current, higher animal welfare standards.
Chelsea Davis, director of communications for Family Farm Action and a family farmer herself, believes King’s legislation furthers the globalization of the food system and prioritizes corporate interests over family farmers. “It gives big agribusiness companies freer rein to do what they would like to do in any given state, because it lowers the standard to [whatever the criterion is in] the states that have the lowest regulation,” she said. She added, “this law says the lowest common denominator wins.”
Loss of State and Local Control
Because the federal government and some states have established low-to-no standards regarding many aspects of agricultural production, the King legislation could threaten a huge variety of state and local measures that raise the bar. For example, it could undermine Maryland’s prohibition on poultry products containing arsenic; North Carolina’s requirement that hog-farm manure lagoons and spray fields be at least 1,500 feet from occupied residences; and Georgia’s ban on the sale of dog meat.
Other state laws at risk of nullification elevate regulations on issues including child labor; handling of dangerous farm equipment; importing of diseased products like firewood or bee colonies; shark finning; standards ensuring that seeds are not adulterated; the sale criteria of products like farm-raised fish and raw milk; labeling of flagship products like wild-caught salmon, Vidalia onions, bourbon, and maple syrup; and standards that protect consumers by ensuring BPA-free baby food containers and the labeling of consumer chemicals known to cause birth defects.
Because the U.S. is so diverse, state and local governments are better positioned than the federal government to recognize, analyze, and address the needs that arise in various areas, said Patty Lovera, assistant director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch.
“The idea [behind this legislation] is to try to tie the hands of state governments that might be willing to do a better job than the feds are doing on a lot of these issues,” Lovera said. “A lot of changes over the years have started at the state level—multiple states do it, and then the federal government decides to do it. So to stop them from doing that is a problem.”
In addition to the regulation protecting against dicamba drift, Shoemyer in Missouri worries that, if passed, the King legislation could reverse an agricultural development ordinance a neighboring county commission passed after a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) tried to open 800 feet from Mark Twain Lake, the water source for 16 counties, including his own. He also wonders whether the legislation would affect his ability to market his non-GMO corn and beans.
King’s attempt to “move in on [his] rights” infuriates Shoemyer, who calls it, “a slap in the face to every rural region and family farmer—and anyone who really believes in and invests in their local community.”
Next Steps and Opposition
Co-sponsored by representatives Collin Peterson (D-MN), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Robert Pittenger (R-NC), and Rod Blum (R-IA), the legislation is currently sitting in the House Agriculture and Judiciary subcommittees; if approved, it could progress toward law as an amendment of the 2018 Farm Bill. But a broad coalition of 75 organizations—including Farm Aid, the National Organic Coalition, the Pesticide Action Network, the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance, and the National Dairy Producers Association—have banded together to oppose the acts.
Opponents hold that King’s legislation violates the 10th Amendment, which guarantees states’ rights, and they point out that it stands in direct conflict with Republican lawmakers’ tendency to deregulate and side with states over the federal government.
“[King] is a guy always talking about states’ rights and going against the big machine,” said Irby of the Humane Society. “But in this, he’s taking the complete opposite approach. What he’s doing is drastic federal overreach and an assault on the powers of state legislatures.”
Despite the widespread opposition, Davis of Family Farm Action believes it’s important to keep educating legislators about the legislation’s negative implications and pressuring them to reject it. “You always have to be concerned with how quickly things can happen,” she said. “You might not think something has legs and all of a sudden it does, and it moves quickly.”
As a rural resident, a consumer, a family farmer, and a person invested in state and local government, Shoemyer hopes people will pay attention to the potential implications of the legislation. “It affects every single one of us,” he said.
Trump Administration Declares War on California’s Environmental Standards
By Ed Kilgore April 3, 2018
The fight against smog was one of many factors that made California a national and global leader in environmental protection. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images
In an expansion of its war of words and lawsuits with the state of California over immigration policy, the Trump administration is issuing a dual threat to the Golden State’s right to police its own environment. One prong of this attack involves a lawsuit to invalidate a novel California law that seeks to give the state the right of first refusal for the sale of federal lands within its borders. The second renews an effort by the George W. Bush administration to revoke a long-standing waiver California has held to offer tougher Clean Air Act standards than the federal government, which has led it to adopt fuel-economy standards adopted by 12 other states (and emulated internationally).
The attempted land sale “veto,” which expands state authority over federal property to an unprecedented extent, would appear to offer the administration the best odds of a reasonably quick victory in the courts. But California’s Democratic politicians and environmental activists will ensure that Team Trump takes a beating in the court of public opinion for its eagerness to sell off public lands (roughly half the state of California) for private development.
The auto-emissions fight, however, is an old one, dating back to the days before the Environmental Protection Agency was founded and the Clean Air Act as we know it today was developed, when California, famously beset by smog, was a pioneer in environmental regulation. The 1970 Clean Air Act amendments authorized waivers allowing California (and states choosing to adopt California’s standards) to exceed federal standards for air quality, including those governing automobile emissions. Subsequent administrations continued to reissue waivers, and California (usually supported by the auto industry itself) set the pace for the country and much of the world, until the Bush administration balked at a 2002 California law imposing significantly higher fuel-economy standards than it supported nationally. After formally denying renewal of the Clean Air Act waiver in 2007, the feds were tangled up in regulatory and legal actions until Barack Obama took office and called off the dogs.
What distinguishes the Trump effort from its predecessor is that the Bush administration was supporting its own less ambitious initiativeto strengthen fuel-economy standards for autos. Team Trump, led by Mr. Fossil Fuel himself, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, is trying to lower federal standards significantly. And its clientele in this revanchist effort includes oil companies fearing clean-energy cars and also an auto industry that now sees an opportunity to batten on low oil prices and the consequent consumer lust for gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.
The fight to bring back dirtier cars won’t be easy, though, as the New York Timesreports:
“Even at the federal level, the president’s announcement alone will not be enough to immediately roll back emissions standards, a process expected to take more than a year of legal and regulatory reviews by the E.P.A. and the Transportation Department. The Trump administration would then need to propose its own replacement fuel-economy standards.”
And then the administration would face the same tough fight in the courts that eventually thwarted Bush, and with fewer possible grounds for compromise, as the Los Angeles Timesnotes:
“Pruitt’s legal ability to revoke California’s authority is uncertain and any such move could be tied up in court for years. In the meantime, auto companies would be faced with the complicated and costly prospect of building and selling two different sets of cars — one for California and the other states that follow its standards, and one for the rest of the country.”
The resisting states account for more than a third of all car sales. Although automakers have been hopeful some deal could be brokered, perhaps with California agreeing to weaken the more immediate targets in exchange for federal buy-in to more aggressive goals through 2030, that is looking increasingly unlikely.
Pruitt says he’s not interested in making such concessions, and California officials say they see no reason to go along with his rollback.
“[Pruitt] signaled that he aimed to make California fall in line. The Obama administration, he said, “made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality, and set the standards too high.” California’s history of setting its own emissions rules “doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” Mr. Pruitt said.”
California’s strategy undoubtedly relies on the hope that the clock will run out on the Trump administration’s drive to preempt tougher fuel-economy standards because Trump himself will be evicted from office in 2020. Between now and then, however, the rhetoric will be as hot as a climate-change-driven summer day in Southern California. Governor Jerry Brown, who was attorney general of the state when it successfully fought off the Bush administration’s assault on higher fuel-efficiency standards, is accepting the call to battle:
“California Governor Jerry Brown said Monday the EPA’s decision represents a “cynical and meretricious abuse of power [that] will poison our air and jeopardize the health of all Americans.”
If the president and his people think it will help them with their “base” to pick fights with California and its alleged secular/socialist/hippie character, they’ll get their money’s worth.
Marco Rubio on gun control: It depends who he’s talking to
Ashraf Khalil, Associated Press April 3, 2018
Sen. Marco Rubio speaks on gun violence reforms.
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was one week after the fatal shootings at a Parkland, Florida, high school, and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio was looking to show solidarity with an angry crowd of parents and students in his home state. He told them — and a national television audience — that an 18 year-old should not be able to buy a rifle and said, “I will support a law that takes that right away.”
About 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) north, District of Columbia officials could only shake their heads in disbelief. The city already had a law barring 18-year-olds from buying rifles, yet Rubio was the main senator pushing legislation to end that ban, as well as D.C.’s prohibition of assault weapons.
“Rubio’s gun bill should be a public embarrassment as well as a personal embarrassment to him,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s nonvoting delegate in Congress.
Gun control has long been a sore point in relations between officials in this heavily Democratic city, home to some of the nation’s toughest gun control laws, and Republicans, who as the congressional majority have power over D.C.’s laws. The strong feelings have intensified with the nation at a crossroads moment in the gun control debate after the Feb. 14 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and a subsequent “March for Our Lives” gun-control rally in Washington.
Rubio, in particular, is seen as the villain. City officials accuse him of playing cynical political games with the lives of Washington residents to curry favor with the National Rifle Association.
Following the town hall, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser challenged Rubio to withdraw his bill. Rubio sent her a letter saying that he and Bowser “share a common goal” and that his bill seeks only to bring Washington “in line with federal law.” If federal law changes —which Rubio said is his goal — then Washington’s laws would change as well.
Bowser, a Democrat, posted the letter on Twitter with her handwritten notes and objections written in the margins. Those notes include Bowser calling Rubio’s stance “the epitome of hypocrisy.”
“He’s just using it to boost his NRA score,” Bowser said in an interview with The Associated Press. “What we think Marco Rubio should be focused on is his job.”
Asked for comment by The Associated Press, Rubio staffers responded by providing the Rubio letter that Bowser had posted.
Rubio introduced the bill, known as the Second Amendment Enforcement Act, in 2015 and again in 2017. According to the NRA website, Rubio has an A-plus rating. Among its list of Rubio accomplishments is that he “sponsored legislation that would repeal Washington, D.C.’s draconian gun control laws and restore the right of self-defense to law-abiding individuals in our nation’s capital.”
Norton said she’s been fighting off similar bills in Congress for years. Another one, sponsored by Virginia Republican Tom Garrett, exists in the House. Neither of them has much chance of passing because the Republican majorities in Congress wouldn’t hold together on such a divisive issue, she said.
“The worst part is why he did it. Why would a senator from Florida take on this issue?” Norton asked. “He’s coming back every year for his NRA payoff.”
According to public records, Rubio received just under $10,000 directly from the NRA during the 2016 election. However the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which combines direct contributions from the NRA with contributions from like-minded affiliates, super PACs and money spent on campaign ads on behalf of the candidate, estimates that Rubio has received more than $3.3 million over the course of his career, making him the 6th-highest recipient in Congress.
The Washington government has bristled for years under what officials call the heavy-handed and arrogant oversight of Congress, which has the right to alter or spike all Washington laws.
Washington has long fought to defend its strict gun control. A 2008 Supreme Court ruling declared Washington’s blanket ban on handgun ownership unconstitutional. Washington restrictions such as preventing gun owners from registering more than one gun per month and requiring re-registration every three years also have been struck down by the courts.
The issues of Washington’s autonomy and its gun control laws are deeply intertwined. The closest Washington has come in recent years to having a vote in Congress unraveled over gun control.
Republicans have opposed statehood for the District of Columbia, which would boost Democratic power in Congress. Despite the Republican Party’s general opposition to federal interference in state issues, the official GOP platform stance on D.C. statehood is that it can only be achieved via constitutional amendment. The platform states that “the nation’s capital city is a special responsibility of the federal government because it belongs both to its residents and to all Americans.”
A 2009 compromise proposed creating a new congressional district in heavily Republican Utah. In exchange, Washington’s House delegate seat would be upgraded to full voting status.
However, as the D.C. Voting Rights Act worked its way through Congress, Republican Nevada Sen. John Ensign attached a rider that would have required Washington to abolish most of its gun-ownership restrictions. The city government concluded it was too high a price to pay and the bill was shelved.
A constant drip of self-dealing. And this is just what we know so far …
By Joy Crane and Nick Tabor April 1, 2018
Introduction By Davis Cay Johnston
Photo-illustration by Joe Darrow
On the day he took the oath of office, Donald Trump delivered two messages about what to expect from his administration. First came the lofty promise of his inaugural address. “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” he vowed. “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth.”
The second message, which Trump delivered without speaking a word, was aimed at a much smaller, but very rich, audience. As the new president’s motorcade left the Capitol, rolling past knots of supporters and protesters, it suddenly stopped three blocks short of the White House. Trump, the First Lady, and the rest of his family got out of their limos and took a three-minute turn in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue.
This was no random spot. The very first place Trump headed after being sworn in — his true destination all along, in a sense — was the Old Post Office and Clock Tower, which only 12 days before the election had been repurposed as the Trump International Hotel Washington. The elegant granite structure, whose architectural character Trump had promised to preserve, was now besmirched by a gaudy, faux-gold sign bearing his name. The carefully choreographed stop sent a clear signal to the foreign governments, lobbyists, and corporate interests keen on currying favor in Washington: The rewards of government would now be reaped by a single man — and the people would bear the cost.
7 Of President Trump’s Dictatorial Tendencies
More than at any time in history, the president of the United States is actively using the power and prestige of his office to line his own pockets: landing loans for his businesses, steering wealthy buyers to his condos, securing cheap foreign labor for his resorts, preserving federal subsidies for his housing projects, easing regulations on his golf courses, licensing his name to overseas projects, even peddling coffee mugs and shot glasses bearing the presidential seal. For Trump, whose business revolves around the marketability of his name, there has proved to be no public policy too big, and no private opportunity too crass, to exploit for personal profit.
Nowhere has the self-enrichment been more evident than at his Washington hotel, which quickly filled up with the very lobbyists and swamp creatures Trump had railed against during his campaign. Oil companies, mining interests, insurance executives, foreign diplomats, and defense contractors all rushed to book their annual conferences at Trump’s hotels and resorts, where Cabinet members graciously addressed them. After hiking the nightly rate to $653 — 32 percent higher than other local luxury hotels — Trump collected $2 million in profits from the property during his first three months in office. By last August, the hotel’s bar and restaurant had hauled in another $8 million in revenue. And although Trump has pledged to give away any money his hotels earn from foreign governments, the plan contains a lucrative loophole: Employees at his hotels admit that they make no effort to identify guests who represent other countries, meaning that much of the foreign money spent at Trump’s properties flows directly into his own pockets. On March 28, a federal judge allowed a lawsuit to go forward that charges Trump with violating the Constitution by accepting money from foreign governments at his D.C. hotel.
In fact, although Trump refuses to disclose the details of his myriad business operations, he continues to enjoy access to every dime he makes as president. Instead of setting up a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest, as other presidents have done, Trump put his two grown sons in charge of his more than 500 business entities. His sons regularly brief Trump about how the enterprises are doing, enabling him to personally monitor how his decisions in office affect his bottom line. What’s more, only 15 days after this “eyes wide open” trust was set up, Trump amended the fine print to allow him to take money out of the operation any time he pleases. The loophole, buried on page 161 of the 166-page form, stipulates that any “net income or principal” can be distributed to Trump “at his request.” Far from putting his wealth in a blind trust, Trump asked the public for its blind trust, effectively sticking his money in a piggy bank in Don Jr.’s room that he is free to raid at any hour of the day or night.
Trump’s children are working hard to cash in on his time in office — especially with foreign investors. At taxpayer expense, they have flown to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Dubai, and India in search of licensing and real-estate deals, trading on the president’s influence in exchange for investments. But the biggest complication of Trump’s presidency — and the one he works hardest to keep secret — is the way his entire business operation is mired in massive debt. Rather than being independently wealthy, public records show, Trump and the business partnerships in which he is a leading investor owe big banks and foreign governments at least $2.3 billion — far more than his disclosure reports indicate. His largest single loan — for nearly $1 billion — is from a syndicate assembled by Goldman Sachs that includes the state-owned Bank of China. If either Trump or Jared Kushner, who tried to shake down Qatar’s finance minister for a loan, winds up needing to negotiate new terms on his ballooning debt, America could find itself being dictated to by a foreign government — all because the White House, thanks to Trump’s business model, has become a true House of Cards.
What follows is 501 days of official corruption, from small-time graft and brazen influence peddling to full-blown raids on the federal Treasury. Given how little Trump has disclosed about his finances, this timeline of self-dealing is undoubtedly only a fraction of the corruption that will eventually come to light. But as even this initial glimpse makes clear, Trump isn’t draining the swamp — he’s monetizing it. —David Cay Johnston
Trump’s Hotel in D.C.
Photo: Tony Millionaire
“The stars have all aligned. I think our brand is the hottest it has ever been.” —Eric Trump, speaking at the hotel
2016
12/7 Diplomats from Bahrain move the country’s National Day celebration from the Ritz-Carlton to the ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
2017
1/20 A watchdog group calls on the General Services Administration, a federal agency, to stop leasing the Old Post Office to Trump for use as the hotel. The agency’s ethics division, which reports to Trump, rules that the $180 million deal is fine.
1/23 Saudi Arabia holds a bash at the hotel after renting rooms for lobbyists for five months. Trump’s haul: $270,000.
2/25 The Kuwaiti Embassy, reportedly pressured by the Trump Organization, moves its National Day celebration from the Four Seasons to Trump’s hotel.
3/1 The National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association hosts a dinner at the hotel, drenched in Trump-branded coffee and wine.
3/22 The American Petroleum Institute holds its board meeting at Trump’s hotel, where it meets with EPA chief Scott Pruitt. A month later, Pruitt suspends drilling regulations.
5/1Rates at the hotel jump to $653 per night, a price hike of 60 percent since Trump’s election.
5/21 A Turkish government council holds its annual conference at the hotel. The group’s chair founded the company that paid $530,000 to former national-security adviser Michael Flynn for lobbying work.
7/17 E-cigarette-makers hold their annual conference at the hotel. Ten days later, the FDA announces it will delay federal oversight of e-cigarettes until 2022.
8/11 A federal agency accidentally posts the hotel’s Q1 profits: $2 million.
9/13 Staffers for Linda McMahon, head of the Small Business Administration, try to cover up the fact that she addressed a business lobbying event at the hotel, avoiding images of hotel signs bearing Trump’s name when posting photos of the event on Twitter.
9/28 The Fund for American Studies, a conservative organization, hosts a lunch at the hotel. The keynote speaker, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, thanks Trump’s staff for helping him get confirmed.
Rick Perry.
10/4 At its annual board meeting, the National Mining Association is addressed by three Cabinet members: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. “Coal is fighting back,” Perry exults over breakfast with the country’s top mining executives. “Clearly the president wants to revive, not revile, this vital resource.” Five days later, the Trump administration announces the repeal of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would have encouraged states to replace coal with wind and solar energy. The plan would have cut climate-warming pollution from coal plants by a third and saved taxpayers and consumers as much as $93 billion a year. The venue for the mining board’s meeting: the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
10/5 A commercial real-estate trade association hosts an awards gala at Trump’s hotel, sponsored by a roster of prominent lobbying agents.
10/11 The American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful conservative lobbying group with ties to the Koch brothers, announces that the venue for its 45th-anniversary gala will be Trump’s hotel. The group requests corporate sponsorships of up to $100,000.
2018
3/5 The Independent Petroleum Association of America holds a three-day lobbying event at the hotel.
3/28 A federal judge declines to stop a lawsuit that accuses Trump of violating the Constitution by accepting money from foreign governments at his hotel.
Mar-a-Lago
“The ornate Jazz Age house was designed with Old-World Spanish, Venetian, and Portuguese influences.” —From a state department promo online
2016
12/31 Mar-a-Lago hosts a New Year’s Eve party with Trump, priced at $525 a ticket. His take for the night: $400,000.
2017
1/1 The resort quietly doubles its initiation fee to $200,000 — a potential haul of $2 million. In return, club members get access to the president on a par with White House officials.
4/4 The State Department runs an online promotion for Mar-a-Lago, which is also picked up by embassy websites in England and Albania.
President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP
4/6 Trump and Ivanka meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. That same day, China approves trademarks for three of Ivanka’s brands.
6/16 Financial-disclosure filings show that Trump’s revenues from the resort soared by 25 percent during his presidential run.
7/17 The administration increases the allotment of H2-B visas for foreign workers. Within days, Mar-a-Lago applies for 76 of the new visas — even though a local jobs agency has 5,100 applicants qualified to fill the openings.
11/10 The Republican Attorneys General Association, which has spent more than $75,000 at Trump’s properties in five months, holds a reception at Mar-a-Lago. It later forms a “working group” to partner with the Trump administration to roll back environmental protections.
12/9 Oxbow Carbon, a major energy company that would benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline, holds its annual holiday gala at Mar-a-Lago.
12/31 Trump boosts ticket prices for his New Year’s Eve bash to $750. Taxpayers foot the $26,000 bill for lights, generators, and tent rental.
2018
1/9 The Trump administration opens offshore drilling in all but one state: Florida, where oil and gas exploration could hurt business at Mar-a-Lago.
2/18 Reports reveal that Trump regularly solicits input from Mar-a-Lago members on everything from gun control to Jared Kushner’s favorability. Unlike other politicians, who are limited to asking the wealthy for campaign contributions, Trump has found a way to personally profit from selling access to the president.
2/26 An Israel-focused charity, the Truth About Israel, relocates its gala to Mar-a-Lago in appreciation of the president’s support for Israel.
Trump’s Other Properties & Investments
Trump’s resort in Miami. Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images
“The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves. They’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars selling access, selling favors, selling government contracts.” —Donald Trump
2016
11/14 In a call with Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, Trump reportedly pushes for approval to build a Trump Tower in downtown Buenos Aires. Ivanka Trump, who oversees the family business with her brothers, sits in on the call.
2017
1/24 Trump signs an executive order to fast-track the Dakota Access Pipeline. He claims to have sold the stock he owns in the pipeline’s builders — as much as $300,000 — but offers no proof.
Photo: EnginKorkmaz/Getty Images
1/27 Trump issues the travel ban but leaves off Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt — countries where he has significant business interests. His company was paid as much as $10 million for use of his name on a tower in Istanbul, and he registered eight new businesses in Saudi Arabia during his campaign.
2/3 Trump, who owned as much as $5 million in bank stocks in 2016, orders the Treasury secretary to consider ways to roll back regulations on banks. The value of bank stocks soars nearly 30 percent during his first year in office.
2/14 Trump, who owned stock in large oil companies, allows oil companies to hide the payments they make to foreign governments in exchange for extraction rights. The move comes only two months after ExxonMobil, which lobbied for the concession, donated $500,000 to Trump’s inauguration.
2/21 Angela Chen, a consultant with ties to China’s ruling elite, buys a $16 million penthouse in a Trump-owned property.
2/28 Trump, who owns 12 golf courses in the U.S., rolls back a rule that limits water pollution by golf courses.
From left, Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Donald Trump, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
4/29 Overriding diplomatic concerns, Trump invites Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte to the White House. To gain favor with Trump, Duterte had appointed the president’s partner on the Trump Tower in Manila as his economic envoy to the U.S.
5/7 The Metals Service Center Institute, which is pushing the Commerce Department for steel tariffs, holds its annual conference at Trump’s resort in Miami.
5/16 The Republican Governors Association holds a conference at Trump’s golf club in Miami, where members strategize with corporate executives over how to persuade the new administration to dismantle environmental regulations and enact other business-friendly moves. Trump’s take for the conference: $400,000.
5/19 Trump proposes slashing HUD’s budget — but retains a subsidythat has poured more than $490 million into a housing complex in Brooklyn where Trump has a financial stake.
Lynne Patton.
6/16 Lynne Patton, an event planner and friend of the Trump family with no experience in housing, is put in charge of the HUD region covering New York and New Jersey — giving her the power to disburse federal subsidies directly to the Brooklyn housing complex from which Trump made $5 million in 2016.
8/2 Activists protest against JPMorgan Chase, which lobbied to slash the corporate tax rate while paying Trump $1.5 million a year in rent at one of his office buildings.
9/19 Report reveals that the Pentagon spends $130,000 a month in rent at Trump Tower — more than twice as much as other tenants.
10/9 Trump International Hotel in Chicago hosts a two-day conference for the manufacturing industry.
10/10 An insurance-industry trade association holds its four-day annual conference at Trump’s resort in Miami.
10/16 GEO Group, the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, holds its annual conference at the Trump National Doral. The company poured $450,000 into Trump’s campaign and inauguration after Obama announced plans to end all federal contracts with private prisons. GEO also hired two of Jeff Sessions’s former aides, plus a former Trump Organization employee, as lobbyists. The investment paid off: A month after Trump took office, he ended the ban on private prisons. GEO received a $110 million contract to build a new immigration jail in Texas, plus $44 million a year to operate it. Earlier this year, the federal Bureau of Prisons announced it would slash some 6,000 jobs and transfer more inmates to private facilities.
10/18 Defense contractor L3 Technologies holds its annual meeting at Trump National Doral. L3 depends on government largesse for 84 percent of its revenue.
10/19 In a break with tradition, Trump personally interviews candidates for U.S. attorney in the districts that cover most of his business dealings. For the New York position, he ultimately chooses one of his campaign donors.
11/7 Trump hawks his golf course during a major speech to South Korea’s legislature.
11/8 A payday-lender lobbying group announces it will hold its 2018 annual conference at the Trump National Doral. Two months later, the administration announces it is considering scrapping a rule that requires payday lenders to stop taking advantage of clients who cannot pay off their loans.
2018
1/2 A judge rules that Starrett City, a housing complex in Brooklyn that Trump owns a stake in, can be sold to private developers. The sale, which the administration approved after it was halted by George W. Bush, is expected to net Trump $14 million.
2/21 Mississippi awards $6 million in tax breaks to a new Trump-branded hotel.
Family & Friends
“The company and policy and government are completely separated. We have built an unbelievable wall in between the two.” —Eric Trump
2016
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff and Melania Trump. Photo: Clint Spaulding/WWD/REX/Shutterstock
11/13 While appearing on 60 Minutes to discuss her father’s election, Ivanka Trump wears a $10,800 bracelet from her jewelry company. After the interview, the company sends out a “style alert”promoting the bracelet to reporters.
12/6 Firm founded by Melania Trump’s friend and adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff receives $26 million for helping plan the inauguration.
2017
1/5 Eric Trump jets to Uruguay to check on an unfinished Trump condo tower. The trip costs taxpayers $97,830.
2/5 Eric Trump spends $200,000 in taxpayer money to jet to the Dominican Republic to push for a Trump-branded project. The deal — which would put Trump’s name on 17 high-rises — violates a Dominican height limit for new resorts. It also breaks Trump’s vow not to seek overseas deals during his presidency. The Dominican president personally approves the high-rises. “Here in the palace, the president’s thoughts are that this U.S. president is angry and we better not get in his way,” a former Dominican ambassador explains. “We don’t want to cross him.”
2/6 Melania’s lawyers, suing a British paper for libel, argue its reporting ruined her “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to monetize her position as First Lady by cashing in on “multi-million-dollar business relationships.”
2/9 Kellyanne Conway offers “free commercial” for Ivanka’s clothing line on Fox News: “Go buy it today, everybody.” Trump refuses to discipline her, defying recommendation of his own ethics agency.
2/18 Taxpayers pay $16,000 to provide security for Eric Trump and Donald Jr. during their trip to open a Trump-branded golf course in Dubai. The event is invitation-only.
3/3 Jared Kushner meets with the CEO of Citigroup, which is lobbying to loosen financial regulations. Citigroup subsequently lends Kushner’s company $325 million to develop a group of office buildings in Brooklyn.
3/9 Kushner fails to disclose his ownership of Cadre, a real-estate start-up. The firm’s value shot up by millions of dollars after he entered the White House.
3/20 Eric’s wife posts a photo on Instagram of the family’s weeklong ski vacation in Aspen. Taxpayers were charged $330,000 for security details and another $200,000 for luxury lodgings.
3/20 Ivanka, refusing to place her assets in a blind trust, sets up shop in the West Wing.
4/24 Kushner’s family tries to broker funding for his real-estate ventures with Qatar’s finance minister. The minister declines. A month later, Kushner supports diplomatic actions against Qatar.
5/5 Trump extends fast-track visas for foreigners who invest $500,000 in U.S. properties. The next day, Kushner’s sister promises visas to Chinese investors if they put $500,000 into the family’s properties in New Jersey.
5/17 Kushner’s company is subpoenaed by federal prosecutors and the SEC for its promotion of the investment-for-visa program.
7/21 CNN finds that even after his family business apologizes for name-dropping Kushner at a marketing event in Beijing, it highlights his White House role in an online sales pitch to Chinese investors.
10/3 Kushner fined $200 for missing a disclosure deadline. To date, he has been forced to change his disclosure form 39 times for failing to mention potential conflicts of interest.
10/4 ProPublica investigation reveals that after Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance dropped a criminal investigation against Donald Jr. and Ivanka, their attorney arranged a fund-raiser on Vance’s behalf, donating $32,000 himself and raising at least $9,000 more.
11/1 Apollo Global Management lends Kushner’s real-estate company $184 million — triple the size of its average loan — after meeting with him in the White House. Six weeks later, the SEC drops investigation into Apollo’s finances.
12/3 Kushner is exposed for failing to disclose that his family’s foundation — which he led for nine years — funded an illegal Israeli settlement on the West Bank. Just before Trump took office, Kushner tried to sway a U.N. vote against an anti-settlement resolution.
2018
2/20 Donald Jr. tours India to sell Trump-branded homes; several newspapers run an ad promising a “conversation and dinner” with him — for an additional fee of $30,000.
Officials & Their Pals
“We are going to send the special interests packing.” —Donald Trump
2017
Steven Mnuchin.
1/19 During his confirmation as Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin fails to disclose a hedge fund he registered in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying federal taxes — the very thing he is supposed to collect as Treasury secretary.
1/24 During his confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price fails to disclose an insider deal he got on $520,000 in stock in a biotech company. As secretary, he will be in a position to approve a drug the company has developed.
2/9 Reports reveal that a top White House aide, Chris Liddell, participated in meetings between Trump and the CEOs of 18 companies in which he held large amounts of stock — a possible criminal offense. The companies included Lockheed Martin, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, and Dow Chemical.
Flynn seated beside Putin.
3/16 Congressional investigators reveal that Trump’s former national-security adviser Michael Flynn — who wanted to “rip up” American sanctions on Russia — failed to report $45,000 in fees he received from the Russian state media outlet RT.
4/14 The White House stops releasing logs of visitors, concealing trips made by lobbyists and corporate executives. In Trump’s first two months alone, by one estimate, more than 500 executives and foreign leaders made unrecorded visits to the White House.
6/29HUD Secretary Ben Carson tours Baltimore — accompanied by prospective business associates being courted by his son. One administrator on the tour later offers Carson’s daughter-in-law a contract worth $500,000.
11/5 New reports reveal that during his confirmation hearings, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failed to disclose that a Russian shipping firm he owns a stake in has close ties to Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law. His new job puts him in charge of American trade policy with Russia.
12/18 Under pressure from watchdogs, EPA chief Scott Pruitt terminates a $120,000 contract for a firm he has worked with in the past to dig up information on EPA staffers who had criticized him or his policies.
12/22 “You all just got a lot richer,” Trump tells wealthy patrons at Mar-a-Lago hours after signing a massive tax give-a-way to the superrich. The bill saved Trump $15 million in taxes and Jared Kushner $12 million. It also enriched much of Trump’s inner circle — including Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos, Steven Mnuchin, and Rex Tillerson.
2018
Betsy DeVos. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.
1/12 Performant Financial is one of only two companies awarded $400 million in contracts from the Education Department to collect on defaulted student loans. One notable former investor in Performant: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
1/31 CDC chief Brenda Fitzgerald is forced to resign over her purchase of stock in one of the world’s largest tobacco companies. She bought the shares a month after taking over the agency tasked with reducing tobacco use.
2/1 William Emanuel, a Trump appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, is investigated for a possible ethics violation after he votes on a case involving his former law firm. His tie-breaking vote would have made it harder for employees at franchises like McDonald’s to hold their parent companies accountable for labor-law violations, but the decision is thrown out because of his conflict of interest.
3/29 ABC News reports that EPA chief Pruitt spent much of his first year in Washington living in a townhouse co-owned by the wife of J. Steven Hart, a top energy lobbyist. Hart lobbied the EPA on several policies last year, including coal regulations and limits on air pollution.
Lobbyist & Other Sleaze
“We’re going to end the government corruption, and we’re going to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” —Donald Trump
2017
1/17 Scott Mason, a key member of Trump’s transition team, returns to lobbying — one of nine transition-team members to violate Trump’s pledge that he would bar such revolving-door moves for at least six months. One of Mason’s clients, Peabody Energy, later helps dream up a coal-industry bailout promoted by Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
1/23 Trump appoints Jeffrey Wood, a lobbyist for a coal polluter, to prosecute environmental crimes like coal pollution.
2/6 Lauren Maddox, who guided Betsy DeVos through her confirmation process for Education secretary, is hired by a for-profit law school to help restore its access to federal student loans. After paying $130,000 in lobbying fees, the school gets its wish: The Education Department agrees to reconsider its eligibility for millions in loans.
Carl Icahn. Photo: CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
2/27 Billionaire Carl Icahn, an unpaid adviser to Trump, submits a regulatory proposal that would raise the value of his investment in an oil refinery. During Trump’s first six weeks in office, Icahn makes an extra $60 million on the deal.
4/12 Marcus Peacock, a policy expert in Trump’s budget office, takes a job lobbying the budget office for the Business Roundtable, which represents 200 of America’s largest corporations. Trump makes no move to enforce the five-year moratorium he vowed to place on such revolving-door moves.
5/19 Trump nominates K. T. McFarland, adviser who once siphoned off $14,000 in campaign funds for “personal use,” as ambassador to Singapore.
8/1 A top aide to EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who oversees federal grants worth hundreds of millions of dollars, receives permission to work as a consultant for private clients. Despite his influence over public policy, the identities of his clients will be kept secret.
8/15 Two Trump campaign operatives register a new lobbying firm, Turnberry Solutions, named after the Scottish town where Trump owns a golf club. Its first client, Elio Motors, hires it to help obtain government handouts.
10/17 Whitefish Energy, a Montana firm that employed the son of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, is awarded $300 million in a no-bid federal contract to restore storm-battered Puerto Rico.
10/26 Trump nominates J. Steven Gardner, a coal-industry consultant, to oversee enforcement of strip-mining regulations. The Senate winds up rejecting the nomination.
Kirstjen Nielsen.
11/8 Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, was guided through her confirmation by a lobbyist whose clients compete for DHS contracts. Privatizing the “sherpa” role in confirmations — work long performed by government staffers — opens up a brazen new frontier in corruption. The lobbyist, Thad Bingel, oversaw the drafting of official policy memos and was included on emails between the DHS and the White House, enabling him to exploit internal information for private gain. Among Bingel’s clients is an Israeli defense contractor being paid $145 million by DHS to build part of Trump’s “virtual wall” along the Mexican border.
12/6 A photographer at the Department of Energy is fired after leaking a photo that shows Rick Perry receiving a confidential “action plan” from a coal magnate in March. The plan is a blueprint for the coal-industry bailout that Perry announced in September.
2018
1/12 Trump gives Kenneth Allen, a former mining executive who still profits from coal sales to the Tennessee Valley Authority, a seat on the TVA board.
Trump and Alex Azar. Photo: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
1/29 Alex Azar, a former lobbyist who worked his way up to the presidency of a drug company, is sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services. Azar, whose company hiked the price of insulin and other drugs under his watch, is now in charge of making drugs more affordable.
2/12 Carl Icahn, who served as an unpaid adviser to Trump, sells $30 million in steel stocks just before Trump announces tariffs on steel imports.
2/18 Dina Powell, who advised Trump on foreign policy, returns to Goldman Sachs only two months after leaving the White House. At Goldman, she will focus on “enhancing the firm’s relationships” with some of the same foreign governments she advised Trump on.
3/2 Trump nominates Peter Wright, an attorney for Dow Chemical, to lead the EPA’s regulation of chemical spills. Dow has 100 polluted sites that Wright would be in charge of cleaning up.
Petty Graft
“We are going to ask every department head to provide a list of wasteful spending projects we can eliminate.” —Donald Trump
2017
Eric Trump and Don Trump Jr. Photo: Phillip Chin/Getty Images for Trump Internati
2/28 The State Department spends $15,000 in taxpayer money for the grand opening of a Trump hotel in Vancouver, an event attended by Eric, Tiffany, and Donald Jr.
4/14 Trump jets to Mar-a-Lago via Air Force One at a cost to taxpayers of $142,380 per hour. For years, Trump heckled President Obama for taking vacations and golfing trips at government expense. If elected, he vowed, he would “rarely leave the White House, because there’s so much work to be done.” In fact, during his first three months in office, Trump’s taxpayer-funded flights to his private properties exceeded $20 million — on track to quickly surpass the amount Obama spent on travel during his eight years in office. Trump made more than 90 visits to his golf courses and played almost twice as much golf as Obama. His family joined in, requiring Secret Service agents to rack up an extra 4,054 days of taxpayer-funded travel to keep up.
5/16 Rick Perry and his staffers take a private jet to a small-business forum in Kansas City, at a cost to taxpayers of $35,000, rather than taking a nonstop flight to the airport 45 minutes away from the event.
6/2 David Shulkin’s chief of staff falsifies an email to suggest that the VA secretary needed to travel to Europe to receive an award. Shulkin’s 11-day trip with his wife, most of which was devoted to sightseeing, cost taxpayers $122,344.
6/7 Scott Pruitt, the EPA chief, spends $36,000 in taxpayer money to take a military plane to New York.
6/24 Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin marries Louise Linton and requests a military plane for their honeymoon to Europe — at a cost to taxpayers of $25,000 per hour.
6/26 Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spends $12,375 in taxpayer money to fly home aboard a private flight from Las Vegas, where he hung out with a hockey team owned by his biggest campaign donor.
7/7 Zinke uses $6,250 in taxpayer money for a helicopter flight from Virginia to Washington, D.C. — a three-hour car ride — for a horse-riding date with Mike Pence.
8/4 HHS Secretary Tom Price takes a private jet at taxpayer expense to St. Simons Island, an exclusive resort where he owns land. The trip, like many of the 26 flights Price took on corporate jets, could have been accomplished with a routine commercial flight.
8/21 Mnuchin and his wife travel to Kentucky aboard a government plane, at a cost to taxpayers of $33,000, to watch the solar eclipse.
8/30 EPA chief Pruitt spends $43,000 to build a soundproof phone booth in his office, enabling him to hold secret conversations with lobbyists and corporate executives. The Government Accountability Office is investigating whether the move violated agency spending rules.
9/29 HHS Secretary Price is forced to resign over the nearly $1 million in taxpayer money he spent taking military planes and private jets, often to visit family and friends.
U-Haul workers sent a flood of letters seeking to reverse an Obama-era rule. Most used very similar language, in part because the company wrote it for them.
By Josh Eidelson and Hassan Kanu April 2, 2018
Photographer: Stephen Hilger/Bloomberg
Thomas Neill wrote the government a letter Jan. 23 asking that it reverse an Obama-era rule that could make it easier for unions to win workplace elections. “Repeal the current rules; reinstate the prior rules; revise the election process in a way that brings them up to date in a sensible, fair manner,” he wrote. So did Brian Picanco, Paul Smedberg, Zane Rowland and Jim Smith.
On the same day. Using exactly the same words.
The men, along with dozens of other people working for U-Haul, the self-storage company, seem to have taken an outsized role in the debate over whether the Trump administration should revisit the rule. They’ve been doing this by flooding the National Labor Relations Board with very similar comments. While at least one employee said workers got together on their own, labor experts contend that the campaign has all the hallmarks of a company-influenced effort. U-Haul agreed, saying that while it didn’t compel workers to take part, it did provide the language for them to use.
Over the past few months, the NLRB received at least 100 similarly worded submissions urging it to throw out the policy that shortens the time between when some employees decide to unionize and when a vote is held. More than 60—roughly one out of every 25 comments submitted so far—used names matching people who work at the self-storage and rental giant, according to a review of LinkedIn pages and recent company announcements. More than a dozen additional comments appear to come from people who worked for the company in the past.
The U-Haul staffers ranged from a clerk for one of its local marketing units to a vice president for government relations, Joseph Cook. (Cook and the five men above didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Another submission was by Sam Shoen, who shares the surname of Joe Shoen, chairman of U-Haul’s parent, Reno, Nevada-based Amerco. The company said two people named Sam Shoen have been associated with U-Haul, one a former official and son of the founder, who said the submission wasn’t his. The other Sam Shoen is a manager who currently oversees one of the company’s storage components and couldn’t be reached for comment. Also among the commenters was Assistant General Counsel Michelle Walters, whose LinkedIn biography says her work for U-Haul includes “union avoidance/positive labor relations.” Walters couldn’t be reached for comment, but company spokesman Sebastien Reyes said in a March 30 response to a request for comment that she drafted the language used by U-Haul employees in their letters to the NLRB .
“We encouraged them to submit comments, and we circulated sample language,” Reyes wrote. “Individuals decided whether to submit a sample comment, write their comment or elect not to submit comments at all.” He confirmed that the people identified by Bloomberg in a review of correspondence sent to the NLRB were in fact U-Haul “team members.”
Photographer: Lars Hagber/Alamy
Founded in 1945, U-Haul claims thousands of locations across the U.S. and Canada. In February, Joe Shoen announced bonuses of more than $23.6 million for almost 29,000 employees, telling them it was thanks to the Republican tax overhaul signed by President Donald Trump.
The company has a history of disdain toward organized labor. An alert for U-Haul managers posted on the company’s human resources website (and since removed) emphasized the need to “harden our workplace against possible organizing” and mount a preemptive anti-union campaign that “begins now and lasts every single day.” The document, referring to an earlier legislative proposal, urged managers to participate in company “union avoidance” classes and instructed that the “preservation of our system members’ right to work in a union-free environment is management’s responsibility.” Staff, if treated well, “will keep the union bums out,” it said. (Reyes, the company spokesman, confirmed the document was an internal memorandum representing the company’s stance on organized labor, but added that it was taken down because it was mistakenly made public.)
After employees at two repair facilities voted 2-to-1 to unionize in 2003, the U-Haul Co. of Nevada shut down one of them, terminated 49 employees and allegedly refused to collectively bargain, arguing that the union election had been tainted by misconduct. A federal appeals court ruled against the company in 2007, and in 2008 the company agreed to pay $2.1 million to employees who the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers alleged had been illegally terminated for supporting the union. The company didn’t admit any wrongdoing as part of the agreement.
But the workers declined to return to work there, and the IAM abandoned its efforts to secure a union contract, according to David Rosenfeld, an attorney for the union. “They were extremely vicious,” he said of the company. Of the employees, he added: “Nobody’s tried since then to organize them, as far as I know.” Reyes denied the 2003 firings were related to the union vote, declining further comment on the case or its aftermath.
“Companies are increasingly using their workers to change elections and public policy.”
The recent U-Haul employee comments to the NLRB come in response to a December invitation by the Republican-majority labor board. It seeks input on whether to amend or rescind the 2014 rule change by the Obama administration. The provisions included shortening the time between when workers petition for a vote on unionization and when the vote happens, leaving less time for companies to urge workers to stay union-free. The comments from people associated with U-Haul each urged more stringent rules, including a minimum “campaign period” of at least 40 days before a union vote. On March 14, the NLRB announced that it was pushing back the deadline for submitting comments, which had already been extended, to April 18.
The volume and similarity of comments raise questions as to whether there was a coordinated effort, said Paul Secunda, who directs the labor and employment law program at Marquette University. “These U-Haul employee comments to the NLRB smack of employee mobilization by the company itself,” he said, though encouraging employees to comment on proposed rulemaking is perfectly legal.
That companies urge employees to take part in campaigns for or against government regulations isn’t novel, but the tactic has enjoyed a renaissance of late. Employers and the business lobby have recently urged workers to fight various corporate taxes and support the recent tax legislation. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a political scientist at Columbia University who just wrote a book on the topic, recounted how a lobbyist bragged of helping a financial company get 100,000 letters opposing the fiduciary rule—the now-endangered conflict-of-interest regulation for financial advisers. Hertel-Fernandez said a telecommunications company interested in shaping a different debate established an internet portal for workers, providing letter templates they could tweak before sending.
“Companies are increasingly using their workers to change elections and public policy. This has become a key part of companies’ political arsenals,” Hertel-Fernandez said in an interview. “Workers who are most fearful of losing their jobs, or of retaliation from their employers, are most likely to respond to political requests made of them by their employers.”
When AT&T Inc. was fighting proposed net neutrality rules in 2009, its senior vice president for external and legislative affairs reportedly sent employees talking points to use in emails to the Federal Communications Commission, encouraging them to send messages from their personal email accounts. AT&T declined to comment.
There have been other alleged efforts to game the public comment system, both in and out of government, that have gone beyond coordinating employee letters. In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that it had identified comments submitted to five agencies that were posted under the names of people who hadn’t consented. Some of those comments were sent to the Labor Department, professing opposition to the fiduciary rule. Last month, environmental groups cried foul over a Trump administration memo summarizing public comments on its reassessment of an Obama-era sage grouse conservation plan, which advocates say omitted almost 100,000 comments.
Why are the poor blamed and shamed for their deaths?
When someone dies, she often suffers a brutal moral autopsy, says Barbara Ehrenreich. Did she smoke? Drink excessively? Eat too much fat?
Barbara Ehrenreich March 31, 2018
Barbara Ehrenreich: ‘Friends berate me for my heavy use of butter.’ Photograph: Stephen Voss for the Guardian
I watched in dismay as most of my educated, middle-class friends began, at the onset of middle age, to obsess about their health and likely longevity. Even those who were at one point determined to change the world refocused on changing their bodies. They undertook exercise or yoga regimens; they filled their calendars with medical tests and exams; they boasted about their “good” and “bad” cholesterol counts, their heart rates and blood pressure.
Mostly they understood the task of ageing to be self-denial, especially in the realm of diet, where one medical fad, one study or another, condemned fat and meat, carbs, gluten, dairy or all animal-derived products. In the health-conscious mindset that has prevailed among the world’s affluent people for about four decades now, health is indistinguishable from virtue, tasty foods are “sinfully delicious”, while healthful foods may taste good enough to be advertised as “guilt-free”. Those seeking to compensate for a lapse undertake punitive measures such as hours-long cardio sessions, fasts, purges or diets composed of different juices carefully sequenced throughout the day.
Of course I want to be healthy, too; I just don’t want to make the pursuit of health into a major life project. I eat well, meaning I choose foods that taste good and will stave off hunger for as long as possible, such as protein, fiber and fats. But I refuse to over think the potential hazards of blue cheese on my salad or pepperoni on my pizza. I also exercise – not because it will make me live longer but because it feels good when I do. As for medical care, I will seek help for an urgent problem, but I am no longer interested in undergoing tests to uncover problems that remain undetectable to me. When friends berate me for my laxity, my heavy use of butter or habit of puffing (but not inhaling) on cigarettes, I gently remind them that I am, in most cases, older than they are.
So it was with a measure of schadenfreude that I began to record the cases of individuals whose healthy lifestyles failed to produce lasting health. It turns out that many of the people who got caught up in the health “craze” of the last few decades – people who exercised, watched what they ate, abstained from smoking and heavy drinking – have nevertheless died. Lucille Roberts, owner of a chain of women’s gyms, died incongruously from lung cancer at the age of 59, although she was a “self-described exercise nut” who, the New York Times reported, “wouldn’t touch a French fry, much less smoke a cigarette”. Jerry Rubin, who devoted his later years to trying every supposedly health-promoting diet fad, therapy and meditation system he could find, jaywalked into Wilshire Boulevard at the age of 56 and died of his injuries two weeks later.
Some of these deaths were genuinely shocking. Jim Fixx, author of the bestselling The Complete Book Of Running, believed he could outwit the cardiac problems that had carried his father off to an early death by running at least 10 miles a day and restricting himself to a diet of pasta, salads and fruit. But he was found dead on the side of a Vermont road in 1984, aged only 52.
Even more disturbing was the untimely demise of John H Knowles, director of the Rockefeller Foundation and promulgator of the “doctrine of personal responsibility” for one’s health. Most illnesses are self-inflicted, he argued – the result of “gluttony, alcoholic intemperance, reckless driving, sexual frenzy, smoking” and other bad choices. The “idea of a ‘right’ to health,” he wrote, “should be replaced by the idea of an individual moral obligation to preserve one’s own health.” But he died of pancreatic cancer at 52, prompting one physician commentator to observe, “Clearly we can’t all be held responsible for our health.”
Still, we persist in subjecting anyone who dies at a seemingly untimely age to a kind of bio-moral autopsy: did she smoke? Drink excessively? Eat too much fat and not enough fiber? Can she, in other words, be blamed for her own death? When David Bowie and Alan Rickman both died in early 2016 of what major US newspapers described only as “cancer”, some readers complained that it is the responsibility of obituaries to reveal what kind of cancer. Ostensibly, this information would help promote “awareness” of the particular cancers involved, as Betty Ford’s openness about her breast cancer diagnosis helped to de-stigmatize that disease. It would also, of course, prompt judgments about the victim’s “lifestyle”. Would Bowie have died – at the quite respectable age of 69 – if he hadn’t been a smoker?
With sufficient ingenuity – or malicious intent – almost any death can be blamed on some mistake of the deceased.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ 2011 death from pancreatic cancer continues to spark debate. He was a food faddist, eating only raw vegan foods, especially fruit, and refusing to deviate from that plan even when doctors recommended a high protein and fat diet to help compensate for his failing pancreas. His office refrigerator was filled with Odwalla juices; he antagonized non-vegan associates by attempting to proselytize among them, as biographer Walter Isaacson has reported: at a meal with Mitch Kapor, the chairman of Lotus software, Jobs was horrified to see Kapor slathering butter on his bread, and asked, “Have you ever heard of serum cholesterol?” Kapor responded, “I’ll make you a deal. You stay away from commenting on my dietary habits, and I will stay away from the subject of your personality.”
Defenders of veganism argue that his cancer could be attributed to his occasional forays into protein-eating (a meal of eel sushi has been reported) or to exposure to toxic metals as a young man tinkering with computers. But a case could be made that it was the fruitarian diet that killed him: metabolically, a diet of fruit is equivalent to a diet of candy, only with fructose instead of glucose, with the effect that the pancreas is strained to constantly produce more insulin. As for the personality issues – the almost manic-depressive mood swings – they could be traced to frequent bouts of hypoglycemia. Incidentally, 67-year-old Mitch Kapor is alive and well at the time of this writing.
Similarly, with sufficient ingenuity – or malicious intent – almost any death can be blamed on some mistake of the deceased. Surely Fixx had failed to “listen to his body” when he first felt chest pains and tightness while running, and maybe, if he had been less self-absorbed, Rubin would have looked both ways before crossing the street. Maybe it’s just the way the human mind works, but when bad things happen or someone dies, we seek an explanation, preferably one that features a conscious agent – a deity or spirit, an evil-doer or envious acquaintance, even the victim. We don’t read detective novels to find out that the universe is meaningless, but that, with sufficient information, it all makes sense. We can, or think we can, understand the causes of disease in cellular and chemical terms, so we should be able to avoid it by following the rules laid down by medical science: avoiding tobacco, exercising, undergoing routine medical screening and eating only foods currently considered healthy. Anyone who fails to do so is inviting an early death. Or, to put it another way, every death can now be understood as suicide.
Liberal commentators countered that this view represented a kind of “victim-blaming”. In her books Illness As Metaphor and Aids And Its Metaphors, Susan Sontag argued against the oppressive moralizing of disease, which was increasingly portrayed as an individual problem. The lesson, she said, was, “Watch your appetites. Take care of yourself. Don’t let yourself go.” Even breast cancer, she noted, which has no clear lifestyle correlates, could be blamed on a “cancer personality”, sometimes defined in terms of repressed anger which, presumably, one could have sought therapy to cure. Little was said, even by the major breast cancer advocacy groups, about possible environmental carcinogens or carcinogenic medical regimes such as hormone replacement therapy.
While the affluent struggled dutifully to conform to the latest prescriptions for healthy living – adding whole grains and gym time to their daily plans – the less affluent remained mired in the old comfortable, unhealthy ways of the past – smoking cigarettes and eating foods they found tasty and affordable. There are some obvious reasons why the poor and the working class resisted the health craze: gym memberships can be expensive; “health foods” usually cost more than “junk food”. But as the classes diverged, the new stereotype of the lower classes as willfully unhealthy quickly fused with their old stereotype as semi-literate louts. I confront this in my work as an advocate for a higher minimum wage. Affluent audiences may cluck sympathetically over the miserably low wages offered to blue-collar workers, but they often want to know “why these people don’t take better care of themselves”. Why do they smoke or eat fast food? Concern for the poor usually comes tinged with pity. And contempt.
Photograph: Stephen Voss for the Guardian
In the 00’s, British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver took it on himself to reform the eating habits of the masses, starting with school lunches. Pizza and burgers were replaced with menu items one might expect to find in a restaurant – fresh greens, for example, and roast chicken. But the experiment was a failure. In the US and UK, schoolchildren dumped out their healthy new lunches or stamped them underfoot. Mothers passed burgers to their children through school fences. Administrators complained that the new meals were vastly over-budget; nutritionists noted that they were cruelly deficient in calories. In Oliver’s defense, it should be observed that ordinary “junk food” is chemically engineered to provide an addictive combination of salt, sugar and fat. But it probably matters, too, that he didn’t study local eating habits in sufficient depth before challenging them, nor seems to have given enough thought to creatively modifying them. In West Virginia, he alienated parents by bringing a local mother to tears when he publicly announced the food she gave her four children was “killing” them.
There may well be unfortunate consequences from eating the wrong foods. But what are the “wrong” foods? In the 80’s and 90’s, the educated classes turned against fat in all forms, advocating the low-fat and protein diet that, journalist Gary Taubes argues, paved the way for an “epidemic of obesity” as health-seekers switched from cheese cubes to low-fat desserts. The evidence linking dietary fat to poor health had always been shaky, but class prejudice prevailed: fatty and greasy foods were for the poor and unenlightened; their betters stuck to bone-dry biscotti and fat-free milk. Other nutrients went in and out of style as medical opinion shifted: it turns out high dietary cholesterol, as in oysters, is not a problem after all, and doctors have stopped pushing calcium on women over 40. Increasingly, the main villains appear to be sugar and refined carbohydrates, as in hamburger buns. Eat a pile of fries washed down with a sugary drink and you will probably be hungry again in a couple of hours, when the sugar rush subsides. If the only cure for that is more of the same, your blood sugar levels may permanently rise – what we call diabetes.
Special opprobrium is attached to fast food, thought to be the food of the ignorant. Film-maker Morgan Spurlock spent a month eating nothing but McDonald’s to create his famous Super Size Me, documenting his 11 kg (24 lb) weight gain and soaring blood cholesterol. I have also spent many weeks eating fast food because it’s cheap and filling but, in my case, to no perceptible ill effects. It should be pointed out, though, that I ate selectively, skipping the fries and sugary drinks to double down on the protein. When, at a later point, a notable food writer called to interview me on the subject of fast food, I started by mentioning my favorites (Wendy’s and Popeye’s), but it turned out they were all indistinguishable to him. He wanted a comment on the general category, which was like asking me what I thought about restaurants.
I grew up in the 1940s and 50s, when cigarettes served not only as a comfort for the lonely but a powerful social glue.
If food choices defined the class gap, smoking provided a firewall between the classes. To be a smoker in almost any modern, industrialized country is to be a pariah and, most likely, a sneak. I grew up in another world, in the 1940’s and 50’s, when cigarettes served not only as a comfort for the lonely but a powerful social glue. People offered each other cigarettes, and lights, indoors and out, in bars, restaurants, workplaces and living rooms, to the point where tobacco smoke became, for better or worse, the scent of home. My parents smoked; one of my grandfathers could roll a cigarette with one hand; my aunt, who was eventually to die of lung cancer, taught me how to smoke when I was a teenager. And the government seemed to approve. It wasn’t till 1975 that the armed forces stopped including cigarettes along with food rations.
As more affluent people gave up the habit, the war on smoking – which was always presented as an entirely benevolent effort – began to look like a war against the working class. When the break rooms offered by employers banned smoking, workers were forced outdoors, leaning against walls to shelter their cigarettes from the wind. When working-class bars went non-smoking, their clienteles dispersed to drink and smoke in private, leaving few indoor sites for gatherings and conversations. Escalating cigarette taxes hurt the poor and the working class hardest. The way out is to buy single cigarettes on the streets, but strangely enough the sale of these “loosies” is largely illegal. In 2014 a Staten Island man, Eric Garner, was killed in a chokehold by city police for precisely this crime.
Why do people smoke? I once worked in a restaurant in the era when smoking was still permitted in break rooms, and many workers left their cigarettes burning in the common ashtray so they could catch a puff whenever they had a chance to, without bothering to relight. Everything else they did was done for the boss or the customers; smoking was the only thing they did for themselves. In one of the few studies of why people smoke, a British sociologist found smoking among working-class women was associated with greater responsibilities for the care of family members – again suggesting a kind of defiant self-nurturance.
When the notion of “stress” was crafted in the mid-20th century, the emphasis was on the health of executives, whose anxieties presumably outweighed those of the manual laborer who had no major decisions to make. It turns out, however, that stress – measured by blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol – increases as you move down the socioeconomic scale, with the most stress inflicted on those who have the least control over their work. In the restaurant industry, stress is concentrated among the people responding to the minute-by-minute demands of customers, not those who sit in offices discussing future menus. Add to these workplace stresses the challenges imposed by poverty and you get a combination that is highly resistant to, for example, anti-smoking propaganda – as Linda Tirado reported about her life as a low-wage worker with two jobs and two children: “I smoke. It’s expensive. It’s also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It’s a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed.”
Nothing has happened to ease the pressures on low-wage workers. On the contrary, if the old paradigm of a blue-collar job was 40 hours a week, an annual two-week vacation and benefits such as a pension and health insurance, the new expectation is that one will work on demand, as needed, without benefits or guarantees. Some surveys now find a majority of US retail staff working without regular schedules – on call for when an employer wants them to come and unable to predict how much they will earn. With the rise in “just in time” scheduling, it becomes impossible to plan ahead: will you have enough money to pay the rent? Who will take care of the children? The consequences of employee “flexibility” can be just as damaging as a program of random electric shocks applied to caged laboratory animals.
Sometime in the early to mid-00’s, demographers noticed an unexpected rise in the death rates of poor white Americans. This was not supposed to happen. For almost a century, the comforting American narrative was that better nutrition and medical care would guarantee longer lives for all. It was especially not supposed to happen to whites who, in relation to people of color, have long had the advantage of higher earnings, better access to healthcare, safer neighborhoods and freedom from the daily insults and harms inflicted on the darker skinned. But the gap between the life expectancy of blacks and whites has been narrowing. The first response of some researchers – themselves likely to be well above the poverty level – was to blame the victims: didn’t the poor have worse health habits? Didn’t they smoke?
The class gap in mortality will not be closed by tweaking individual tastes.
In late 2015, the British economist Angus Deaton won the Nobel prize for work he had done with Anne Case, showing that the mortality gap between wealthy white men and poor ones was widening at a rate of one year a year, and slightly less for women. Smoking could account for only one fifth to one third of the excess working-class deaths. The rest were apparently attributable to alcoholism, opioid addiction and actual suicide – as opposed to metaphorically “killing” oneself through unwise lifestyle choices.
Why the excess mortality among poor white Americans? In the last few decades, things have not been going well for working-class people of any color. I grew up in an America where a man with a strong back – and a strong union – could reasonably expect to support a family on his own without a college degree. By 2015, those jobs were long gone, leaving only the kind of work once relegated to women and people of color available in areas such as retail, landscaping and delivery truck driving. This means those in the bottom 20% of the white income distribution face material circumstances like those long familiar to poor blacks, including erratic employment and crowded, hazardous living spaces. Poor whites always had the comfort of knowing that someone was worse off and more despised than they were; racial subjugation was the ground under their feet, the rock they stood upon, even when their own situation was deteriorating. That slender reassurance is shrinking.
There are some practical reasons why whites are likely to be more efficient than blacks at killing themselves. For one thing, they are more likely to be gun owners, and white men favour gunshot as a means of suicide. For another, doctors, undoubtedly acting on stereotypes of non-whites as drug addicts, are more likely to prescribe powerful opioid painkillers to whites. Pain is endemic among the blue-collar working class, from waitresses to construction workers, and few people make it past 50 without palpable damage to their knees, back or shoulders. As opioids became more expensive and closely regulated, users often made the switch to heroin which, being illegal, can vary widely in strength, leading to accidental overdoses.
Affluent reformers are perpetually frustrated by the unhealthy habits of the poor, but it is hard to see how problems arising from poverty – and damaging work conditions – could be cured by imposing the doctrine of “personal responsibility”. I have no objections to efforts encouraging people to stop smoking or add more vegetables to their diets. But the class gap in mortality will not be closed by tweaking individual tastes. This is an effort that requires concerted action on a vast scale: a welfare state to alleviate poverty; environmental clean-up of, for example, lead in drinking water; access to medical care including mental health services; occupational health reform to reduce disabilities inflicted by work.
The wealthier classes will also benefit from these measures, but what they need right now is a little humility. We will all die – whether we slake our thirst with kombucha or Coca-Cola, whether we run five miles a day or remain confined to our trailer homes, whether we dine on quinoa or KFC. This is the human condition. It’s time we began facing it together.
This is an edited extract from Natural Causes, by Barbara Ehrenreich, published by Granta on 12 April at £16.99. To order a copy for £14.44, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
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Fourth-generation farmer Jon Bansen translates complex grazing production systems into common-sense farm wisdom.
By Kathleen Bauer, Business, Farming March 30, 2018.
In the U.S., the dairy industry is a tough business for organic and conventional producers alike, with plunging prices and changing consumer demand leading to a spate of farm shutdowns and even farmer suicides. And in Oregon, where dairy is big business—accounting for 10 percent of the state’s agriculture income in 2016—the story is much the same.
But Jon Bansen, who has farmed since 1991 at Double J Jerseys, an organic dairy farm in Monmouth, Oregon, has throughout his career bucked conventional wisdom and demonstrated the promise of his practices. Now he’s convincing others to follow suit.
Bansen and his wife Juli bought their farm in 1991 and named it Double J Jerseys, then earned organic certification in 2000. In 2017, he switched to full-time grass feed for his herd of 200 cows and 150 young female cows, called heifers. He convinced his brother Bob, who owns a dairy in Yamhill, to convert to organic. His brother Pete followed suit soon after. (“He’s a slow learner, that’s all I can say,” Bansen joked.)
He’s someone who prefers to lead by example, which has earned him the respect of a broad range of the region’s farmers and ranchers, as well as its agricultural agencies and nonprofits.
“Jon is an articulate spokesperson for organic dairy in Oregon and beyond,” said Chris Schreiner, executive director of Oregon Tilth, an organic certifying organization. “His passion for organic dairy and pasture-based systems is contagious, and he does a great job of translating complex grazing production systems into common-sense farmer wisdom. His personal experience … is a compelling case for other dairy farmers to consider.”
George Siemon, one of the founders of Organic Valley, the dairy co-operative for which Bansen produces 100 percent grass-fed milk under Organic Valley’s “Grassmilk” brand, believes the switch to 100 percent grass is a direction that Bansen has been moving in all along.
“He’s just refined and refined and refined his organic methods,” said Siemon, admitting that Bansen is one of his favorite farmers. “He’s transformed his whole farm. It’s a great case when the marketplace is rewarding him for getting better and better at what he does and what he likes to do.”
Deep Roots in Dairy Farming
Dairy farming is baked into Bansen’s DNA, with roots tracing all the way back to his great-grandfather, who emigrated from Denmark in the mid-1800s, settling in a community of Danes in Northern California. He hired out his milking skills to other farmers until he saved enough to buy his own small farm near the bucolic coastal town of Ferndale in Humboldt County.
Bansen was about 10 years old when his father and their family left the home farm to strike out on their own in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. They bought land in the tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Yamhill, about an hour southwest of Portland.
A typical farm kid, Bansen and his seven siblings were all expected to help with the chores. “You fed calves before you went to school, and you came home and dinked around the house eating for awhile until you heard Dad’s voice beller at you that it was time to get back to work,” Bansen recalled. “I was a little envious of kids that lived in town and got to ride their bikes on pavement. That sounded pretty sexy to me.”
After studying biology in college in Nebraska and getting married soon after graduating, Bansen and his wife worked on his dad’s Yamhill farm for five years and then began talking about getting a place of their own. They found property not far away outside the sleepy town of Monmouth. It had the nutritionally rich, green pastures Bansen knew were ideal for dairy cows, fed by the coastal mists that drift over the Coast Range from the nearby Pacific Ocean.
One day, a few years after they’d started Double J Jerseys, a man knocked on their door. He said he was from a small organic dairy co-op in Wisconsin that was looking to expand nationally. He wondered if Double J would be interested in transitioning to organic production, mentioning that the co-op could guarantee a stable price for their milk.
It turned out that the stranger was Siemon, a self-described “long-haired hippie” who’d heard about Bansen through word of mouth. “He was reasonably skeptical,” recalls Siemon. “He wanted to make sure it was a valid market before he committed, because it’s such a big commitment to go all the way with organic dairy.”
For his part, Bansen worried that there wasn’t an established agricultural infrastructure to support the transition, not to mention the maintenance of an organic farm. “I was worried about finding enough organic grain,” he said.
On the other hand, however, the young couple needed the money an organic certification might bring. “We had $30,000 to our name and we were more than half a million dollars in debt” from borrowing to start the farm, Bansen said.
After much research and soul-searching, they decided to accept Siemon’s offer and started the transition process. It helped that his cousin Dan had transitioned one of his farms to organic not long before and that generations of his family before him had run pasture-based dairies.
“My grandfather, he was an organic dairy farmer, he just didn’t know what it was called,” Bansen said. “There were no antibiotics, no hormones, no pesticides. You fed your cows in the fields.”
The Organic Learning Curve
During the Bansens’ first organic years, they had to figure out ways to eliminate antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides—all of which Bansen views as “crutches” to deal with management issues.
To prevent coccidiosis, a condition baby cows develop when they don’t receive enough milk and are forced to live in overcrowded conditions, for example, Bansen fed his calves plenty of milk and made sure they had enough space.
To prevent cows from contracting mastitis, an infection of the mammary system, he changed the farm’s milking methods.
Another learning curve had to do with figuring out the balance of grain to forage (i.e., edible plants). Originally Bansen fed each of his cows 20 pounds of grain per day, but after switching to organic sources of grain, he was able to reduce that to four or five pounds a day. This switch cut down grain and transportation costs dramatically.
He also had to learn to manage the plants in the fields in order to produce the healthiest grazing material possible. Since the transition to organic, Double J has grown to nearly 600 acres, a combination of pastures for the milking cows, fields for growing the grass and forage he stores for winter, when it’s too cold and wet to keep the animals outdoors.
“It’s not a machine; it’s a constant dance between what you’re planting and growing and the weather patterns and how the cows are reacting to it,” said Bansen. “There’s science involved in it, but it’s more of an art form.”
Transition from Grain to Grass
Bansen’s decision to take his cows off grain completely has meant doing something very different than what the other farmers around him do—even some of those in his own co-op.
His participation in Organic Valley’s grassmilk program is just a progression of what he calls “the organic thing.” He gets paid a little more for his milk, but it’s not the road to riches, in part because his cows don’t produce as much milk as when their feed was supplemented with grain, and he’s had to add more land in order to grow enough to feed them.
Bansen’s motivated by the desire to produce the most nutrient-dense milk possible, and he believes that 100 percent grass-fed milk is where the market is going.
Scientific research seems to bear out his hypothesis. A study titled “Greener Pastures: How grass-fed beef and milk contribute to healthy eating,” published in 2006 by the Union of Concerned Scientists Food and Environment Program, found statistically significant differences in fat content between pasture-raised and conventional products. Specifically, milk from pasture-raised cattle tends to have higher levels of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)—an omega-3 fatty acid—as well as consistently higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), another fatty acid that in animal studies has shown many positive effects on heart disease, cancer, and the immune system.
As our agriculture has moved away from pasture, the balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids has shifted—leading most of us to consume much more omega-6. Severalstudies have linked that shift to increases in everything from heart disease to cancer to autoimmune diseases.
Bansen’s own test results showed the levels of omega-3 to omega-6 in the milk his cows produce are close to 1:1, far less than the 7:1 ratio found in conventional milk. And that’s on winter forage. He can’t wait to see what the results are once the cows are on pasture this season.
Speaking His Mind
While he’s generally affable, Bansen isn’t shy about disagreeing with the other farmers in the co-op. “When the going gets tough and somebody needs to speak up with some truthfulness, Jon’s never been afraid to speak his mind, and you need that in a co-op,” said Siemon.
In addition to speaking before young farmers in Organic Valley’s “Generation Organic” (or Gen-O) program aimed at farmers under the age of 35, as well as participating in regional farm organizations, Bansen has written articles on grazing and forage for publications like Graze magazine. In an essay in its latest issue, he highlighted the problems he sees in the current organic milk market.
Bansen worries that the integrity of the organic milk market is in jeopardy because of national producers like Aurora Organic Dairy, essentially organically certified factory farms, are flooding the market with milk and reducing prices for smaller operations.
An even bigger problem, from his perspective, is that not enough organic farmers embrace what he terms “the organic lifestyle.” “I’m sick of farmers bitching about the price of milk and going down to Walmart to buy groceries and taking their kids out to McDonald’s,” he said bluntly. “You have no right to bitch about what’s going on in your marketplace if you’re not supporting that same marketplace.”
When Bansen shipped his first milk to Organic Valley in 2000, there were 200 dairies in the co-op. With that number around 2,000 today, he feels it’s more critical than ever that all are pulling in the same direction.
“There’s nothing worse than a farmer who’s on the organic truck saying, ‘I just do it for the money. It’s really no different from other milk,’” he said.
It’s spring in Oregon, probably Bansen’s favorite season, and he’s itching to let his cows out to graze as soon as his pastures have enough forage. When Bansen was growing up, his father used to hold the cows in the barn until milking was done, them release them into the pasture all at once when the season began, which Bansen described as “friggin’ mayhem.”
Preferring a calmer approach with his own cows, he milks six of them at a time and then opens the gate to release them in small groups.
“We’ve kind of taken some of that crazy stuff out of the deal, but it’s still a brilliant day. It’s better than Christmas.”
Algae is one of the most powerful sources of energy we have access to on Earth. This is how it could revolutionize sustainable energy. Make sure to follow Focal Point for the best science stories. (via Focal Point)
Algae is one of the most powerful sources of energy we have access to on Earth. This is how it could revolutionize sustainable energy. Make sure to follow Focal Point for the best science stories. (via Focal Point)
Scott Pruitt. Photographer: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Bloomberg
The fight against smog was one of many factors that made California a national and global leader in environmental protection. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images
Photo-illustration by Joe Darrow
Photo: Tony Millionaire
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Stephanie Winston Wolkoff and Melania Trump. Photo: Clint Spaulding/WWD/REX/Shutterstock
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Betsy DeVos. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.
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Photographer: Lars Hagber/Alamy
Barbara Ehrenreich: ‘Friends berate me for my heavy use of butter.’ Photograph: Stephen Voss for the Guardian
Photograph: Stephen Voss for the Guardian
After much research and soul-searching, they decided to accept Siemon’s offer and started the transition process. It helped that his cousin Dan had transitioned one of his farms to organic not long before and that generations of his family before him had run pasture-based dairies.
Scientific research seems to bear out his hypothesis. A 